The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead

[3] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 14-18. Compare J.

Cook, _Voyages_, i. 172 _sqq._; G. Forster, _Voyage round the World_ (London, 1777), i. 253 _sq._; J. Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean_, pp. 321 _sqq._; D.

Tyerman and G. Bennet, _Journal of Voyages and Travels_ (London, 1831), i. 58 _sq._, 108 _sqq._, 136 _sqq._, 206 _sq._, 234 _sq._, 316 _sq._, 555 _sq._, ii. 51-53, 59-61; F. H. H.

Guillemard, _op. cit._ pp. 511 _sqq._ C. E. Meinicke, _op. cit._ ii. 152 _sq._; A. Baessler, _Neue Sudsee-Bilder_ (Berlin, 1900), pp. 29 _sqq._

-- 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.[4]

[4] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 175 _sq._; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 79 _sqq._; C. E. Meinicke, _op. cit._ ii. 171; F. H. H. Guillemard, _op. cit._ pp. 513 _sq._

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 sh.e.l.l-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.[5]

[5] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 185 _sq._ vi. 139 _sqq._; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 36 _sqq._, 70 _sqq._; J. A. Moerenhout, _Voyages aux iles du Grand Ocean_ (Paris, 1837), ii. 93 _sqq._; C. E.

Meinicke, _op. cit._ ii. 171 _sq._

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 part.i.tions, 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;[6] 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.[7]

[6] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 181 _sqq._; J. Wilson, _op. cit._ pp.

341 _sq._; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 170 _sqq._; J. A. Moerenhout, _op. cit._ ii. 84 _sqq._ As to the wooden head-rests see W.

Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 188 _sq._

[7] J. Wilson, _op. cit._ pp. 213 _sq._

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 subst.i.tutes, 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 sh.e.l.l 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."[8] 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.[9]

[8] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 204 _sq._

[9] J. Wilson, _op. cit._ p. 400.

The princ.i.p.al 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 s.p.a.cious house where immense quant.i.ties 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 a.s.semble 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.[10]

[10] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 196 _sqq._; G. Forster, _Voyage round the World_ (London, 1777), i. 276 _sq._; J. Wilson, _op.

cit._ pp. 389-392; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 179 _sqq._; J. A.

Moerenhout, _op. cit._ ii. 112 _sqq._

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.[11] They made bows and arrows, with which, as an amus.e.m.e.nt, 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.[12]

[11] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 202 _sq._

[12] J. Wilson, _op. cit._ p. 368; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i.

217-220; J. A. Moerenhout, _op. cit._ ii. 148-150.

Society among these islanders was divided into three ranks; first the royal family and n.o.bility (_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 cla.s.s, const.i.tuting 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 const.i.tuted 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.[13]

[13] W. Ellis, _op. cit._. iii. 94-98. Compare J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 225 _sq._

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 G.o.d and received the homage and prayers of the worshippers; at other times he officiated as high-priest and transmitted the vows and pet.i.tions 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 G.o.ds: their persons were always sacred, and their families const.i.tuted the highest rank recognised by the people.[14]

[14] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iii. 93 _sq._

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 pa.s.s 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.[15]

[15] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 155 _sq._; J. Wilson, _op. cit._ p.

329; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iii. 101 _sq._

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 G.o.ds.

The red feathers were taken from the images of the G.o.ds 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.[16]

[16] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iii. 108 _sqq._ Compare J. Wilson, _op. cit._ pp. 327 _sq._; J. A. Moerenhout, _op. cit._ ii. 22 _sq._; D. Tyerman and G. Bennet, _Journal of Voyages and Travels_, i. 526 _sq._, ii. 56. Another singular ceremony observed at the installation of a king was this. The king advanced into the sea and bathed there. Thither he was followed by the priest of Oro bearing a branch plucked from a sacred tree that grew within the precincts of the temple. While the king was bathing, the priest struck him on the back with the holy bough, at the same time invoking the great G.o.d Taaoroa. This ceremony was designed to purify the monarch from any defilement or guilt he might previously have contracted. See W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iii. 110.

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 compa.s.s of five hundred miles. Hither, from every sh.o.r.e, human victims, already slain, were sent to be offered on the altar of the war-G.o.d Oro, whose princ.i.p.al 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 G.o.ds 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."[17] Of one particular monarch of this line, Tamatoa by name, we read that he "had been enrolled among the G.o.ds," 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."[18]

[17] D. Tyerman and G. Bennet, _Journal of Voyages and Travels_, i. 529 _sq._

[18] Tyerman and Bennet, _op. cit._ i. 524.

