The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 2 (of 3)

CHAPTER V
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE SOCIETY ISLANDERS

§ 1. The Society Islands

The Society Islands are a large and scattered archipelago in the South Pacific, situated within 16° and 18° of South latitude, and between 148° and 155° of West longitude. They lie some three hundred miles from the Hervey or Cook Islands, from which they are separated by the open sea. The islands form a chain nearly two hundred miles in length, extending from north-west to south-east, and fall into two groups, an eastern and a western, which, on account of the prevailing wind, are known respectively as the Windward and Leeward Islands. The Windward or eastern group includes Eimeo or Moörea in the west, Maitea in the east, and Tahiti, the principal island of the whole archipelago, in the centre. In the Leeward or western group the chief islands are Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa, and Borabora. The islands appear to have been first discovered by the Spanish navigator Fernandez de Quiros in 1606 or 1607, but after him they were lost sight of till 1767, when they were rediscovered by Wallis. A few years later they were repeatedly visited by Captain Cook, who gave the first full and accurate description of the islands and their inhabitants.⁶¹⁸

The islands, with the exception of a few flat lagoon islands, are of volcanic formation, high and mountainous, consisting for the most part of a central peak or peaks of bold and striking outline, which descend in steep ridges towards the sea, sometimes reaching the coast, but oftener leaving a broad stretch of flat and very fertile land between their last slopes and the beach. Between the ridges lie deep and beautiful valleys, watered by winding streams and teeming with luxuriant vegetation. The rocks of which the islands consist are all igneous, chiefly trachyte, dolerite, basalt, and lava. They are considered by geologists to present perhaps the most wonderful and instructive example of volcanic rocks to be seen on the globe. Yet, though the islands are judged to be of comparatively recent formation, there are no traces of volcanic action in them at the present time. The craters have disappeared: hot springs do not exist; and earthquakes are rare.⁶¹⁹

The Society Islands, and Tahiti in particular, are famous for the beauty of their natural scenery; indeed, by general consent they appear to rank as the fairest islands in the Pacific. Travellers vie with each other in praise of their enchanting loveliness. Tahiti, the largest island of the group, may be taken as typical of them all. It consists of two almost circular islands united by a very low and narrow neck of land: the northern and larger island is known as Tahiti the Great (Tahiti nui), the southern and smaller island is known as Tahiti the Little (Tahiti iti). In the centre of each island the mountains rise in craggy peaks, sometimes in the shape of pyramids or sugar-loaves, their rocky sides clothed with every variety of verdure, and enlivened here and there by cataracts falling from lofty cliffs, while the shore is washed by the white-crested waves of the Pacific breaking in foam on the coral reefs or dashing in spray on the beach. The scene is especially striking when beheld for the first time from the sea at sunrise on a fine morning. Then the happy combination of land and water, of precipices and plains, of umbrageous trees drooping their pendent boughs over the sea, and distant mountains shown in sublime outline and richest hues, all blended in the harmony of nature, produces in the beholder sensations of admiration and delight. The inland scenery is of a different character, but not less impressive. There the prospect is occasionally extensive, but more frequently circumscribed. There is, however, a startling boldness in the towering piles of basalt, often heaped in picturesque confusion near the source or margin of some crystal stream that flows in silence at their base, or plashes purling over the rocks that obstruct its bed; and there is the wildness of romance about the deep and lonely glens, from which the mountains rise like the steep sides of a natural amphitheatre till they seem to support the clouds that rest upon their summits. In the character of the teeming vegetation, too, from the verdant moss that drapes the rocks to the rich foliage of the bread-fruit tree, the luxuriance of the pandanus, and the waving plumes of the coconut palm, all nurtured by a prolific soil and matured by the genial heat of a tropical climate, there is enough to arrest the attention and to strike the imagination of the wanderer, who, in the unbroken silence that reigns in these pleasing solitudes, may easily fancy himself astray in fairyland and treading enchanted ground.⁶²⁰

