Travel of Georg Forster
Tahà - Society Island (Tahaa)
Title
Heeva dance at Tahà
Short description
Georg Forster reports on the heeva his father and other crew members can experience on Tahaa Island.
Text on source
After our party had dined in O-Hamene harbour, they removed to the next creek to the north, and walked to the house of a chief named O-Tàh, where the natives said there would be a heeva or public dance. The crowd increased prodigiously as they approached it, and in their way they saw a woman at a considerable distance, dressed in a singular habit, and blacked all over. They were told she performed the burial rite, or mourned for a dead person. They found the aree, who was an elderly man, sitting on a wooden stool, of which he offered one half to my father. The dance was begun some time after by three young girls, the eldest not exceeding ten, and the youngest about five years of age. The usual music was performed on three drums, and in the intervals of the dance three men performed something of a pantomime drama, which represented travellers asleep, and thieves dextrously conveying away their goods, round which they had, for greater security, placed themselves.
English translation
Folios/Pages
pp. 412-413
Date
1773 09 14 circa
Observations on the events description
The dots on the map indicate the places where sound and music events were described. They don't represent travel stages.
Participants
Name
Role
Notes
Edit
Delete
Forster, Johann Reinold
Teller
How to quote
Fabbrocino A. P., "Heeva dance at Tahà" (Event description), Echos. Sound Ecosystems in Travelogues. Published 2024 03 20.
doi: 10.25430/echos.travels.76
This work is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 
