Page:American Diplomacy in the Orient - Foster (1903).djvu/411

 of general information. They are nearly all Christians, and are very devout in their attachment to their church and religion. … Thanks to the missionaries the great bulk of the natives and nearly all the chiefs can read and write and are adopting the habits of civilization with great alacrity." In recent years the Catholics have established missions, and have gathered a considerable number of adherents.

Foreign traders arrived soon after the missionaries, but it was several years before they permanently settled in the islands. The first to establish themselves were the Germans, and they were followed by British and Americans. The intercourse of this class has had a most deleterious effect upon the natives. They interfered with the government, stirred up strife, and set the people at variance with each other through their support of rival chiefs. They circumvented or disregarded the prohibitions which the missionaries had induced the native rulers to enact against the importation of firearms and liquors. The injurious effect of this importation was brought to the attention of the British government, and Parliament enacted laws making the traffic unlawful for British subjects in the islands still under native rule. Hence the guilty parties in this nefarious commerce were mostly the Germans and Americans.

The first time the attention of the United States was officially called to these islands was in 1872. Commander Meade, in the naval steamer Narragansett, on a cruise in the South Pacific, entered the harbor of Pago Pago in Tutuila, and found the islands in a state of