THE United States of America has done much to shape the destiny of Samoa, and it is an interesting historical fact that as long ago as 1839 exact scientific, knowledge of the group was acquired by America. In that year the United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by Lieut. Charles Wilkes, U.S.N., visited the group. The expedition comprised six ships specially equipped for the exploration and survey of the then unfrequented islands of Polynesia. An extensive account of the work performed by it was published, in which may be found details of the flora and fauna of Samoa, and the surveys of the Expedition are the first, and the foundation of practically all, Samoan land admeasurements. The expedition did other work. In the previous year Captain Drinkwater Bethune of H.M.S. Conway had agreed with the chiefs upon a code of commercial regulations, by which in consideration of payment of harbour dues by vessels using the port, provision was made for the protection of foreign interests. Wilkes concluded a similar treaty in 1839. These regulations form the first formal recognition of the whites among the Samoans.

For the next twenty years white settlement in the group, and particularly at Apia, steadily increased. It was of all sorts and descriptions and of many nationalities, from Scandinavians to American negroes. The little community got along as best it could. "A sort of protective society,” says the Sidney Morning Herald of June 23rd 1875, “organised after the fashion of a small republic" was established with consent of the chiefs "enforcing order among members of its own body by means of a code of laws." The old system of native government, at once patriarchal and communistic, continued outside of Apia with practically no variation of its ancient custom. The seat and authority of native government lay with the chiefs, of multifarious grades. Their positions were never absolutely in right of inheritance, but birth and marriage always carried great power. Their dignity was recognised by a special language – words applied to them and their possessions were not used in reference to commoners, and they had many privileges more material. The chiefs acted as councillors and as magistrates to the particular community in which they resided. They were treated by their people with deference and respect and the moral influence exercised by them was great. But in all times known to Europeans, though possibly it had not always been in, the chiefly authority was curiously limited by the power of Samoan communism. Laws were hard to maintain; punishment for offences, unless the actual offence seemed bad in the eyes of the community, was difficult. The Samoans are a natural race, and rules as such have no great respect with them. As will be indicated in the succeeding chapter the native communities were basically independent of each other and were combined only for mutual protection or by reason of cost. The territorial extent of any native government was therefore never definitely fixed, and was subject to such alteration as might arise from changes in leadership or from hostilities which were the natural outcome of personal or local ambition.

In 1848 native war broke out, and lasted some seven years, gradually involving the greater part of Upolu and Savaii. It was a continuation of old district quarrels during the then interregnum and as far as can he gathered the whites had no part in it, if we may exclude the sale of ancient firearms. At its conclusion there was peace in Samoa for a few years.

In 1855 a constitution was drafted by Mr. Charles St. Julian, Chief Justice of Fiji prior to the annexation of that group to Great Britain in 1874, and this, says the Herald with some naivety, “served afterwards as a basis for the constitution ultimately adopted by the chiefs and the people, native and foreign.” Mr. Thomas Trood, for many years acting British Vice-Consul, who died at Apia in 1916, has described this Constitution in the year of his landing there, 1857. “In those days," says Trood "every man did what was right in his own eyes. There was no liquor licenses, or taxes of any description whatever; really a golden age; the Native Government existing more in name than in fact; de jure certainly but by no means de facto.” - Prior to the establishment, in 1880, of the Municipality of Apia, law and order among the whites were matters of personal choice, and for a further twenty years, as we shall see, they were little more.

In 1847 the first British Consular Agent was appointed in the person of George Pritchard, a missionary of the London Missionary Society who had been obliged to leave Tahiti in consequence of his resistance to the growing power of France in the Society group. He was succeeded, in 1856, by his son, William T. Pritchard, afterwards transferred to Fiji, who has left an interesting contribution to Samoan literature.

In 1853 the first United States Commercial Agent to Samoa was appointed. On at least two occasions before 1865, during vacancies, the interests of the citizens of the Great Republic were looked after by the British Consul. Germany was first represented in 1861.

These Consuls had their own courts and exercised a certain control over their own countrymen. The consular decisions however lacked means of enforcement, and were in consequence obeyed within the jurisdiction of their own nationals only as inclination or sentiment might direct. And there were many whites who were either of no nationality or without representation. By the 'seventies a disorderly half-caste population had, in addition, arisen, who in the words of Consul Churchward "led the natives into all the vices of their beachcombing progenitors; the sale of liquors of the vilest and most maddening description was permitted without restriction, to natives and whites, amongst whom there were many men whose very existence depended upon disorder and who occupied their whole time in fostering it.”

Late in 1856 an English trader, by name William Fox, was murdered by a young chief on Savaii. The act arose from a supposed insult, and for two years the offender went unpunished. The effect of this circumstance on the childish mind of the natives during this period was bad; their natural respect for the resident whites seems, from this and other causes which have been referred to, to have suffered considerably. But in 1859 H.M.S. Cordelia, Captain Vernon, paid a punitive visit to Savii, demanded the surrender of the murderer, destroyed houses and canoes until he was delivered up, and then promptly strung him to the yardarm, returning his body for burial. The effect of the punishment was marked and it was lasting.

