William Mariner’s Account of the Tonga Islands

Record summary

An Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, attributed to the shipwreck survivor William Mariner and edited by John Martin, was published in 1817. It describes Tongan cosmology, deities, spirit possession, funerary practice, sacred authority, and social life during the pre-Christian and early-contact period. The work is valuable for examining how an alleged eyewitness account became a textual source on Pacific esotericism. Its reliability has long been debated because Mariner’s memory, Martin’s editorial role, and later ethnographic comparisons complicate the narrative. It is a historical publication, not a paranormal case report.