George Turner’s Samoa, a Hundred Years Ago and Long Before

Record summary

George Turner’s Samoa, a Hundred Years Ago and Long Before, published in 1884, gathers Samoan genealogies, myths, origin narratives, sacred places, deities, ritual practices, and accounts of spirit-related traditions. It is a key nineteenth-century source for comparing Polynesian cosmologies and the recording of esoteric knowledge by missionaries. Turner presents traditions obtained through named and unnamed Samoan informants, but he arranges them for an English readership and often evaluates them through Christian assumptions. Its contents should be checked against Samoan scholarship, variant oral histories, and the publication’s editorial framing.