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

Captain Cook tells us that the custom observed by mourners of offering their own blood, tears, and hair to their departed relative or friend "is founded upon a notion that the soul of the deceased, which they believe to exist in a separate state, is hovering about the place where the body is deposited: that it observes the actions of the survivors, and is gratified by such testimonies of their affection and grief."⁸⁰⁸ This explanation, in perfect harmony with the vigilance, vanity, and jealousy commonly ascribed to ghosts, is in all probability correct. Yet it deserves to be noticed that the custom of voluntarily hacking the body with shark's teeth to the effusion of blood was singularly enough practised by the Society Islanders on occasions of joy as well as of sorrow. When a husband or a son returned to his family after a season of absence or exposure to danger, his arrival was greeted, not only with the cordial welcome and the warm embrace, but with loud wailing, while the happy wife or mother cut her body with shark's teeth, and the gladder she was the more she gashed herself.⁸⁰⁹ Similarly many savage peoples weep over long-absent friends, or even over strangers, as a polite form of greeting in which genuine sorrow can hardly be supposed to play a part.⁸¹⁰ It is difficult to see how such observances can be based on superstition; apparently the emotion of joy may express itself in very different ways in different races.

The natives stood in great fear of the spirits of the dead, which were supposed to haunt the places of their former abode and to visit the habitations of men, but seldom on errands of mercy or benevolence. They woke the survivors from their slumbers by squeaking noises to upbraid them with their past wickedness or to reproach them with the neglect of some ceremony, for which the ghosts were compelled to suffer. Thus the people imagined that they lived in a world of spirits, which surrounded them night and day, watching every action of their lives and ready to revenge the smallest slight or the least disobedience to their injunctions, as these were proclaimed to the living by the priests. Convulsions and hysterics, for example, were ascribed to the action of spirits, which seized the sufferer, scratched his face, tore his hair, or otherwise maltreated him.⁸¹¹

This fear of the spirits of the dead induced the Society Islanders to resort to some peculiar ceremonies for the protection of the living against the ghosts of persons who had recently died. One of these quaint rites was performed by a priest, who went by the name of the "corpse-praying priest" (tahua bure tiapa-pau). When the corpse had been placed on a platform or bier in a temporary house, this priest ordered a hole to be dug in the earth or floor, near the foot of the platform, and over this hole he prayed to the god by whom the spirit of the deceased had been summoned to its long home. The purport of the prayer was that all the dead man's sins, and especially that for which his soul had been called to the region of Night (po), should be deposited in that hole, that they should not attach in any degree to the survivors, and that the anger of the god might be appeased. The priest next addressed the corpse, usually saying, "With you let the guilt now remain." The pillar or post of the corpse, as it was called, was then planted in the hole, earth was thrown over the guilt of the departed, and the hole filled up. After that, the priest proceeded to the side of the corpse, and taking some small slips of plantain leaf-stalk he fixed two or three of them under each arm, placed a few on the breast, and then, addressing the dead body, said, "There are your family, there is your child, there is your wife, there is your father, and there is your mother. Be satisfied yonder (that is, in the world of spirits). Look not towards those who are left in this world." The concluding parts of the ceremony were designed to impart contentment to the deceased, and to prevent his spirit from repairing to the places of his former resort, and so distressing the survivors. This was considered a most important ceremony, being a kind of mass for the dead and necessary as well for the peace of the living as for the quiet of the departed. It was seldom omitted by any who could pay the priest his usual fees, which for this service generally took the form of pigs and cloth, in proportion to the rank or possessions of the family.⁸¹²

