This story, clearly romanticised, has sound historical foundations. We received it in this form through a manuscript in English written in 1823 by a certain Tim Werner, former first lieutenant on a ship of the United States Military Navy. This Tim Werner had to leave the Navy at a rather young age - he was just thirty nine years old - because of an accident, and he lived in Polynesia for several years. Here, as we can deduce from some of his letters and notes found together with this manuscript, he took a Polynesian lover, a twenty year old young man named Tialelo, who told him the epic of the "Kea tribe" and which Tim wrote down on in a copybook.
A grand-nephew, a certain Chris Werner of Boston, a descendant of one of Tim's brothers, in 1896 inherited those papers. Happily also Chris was gay, so that he not only didn't destroy the papers, but carefully copied them and decided to research this "Kea tribe". Having a large capital at his command, he went to Spain and here he consulted the "Naval Historical Archive" in Madrid. From his notes we know that on the folder of the registers marked with the initials "MER-600/49" there was noted the existence of a brigantine named "Morisco", launched in Cadiz in 1643. It was also written that the ship made its last journey in 1699, leaving Cadiz for a journey in the West Indies, under a Captain Don Alonso Gonzales Serrano de Garces. In the register the names of the other crew members were not given, but this, in any case, was a first important verification of the historical background of the story. Also in that period and through to 1700 the King of Spain was Carlos II, as is mentioned in the story. The "Morisco" was then reported missing in the Pacific Ocean and the concluding note in the folder on the brigantine reads:
"No news to this day that any of the crew members could have survived."
In other words the ship had been wrecked, or had been victim of the pirate-infested seas of the West Indies.
Then Chris Werner asked and obtained the authorisation to carry on his researches on the "Heraldic Archive of Spain's Aristocracy" and here he found a second important check regarding this story. There existed the genealogical tree of the Rivas' Dukes. And there was a Don Hernando Arias Espartero de Aragon, and besides his name was written: "born on December 6th 1671" and then: "lost at sea after 1699". From the story it appears that Don Hernando, at the beginning of the story, was twenty eight years old!
As it is clear from Chris Werner's notes that, he thought that somebody, in finding or knowing in some way this information, could write the whole story, inventing a "tribe" that never existed. Therefore he decided to direct his research to the historical records about the discovery of the Pacific islands. He found and copied some very interesting reports on expeditions. The first one is the following.
"From the Historical Archive of His Majesty's Admiralty - London
Relation of the fifth journey of Douglas Lord Finnegan on the Pacific Sea, made in the years 1765 - 1768
Fascicle 12 - Page 37.
(omission) We at last came in sight of a group of volcanic islands. We cast anchor near the one that seemed the biggest and where could be seen a wide village. We put the dinghies at sea and, with an armed escort, we went towards the village. We met the population living there. They were people of strong constitution, tall but slender, their skin of a light bronze colour, their hair straight and black, oval faces and fine traits (omission) and both men and women wore on their hips simple clothes tied on one side and adorned themselves with fresh flower garlands. (omission) They were merry, gentle, hospitable, but very dissolute about their morals - their young women with lack of constraint solicited our sailors to the carnal union, (omission) especially during the night, so that I myself and more than once had to send them away from my bed and to refuse their tempting approaches.
The King of one of these islands showed to me a brass fruit bowl received by one of his ancestors as a gift from the ship of His Majesty's ship "Victory" and carved with the date 1676. (Omission) In the nearby island we found a tribe similar to the others and yet in some aspects rather different.
This tribe wore simple clothes like all the other tribes and had similar songs and dances, but their complexion was lighter and, really surprising but worth mentioning was that, while in the other islands, as I had occasion to write before, I was disgusted by the evident sexual promiscuity, in the only village of this island men and women live strictly divided in two parts of the village connected just by their temple. During the day they often worked together, but at night each gender withdrew to its own part. (omission) We were welcome but, differently from other villages, not in their homes. They rapidly built for us some comfortable, provisional huts behind a promontory where there was a circular sacred place, so that we were at the gates of the village but not in it. This avoided us being constrained to undergo, as happened in the other islands, the embarrassing nocturnal offers, even if some of the men of our crew complained.
