Omai

Soon ( * about 1751, † 1780), known for its Polynesian Article O as Omai, was the first Polynesians, who visited the British Isles and later returned to his homeland.

Omai was the son of a landowner on the island Ra'iatea. After fighting with attackers from Bora Bora, where he lost his father, he was forced to flee as a child to Tahiti. There he was in 1767 witnessed the first contact between natives and English sailors under the command of Samuel Wallis.

In September 1773 Omai went to Huahine, a neighboring island of Tahiti, on board the Adventure, who accompanied commanded by Tobias Furneaux James Cook and the Resolution on Cook's second Pacific expedition. Omai made ​​the acquaintance of Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg Forster and became friends with, among others, James Burney, a brother of the novelist Fanny Burney.

In July 1775 he reached, now a regular member of the crew, on the Adventure England, where, among others, Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty ( Admiralty ) and Joseph Banks his assumptions. When Prince dubs, he was introduced into the highest circles, the members of the Royal Society, and even the British King George III. presented. This ordered to vaccinate him against smallpox. Thus he escaped the fate of his fellow countryman Autourou, who had traveled in 1769 with Louis Antoine de Bougainville to France, but had died on the return journey to Tahiti on a smallpox infection. Due to its informal and friendly nature Omai embodied partly for its eco- the ideal of the so-called noble savage, which fuses natural innocence and aristocratic gentility harmonious. Omai was repeatedly painted, most recently by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The portrait now hangs in the Tate Gallery.