White Shadows in the South Seas Part 11

"A young man may bring home a girl he does not know, perhaps a girl he has seen on the beach in the moonlight, to stay with him that night in his mother's house. It may be that her beauty and charm will so please his mother that she will call a family council after the two have gone to bed. If the family thinks as the mother does, they determine to marry the young man to that girl, and they do so after this fas.h.i.+on:

"Early in the morning, just at dawn, before the young couple awake, all the women of the household arouse them with shrieks. They beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cut themselves with sh.e.l.ls, crying loudly, _Aue! Aue!_ Neighbors rush in to see who has died. The youth and the girl run forth in terror. Then the mother, the grandmother and all other women of the house chant the praises of the girl, singing her beauty, and wailing that they cannot let her go. They demand with anger that the son shall not let her go. All the neighbors cry with them, _Aue! Aue!_ and beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, until the son, covered with shame, asks the girl to stay.

"Then her parents are sent the word, and if they do not object, the girl remains in his house. That is often the manner of Marquesan marriage."

Yet often, of course, she explained, marriage was not the outcome of a night's wooing. The young Marquesan frequently brought home a girl who did not instantly win his mother's affection. In that case she went her way next morning after breakfast, and that was all. Our regard for chast.i.ty was incomprehensible to Malicious Gossip, instructed though she was in all the codes of the church. It was to her a creed preached to others by the whites, like wearing shoes or making the Sabbath a day of gloom, and though she had been told that violation of this code meant roasting forever as in a cannibal pit whose fires were never extinguished, her mind could perceive no reason for it. She could attach no blame to an act that seemed to her an innocent, natural, and harmless amus.e.m.e.nt.

The truth is that no value was, or is, attached to maidenhood in all Polynesia, the young woman being left to her own whims without blame or care. Only deep and sincere attachment holds her at last to the man she has chosen, and she then follows his wishes in matters of fidelity, though still to a large extent remaining mistress of herself.

The Marquesan woman, however, often denies her husband the freedom she herself openly enjoys. This custom persists as a striking survival of polyandry, in which fidelity under pain of dismissal from the roof-tree was imposed by the wife on all who shared her affections.

This was exactly the status of a household not far from my cabin.

Haabuani, master of ceremonies at the dances, the best carver and drum-beater of all Atuona, who was of pure Marquesan blood, but spoke French fluently and earnestly defended the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility,--even coming to actual blows with a defiant Protestant upon my very _paepae_--explained his att.i.tude.

"If I have a friend and he temporarily desires my wife, Toho, I am glad if she is willing. But my enemy shall not have that privilege with my consent. I would be glad to have you look upon her with favor.

You are kind to me. You have treated me as a chief and you have bought my _kava_ bowl. But, _ecoutez, Monsieur_, Toho does what she pleases, yet if I toss but a pebble in another pool she is furious.

See, I have the bruises still of her beating."

With a tearful whine he showed the black-and-blue imprints of Toho's anger, and made it known to us that the three _piastres_ he had of me for the _kava_ bowl had been traced by his wife to the till of Le Brunnec's store, where Flower, the daughter of Lam Kai Oo, had spent them for ribbons. Toho in her fury had beaten him so that for a day and a night he lay groaning upon the mats.

"That is as it should be," said Malicious Gossip, sternly, while her curving lips set in straight lines. s.e.x morality means conformity to s.e.x _tapus_, the world over.

Free polyandry still exists in many countries I have seen, and in others its dying out leaves these fragmentary survivals. I have visited the tribe of Subanos, in the west and north of the island of Mindanao in the Philippine archipelago, where the rich men are polygamists, and the poor still submit to polyandry. Economic conditions there bring about the same relations, under a different guise, as in Europe or America, where wealthy rakes keep up several establishments, and many wage-earners support but one prost.i.tute.

Polyandry is found almost exclusively in poor countries, where there is always a scarcity of females. Thus we have polyandry founded on a surplus of males caused by poverty of sustenance. The female is, in fact, supposed to be the result of a surplus of nutrition; more boys than girls are born in the country districts because the city diet is richer, especially in meat and sugar. It is notable that the families of the pioneers of western America bore a surprising majority of males.

In the Marquesas, where living was always difficult and the diet poor, there were always more men than women despite the frequent wars in which men were victims. Another reason was that male children were saved often when females were killed in the practice of infanticide, also forced by famine. The overplus of men made them amenable to the commands of the women, who often dominated in permanent alliances, demanding lavishment of wealth and attention from their husbands.

Yet--and this is a most significant fact--the father-right in the child remained the basis of the social system.