From the 'thirties onward trade had begun to establish itself. The stocks of earlier island traders were made up largely of calico prints, knives, axes, and, not unseldom and not always even secretly, arms and ammunition. In later years the customary stocks have been much extended by kegged and tinned meats, canned provisions, and also of baker's bread. The trade in munitions has of course long disappeared. The earlier exchange was cocoanut oil, the later copra. Before 1860 traders had built many stores in Apia and trading stations on Upolu and Savaii. Of these, with a single exception to which reference will shortly be made, the very names are now all but forgotten. In the 'sixties came traders whose names are still in Samoa and whose lives are remembered the with respect.. In 1861 Andrew and Charles McFarland commenced business, and in the same year Samuel Dean. In 1867 came Charles Netzler, in 1868 August Nelson. The sole export of the group at this time was cocoanut oil. In the foreign community the English traders outnumbered any other nationality. English was then, and has always since been, the language upon which the various nationals met. The customary specie currency until the late 'eighties was dollars of Central and South American countries, though other systems were also in use; towards the close of the 'eighties and until annexation in 1900 American and English money were largely employed.

About the year 1854 there arrived in Apia, from Valparaiso, Chili, one August Unshelm, representing the great Hamburg house of Johann Cesar Godeffroy und Sohn. Unshelm, a man of ability and tact, commenced trading in Matafele, Apia in 1855, and in a few years he had instituted there a successful business in trade and oil, and had also established small substations at Vavau in Tonga and at Fiji. In 1864 he had the misfortune to he lost at sea, in a hurricane in the Fijian Archipelago. At his death Theodor Weber, then a young man of twenty-seven, who had come to Samoa from the firm in Hamburg through its Valparaiso branch in 1861, took charge. Weber is the most remarkable man in the early history of Samoa. According to Robert Louis Stevenson, and indeed many others, his methods were a sort of skilful admixture of the tactics of Machiavel and a caveman, but however that may be they seem at least to have gained him, as Stevenson freely admits, the respect of the whole community, white and native. By the end of 1869, that is in little upward of five years, he had as Trood says, "established a net-work of trading stations from New Britain on the north to Tongatabu on the south, including the Line Islands.” In the choice of his traders he took no account of nationality. For those seeking employment he had, it is said, but three questions, and all required affirmative answers: "Can you speak the language?" “Can you live among natives without quarrelling with them?” "Can you keep your mouth shut?" Two points of advice were given: “Have a woman of your own, no matter what island you take her from; for a trader without a wife is in eternal hot water;" and "Give no assistance to missionaries either by word or deed, beyond what is demanded of you by common humanity" - for the missionary taught the native that cloth or coin were better payment for produce than beads and tobacco.

From the standpoint of Samoa, Weber's greatest work was his persistent acquisition, on behalf of the firm which he represented, of tracts of land which at the time of his surrendering the management at Apia in 1888 and his death the following year at Hamburg at the age of fifty-two, amounted to seventy-five thousand acres, much of it of the cream of Upolu and therefore of all the Samoas. In the 'seventies Johann Cesar Godeffroy broke, and his firm collapsed, through foreign speculation, and their place in the South Seas is now occupied by the Hamburg Company which bears the wonderful name of the ---Deutsche Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft der Südsee Inseln zu Hamburg" and is known throughout the Western Pacific as the German Firm, or the D.H.&P. G. Whatever his methods may have been it is impossible not to admire the youthful genius of Weber. He found himself in a community where conditions were about as loose as me could well imagine, where government was nominal, and in these small, often sordid, surroundings without precedent and alone he constructed on wide lines and with sure knowledge the greatest commercial edifice in the South Seas. His results have never been faulty; his dealings have stood the test of time. The Land Commission of 1891-1894 threw many land claims out and reduced most, but it found nearly all Weber's purchases valid and based upon good consideration. His system of imported controlled labour is the only one that has so far been found entirely satisfactory; his plantations alone offer no interference with the ordinary life of the Samoans. He first in Samoa substituted copra for oil. His firm almost alone has succeeded in plantation matters. It is not sought to praise the man or his methods, but the house he builded is to-day his monument.

Weber was the first Imperial German Consul, appointed in 1870. From 1861 he had acted as Consul for Hamburg and the Norddeutscher Bund. He held office until 1872, and from 1875 until 1880, when he was succeeded by Captain Zembsch under circumstances which must have reference later.

In the year 1871 the British Consul at Apia reported to his Government regarding Samoa: “The imports are from the Australian Colonies and Hamburg; the greater part however are of British manufacture. About one third of the exports are shipped to the colonies and 90 thence to England; two thirds to Hamburg direct, being shipped by the representatives of the German firm, Messrs Godelfroy and Sons. In 1858 the business of these islands was in the hands of two British merchants, one German house and one American. In 1870 six British merchants and traders were established in Apia, besides a number of small agencies; one German house, with several out-stations and agencies; and three American houses with their agencies.

From 1870 onward settlement continued, though, as has since always been the case with Samoa, many who came stayed for a few years only. Even by the 'fifties Apia, which in 1830 is said to have had not a single European resident, was one of the ports of the Pacific. By the early 'sixties it had, in virtue of its position as a port, become the centre of trade for the group. The natives followed the whites; about the year 1867 the seat of native government was transferred to Apia from Malie, the ancient home of the Malietoa family.