Saudeleur dynasty

Pohnpei, a high volcanic island of about 334 square kilometres in the eastern Caroline Islands, was probably settled around the start of the Common Era by people of the Lapita cultural tradition from the south-east Solomon Islands or Vanuatu. Radiocarbon dates show human activity at the site of Nan Madol, on the reef off Temwen Island on the east coast, from about 80–200 CE, and artificial islets were being built there by the eighth or ninth century. According to Pohnpeian oral tradition, the island was not yet united when two sorcerer brothers, Olisihpa and Olosohpa, arrived in a large canoe from Western Katau, a land of legend, seeking a place to build an altar to Nahnisohn Sapw, a god of agriculture. They built on the reef at Nan Madol, and when Olisihpa died of old age Olosohpa became the first Saudeleur, ‘lord of Deleur’, and brought the whole island under one ruler. Tradition says he married a local woman and founded a line of rulers, though accounts give between eight and seventeen of them. The rise of the dynasty is usually placed around 1100–1200, a dating supported by archaeology: coral from the tomb of the first ruler of the whole island shows that it was built at Nan Madol around 1180–1200.

Pohnpei is a fertile, well-watered island, and its people lived from breadfruit, yams, taro and coconuts, with fish and shellfish from the reef and lagoon. Its population under the Saudeleur has been estimated at around 25,000. Tradition holds that the ruler owned the land and its people and allotted land to subordinate landholders, who owed him tribute: mainly breadfruit during rak, the season of plenty, and yams, taro and fermented breadfruit during isol, the season of scarcity, with seafood due at fixed times. Food was delivered to Nan Madol at landing places, first at Peiniot and later at Usennamw, and turtles and dogs were reserved for the ruler’s table. Nan Madol itself housed a small elite of nobles and priests, almost certainly no more than 1,000 people and perhaps fewer than half that, while some islets served special purposes, such as canoe building on Dapahu and the making of coconut oil on Peinering. Religion bound the system together. Priests presided over rites and burials at Nan Madol, a moray eel called Nahn Samwohl was revered as an intermediary with the founders’ god Nahnisohn Sapw, and offerings were made to the thunder god Nahn Sapwe, from whom the rulers drew their legitimacy. Other cults, including those of freshwater eels, continued across the island.

No standing army is recorded for the Saudeleur, and Pohnpeian tradition says that its rulers were little concerned with military affairs. Their power rested instead on religious authority, on control of land, food and labour, and, in the stories, on sorcery. The quarrying, transport and stacking of great quantities of basalt, some of it brought from the far side of the island, show the scale of labour a ruler at Nan Madol could command, and the walls of the royal tomb on Nandauwas rise 5.5–7.5 metres around its central enclosure. Opposition came from within: tradition records that discontent with harsh rulers led to at least two assassinations. The dynasty’s end is remembered as a war. The story survives in at least thirteen published versions. By tradition Isokelekel, son of the thunder god Nahn Sapwe, sailed from Katau in the east, a land often identified with Kosrae, with 333 followers. The accounts differ on how fighting began, whether from children’s play that turned into a quarrel, the provocation of one of his lieutenants or a rising of Pohnpeians against the ruler, and on its course, but all end with the defeat of the last Saudeleur, Saudemwohl. The anthropologist Glenn Petersen has argued that the historical invasion may have conquered only the district of Madolenihmw rather than the whole island.

The Saudeleur polity was the first government to rule the whole of Pohnpei, and its organisation is known almost entirely from oral tradition, written down by Pohnpeian historians such as Luelen Bernart and by anthropologists, and from the archaeology of Nan Madol. Authority was concentrated in a single ruler, the Saudeleur, who lived at Nan Madol surrounded by priests and nobles. The complex reflected this order. Its north-eastern mortuary sector, Madol Powe, held 58 islets with the walled tombs of rulers and the dwellings of priests, while other islets housed the ruler, the nobility and the work that supplied them. Tradition credits the rulers with a stratified system of titles tied to particular offices and occupations, a forerunner of the elaborate title system of later Pohnpei. During the reign of the Saudeleur remembered as Mwohnmwei the island is said to have been divided into three wei, or districts. Control was not equal everywhere: Sokehs in the north-west held high prestige, while Onohnleng remained largely autonomous. Names of other rulers survive in tradition, among them Inenen Mwehi, Raipwenlake and Sakon Mwehi, who is remembered for taxing Pohnpeians ruthlessly, but neither the order of the rulers nor the length of their reigns can be fixed with confidence.

Nan Madol is the Saudeleur’s enduring monument and one of the most remarkable archaeological sites in the Pacific. Nearly a hundred artificial islets of stacked basalt columns and coral fill, separated by tidal canals, cover an area of about 1.5 by 0.5 kilometres on the reef. Uranium-thorium dating of coral from the tomb of the first ruler of the whole island places the start of monument building there at about 1180–1200, before the monumental construction that began on other Pacific islands between about 1300 and 1600, and most of its palaces, temples and tombs were built between about 1200 and 1500. The Saudeleur era also left a political legacy. Pohnpeians remember it as the first time the island was united under one government, and the customs of tribute and feasting at funerals and other celebrations are traced to Saudeleur practice. The Nahnmwarki system that replaced it, with chiefdoms each headed by two principal chiefs, still structures customary life on the island. German and Japanese colonial officials dug at Nan Madol in the early twentieth century. The site became a United States National Historic Landmark in 1985, and in 2016 it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger, because silting canals and spreading mangroves threaten its walls.

The fall of the Saudeleur is known only through oral tradition, which survives in many versions. The later rulers are remembered as increasingly oppressive in their demands for food and labour, and the stories say that one of them offended the thunder god Nahn Sapwe, who left Pohnpei for Katau. There the god fathered a son, Isokelekel, with a woman of the island, and the child was said to know even before his birth that he was destined to avenge his father. As a grown man Isokelekel sailed to Pohnpei with 333 followers, and war broke out with the Saudeleur. The last ruler, Saudemwohl, was defeated; tradition says that he retreated uphill to a stream, where he turned into a fish. Isokelekel took the new title of Nahnmwarki and the seat of power at Nan Madol, created the second title of Nahnken for his son Nahnlepenien, and divided Pohnpei into three autonomous chiefdoms, which later became five. The conquest is usually dated around 1628, although some accounts place the fall of the dynasty in the sixteenth century. Isokelekel himself is said to have taken his own life on realising that he had grown old. Nan Madol remained in use for a time under the new chiefs but was gradually abandoned, and Pohnpei is today a state of the Federated States of Micronesia.