ABSTRACT
The quote ‘round, black and lustrous’ is taken from the Missionary Herald dating to 1881, the year following the establishment of the first mission in Chuuk Lagoon. It refers to the eyes of the indigenous people which were ‘not dimmed by the use of [k]ava or toddy from the cocoanut blossom’ (Doanne 1881:209, quoted in Marshall and Marshall 1975:450). The inhabitants of Chuuk Lagoon at this time had no history of using psychoactive substances, unlike their island neighbours to the west and east who chewed betel nut and drank kava respectively. By 1886 the Reverend Robert Logan was able to predict that ‘[d] oubtless white men will some time teach them to drink’ (1886:18, quoted in Marshall 1979:37). These comments were made at the very beginning of prolonged encounters between the Chuukese and outsiders.
