Histories of Men and Specimens: One Trip from Fiji to the Smithsonian

In June 1842, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes returned to New York from a four-year voyage around the world with the United States Exploring Expedition. Wilkes had a prisoner on board his flagship, a Fijian man, named Veidovi, whom he had “arrested” in May 1840 for an1834 murder of several sea slug traders. Veidovi died the day after the ship arrived in New York. Americans buried his body in Brooklyn, but the head was too good to hide and the man's cleaned skull went to Washington, where, for the last century and a half, it has been a prized possession of various American museums. This paper pieces together the history of this man and his skull. Most Fijian accounts end with his arrest and departure; most American accounts begin with his arrival in the United States and his quick incorporation into an exuberant popular culture ready to celebrate the presence of cannibals and mermaids. But weaving together the story presents a more interesting history about the intersections between the aspirations of an expansive United States and the power struggles within Fiji. Was Veidovi surrendered, as Americans liked to believe, because Fijians recognized the error of their murderous ways? Or was Veidovi surrendered as one of many acts in the on-going power struggles in his town of Rewa? And how did the skull play into the racial politics of the United States, where it became a relic of “pure” Fijian ancestry, a category as carefully invented as the mermaid?