§ 2. The Islanders and their Mode of Life

The islanders are, or were at the date of their discovery by Europeans, fine specimens of the Polynesian race, being tall, well-proportioned, and robust. Captain Cook described them as of the largest size of Europeans. Their complexion varies from olive to bronze and reddish-brown, frequently presenting a hue intermediate between the yellow of the Malay and the copper-colour of the American Indians. The hair is shining black or dark brown, usually straight, but often soft and curly; never lank and wiry like that of the American Indians, and only in rare cases woolly or frizzly like that of the Papuans. The men have beards, which they used to wear in a variety of fashions, always, however, plucking out the greater part. The shape of the face is comely, and the facial angle is often as perpendicular as in Europeans. The cheek-bones are not high; the nose is either straight or aquiline, often accompanied by a fulness about the nostrils; it is seldom flat, though it was formerly the practice of mothers and nurses to press the nostrils of the female children, a broad flat nose being by many regarded as a beauty. The mouth in general is well formed, though the lips are sometimes large and protuberant, yet never so much as to resemble the lips of negroes; the chin is usually prominent. The general aspect of the face very seldom presents any likeness to the Tartar or Mongolian cast of countenance; while the profile frequently bears a most striking resemblance to that of Europeans. A roundness and fulness of figure, not usually extending to corpulency, is characteristic of the race, especially of the women. In general physique they resemble the Sandwich Islanders and Tonga Islanders; according to Ellis, they are more robust than the Marquesans, but inferior in size and strength to the Maoris.⁶²¹

Their diet is chiefly vegetable; when Captain Cook visited the islands, the only tame animals were hogs, dogs, and poultry. Bread-fruit, taro, yams, bananas, and coconuts are their staple food; the bread-fruit in particular has been called their staff of life. Taro and yams are carefully cultivated by the natives, and they also grow the sweet potato as an article of food, though to a less extent than the other two roots; in quality the sweet potato of Tahiti is far inferior to that of the Sandwich Islands. The sea affords a great variety of fish and shell-fish, which the natives catch and eat; nothing that the sea produces is said to come amiss to them. Hogs and dogs were in olden times the only quadrupeds whose flesh was eaten by the Tahitians; but for the most part they rarely tasted meat, subsisting almost exclusively on a diet of fruit, vegetables, and fish.⁶²²

The common houses were of an oblong shape, usually from eighteen to twenty-four feet in length, by eleven feet in width, the long sides being parallel to each other, but the two ends commonly rounded, especially in the houses of chiefs. The thatched roofs were supported on three parallel rows of wooden posts, and there being no outer walls and no partitions, the wind blew freely through them. The floor was covered with mats, forming a single cushion, on which the people sat by day and slept at night. In some houses there was a single stool appropriated to the use of the master of the family; otherwise an ordinary dwelling contained little or no furniture except a few small blocks of wood, hollowed out on the upper surface so as to form head-rests or pillows. The houses served chiefly as dormitories and as shelters in rain: the people took their meals in the open air. Chiefs, however, often owned houses of much larger dimensions, which were built and maintained for them at the common expense of the district. Some of these chiefly dwellings were two hundred feet long, thirty feet broad, and twenty feet high under the ridge; one of them, belonging to the king, measured three hundred and seventy feet in length. We read of houses which could contain two or three thousand people;⁶²³ and of one particular house in Tahiti we are informed that it was no less than three hundred and ninety-seven feet long by forty-eight feet broad, and that the roof was supported in the middle by twenty wooden pillars, each twenty-one feet high, while the sides or eaves of the roof rested on one hundred and twenty-four pillars, each ten feet high. A wooden wall or fence enclosed the whole. This great house was used for the celebration of feasts, which sometimes lasted for days together, and at which nearly all the hogs in the island were consumed.⁶²⁴

Like all the Polynesians down to the date of their discovery by Europeans, the inhabitants of the Society Islands were totally ignorant of the use and even of the existence of the metals, and they had to employ substitutes, chiefly stone and bone, for the manufacture of their tools and weapons. Of their tools Captain Cook gives the following account: "They have an adze of stone; a chisel, or gouge, of bone, generally that of a man's arm between the wrist and elbow; a rasp of coral; and the skin of a sting-ray, with coral sand, as a filer or polisher. This is a complete catalogue of their tools, and with these they build houses, construct canoes, hew stone, and fell, cleave, carve, and polish timber. The stone which makes the blade of their adzes is a kind of basaltes, of a blackish or grey colour, not very hard, but of considerable toughness: they are of different sizes; some, that are intended for felling, weigh from six to eight pounds; others, that are used for carving, not more than so many ounces; but it is necessary to sharpen both almost every minute; for which purpose, a stone and a cocoa-nut shell full of water are always at hand. Their greatest exploit, to which these tools are less equal than to any other, is felling a tree; this requires many hands, and the constant labour of several days."⁶²⁵ The earliest missionaries expressed their astonishment that with such simple tools the natives could carve so neatly and finish so smoothly; our most ingenious workmen, they declared, could not excel them.⁶²⁶

