Background
Salmon was born Alexander Solomon in 1820 in Hastings, England. While often described as "the scion of a British Jewish banking family", his background was quite different.
Salmon was born Alexander Solomon in 1820 in Hastings, England. While often described as "the scion of a British Jewish banking family", his background was quite different.
His father, John Solomon, was a fruiterer or greengrocer selling from a store in Piccadilly. He improved his background when he arrived in Tahiti at age 19 in 1841. This is not surprising when it is considered how he was treated by British and European visitors to Tahiti. An example of this was Captain Henry Byam Martin, commander of HMS Grampus, who in 1847 described Salmon as, "... a low swindling bankrupt Jew from London." On his mother Catherine's side, Alexander was a grandson of a renowned Jewish miniaturist artist, Solomon Polack. His maternal uncle was Joel Samuel Polack.
He was well-educated and decided to settle on the island when he visited it in the late 1830s as a sailor aboard a whaler. He was not the first Jew to have settled on the island. When Captain Bligh of Bounty fame visited Tahiti, he encountered an escaped Jewish convict called Samuel Pollend, who lived on the island after surviving a shipwreck.
Salmon married Arii-taimai, one of the outstanding women on the island, a chieftain of the Teva clan. By this time, the Tahitians were nominal Christians, although they resented the missionaries’ demands to give up dancing, tattooing, and wearing flowers in their hair.
Salmon became the chief adviser to the rulers. Under the British, the Protestants were in the ascendancy — and Salmon’s wife was a Protestant. However, by 1841 the French were in charge and were attempting to impose Catholicism. Civil war threatened, and the queen of Tahiti fled on a British warship. Salmon and his chieftain wife devised a formula that persuaded the queen to return there by preventing bloodshed, and he persuaded the natives not to resist the French. Arii-tamaii, who was regarded as the queen’s equal and had in fact refused the crown, devised the peace plan.
After the queen returned, Salmon was awarded a high place of honor in her court. He served as president of the Tahiti Chamber of Commerce and was prominent in mercantile life. He shared his wife’s love for the people and in the late 1850s journeyed to Paris to try to dissuade Napoleon III from forcing Catholicism on the people. He was denied an audience with the emperor, and jour¬neyed on to England, where in 1858 he published his letter of complaint.
Salmon and his wife had eight children. One succeeded his mother as high chief of Papara, a daughter was the wife of the last king of Tahiti, Maran Taaroa; and their son Tati was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson when the writer lived on the island. Arii-taimai, who published her memoirs, partly edited by Henry Adams (1901), died in 1897, aged seventy-six.
In January 1842, Salmon married Princess Oehau, Ari'i Ari'ioehau Ari'ita'ima'i Hinari'i (1824 – 24 June 1897), later given the title ari'i. She was the adoptive daughter of King Pōmare II's widow, the mother of Pōmare III and Pōmare IV. Considered one of the highest ranking chiefesses in the land, she was head of the Teva clan, the traditional rivals of the Pōmare family, and descended from Chief Amo and Queen Purea who received the first European explorer to Tahiti Samuel Wallis in 1767. In 1846, she was considered a rival candidate to the Tahitian throne by the French governor Armand Joseph Bruat in the event that Queen Pōmare IV did not to return from her self-imposed exile to Raiatea and comply with a French protectorate over Tahiti.
The union of Salmon and Ali'i|ari'i produced the following children:
Tetuanui Reiaitera'iatea Titaua Salmon (3 November 1842 – 25 September 1898), married in 1856 John Brander; and in 1878 George Darsie
Ernest Tepauari'i'iahurai Salmon (December 1843 – April 1844)
Ari'ino'ore Moetia Salmon (3 March 1848 – 1935), married Dorence Atwater
Ari'i Teuraitera'i Tati Salmon (1852 – 5 December 1918)
Alexander Ari'ipaea Vehiaitipare Salmon (4 August 1855 – 1914)
Jean Nari'ivaihoa Tepau Marama Salmon (24 October 1856 – 6 February 1906)
Queen Johanna Marau Ta'aroa a Tepau Salmon (24 April 1860 – 2 February 1934), married King Pōmare V
Lois Beretania "Pri" Salmon (23 March 1863 – 25 May 1894)
Alexandria Manihinihi "Cheeky" Salmon (1 October 1866 – 2 December 1918), married her nephew Norman Brander