Soon after the decease of a chief or person of distinction, another singular ceremony, called a heva, was performed by the relatives or dependants, who personated the ghost of the departed. The principal actor in the procession was a priest or kinsman who wore a curious dress and an imposing head-ornament called a parae. A cap or turban of thick native cloth was fitted close to the head; in front were two broad mother-of-pearl shells that covered the face like a mask, with only a small aperture through which the wearer could look in order to find his way. Above the mask were fixed a number of long, white, red-tipped feathers of the tropic bird, diverging like rays and forming a radiant circle; while beneath the mask was a thin yet strong board curved like a crescent, from which hung a sort of network of small pieces of brilliant mother-of-pearl, finely polished and strung together on threads. The depth of this network varied according to the taste or means of the family, but it was generally nine inches or a foot, and might consist of ten to fifteen or twenty perfectly straight and parallel rows. The labour of making this mother-of-pearl pendant must have been immense; for many hundred pieces of the shell had to be cut, ground down to the requisite thinness, polished and perforated, without the use of iron tools, before a single line could be fixed upon the head-dress. Fringed with feathers, the pendant formed a kind of ornamental breastplate or stomacher. Attached to it was a garment composed of alternate stripes of black and yellow cloth, which enveloped the body and reached sometimes to the loins, to the knees, or even to the ankles.⁸¹³ On his back the masker wore an ample cloak or mantle of network covered with glossy pigeon's feathers of a bluish colour. The costume appears to have been intended as a disguise to prevent the spectators from recognising the wearer; for George Forster, who has given us an elaborate description of it, observes that "an ample hood of alternate parallel stripes of brown, yellow, and white cloth descends from the turban to cover the neck and shoulders, in order that as little as possible of the human figure may appear."⁸¹⁴

In this strange garb the chief mummer, who was usually the nearest relation of the deceased, carried in one hand a formidable weapon, consisting of a staff about five feet long, one end of which was rounded to serve as a handle, while the other end broadened out into a sort of scythe, of which the inner or concave side was armed with a row of large strong shark's teeth fixed in the wood. In the other hand he bore a kind of clapper formed of two pearl-oyster shells, beautifully polished. Thus attired and equipped, he led a procession either from the house of the deceased, or, according to another account, from a valley to which, as if under a paroxysm of grief, the party had retired at the death of the person for whom the ceremony was performed; and as he walked along he continued to rattle or jingle the shells against each other to give notice of his approach. With him walked a number of men and boys, naked except for a girdle, armed with cudgels, their faces and bodies painted black, red, and white with charcoal and coloured earths. In this impressive style the mummers marched through the district, the people everywhere fleeing in terror at the sight of them, and even deserting the houses at their approach. For whenever the leader caught sight of any one, he ran at him, and if he overtook the fugitive, belaboured him with his sharp-toothed club, to the grievous mauling of the unfortunate wretch; while, not to be behind their leader, the assistants plied their bludgeons on the bodies of all and sundry who chanced to fall into their hands. At such times safety was only to be found in the king's temple, which served on this as on other occasions as a sort of sanctuary or place of refuge. Having thus scoured the country, the mummers marched several times round the platform where the body was exposed, after which they bathed in a river and resumed their customary apparel. This performance was repeated at intervals for five moons, but less and less frequently as the end of the time approached. The longer it lasted, the greater was the honour supposed to be done to the dead. The relatives took it in turn to assume the fantastic dress and discharge the office of leader. Throughout the ceremonies the performers appeared and acted as if they were deranged. They were supposed to be inspired by, or at all events to represent, the spirit of the deceased, to revenge any injury he might have received, or to punish those who had not shown due respect to his remains.⁸¹⁵ Hence we may infer that the whole of this quaint masquerade was designed to appease the anger of the ghost, and so to protect the survivors by preventing him from returning to take vengeance on them for any wrongs or slights he might have suffered at their hands.

The same fear of the returning ghost is clearly expressed in a prayer which the natives used to address to a dead relative at burial. They put blossoms of bread-fruit and leaves of the edible fern under the arms of the corpse, and as they did so, they prayed, saying, "You go to the Po [Night, the World of Shades], plant bread-fruit there, and be food for the gods; but do not come and strangle us, and we will feed your swine and cultivate your lands."⁸¹⁶

