Revised Jun 21 2021
⇐ Appearance and Deportment Home TITPTP Agriculture ⇒
The Island, the People, and the Pastor
Ch. V - Occupations
OCCUPATIONS.
They all labour, while young, in the cultivation of the ground; and when possessed of a sufficient quantity of cleared land, and of stock to maintain a family, they are allowed to marry, but always with the consent of Adams.
The greatest harmony prevailed in this little society; their only quarrels (and these rarely happened) being, according to their own expression, quarrels of the mouth. They are honest in their dealings, which consist of bartering different articles for mutual accommodation.
Their habitations are extremely neat. The little village of Pitcairn forms a pretty square, the houses at the upper end of which are occupied by the patriarch John Adams and his family, consisting of his old blind wife and three daughters, from fifteen to eighteen years of age, and a boy of eleven; a daughter of his wife by a former husband, and a son-in-law. On the opposite side is the dwelling of Thursday October Christian, and in the centre is a smooth verdant lawn, on which the poultry are let loose, fenced in so as to prevent the intrusion of the domestic quadrupeds. All that was done was obviously undertaken on a settled plan, unlike anything to be met with on the other islands. In their houses they had a good deal of decent furniture, consisting of beds laid upon bedsteads, with neat coverings: they had also tables, and large chests to contain their valuables and clothing, which is made from the bark of a certain tree, prepared chiefly by the elder Otaheitan females. Adams's house consisted of two rooms, and the windows had shutters to pull to at night. The younger part of the sex are, as before stated, employed with their brothers, under the direction of Adams, in the culture of the ground, which produced cocoanuts, bananas, the bread-fruit tree, yams, sweet potatoes, and turnips. They have also plenty of hogs and goats; the woods abound with a species of wild hog, and the coasts of the Island with several kinds of good fish.
John Adams's House