The islands of Samoa were first settled about 3,000 years ago, after a very gradual migration eastwards into the Pacific Ocean from people originating in South East Asia. Others dispute this date, and fix the first Samoan colonies at 1000 B.C. and still others at around 600 B.C. Many archaeologists believe that Samoa was the cradle of Polynesian culture, from which Samoan settlers spread to settle Hawaii, Tahiti, and New Zealand, among other places.
        The Samoans had a very rich culture and mythology, believing that their islands and they themselves were the creation of the god Tagaoloa. They also had a diverse pantheon of other gods, including Fe'e, the War-God. Samoan mythology depicts Fe'e as a huge octopus, living under the sea with his tentacles reaching to the far corners of the known world like a huge compass. Believed to cause thunderstorms by his very voice, the Samoan
king's diviners would listen to thunder and discern if it was auspicious to go to war or not.
        What if Fe'e was real, and he was an intelligent race of cephalopod? This is not as outrageous as it may first seem. Cephalopods, which include squids, octopi, chambered nautiluses, and cuttlefish, are easily the most intelligent of invertebrates on earth today. Tests have shown that octopi possess considerable puzzle solving capabilities, possessing the largest brain in the invertebrate world, leading many to speculate that some species are at least as intelligent as the cat. Squids in the Caribbean, off New Zealand, and elsewhere are able with great precision to control the colors of their body, and even communicate with other squids with complex patterns of pulsating light and a rich spectrum of hues, requiring some intelligence to process. I speculate that in this ATL, the Fe'e is based on an actual
creature, a sentient octopus. Accepted by the Samoans with no great effect, it had profound influences once the idyllic islands were discovered by Europeans.

        ---1722: Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen sighted the islands, but did not make landfall.

        ---1768:  French navigator Louis de Bougainville sighted the Samoa islands, calling them the "Navigator Islands" because he encountered many Samoans sailing small canoes far from land and assuming that they must be skilled navigators. He does not encounter the Fe'e, nor understand any native reports on them, though the first inklings of their existence are now made to Europeans.

        ---late 1700s and early 1800s: Increasing European travel through the area brings Europeans to call upon the Samoans for supplies. European sailors begin to hear reports in earnest about the Fe'e, but chalk it up to native superstition and "pagan" beliefs.  The tales of the Fe'e are no wilder than anything else in the region, and are no real import to most.

        ----1831:  Reverend John Williams of the London Missionary Society arrived in the Samoan Islands with eight Tahitian missionaries, hoping to spread Christianity throughout the islands. The first European to really spend large amounts of time in the Samoa, and definitely the first to live there, he investigates native tales of the intelligent Fe'e. By the middle part of that year, he makes his first discovery of the Fe'e, and seeks to preserve it, as it is certainly an unusual specimen. No expert on marine biology, he continues preaching until with the help of his Tahitian missionaries encounters the first live Fe'e.
        The Samoans believe that Fe'e lived in a stone house beneath the waves, in a hole he created by knocking through the barrier reef protecting the island. Using those materials, Fe'e created a palace, called Bale-Fe'e.
        Reverend Williams, in a small Polynesian vessel, sights through the azure waters off Samoa Bale-Fe'e, and a number of these octopi around it. The structure is clearly artificial, decorated with native offering and trash left by European travelers. The Fe'e are maintaining gardens of undersea vegetation, and are seen to cooperatively catch entire schools of fish, using nets and herding techniques.
        Samoan divers head overboard, and are seen to engage in trade with the Fe'e, offering European goods for pearls, choice bits of coral, and items scavenged from ship wrecks. Though obviously lacking a true common language, the two groups do manage to make themselves understood well enough by hand and tentacle gestures.

Part II.

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