Throughout all Australia, Melanesia, and Papuasis on the east, and America on the west, the mother-right prevailed among primitive peoples. Children followed the mother, took their name from her, and inherited property through her. I have known a Hawaiian n.o.bleman who, commenting on this fact, said that the system had merit in that no child could be called a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and that the woman, who suffered most, was rewarded by pride of posterity. He himself, he said, was the son of a chieftess, but his father, a king, was the son of a negro cobbler.

The father-right, so familiar to our minds that it seems to-day almost the only natural or existing social system, was in fact developed very lately among all races except the Caucasian and some tribes of the Mongols. Yet in the Marquesas, these islands cut off from all other peoples through ages of history, the father-right prevailed in spite of all the difficulties that attended its survival in polyandry.

Each woman had many husbands, whom she ruled. The true paternity of her children it was impossible to ascertain. Yet so tenaciously did the Marquesans cling to the father-right in the child, that even this fact could not break it down. One husband was legally the father of all her children, ostensibly at least the owner of the household and of such small personal property as belonged to it under communism. The man remained, though in name only, the head of the polyandrous family.

I seemed to see in this curious fact another proof of the ancient kins.h.i.+p between the first men of my own race and the prehistoric grandfathers of Malicious Gossip and Haabunai. My savage friends, with their clear features, their large straight eyes and olive skins, showed still the traces of their Caucasian blood. Their forefathers and mine may have hunted the great winged lizards together through primeval wildernesses, until, driven by who knows what urge of wanderl.u.s.t or necessity, certain tribes set out in that drive through Europe and Asia toward America that ended at last, when a continent sunk beneath their feet, on these islands in the southern seas.

It was a far flight for fancy to take, from my _paepae_ in the jungle at the foot of Temetiu, but looking at the beauty and grace of Malicious Gossip as she sat on my mats in her crimson _pareu_, I liked to think that it was so.

"We are cousins," I said to her, handing her a freshly-opened cocoanut which Exploding Eggs brought.

"You are a great chief, but we love you as a blood-brother," she answered gravely, and lifted the sh.e.l.l bowl to her lips.

CHAPTER XI

Filling the _popoi_ pits in the season of the breadfruit; legend of the _mei_; the secret festival in a hidden valley.

On the road to the beach one morning I came upon Great Fern, my landlord. Garbed in brilliant yellow _pareu_, he bore on his shoulders an immense _kooka_, or basket of cocoanut fiber, filled with quite two hundred pounds of breadfruit. The superb muscles stood out on his perfect body, wet with perspiration as though he had come from the river.

"Kaoha, Great Fern!" I said. "Where do you go with the _mei_?"

"It is _Meinui_, the season of the breadfruit," he replied.

"We fill the _popoi_ pit beside my house."

There is a word on the Marquesan tongue vividly picturing the terrors of famine. It means, "one who is burned to drive away a drought." In these islands cut off from the world the very life of the people depends on the grace of rain. Though the skies had been kind for several years, not a day pa.s.sing without a gentle downpour, there had been in the past dry periods when even the hardiest vegetation all but perished. So it came about that the Marquesan was obliged to improvise a method of keeping breadfruit for a long time, and becoming habituated to sour food he learned to like it, as many Americans relish ill-smelling cheese and fish and meat, or drink with pleasure absinthe, bitters, and other gagging beverages.

In this season of plenteous breadfruit, therefore, Great Fern had opened his _popoi_ pit, and was replenis.h.i.+ng its supply. A half-dozen who ate from it were helping him. Only the enthusiasm of the traveler for a strange sight held me within radius of its odor.

It was sunk in the earth, four feet deep and perhaps five in diameter, and was only a dozen years old, which made it a comparatively small and recently acquired household possession in the eyes of my savage friends. Mouth of G.o.d and Malicious Gossip owned a _popoi_ pit dug by his grandfather, who was eaten by the men of Taaoa, and near the house of Vaikehu, a descendant of the only Marquesan queen, there was a _uuama tehito_, or ancient hole, the origin of which was lost in the dimness of centuries. It was fifty feet long and said to be even deeper, though no living Marquesan had ever tasted its stores, or never would unless dire famine compelled. It was _tapu_ to the memory of the dead.

All over the valley the filling of the pits for reserve against need was in progress. Up and down the trails the men were hastening, bearing the _kookas_ filled with the ripe fruit, large as Edam cheeses and pitted on the surface like a golf-ball. A breadfruit weighs from two to eight pounds, and giants like Great Fern or Haabuani carried in the _kookas_ two or three hundred pounds for miles on the steep and rocky trails.