The principal manufacture of the Society Islanders was the making of the cloth which they used for their garments. The material for the cloth was furnished by the bark of several trees, including the paper-mulberry, the bread-fruit tree, and a species of wild fig-tree. Having been stripped from the tree and soaked in water, the bark was spread out on a beam and beaten with heavy wooden mallets, till it was reduced to the proper degree of thinness and flexibility. The finest and most valuable kind of cloth was made chiefly, and sometimes entirely, from the bark of the paper-mulberry and was bleached pure white. But vegetable dyes were also commonly employed to stain the cloth with a variety of hues arranged in patterns. The favourite colours were a brilliant scarlet and a bright yellow; Captain Cook described the scarlet as exceedingly beautiful, brighter and more delicate than any we have in Europe; it was produced by a mixture of the juices of two vegetables, the fruit of a species of fig and the leaves of the Cordia sebastina or etou tree. The patterns were in this bright scarlet on a yellow ground; formerly they were altogether devoid of uniformity or regularity, yet exhibited a considerable degree of taste. The bales of bark-cloth were sometimes as much as two hundred yards long by four yards wide; the whole bale was in a single piece, being composed of narrow strips joined together by being beaten with grooved mallets. A chief's wealth was sometimes estimated by the number of bales which he possessed; the more valuable sort, covered with matting or cloth of an inferior sort, were generally hung from the roof of his house. The manufacture of cloth was chiefly in the hands of women; indeed it was one of their most usual employments. Even women of high rank did not disdain this form of industry; the wives and daughters of chiefs took a pride in manufacturing cloth of a superior quality, excelling that produced by common women in the elegance of the patterns or the brilliance of the dyes. Every family had a little house where the females laboured at the making of cloth; but in addition every district had a sort of public factory, consisting of a spacious house where immense quantities of cloth were produced on the occasion of festivals, the visits of great chiefs, or other solemnities. In such a factory the women would often assemble to the number of two or three hundred, and the monotonous din of their hammers falling on the bark was almost deafening; it began early in the morning, only to cease at night. Yet heard at a distance in some lonely valley the sound was not disagreeable, telling as it did of industry and peace.⁶²⁷

Among the other articles manufactured by the Society Islanders before the advent of Europeans were fine mats, baskets of many different patterns, ropes, lines, and fishing-tackle, including nets, hooks, and harpoons made of cane and pointed with hard wood. In every expedient for taking fish they are said to have been exceedingly ingenious.⁶²⁸ They made bows and arrows, with which, as an amusement, they shot against each other, not at a mark, but to see who could shoot farthest. Like the rest of the Polynesians, they never used these weapons in war.⁶²⁹

Society among these islanders was divided into three ranks; first the royal family and nobility (hui arii); second, the landed proprietors, or gentry and farmers (bue raatira); and third, the common people (manahune). Of these, the landed gentry and farmers were the most numerous and influential class, constituting at all times the great body of the people and the strength of the nation, as well as of the army. The petty farmers owned from twenty to a hundred acres. Some of the great landowners possessed many hundreds of acres, and being surrounded by retainers they constituted the aristocracy of the country and imposed a restraint upon the king, who, without their co-operation, could carry but few of his measures. They also frequently acted as priests in their family temples. The common people comprised slaves and servants. The slaves were captives taken in war. Their treatment was in general mild, and if peace continued, they often regained their freedom and were allowed to return to their own country.⁶³⁰