§ 8. The Disposal of the Dead

The heat of the climate, by hastening the decomposition of dead bodies, rendered it necessary that corpses should be speedily removed or treated so as to preserve them for a time from decay. As such treatment was generally too costly for the poor and even the middle ranks of society, families belonging to these classes were usually obliged to inter their dead on the first or second day after the decease. During the short intervening period the body, resting on a bed of fragrant green leaves, was placed on a sort of bier covered with white cloth and decorated with wreaths and garlands of sweet-smelling flowers. Round it sat the relatives, giving vent to their grief in loud and continued lamentations, and often cutting their temples, faces, and breasts with shark's teeth, till they were covered with blood from their self-inflicted wounds. The bodies were frequently committed to the grave in deep silence; but sometimes a father would deliver a pathetic oration at the funeral of his son.⁸¹⁷ The grave was generally shallow and the corpse was deposited in a bent posture, with the hands tied to the knees or to the legs.⁸¹⁸

But in the families of chiefs the custom was to submit the bodies of the dead to a sort of embalming and to preserve them above ground for a time.⁸¹⁹ The Tahitians had a tradition of a rude or unpolished period in their history, when the bodies of the dead were allowed to remain in the houses in which they lived, and which were still occupied by the survivors. A kind of stage or altar was erected in the dwelling, and on it the corpse was deposited. But in a later and more polished age, which lasted till the advent of Europeans, the practice was introduced of building separate houses or sheds for the lodgment of corpses.⁸²⁰

These houses or sheds (tupapows) were small temporary buildings, often neatly constructed. The thatched roof rested on wooden pillars, which were seldom more than six feet high. The body was laid on a bier or platform raised on posts about three feet from the ground. This bier was movable, for the purpose of being drawn out, and of exposing the body to the rays of the sun. The body was usually clothed or covered with cloth, and for a long time it was carefully rubbed with aromatic oils once a day. The size of these charnel-houses varied with the rank of the persons whose bodies they contained; the better sort were enclosed by railings. Those which were allotted to people of the lower class just sufficed to cover the bier, and were not railed in. The largest seen by Captain Cook was eleven yards long. Such houses were ornamented according to the taste and abilities of the surviving kindred, who never failed to lay a profusion of good cloth about the body, and sometimes almost covered the outside of the house.⁸²¹

But before the corpse was deposited in one of these temporary structures, it was shrouded in cloth and carried on a bier to the sea-shore, where it was set down on the beach at the water's edge. There a priest, who accompanied the procession, renewed the prayers which he had offered over the body both at the house and on its passage to the shore. Further, he took up water in his hands and sprinkled it towards the corpse, but not upon it. These prayers and sprinklings he repeated several times, and between the repetitions the body was carried back some forty or fifty yards from the sea, only to be brought back again to the water's edge. While these ceremonies were being performed, the temporary house or shed was being prepared, in which the corpse was to remain until the flesh had wholly wasted from the bones. Thither it was then carried from the beach and laid upon the bier.⁸²²