In the banana-groves or among thickets of _ti_ the women were gathering leaves for lining and covering the pits, while around the center of interest naked children ran about, hindering and thinking they were helping, after the manner of children in all lands when future feasts are in preparation.

There was a time when each grove of breadfruit had its owners, who guarded it for their own use, and even each tree had its allotted proprietor, or perhaps several. Density of population everywhere causes each mouthful of food to be counted. I have known in Ceylon an English judge who was called upon to decide the legal owners.h.i.+p of one 2520th part of ten cocoanut-trees. But my friends who were filling the _popoi_ pits now might gather from any tree they pleased.

There was plenty of breadfruit now that there were few people.

Great Fern was culling from a grove on the mountain-side above my house. Taking his stand beneath one of the stately trees whose freakish branches and large, glossy, dark-green leaves spread perhaps ninety feet above his head, he reached the nearer boughs with an _omei_, a very long stick with a forked end to which was attached a small net of cocoanut fiber. Deftly twisting a fruit from its stem by a dexterous jerk of the cleft tip, he caught it in the net, and lowered it to the _kooka_ on the ground by his side.

When the best of the fruit within reach was gathered, he climbed the tree, carrying the _omei_. Each brown toe clasped the boughs like a finger, nimble and independent of its fellows through long use in grasping limbs and rocks. This is remarkable of the Marquesans; each toe in the old and industrious is often separated a half inch from the others, and I have seen the big toe opposed from the other four like a thumb. My neighbors picked up small things easily with their toes, and bent them back out of sight, like a fist, when squatting.

Gripping a branch firmly with these hand-like feet, Great Fern wielded the _omei_, bringing down other breadfruit one by one, taking great care not to bruise them. The cocoanut one may throw eighty feet, with a twisting motion that lands it upon one end so that it does not break. But the _mei_ is delicate, and spoils if roughly handled.

Working in this fas.h.i.+on, Great Fern and his neighbors carried down to the _popoi_ pit perhaps four hundred breadfruit daily, piling them there to be prepared by the women. Apporo and her companions busied themselves in piercing each fruit with a sharp stick and spreading them on the ground to ferment over night.

In the morning, squatted on their haunches and chanting as they worked, the women sc.r.a.ped the rind from the fermented _mei_ with cowry sh.e.l.ls, and grated the fruit into the pit which they had lined with banana leaves. From time to time they stood in the pit and tramped down the ma.s.s of pulp, or thumped it with wooden clubs.

For two weeks or more the work continued. In the ancient days much ceremoniousness attended this provision against future famine, but to-day in Atuona only one rule was observed, that forbidding s.e.xual intercourse by those engaged in filling the pits.

"To break that _tapu_," said Great Fern, "would mean sickness and disaster. Any one who ate such _popoi_ would vomit. The forbidden food cannot be retained by the stomach."

To vomit during the fortnight occupied in the task of conserving the breadfruit brought grave suspicion that the unfortunate had broken the _tapu_. When their own savage laws governed them, that unhappy person often died from fear of discovery and the wrath of the G.o.ds.

To guard against such a fate those who were not strong and well took no part in the task.

This curious connection between s.e.x and the preparation of food applied in many other cases. A woman making oil from dried cocoanuts was _tapu_ as to s.e.xual relations for four or five days, and believed that if did she sin, her labor would produce no oil. A man cooking in an oven at night obeyed the same _tapu_. I do not know, and was unable to discover, the origin of these prohibitions. Like many of our own customs, it has been lost in the mist of ages.

A Tahitian legend of the origin of the breadfruit recounts that in ancient times the people subsisted on _araea_, red earth. A couple had a sickly son, their only child, who day by day slowly grew weaker on the diet of earth, until the father begged the G.o.ds to accept him as an offering and let him become food for the boy. From the darkness of the temple the G.o.ds at last spoke to him, granting his prayer. He returned to his wife and prepared for death, instructing her to bury his head, heart and stomach at different spots in the forest.

"When you shall hear in the night a sound like that of a leaf, then of a flower, afterward of an unripe fruit, and then of a ripe, round fruit falling on the ground, know that it is I who am become food for our son," he said, and died.

She obeyed him, and on the second night she heard the sounds. In the morning she and her son found a huge and wonderful tree where the stomach had been buried. The Tahitians believe that the cocoanut, chestnut, and yam miraculously grew from other parts of a man's corpse.

Breadfruit, according to Percy Smith, was brought into these islands from Java by the ancestors of the Polynesians, who left India several centuries before Christ. They had come to Indonesia rice-eaters, but there found the breadfruit, "which they took with them in their great migration into these Pacific islands two centuries and more after the beginning of this era."