When Robert Louis Stevenson died in 1894, warriors laid down their weapons and carried his body to a mountaintop grave above this ramshackle South Pacific outpost.
Although they revered the best-selling writer as "Tusitala" - "the teller of tales" - their descendants have all but forgotten him.Now a group of former missionaries from the United States wants to revive Stevenson's legacy in time for the centenary of his death on Dec. 3.
"He loved Samoa and Samoans loved him. We want to bring some of that back by preserving a piece of history," said Jim Winegar, a director of the Robert Louis Stevenson Foundation, based in Phoenix.
Restoration of Stevenson's historic home, Vailima, as a museum is under way. There are also plans to fix his neglected tomb.
Tourists who climb a steep and slippery rain forest trail up Mount Vaea to visit it are sometimes shocked to see bored teens scratching their names and initials into layers of whitewash on the tomb.
"It's just something everyone does," explained one boy.
Before he died at the age of 44, Stevenson chose the gravesite and wrote his own poetic epitaph:
"Under the wide and starry sky,
"Dig the grave and let me lie . . . ."
He arrived in 1889, hoping the tropical warmth would stave off tuberculosis caught as a child in the cold mists of his native Scotland.
He fell in love with the country during the last five years of his life.
He learned the language and championed the rights of Samoans against the ambitions of Germany, Britain and the United States. Each wanted to take over the islands, which straddled strategically important trans-Pacific shipping routes.
Warships regularly docked at Apia in a show of pre-World War I superpower rivalry.
Foreign envoys meddled in local affairs and tried to pit opposing island clans against one another and triggered tribal warfare. Stevenson, who was awarded chiefly rank, often intervened to bring peace.
"Stevenson was an adviser to our chiefs and had great compassion for Samoans who were fighting among themselves," said Seiuli Paul Wallwork, a Samoan member of the foundation's board whose English grandfather knew Stevenson.
All the while he kept writing books, stories, poems and newspaper articles sent by sailboat to publishers in Britain and the United States.
Soon after his death, Germany annexed Western Samoa. The United States took over the smaller eastern islands, which remain American Samoa.
A German governor moved into Vailima and had the house extended.
At the outbreak of World War I, the colony was seized by New Zealand on behalf of Britain. Vailima became home to a long line of New Zealand administrators and then the official residence of Western Samoa's head of state at independence in 1962.
The United Nations now considers Western Samoa as one of the world's least-developed countries. Many of its people still lead simple village lives, and most rely on financial support from relatives who have moved overseas to work.
Apia is a dilapidated capital. Buildings are falling apart. The roads are potholed and dusty.
Apart from one hotel named the Tusitala, there's nothing in the town reminiscent of Stevenson, who regularly strolled its streets.
The once stately Vailima fell into serious disrepair and was almost destroyed by three recent tropical cyclones.
"It was in bad shape when we started," said Winegar. "When it's complete, it will look much as it did when it was enlarged by the Germans. But inside it will appear very much as it did when Stevenson lived there."
Winegar and fellow ex-missionaries Dan Wakefield and Rex Maughan spent several years in Western Samoa for the Mormon Church in the 1960s and now regularly visit the islands to supervise the project.
The Western Samoan government hopes it will become a tourist attraction for their cash-strapped country.
Winegar also hopes it will inspire Samoans to learn more about their once beloved Tusitala.
However, restoring a house might prove easier than rebuilding a memory.
Few Samoans have read Stevenson's adventure classics "Treasure Island," "Kidnapped" and "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
"For somebody so well known around the world, he's not really known about here," said Ulafala Aiavao, a Samoan journalist. "His work isn't taught much in schools. Little has been translated into Samoan (language). He was writing for a foreign audience."