The practice of embalming appears to have been long familiar to the natives of the Society Islands. The methods employed by them were simple. Sometimes the juices were merely squeezed out of the corpse, which was then exposed to the sun and anointed with fragrant oils. At other times, and apparently more usually, the bowels, entrails, and brains were extracted, and the cavities filled with cloth soaked in perfumed oils, which were also injected into other parts of the body. Scented oils were also rubbed over the outside daily: every day the corpse was exposed to the sun in a sitting posture: every night it was laid out horizontally and often turned over, that it might not remain long on the same side. By these means, combined with the heat of the sun and the dryness of the atmosphere, the process of desiccation was effected in the course of a few weeks: the muscular parts and the eyes shrivelled up; and the wizened body resembled a skeleton covered with parchment or oilcloth. Thus reduced to a mummy, it was clothed and fixed in a sitting attitude: a small altar was erected before it; and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers were daily presented by the relatives or by the priest who was appointed to attend to it. For if the deceased was a chief of high rank or great renown, a priest or other person was set apart to wait upon the corpse and to present food to its mouth at different hours of the day. They supposed that the soul still hovered over the mouldering remains and was pleased by such marks of attention. Hence during the exposure of the body in the temporary house the mourners would sometimes renew their lamentations there, and, wounding themselves with shark's teeth, wipe off the blood on a cloth, and deposit the bloody rag beside the mummy as a proof of their affection. In this state the desiccated body was preserved for many months till the flesh had completely decayed; Ellis was of opinion that the best-preserved of these mummies could not be kept for more than twelve months. The bones were then scraped, washed, and buried within the precincts of the family temple (morai), if the deceased was a chief; but if he was a commoner, they were interred outside of the holy ground. However, the skull was not buried with the bones; it was carefully wrapt in fine cloth and kept in a box by the family, it might be for several generations. Sometimes the box containing the skull was deposited at the temple, but often it was hung from the roof of the house.⁸²³ At marriage the skulls of ancestors were sometimes brought out and set before the bride and bridegroom in order, apparently, to place the newly wedded pair under the guardianship of the ancestral spirits who had once animated these relics of mortality.⁸²⁴ In time of war victorious enemies would sometimes despoil the temples of the vanquished and carry off the bones of famous men interred in them; these they would then subject to the utmost indignity by converting them into chisels, borers, or fish-hooks. To prevent this sacrilege the relations of the dead conveyed the bones of their chiefs, and even the bodies of persons who had lately died, to the mountains and hid them in caverns among the most inaccessible rocks and lofty precipices of these wild solitudes.⁸²⁵ Where the mountains advance to the coast, many of these caves exist in the face of cliffs overhanging the sea; for the most part they are situated in places which Europeans can reach only with the help of ropes and ladders, though the natives, it is said, can clamber up the steepest crags with ease. Few even of the islanders know the situation of the caverns, and fewer still will consent to act as guides to the curious stranger who may wish to explore their recesses; for the fear of the ghosts, who are supposed to haunt these ancient depositories of the dead, is yet deeply rooted in the native mind. Moreover, the mouths of the caves are generally so low and overgrown with shrubs and creepers that they may easily be overlooked by an observer standing in front of them. Some of the grottos are said to be still full of skulls, or were so down to the end of the nineteenth century.⁸²⁶ The mummies as well as the bones were liable to be captured by an invader, and were esteemed trophies not less glorious than foemen slain in battle. Hence during an invasion the mummies were generally the first things to be carried off for safety to the mountains.⁸²⁷

A dangerous pollution was supposed to be contracted by all who had handled a corpse. Hence the persons employed in embalming a body were carefully shunned by every one else so long as the process lasted, because the guilt of the crime for which the deceased had died was supposed to attach in some degree to such as touched his mortal remains. The embalmers did not feed themselves, lest the food, defiled by the touch of their polluted hands, should cause their death; so they were fed by others.⁸²⁸ This state of uncleanness lasted for a month, during which the tabooed persons were forbidden to handle food as well as to put it into their own mouths.⁸²⁹

Again, when the ceremony of depositing the sins of the deceased in a hole⁸³⁰ was over, all who had touched the body or the garments of the deceased, which were buried or destroyed, fled precipitately into the sea to cleanse themselves from the pollution which they had incurred by contact with the corpse; and they cast into the sea the garments they had worn while they were engaged in the work. Having bathed, they gathered a few pieces of coral from the bottom of the sea, and returning with them to the house, addressed the dead body, saying, "With you may the pollution be." With these words they threw down the pieces of coral on the top of the hole that had been dug to receive all the objects defiled by their connexion with the deceased.⁸³¹

When a person had died of an infectious disorder, the priests entreated him to bury the disease with him in the grave and not to inflict it upon other people, when he revisited them as a ghost. They also threw a plantain into the grave, and either buried with him or burned all his utensils, that nobody might be infected by them.⁸³²

