It was a sight completely alien to the Bau people.
A strange white skinned man with red hair and beard was being accorded rites and ceremony normally befitting a great warrior, more-so, one of their own.
Many Bauan natives had never seen a white man before, except that Kalle Svensson aka Charlie Savage, was no ordinary kaivalagi (white man).
The giant Swede single-handedly turned the tide of war in Fiji when Bauan warlord, Naulivou, was determined to overwhelm his enemies and stamp his dominance throughout the land.
But Savage’s influence would grow and legend has it that the sons he had by high ranking women, given to him in marriage, would be killed to prevent anyone usurping the chiefly leadership at Bau.
It is understood that Savage arrived in Fiji on the brig Eliza in 1808.
This was a time when white men were just starting to emerge in the South Seas.
As most accounts go, Savage was placed as a sailor aboard a ship registered in Port Jackson, Sydney, Australia.
He is known to have left Sydney for Tonga around 1807 and from there he was taken to Fiji by the Eliza, a brig from Callao in South America, which was wrecked near Nairai Island.
According to A History of Fiji by Ronald Derrick, Savage and another named John Husk had apparently boarded the Eliza at Tonga after claiming to be a survivor of the massacred crew of the Port au Prince and begged to be taken on as crew.
From all accounts, there were 40,000 in Spanish dollars on board the Eliza and a large quantity of firearms.
“After passing the Lau islands, the captain got too far south of his course and the ship piled on Mocea Reef, nine miles south of Nairai, and became a total wreck — an event which launched upon Fiji a triple disaster, Charlie Savage, the firearms and the dollars,” Derrick noted.
Most historians are unsure of whether Savage took with him a supply of muskets and ammunitions from the wreck, or returned later for them.
However Derrick wrote that, “One way or the other he introduced firearms to Bau, and the Vunivalu, Naulivou, was quick to see the advantage they would give him in his wars.”
Savage and others were taken to the east coast of Viti Levu, where he considerably aided the fortunes of the chiefs of Rewa and Bau.
The Swede soon demonstrated his deadly skills with the musket as was related by the people of Kasavu Village on the banks of the Rewa River.
Years later, the Kasavu people told Methodist missionary David Cargill that Savage “stood on his canoe in the middle of the river, less than a pistol-shot from the reed fence of the fortification and fired on the inhabitants, who had no means of defending themselves”.
The victims were so numerous that the townspeople piled up the bodies and sheltered behind them and the stream beside the village ran blood red.
He followed up with even more bloody displays of his musketry skills at Nakelo and Verata.
At Nakelo and elsewhere, Derrick continued, “his deeds were of such quality that he was spoken of with horror by his foes and admiration by his friends”.
It was at Nakelo that the Bauana plaited sinnet baskets strong enough to hold the Swede who was duly hoisted into the trest overlooking the village.
Savage fired at will from a slit in the busket, taking out Nakelo’s warriors and eventually the town fell.
Savage would quickly improve his knowledge of iTaukei language, eventually speaking the dialects fluently and, for more than five years, lived at Bau.
Yet Savage would not be alone for long, eventually joined by other beachcombers and seamen who deserted their sandalwood ships or obtained discharge.
“Within two or three years there were twenty of them: reckless, cruel, profligate men, whose muskets made them a terror to the enemies of their patrons; they lived by violence and the safe slaughter of savages armed only with primitive weapons; their reward was unrestrained licence and their morals were that of a poultry yard.”
These men were regarded by Fijians themselves as monsters and others as “demons in human form”.
However in his book Fijian Weapons and Warfare, Fergus Clunie stated: “These men lived closer to, and probably understood and sympathised with the Fijians more than any other foreigners living in Fiji have done since”.
Apparently, Savage kept in close contact with other white men who resided on the east coast of Fiji at the time.
“Just before the attack on Verata, he had sent word to several sailors living there to evacuate the area and these men now joined him at Bau,” Brown wrote.
“They were important as, at the time, no Fijian could be prevailed upon to fire a musket.
“The whole firepower of an army was in the hands of the ex-sailors and beachcombers who were living under the protection of various chiefs.
“With these sailors, Charlie formed the nucleus of an army of homeless whites whose ragged volleys were destined to push Bau into eminence never previously known,” Brown wrote.
