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Overview
Turner's collection describes Le Feʻe accompanying Tapuaau from Fiji and reaching towards white cloth inside a house. It also records shell representatives and interpretations of the creature's movements at sea. These are attributed local understandings of a deity, rather than a list of powers shared by every octopus. The nineteenth-century English word cuttle-fish is explicitly accompanied by Octopus in the heading. The white cloth becomes a sign worn by warriors in the account of Tapuaau’s arrival. Shells provide a different representative presence: Turner describes white Cypræa ovula shells that are said to murmur when war is decided upon, while their colour and the octopus’s distance from shore are interpreted as signs. These material and animal associations are recorded as locally situated relationships with the deity, not interchangeable pieces of one composite body. Another community treats the Feʻe as a broader village power associated with May, games and collective temple-building.
Another episode makes a Savaiʻi Feʻe the husband of an Upolu chief's daughter. His passage opens a hole through the reef at Apia, and he builds an inland stone house. In that same fragment, a branch drifting down the river is his favourable sign that the people may proceed with war. A different fragment concerns octopus deities caught in a net and changed into rocks. These accounts connect kinship, movement and landmarks while retaining different actors and outcomes. Turner's missionary interpretations are not adopted as judgments on the tradition or its present-day significance. Turner locates the transformed octopus gods as upright rocks in the lagoon on northern Upolu and says travellers from Savaiʻi preferred to go around them. His description of the inland stone house invokes Stonehenge as an outsider’s comparison; it is not an archaeological demonstration that the two places share builders or function. Household associations in the same entry differ again from the war and village accounts. The profile keeps those layers visible and does not reproduce prayers or turn narrated consequences of disrespect into medical fact.
Origins & earliest records
The selected witness is Turner's 1884 collection, inspected through a 1984 reprint. Chapter IV, section 8 separately records household, village and war-associated Feʻe accounts. Its reference to octopus-shaped beings and local landmarks is a published transmission through a missionary, not a dated beginning for Samoan religious knowledge.
Records & interpretation
Turner explicitly names the octopus and separates the local accounts of a reef passage, stone house and changed rocks. These descriptions document reported cultural relationships and narrative variants. The English cuttle-fish terminology is historical; it does not establish zoological identification of a supernatural animal or confirmation of the narrated transformations.
In the literature
“They were changed into stones”
Chapter IV §8(2), lagoon-stones story · Turner’s historical English rendering
One reported story accounts for lagoon rocks through the fate of captured cuttle-fish deities.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Samoa, a Hundred Years Ago and Long Before
Chapter IV, section 8, O Le Fe'e; local war, village, household and landmark episodes are distinguished.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
Located primary passages
Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.
Primary source witness
George Turner, first printed London 1884; selected hosted text explicitly identifies the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific 1984 reprint. Chapter/numbered-section locators used because printed page numbers are not retained. Historical missionary-mediated accounts; differing village and household traditions remain distinct.
- Turner reports a chief Tapuaau bringing the cuttle-fish deity from Fiji. White cloth and shells provide emblems, and particular observed colours and movements are interpreted as signs in war.
- Accounts assign differing sacred periods to village worship. A separate story turns captured and killed cuttle-fish gods into lagoon stones; another describes a married Fe’e opening the Apia reef passage and building a stone house inland.
- Some families treat Fe’e as a household god and fear illness after consumption of its animal form. Turner records an internal cuttle-fish as the threatened consequence, rather than a general anatomy of the deity.
Specified numbered sections and complete episodes read; this is not a claim to have read the whole book. Turner’s missionary judgments and comparative labels are not adopted as contemporary Indigenous testimony. Prayer/song formulas omitted; no universal morphology or current practice inferred.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary textGeorge Turner: Samoa, selected 1984 reprint of 1884 textResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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