§ 9. The Fate of the Soul after Death

The natives of the Society Islands believed in the immortality of the human soul, or at all events in its separate existence after death⁸³³; they thought that no person perishes or becomes extinct.⁸³⁴ On its departure from the body the spirit, now called a tee, teehee, or tii, was supposed to linger near its old habitation, whether the mouldering remains exposed on the bier, or the bones buried in the earth, or the skull kept in its box. In this state the spirits were believed to lodge in small wooden images, seldom more than eighteen inches high, which were placed round about the burial-ground.⁸³⁵ These images are variously said to have borne the same name (tee, teehee) as the spirits which inhabited them,⁸³⁶ or to have been called by a different name (unus)⁸³⁷. Specimens of these images were seen by George Forster in Tahiti. He says that round about the marai (morai) of Aheatua, at that time King of Tiarroboo, "were placed perpendicularly, or nearly so, fifteen slender pieces of wood, some about eighteen feet long, in which six or eight diminutive human figures of a rude unnatural shape were carved, standing above each other, male or female promiscuously, yet so that the uppermost was always a male. All these figures faced the sea, and perfectly resembled some which are carved on the sterns of their canoes, and which they call e-tee."⁸³⁸ To the same effect George Forster's father, J. R. Forster, observes that "near the marais are twenty or thirty single pieces of wood fixed into the ground, carved all over on one side with figures about eighteen inches long, rudely representing a man and a woman alternately, so that often more than fifteen or twenty figures may be counted on one piece of wood, called by them Teehee."⁸³⁹ But the souls of the dead, though they inhabited chiefly the wooden figures erected at the temples or burial-grounds (marais, morais), were by no means confined to them, and were dreaded by the natives, who believed that during the night these unquiet spirits crept into people's houses and ate the heart and entrails of the sleepers, thus causing their death.⁸⁴⁰

However, the Society Islanders appear to have been by no means consistent in the views which they held concerning the fate of the soul after death. Like many other people, they seem to have wavered between a belief that the souls of the dead lingered invisible near their old homes and the belief that the disembodied spirits went away to a distant land, where all human souls, which have departed this life, met and dwelt together. Or perhaps it might be more correct to say, that instead of wavering between these two inconsistent beliefs, they held them both firmly without perceiving their inconsistency. At all events these islanders believed that either at death or at some time after it their souls departed to a distant place called po or Night, the common abode of gods and of departed spirits.⁸⁴¹ Thither the soul was conducted by other spirits, and on its arrival it was eaten by the gods, not all at once, but by degrees. They imagined that the souls of ancestors or relatives, who ranked among the gods, scraped the different parts of the newly arrived spirit with a kind of serrated shell at different times, after which they ate and digested it. If the soul underwent this process of being eaten and digested three separate times, it became a deified or imperishable spirit and might visit the world and inspire living folk.⁸⁴² According to one account, the soul was cooked whole in an earth-oven, as pigs are baked on earth, and was then placed in a basket of coco-nut leaves before being served up to the god whom the deceased had worshipped in life. "By this cannibal divinity he was now eaten up; after which, through some inexplicable process, the dead and devoured man emanated from the body of the god, and became immortal."⁸⁴³ In the island of Raiatea the great god Oro was supposed to use a scallop-shell "to scrape the flesh from the bones of newly deceased bodies, previous to their being converted into pure spirits by being devoured by him, and afterwards transformed by passing through the laboratory of his cannibal stomach."⁸⁴⁴ This process of being devoured by a god was not conceived of as a punishment inflicted on wicked people after death; for good and bad souls had alike to submit to it. Rather, Captain Cook tells us, the natives considered "this coalition with the deity as a kind of purification necessary to be undergone before they enter a state of bliss. For, according to their doctrine, if a man refrain from all connexion with women some months before death, he passes immediately into his eternal mansion, without such a previous union; as if already, by this abstinence, he were pure enough to be exempted from the general lot."⁸⁴⁵ A slightly different account of this process of spiritual purification is given by the first missionaries to Tahiti. They say that "when the spirit departs from the body, they have a notion it is swallowed by the eatōoa (atua) bird, who frequents their burying-places and morais, and passes through him in order to be purified, and be united to the deity. And such are afterwards employed by him to attend other human beings and to inflict punishment, or remove sickness, as shall be deemed requisite."⁸⁴⁶

In spite of the purification which the souls of the dead underwent by passing through the body of a god or of a divine bird, they were believed to be not wholly divested of the passions which had actuated them in life on earth. If the souls of former enemies met in the world beyond the grave, they renewed their battles, but apparently to no purpose, since they were accounted invulnerable in this invisible state. Again, when the soul of a dead wife arrived in the spirit land, it was known to the soul of her dead husband, if he had gone before, and the two renewed their acquaintance in a spacious house, called tourooa, where the souls of the deceased assembled to recreate themselves with the gods. After that the pair retired to the separate abode of the husband, where they remained for ever and had offspring, which, however, was entirely spiritual; for they were neither married nor were their embraces supposed to be like those of corporeal beings.⁸⁴⁷

