“I can see but one way out–to follow the demands of the Samoan people that the Berlin Act be rescinded, while the three Powers withdraw absolutely, and the natives be left alone, and allowed to govern the islands as they choose …There would be internal dissensions covering a certain period … it might affect commerce, and certainly the present standing of all foreigners … but it is the patient and not the doctor who is in danger … If left alone, the Samoans would continue fighting, just as they do under the tripartite treaty … but at least they would fight it out by themselves, without their wars being turned to the advantage of meddling foreigners.”

— “RLS, Recollections of Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific,” A. Johnstone.

Western Samoa was the first island state in the Pacific to win independence, in 1962, even though they had been independent until the Germans came, then the British, then the Americans, all of them anchoring their warships decked out with flags in Apia’s harbor, capital of Samoa. The “three powers” were there to colonize but first they had to take away the independence from their new subject population.

“A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa” is the book R.L. Stevenson wrote about the political turmoil among the people of his adopted island home in Samoa, an island group in the South Seas. By the time Stevenson arrived there in December 1889, much of the trouble had already played out with foreign meddling getting most of the credit.

The immediate political situation in Samoa at the time involved the identity of the next king, an important connection for the colonizers. The Germans got impatient and decided to install their own puppet-king, a chief named Laupepa, upon whom they conferred the kingly title, the highest high name in the Samoan list of high names: “Malietoa”—“Malietoa Laupepa!” It is he whose royal seal authenticates artifact number 769 in the Saranac Lake collection.

M. Laupepa had two rivals, Mataafa and Tamasese, so there were three factions dividing the native population. After sizing them up, Stevenson considered Mataafa to be the ablest candidate for kingship, telling the editor of the London Times that “I thought him, on the whole, the most honest man in Samoa, not excepting white officials.”

Mataafa carried out his doomed armed rebellion in July 1893, so Louis told his pen pal, Mark Twain, about it: “… I wish you could see my ‘simple and sunny heaven’ now; war has broken out … and here it is–with its concomitants of blackened faces, severed heads and men dying in hospital … the government troops have started a horrid novelty; taking women’s heads … Perhaps the best that could happen would be a complete and immediate suppression of the rebels; but alas! All my friends (bar a few) are in the rebellion.”

Prior to this rebellion, Mataafa had already done time in Apia’s jail. That’s where he first got to know RLS, when the latter made periodic visits there to see him and the jailers took note. Mataafa, who Louis called a “beautiful, sweet old fellow” felt that Tusitala’s intentions were proper, even honorable and the chief accorded him royal “kava,” the highest honor in Samoan custom and it carried political weight.

That’s how Robert Louis Stevenson showed up on the radar of officialdom and possibly why the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific issued a Regulation for the Maintenance of Peace and Good Order in Samoa, considered by a few to be directed at RLS, even himself; said regulation “prescribing fine and imprisonment for any British subject guilty of sedition toward the Samoan government,” defining sedition as “… all practices whether by word, deed, or writing, having for their object to bring about in Samoa discontent … and generally to promote public disorder in Samoa.”

Following his defeat in 1893, Mataafa and thirteen of his higher chiefs were exiled to the German controlled Marshall Islands while 27 of his minor chiefs were jailed in Apia. For good measure, the families and villages that backed Mataafa were overloaded with fines and taxes. For a Samoan to be exiled was like a death sentence. Louis sent a supply of food and trade cloth to the prisoners via his cousin, Graham Balfour, a future British Representative of the Stevenson Society of America in Saranac Lake.

In the meantime, RLS did what he could to improve conditions for the minor chiefs in the Apia jail, things like providing tobacco and throwing a feast for them. Robert Louis Stevenson was on his way to being venerated by the Samoan people, especially the backers of Mataafa. It was bound to happen, considering the effect he had on people.

One of those people was Taalolo, the head cook at Vailima and a minor chief in his own right. Taalolo’s father-in-law, Po’e, was one of the twenty-seven chiefs locked up in Apia’s jail. Po’e fell ill, ill enough to get a doctor who said to get him to a better place. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson were summoned.

This tropical tri-partite jail holding Po’e and his fellow chiefs was the kind seen in movie westerns, with one laid back guard on duty. In this case it was Mr. Wurmbrand. Fanny Stevenson poured the pressure on him to look the other way while her husband sprung Po’e from prison. The two Stevensons took their patient to Vailima, Stevenson’s big house on the plateau where he recovered. When Mr. Wurmbrand got fired over the incident, RLS invited him there to live, free of charge.

In an attempt to smooth things over with the authorities, Louis posted bond for the patient’s return. This is the above-mentioned artifact #769 on display in the Stevenson Cottage. It is called “The Malietoa Bond,” a permit signed by King Malietoa Laupepa of Samoa, and a guarantee signed by RLS referring to the political prisoner, Po’e, whom Mr. Stevenson took out of jail and refused to deliver up to authorities. It was Po’e who afterward gathered together the chiefs who built the Loho Alofa or “Road of the Loving Heart” in gratitude to Tusitala. The permit is written on one side of a sheet of foolscap in Samoan, signed “Malietoa” and sealed with his royal seal. On the back it says:

“I hereby bind myself to pay the amount of one hundred dollars U.S.C. to the Treasury of the Samoan Government in case the faipule Po’e commits any breach of the above mentioned conditions imposed upon him.

— Robert Louis Stevenson, Vailima, July 7, 1894”

Over a period of months, the chiefs were released one by one, those with lesser charges going first. And so it was that when they were all home again, Po’e rallied 21 of them to build a good road through the jungle to the home of Tusitala. The chiefs insisted on doing the work personally, only then would it have meaning. Such a gesture to a white man in Oceania was an extraordinary thing, they say.

The road was finished by early October. RLS had planned an impressive dedication party and invitations went out. Not too many people came because a rumor had spread that the occasion was a set-up to get certain people placed for a massacre which wasn’t true. The signpost they erected at the entrance to the new road said:

“We bear in mind the surpassing kindness of Mr. R.L. Stevenson and his loving care during our tribulations while in prison. We have therefore prepared a type of gift that will endure without decay forever–the road we have constructed. We are …” 22 names are listed.

This is the road that came to be called “The Road of the Loving Heart” though some call it “The Road of Gratitude.” Today there is not a trace of it left except in story.

About six weeks after the road’s dedication the chiefs found themselves cutting a new trail through the jungle during the night, up the side of a small volcanic peak called “Vaea.” They were bringing Tusitala to his final address, where he said he wanted to be, on top of his own little mountain and looking out to sea, under the wide and starry sky.