The government of the Society Islands, like that of Hawaii, was at least in form an arbitrary monarchy. The supreme authority was vested in the king and was hereditary in his family. It partook of a sacred character, for in these islands government was closely interwoven with religion; the king sometimes personated the god and received the homage and prayers of the worshippers; at other times he officiated as high-priest and transmitted the vows and petitions of the people to the superior deities. The genealogy of the reigning family was usually traced back to the first ages of the world: in some of the islands the kings were believed to be descended from the gods: their persons were always sacred, and their families constituted the highest rank recognised by the people.⁶³¹

Indeed, everything in the least degree connected with the king or queen – the cloth they wore, the houses in which they dwelt, the canoes in which they voyaged, the men who carried them when they journeyed by land – became sacred and could not be converted to common use. The very sounds in the language which composed their names could no longer be appropriated to ordinary significations. If on the accession of a king any words in the language were found to resemble his name, they were abolished and changed for others; and if any man were bold enough to continue to use them, not only he but all his relations were immediately put to death; and the same severity was exercised on any who should dare to apply the sacred name to an animal. Thus in process of time the original names of most common objects in the language underwent considerable alterations. No one might touch the body of the king or queen; nay, any person who should so much as stand over them, or pass his hand over their heads, was liable to pay for the sacrilege with the forfeiture of his life. The very ground on which the king or queen even accidentally trod became sacred; and any house belonging to a private person which they entered must for ever be vacated by the owner and either set apart for the use of the royal personages or burnt down with every part of its furniture. Hence it was a general rule that the king and queen never entered any dwellings except such as were specially dedicated to their use, and never trod on the ground in any part of the island but their own hereditary districts. In journeying they were always carried on men's shoulders.⁶³²

The inauguration of a king consisted in girding him with a sacred girdle (maro ura) of red, or red and yellow, feathers, which not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with the gods. The red feathers were taken from the images of the gods and interwoven with feathers of other colours. A human victim was sacrificed when they began to make the girdle, and another was sacrificed when it was finished; sometimes others were slaughtered at intermediate stages, one for each fresh piece added to the girdle. The blood of the victims was supposed to consecrate the belt.⁶³³

The deification of kings in their lifetime would seem not to have been confined to Tahiti, but to have prevailed in the other islands of the Society Archipelago. We hear particularly of the divinity of the kings of Raiatea. In that island a place called Opoa is said to have been the metropolis of idolatry for all the South Pacific Islands within a compass of five hundred miles. Hither, from every shore, human victims, already slain, were sent to be offered on the altar of the war-god Oro, whose principal image was there worshipped. There, too, was the residence of the kings of the island, "who, beside the prerogatives of royalty, enjoyed divine honours, and were in fact living idols among the dead ones, being deified at the time of their accession to political supremacy here. In the latter character, we presume, it was, that these sovereigns (who always took the name of Tamatoa) were wont to receive presents from the kings and chiefs of adjacent and distant islands, whose gods were all considered tributary to the Oro of Raiatea, and their princes owing homage to its monarch, who was Oro's hereditary high-priest, as well as an independent divinity himself."⁶³⁴ Of one particular monarch of this line, Tamatoa by name, we read that he "had been enrolled among the gods," and that "as one of the divinities of his subjects, therefore, the king was worshipped, consulted as an oracle, and had sacrifices and prayers offered to him."⁶³⁵

In the succession to the throne the law of primogeniture prevailed, and in accordance with a singular usage, which was invariably observed, the king regularly abdicated on the birth of his first son and became a subject of his infant offspring. The child was at once proclaimed the sovereign of the people: the royal title was conferred on him; and his own father was the first to do him homage by saluting his feet and declaring him king. The public herald was despatched round the island with the flag of the infant monarch: in every district he unfurled the banner and proclaimed the accession of the youthful sovereign. The insignia of royalty and the homage of the people were at once transferred from the father to the child: the royal domains and other sources of revenue were appropriated to the maintenance of the household of the infant ruler; and the father paid him all the marks of reverence and submission which he had hitherto exacted from the people. However, during the minority of his son the former king appears to have filled the office of regent. This remarkable rule of succession was not limited to the royal house, but prevailed also in noble families: no sooner did a baron's wife give birth to a child than the baron was reduced to the rank of a private man, though he continued to administer the estate for the benefit of the infant, to whom all the outward marks of honour were now transferred.⁶³⁶