Quotes from "His Majesty O'Keefe" regarding Yap, Micronesia
(Spanish Governor Don Henrique to Captain David D. O’Keefe, regarding the Yapese people) “. . . I wish to be your friend. I need your help . . . . You have a hold over these people. Tell me, what can I do to make them obey me and respect me as they do you?”
I can tell you in three words,” said O’Keefe. “Let them alone.”
“But Manila will not let me alone. The roads, the docks . . . .“
“You must make Manila understand what all white men have learned here through bitter experience. The Germans learned it, I learned it, and now you’ve found out. The Yaps will not work.”
p. 293, “His Majesty O’Keefe,” by Lawrence Klingman and Gerald Green (1950)
Despite all the efforts of successive occupying powers, the stubborn Yaps have remained the same. They refuse to work for the new (foreigners); they are indifferent to his culture, with the exception of soft drinks and cigarettes; fei (stone money) is still their medium of exchange; mispils (communal mistresses) are still stolen in the dead of night, and the tammarangs (magicians) still inflict death by bone-pointing upon offenders against the ancient religion. In Tomil Harbor, on calm days when the water is clear, two wheels of fei, fully twenty feet in diameter, the largest ever hewn by O’Keefe’s men, are pointed out to visitors.*
p. 353, “His Majesty O’Keefe,” by Lawrence Klingman and Gerald Green (1950)
* These two stone money pieces are now on the “forbidden island” of Rumung.
I can tell you in three words,” said O’Keefe. “Let them alone.”
“But Manila will not let me alone. The roads, the docks . . . .“
“You must make Manila understand what all white men have learned here through bitter experience. The Germans learned it, I learned it, and now you’ve found out. The Yaps will not work.”
p. 293, “His Majesty O’Keefe,” by Lawrence Klingman and Gerald Green (1950)
Despite all the efforts of successive occupying powers, the stubborn Yaps have remained the same. They refuse to work for the new (foreigners); they are indifferent to his culture, with the exception of soft drinks and cigarettes; fei (stone money) is still their medium of exchange; mispils (communal mistresses) are still stolen in the dead of night, and the tammarangs (magicians) still inflict death by bone-pointing upon offenders against the ancient religion. In Tomil Harbor, on calm days when the water is clear, two wheels of fei, fully twenty feet in diameter, the largest ever hewn by O’Keefe’s men, are pointed out to visitors.*
p. 353, “His Majesty O’Keefe,” by Lawrence Klingman and Gerald Green (1950)
* These two stone money pieces are now on the “forbidden island” of Rumung.