Near the temple there were three houses where they kept their children. Here their fathers and mothers brought up them with care, all together, without concern who was their child or not. When the child reached the age of puberty, they were divided, in fact there was a house for the children and one for the adolescents where they were educated. When they reached approximately the age of thirteen, they were judged adults, so that the boys were sent to live in the men's part and the girls in the women's one. (omission)
Consequently they had, different from all the other villages, both a King ruling the men and a Queen ruling the women (omission) and they called their King Hey-nah-dou and their Queen Lou-oh-lah-nee. (omission)"
This passage, even if never names them, is clearly referring to the "Kea tribe" and the name of the two chiefs (or King and Queen as Lord Finnegan calls them) are a clear attempt at transcription of the names Hernando and Luolani as he had heard them pronounced. Also the description of the village corresponds almost exactly to the story of the manuscript.
We don't quote here other documents that confirm these notes but without anything specifically interesting, apart from the last extract which we quote hereunder.
It is based on some passages of a document entitled "Relation on the deeds of Father Mateo Pedra y Molas S. J. missionary in the Indies" to be found in the Archives of the General House of the Jesus' Company (Jesuits) of Rome, and dated 1784. On page 297,and following, of the manuscript, there is this report.
"(omission) About the tribe called Puerokea, it has been impossible to bring them the light of the Holy Gospel or the gift of civilisation, because this tribe, more than the others, was living in sin and, differently from the others of the neighbouring islands, was addicted to abominable deeds that no one of them did absolutely want to abandon.
Amongst them, in fact (the following part was not written in Spanish, but in Latin, so that common people couldn't understand it) "the man had carnal intercourse with the man and the woman with the woman, and they were living together in couples of the same sex as if they were husband and wife, or else in a whoring house where all together they performed all sort of infamy, copulating and reciprocally inserting their penis in the anus or in the mouth. But what surpasses any nefariousness is that in their school, the masters abused with impunity their barely pubescent students, affirming that this was part of the education that each boy or girl has to receive, and they invited the youths to perform the same horrible practices amongst themselves." (Here the text comes back to Spanish) Just once in a year a man and a woman drawn by lots, carnally united in a cell standing near the temple dedicated to their gods, but in the darkness, without seeing each other or recognising each other, in order to procreate.
Those filthy slaves of the Devil, who were so handsome like all the children of the Devil, even more handsome than the natives of the other islands, were living in their condition of sin and abomination, declaring to be happy and even proud of it. To our teachings they laughed telling us that we were mad, and some of the young men went so far as inviting us to perform with them Sodom's sin to persuade us! They didn't want to believe us when we explained to them that we had taken the vow of chastity, and they insinuated that we had carnal affairs amongst ourselves. Our teachings and our prayers for their salvation had absolutely no response.
We were on the island for seven months and, differently from all the other islands we couldn't make any conversions. The wooden house and the little church nearby which we built where they allowed us, were never visited by the natives. (omission)
So, we thought to call from the other islands Barnaba and Gabriel, two converted natives, to back our interpreter, and because we thought that possibly, amongst natives, they could find more suitable subjects to touch those people's hearts. But one day Barnaba came back from the village in hurry to warn us that Gabriel had been ensnared by those sons of the vice and that he said that he was planning to ask to the infamous tribe to admit him as a member.
Immediately, with Father Augustino and Father Pablo, we went to the village asking to meet with Gabriel. They called him, and the unfortunate young man confirmed us that he had chosen the road of the foul vice. We tried to convince him, we showed him the hell pains that would have awaited for him if he persisted in his error, we assured him forgiveness and absolution if he repented, but all was useless. He laughed with a sneer and went as far as kissing on the mouth a young native beside him, in front of our eyes, and he affirmed that he had found a better paradise than what we were preaching. It was evident that the Evil One had got hold of him!
We went back to our house, shaken and troubled. After going to the church to ask to Holy Spirit to inspire us, we decided we had to attempt to kidnap Gabriel to deliver him from the ill-fated influence of the inhabitants of this kingdom of Satan, and make him recover his senses.
But unhappily, when we had just succeeded in catching and tying him up, the village men, hearing his yells arrived and, after a short scuffle we were overcome; they took Gabriel back with them. We went to strongly protest with their King, telling him that we wanted back our man. But he not only refused that but told us that, after consulting with the Queen and the elders, they had decided to chase us away from the island and that they gave us until the sunset to leave.
Father Augustino tried again to approach this wicked Gabriel, alone and in secret, but he was caught and beaten, and he even risked being killed by Gabriel. Therefore at evening we boarded our two boats where we had loaded all the sacred furnishings; we set fire to the house and the church we had to abandon, so that they could not be debased by those perverted beings. (omission)"
It is really interesting to see the different appreciation of the English Lord and of the Spanish Jesuit. Possibly the first one had had less time to understand the sexuality of the Kea tribe, and didn't understand the real reason for the separation of the two sexes.