Savage was becoming more at home and gained the respect of the chiefs which he had so critically aided in battle.
He would soon engage in rites of ceremonies that no white man had ever been a part of.
“Shortly after the battle for Verata, a ceremony to recognise the newly initiated warriors was performed,” wrote Stanley Brown in his book Men from Under the Sky -The arrival of Westerners in Fiji.
“Charlie Savage was one of the young men so chosen, an honour never previously given to a foreigner.
“He was painted with black dye and turmeric as was the custom, but he laughed at these efforts to make him appear more fearsome.
“The ceremony was to honour the young men who had gained distinction in battle, just as young squires had been awarded their spurs in the old days in England.
“As the name of each warrior or koroi was called out he presented gifts to the chief and received his new name, won in battle, and a spear.
“Savage, appeared last, carrying his musket and was given the name Koroi ni Vuinivalu, the most honourable name of all, meaning “warrior of the commander in chief.”
Regarded as a protégé of Naulivou, he was now adopted into the clan itself and no longer regarded as a foreigner.
In fact, he ranked second in command to the Vunivalu.
“Charlie Savage, ought to rank deservedly high among the able men who tempted fortune in the South Seas,” was historian and Fiji Museum’s first curator Colman Wall’s verdict on the man.
Wall wrote that in ceremonies after the battle for Verata, Savage reportedly walked out of the burekalou while kava was being prepared, “a thing that would have meant death to a lesser man”.
Not so for Savage.
“..I do not know of a single instance of a white man joining in pagan rites except Captain Cook, or indulging in cannibalism in any part of the Pacific,” he added.
However Savage, despite being quite a barbarian himself, often derided the Fijian customs he was subject to.
“He was always implacably opposed to cannibalism and on one occasion threatened — with a loaded musket — warriors who were proposing to eat the body of an enemy,” Brown continued.
Apparently on returning to the Bay, Savage refused the attentions of Fijian doctors and would only allow water to be poured on his wounds.
According to Wall, in a paper presented to the Fijian Society in 1911, tracing Savage’s career involved separating the chaff from the wheat.
“The four years or so of Savages’ sojourn in Fiji were mostly taken up in either fighting or feasting, he had no doubt great ladies given to him as wives, but most of the stories about them and the murder on his infant sons, lest they become vasu to Bau, rests on very insecure evidence. Some of it is no doubt true, much of it is pure myth,” wrote Wall.
Savage was known to have been given as wives, Adi Kakua and a daughter of Tui Lomaloma. He is recorded to have had a daughter named Maria.
Historian, Wall, mentioned coming into possession of three of the Spanish dollars that had been on board the wrecked Eliza.
“They were of the years 1797 or 1798. On one side were engraved the head of the Spanish King and on the other, a gateway flanked by two towers, from which they obtain the name of pillar dollars.
“The natives used them as chucky stones to skim over the water.”
Wall maintained that most of the dollars remained at the wreck and buried at sites on Nairai island and on Bau “in the place occupied by the Harem of Ulivou (Naulivou) and afterwards by that of Tanoa.”
After spending five years at Bau and enjoying the privileges of his stay, Savage would meet an untimely death at Wailea in Bua, Vanualevu.
In September 1813, Savage was killed in Wailea, Bua, after a disastrous sandalwood run in the province. After a siege on a rock face, Savage was killed alongside a Chinaman, Luis, while trying to negotiate with the enraged Waileans, thousands of whom had camped around Dillon’s Rock, where the others had sought refuge.
True to form Savage banked on his ability to converse in the native Fijian to secure their safe passge from their place of refuge.
It was to be the big Swede’s last gamble. The Waileans swiftly clubbed the Chinaman and captured Savage.
Knowing they had captured a great man whose reputation had no doubt spread throughout the group, the Waileans decided to drown Savage in a small pool in order to preserve his skull which they converted into a yaqona bowl.
He and other victims of the ill-fated Sandalwood expedition to Wailea, would be cooked in cannibal ovens and eaten.
It was a violent end to a man who himself had been the cause of much violence and bloodshed in Fiji.
Beachcomber, heathen, mercenary, barbarian or father, Charlie Savage surely made his impact in Fiji.
