[1] Given his fluency of the Tongan and Fijian languages and proclivity for violence, Savage easily insinuated himself in the company of the Bau Island chieftain Naulivou.
Other accounts of his lethality depict that his “victims were so numerous that the townspeople piled up the bodies and sheltered behind them; and the stream beside the village ran red.”[2] For his services, Savage was accorded a certain amount of prestige and rewards from Naulivou, although the scope and magnitude of the more sensational details, to include numerous wives, influence on local politics, and becoming a cannibal chief in his own right, appear to be exaggerated accounts mixed with European yarns of “white savages.”[4] In 1813, the Hunter reached Fiji to ply in the sandalwood trade and subsequently employed a number of local European beachcombers including Savage.
Using the lull in fighting to attempt to parlay, Dillon reminded the Wailea that eight of their own, including a priest’s brother, were held hostage on board the Hunter.
Finally, exasperated by Dillon’s refusal to come down and triggered by another defender attempting to escape, the Wailea attacked the unarmed Savage and quickly overpowered him, eventually drowning him in a well.
Scholarly books and articles have examined Savage's legacy in terms of his aid in the rise of the Bau (and thus their subsequent dominance of Fiji), his introduction of firearms, and his role as an agent of social change with varying degrees of support and reproof.