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 t.i.tle 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 n.o.ble 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.[19]

[19] J. Cook, _Voyages_, i. 225 _sq._; W. Ellis, _op. cit._ iii.

99 _sq._ Compare J. Wilson, _op. cit._ pp. 180 _sq._, 327, 330, 333; J. Turnbull, _Voyage round the World_ (London, 1813), pp.

134, 137, 188 _sq._, 344; J. A. Moerenhout, _op. cit._ ii. 13 _sq._

-- 3. _The Religion of the Society Islanders_

If religion consists essentially in a fear of G.o.ds, the natives of the Society Islands were a very religious people, for they believed in a mult.i.tude of G.o.ds and stood in constant dread of them. "Whatever attention," says Ellis, "the Tahitians paid to their occupations or amus.e.m.e.nts, and whatever energies have been devoted to the prosecution of their barbarous wars, the claims of all were regarded as inferior to those of their religion. On this every other was dependent, while each was alike made subservient to its support."[20] "No people in the world, in ancient or modern times, appear to have been more superst.i.tious than the South Sea Islanders, or to have been more entirely under the influence of dread from imaginary demons, or supernatural beings. They had not only their major, but their minor demons, or spirits, and all the minute ramifications of idolatry."[21] "Religious rites were connected with almost every act of their lives. An _ubu_ or prayer was offered before they ate their food, when they tilled their ground, planted their gardens, built their houses, launched their canoes, cast their nets, and commenced or concluded a journey. The first fish taken periodically on their sh.o.r.es, together with a number of kinds regarded as sacred, were conveyed to the altar. The first-fruits of their orchards and gardens were also _taumaha_, or offered, with a portion of their live-stock, which consisted of pigs, dogs, and fowls, as it was supposed death would be inflicted on the owner or the occupant of the land, from which the G.o.d should not receive such acknowledgment."[22]

[20] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 321; compare J. A. Moerenhout, _op.

cit._ i. 417.

[21] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 361.

[22] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 350.

Different G.o.ds were worshipped in different islands, and even in different parts of the same island,[23] and if a deity failed to answer the expectations of his worshippers, they did not scruple to change him for another. In Captain Cook's time the people of Tiaraboo (Tairaboo), the southern peninsula of Tahiti, discarded their two old divinities and adopted in their place Oraa, the G.o.d of the island of Bolabola (Borabora), apparently because the people of Bolabola had lately been victorious in war; and as, after this change of deity, they themselves proved very successful in their operations against their enemies, they imputed the success entirely to their new G.o.d, who, they literally said, fought their battles.[24] Again, when the prayers and offerings for the recovery of a sick chief were unavailing, the G.o.d was regarded as inexorable, and was usually banished from the temple, and his image destroyed.[25]

[23] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 148, 160; J. R. Forster, _Observations made during a Voyage round the World_ (London, 1778), p. 539.

[24] J. Cook, _Voyages_, vi. 148 _sq._

[25] W. Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 350.

The pantheon and mythology of the Society Islands were of the usual Polynesian type; some of their chief G.o.ds were recognised and worshipped under the same names, with dialectical differences, in other islands of the Pacific. In the beginning they say that all things were in a state of chaos or darkness, from which the princ.i.p.al deities, including Taaroa, Oro, and Tane, at last emerged. Hence these high G.o.ds were said to be born of Night or the primaeval darkness (_Po_). Among them all the first place in time and dignity was generally a.s.signed to Taaroa, who appears in other parts of Polynesia as Tanaroa, Tangaroa, Tagaloa, and so on. By some he was spoken of as the progenitor of the other G.o.ds and as the creator of the heavens, the earth, and sea, as well as of men, beasts, birds, and fishes; but others were of opinion that the land or the world had existed before the G.o.ds. Oro, the great national G.o.d of Tahiti, Raiatea, and other islands, was believed to be a son of Taaroa.[26] To these three great G.o.ds, Oro, Tane, and Taaroa, the people sacrificed in great emergencies, when the deities were thought to be angry. At such times the wrath of the G.o.d was revealed to a priest, who, wrapt up like a ball in a bundle of cloth, spoke in a sharp, shrill, squeaky voice, saying, "I am angry; bring me hogs, kill a man, and my anger will be appeased."[27]

[26] W. Ellis, _op. cit._ i. 322 _sqq._ Compare J. R. Forster, _Observations made during a Voyage round the World_, pp. 539 _sqq._; G. Forster, _Voyage round the World_, ii. 149 _sqq._; J.