Also this second relation corresponds almost exactly to our story. Where it is different is where it tells of a union only once a year to procreate, whilst in the story it is said it happened at the new moon, that is about thirteen times in one year. But almost surely the explanation of this difference is simple - each man and each woman in average could be chosen by lot once in one year or even less than that.
The name of the tribe, following the Jesuit Father's writing, is "Puerokea". Kea corresponds, and we can infer that the first part of the word, that is "puero" is just a deformation of the Spanish term "pueblo" entered so in the hybrid Kea language. Therefore, if this hypothesis is correct, it is exactly "El Pueblo Kea" that is the "Kea People" (even if in the story the term "tribe" is used).
Since he had he found enough elements from the documentation to confirm the historical background of the story of the Kea tribe, Chris Werner decided to try to single out the island where the tribe was living in the hope of finding the descendants of the tribe.
But his search was useless. In fact he found documentation stating that, in 1807, in the smaller islands of the Hawaii group, there was a volcanic eruption that united two small islands giving birth so to the island now known as Kauai. It doesn't seem to us at all casual that the pronunciation of Kauai is so close to that of Kawaai of the story, and it cannot be just coincidence that the disappearance, or to better said, the upsetting and union of the two preceding islands happened in 1807, that is exactly sixteen years before the drafting of Tim Werner's story (written in 1823). And that the Polynesian lover of Tim Werner came from Ohau island, near Kauai island. The Polynesian man in 1823 was twenty-nine years old; therefore at the time of the volcanic eruption, he was thirteen.
What could have happened, therefore?
The rise of a new volcano from under the sea so radically changed the two existing islands making them just one, and must have destroyed the two villages in Kawaai and in Islakea, but at least some of the members of the Kea tribe must have fled safely and found shelter in the not so far island of Ohau. Tim Werner's lover was almost for sure one of these survivors.
Another fact that corroborates this thesis is the name of the young Polynesian - Tialelo. This name doesn't exist amongst the Hawaiian populations, but it is shaped with three syllables derived from the names of the "founding fathers" of the Kea Tribe that we meet in the story, that is Santiago, Muleto and Celo or Vilo or Mazuelo. In fact we see in the story that when a novice of the "new generation" comes of age, he chooses a name taking a syllable from the names of three adults he most admired. And even if at the beginning of the '800 all the founder fathers were of course dead, the syllables of their names survived intact in the names of their descendants.
It could be curious that Tialelo didn't narrate the end of his tribe, but perhaps this was more the choice of Tim Werner. He possibly decided to end his story with a flourish, a good ending, more than with a tragedy that some detractor of gay love could easily assimilate to the destruction of Sodom. Even if here the "Lot" who escapes is Tialelo, a gay man.
This is all that results from the notes and documents of Chris Werner about the research he carried out between 1888 and 1906.
Chris Werner passed away in New York on March 23rd 1927. The casket containing both Tim Werner's papers and the fruit of Chris Werner's research, passed to the hands of his lover, Kevin Ladd, who died in 1941. At his death, his niece, Melissa Williams Ladd inherited the casket; luckily she conserved it, and in 1957 sold it to a wealthy gay industrialist in Seattle, Michael Grant, famous for his precious collection of ancient documents on male homosexuality. We don't know how Michael Grant came to know about the existence of the casket and how he managed to buy it. His only note about this purchase reads:
"September 14th, 1957. Concluded purchase of Werner's papers. Paid 106 dollars in cash, after verifying the content." and the list of previous owners follows, possibly directly as told by Melissa Williams Ladd.
Michael Grant left in his testament all his precious collection to the "American Gay Task Force" association of New York, who received all the material in 1972, three years after Michael Grant's death. In the "AGTF" archives there still exists the original of this story and of Chris Werner's manuscripts. All the documentary material was transferred to microfilm in 1986, to make it accessible to researchers, and a catalogue was then published.
We asked for copies of some microfilms that seemed interesting, and amongst them were those of the "Werner casket", so we decided to publish this story.
We thank very much the AGTF of New York for having granted us the publication rights, and also Andrej Koymasky who executed, with skill and patience, the transcription of the manuscripts and the translations from Spanish and Latin.
The Publisher.