In general the situation of po or the land of the dead seems to have been left vague and indefinite by the Society Islanders; apparently they did not, like the Western Polynesians, imagine it to be in some far western isle, to reach which the souls of the departed had to cross a wide expanse of sea.⁸⁴⁸ However, the natives of Raiatea had very definite ideas on this mysterious subject. They thought that po was situated in a mysterious and unexplored cavern at the top of the highest mountain in the island. This cavern, perhaps the crater of a volcano, was said to communicate, by subterranean passages, with a cave on the coast, the opening of which is so small that a child of two years could hardly creep into it. Here an evil spirit (varu iino) was said to lurk and, pouncing out on careless passers-by, to drag them into the darkest recesses of his den and devour them. After the conversion of the natives to Christianity the missionaries were shown the spot. Near it were the ruins of a temple of the war god, where multitudes of the corpses of warriors slain in battle had been either buried or left to rot on the ground. The missionaries saw many mouldering fragments of skeletons. Not far off a cape jutted into the sea, up the lofty and precipitous face of which the souls of the dead were said to climb on their way to their long home in the cavern at the top of the mountain. A native informant assured the missionaries that he had often seen them scaling the dizzy crag, both men and women.⁸⁴⁹

In the island of Borabora the fate even of kings after death was believed to be a melancholy one. Their souls were converted into a piece of furniture resembling an English hat-stand; only in Borabora the corresponding utensil was the branch of a tree with the lateral forks cut short, on which bonnets, garments, baskets, and so forth were suspended. The natives very naturally concluded that in the other world a similar stand was wanted for the convenience of the ghosts, to hang their hats and coats on. Kings who shrank from the prospect of being converted into a hat-stand after death made interest with the priest to save them from such a degradation. So when a king who had been great and powerful in life saw his end approaching, he would send to the priests the most costly presents, such as four or five of the largest and fattest hogs, as many of the best canoes, and any rare and valuable European article which he happened to possess. In return the priests prayed for him daily at the temples till he died; and afterwards his dead body was brought to one of these sacred edifices and kept upright there for several days and nights, during which yet larger gifts were sent by his relatives, and the most expensive sacrifices offered to the idols. The decaying corpse was then removed, placed on a canoe, and rowed out on the lagoon as far as an opening in the reef, only to be brought back again in like manner; while all the time the priests recited their prayers and performed their lugubrious ceremonies over it on the water as well as on the land. Finally, the mouldering remains were laid out to rot on a platform in one of the usual charnel-houses.⁸⁵⁰

Conversion into a hat-stand was not, perhaps, the worst that could happen to the soul of a Society Islander after death. In the island of Raiatea there is a lake surrounded by trees, the tops of which appear curiously flat. On this verdant platform the spirits of the newly departed were said to dance and feast together until, at a subsequent stage of their existence, they were converted into cockroaches.⁸⁵¹ The souls of infants killed at birth were supposed to return in the bodies of grasshoppers.⁸⁵²

But the Society Islanders were far from thinking that the souls of the dead herded together indiscriminately in the other world. They imagined that the spirits were discriminated and assigned to abodes of different degrees of happiness or misery, not according to their virtues or vices in this life, but according to the rank which they had occupied in society, one receptacle of superior attractions being occupied by the souls of chiefs and other principal people, while another of an inferior sort sufficed to lodge the souls of the lower orders. For they did not suppose that their good or bad actions in this life affected in the least their lot in the life hereafter, or that the deities took account of any such distinction. Thus their religion exerted no influence on their morality.⁸⁵³ Happiness and misery in the world beyond the grave, we are told, "were the destiny of individuals, altogether irrespective of their moral character and virtuous conduct. The only crimes that were visited by the displeasure of their deities were the neglect of some rite or ceremony, or the failing to furnish required offerings."⁸⁵⁴