Constance Gordon Cumming captured many images of 1870s colonial life in Fiji and collected traditional Fijian objects.

The Fiji Times and The Polynesian Gazette were occasionally printed on very fine white barkcloth (masi seavu). The text shown here reports local news, ship movements, and announcements, but does not seem to be connected to a significant event.

The first Christian missionaries arrived in Fiji in 1835, and although the progress of conversion was slow and the missionaries’ position was sometimes precarious, the great majority of Fijians had become devout Christians by the late 1870s. Methodist missionaries documented the Fijian language with grammar and dictionaries, and publications such as this New Testament were translated into Fijian.

British colonial officer Arthur J. L. Gordon made several drawings that included depictions of incidents in the highlands of Viti Levu during the Little War of 1876, an uprising against the colonial administration.

The kaka form of spear is thought to be named for the similarity between the barbs and the beak of the kaka parrot. 

This sokilaki spear has very fine coir binding and extraordinarily precise barb carving in twenty-nine tiers, unnecessary in terms of technical efficiency, but significant in terms of status and divine favor.

Saisai were reserved for chiefly use.

American-made muskets were traded to Fiji by the thousands from the period of the sandalwood trade (1804–14) to the mid-nineteenth century. A few surviving examples exhibit intricately inlaid whale ivory and white glass seed beads added by Fijians.