My Friends the Savages Part 15

When I tell you that these strange designs are not only the manifestation of coquetry or vanity but that they are also made to frighten away the Evil Spirit you may well imagine how they each try to arabesque their skin in a more horrible way than the other, in order to look uglier and be more admired.

How many, even in civilized places, would like to adopt such a mode of winning the admiration which their forbidding features cannot command!

One of these artistic creations cannot last more than a day. It is carefully sc.r.a.ped off and replaced.

The Sakai's life is tranquil and serene. He does not pa.s.s much of his time in the hut because every morning he goes off into the forest in search of game and vegetable food. He is accompanied by his boys who either practise with their blow-pipe or with a pointed stick dig in the ground for roots and bulbs, or they catch insects and reptiles to fill the baskets they carry on their backs.

When the Sakai is not out hunting, or visiting friends and relations in other villages, he remains quietly in his hut sleeping, smoking, chewing a nice quid or in preparing poisons and poisoned arrows.

He is good-tempered and good-hearted, and never quarrels with his wife.

I have never heard of one of these savages beating his wife or children, or of ill-treating them in any way and neither of using violence with any one else unless with a declared foe or one who has offended his sentiments and superst.i.tions.

One day I ordered a child to do something, I don't remember what, and he answered me impertinently with a curt _neay_ (no). I turned to his mother who was present and told her that the boy ought to have his ears boxed.

The woman gave me a look of mingled wonder and irritation, then said: "You are a bad man if you would hurt my son when he did not mean any harm!".

Yet in spite of this kind of reasoning and the clemency shown towards children (which would make a pedagogue of the educational rod system commit suicide) the Sakais are honest and respectful to their parents and the old; they are affectionate in their family and, poor savages!

are still a long way off from such a degree of civilization as to cut up a cross wife or a troublesome lover into pieces and send them in a mysterious valise to take a sea-bath or in a butcher's sack to take a fresh water one in a convenient river.

But the answer given me by the boy and his mother's implicit approval were only the decisive affirmation of that indomitable spirit of freedom that animates the Sakai and makes him do what he likes but never what others command.

In fact, even taking him as a guide or travelling companion it is always wise to let him have his own way without interfering at all. He will rest, eat, smoke, and walk on just as he chooses and if you contradict him in his desire he will turn his back upon you and abandon you in the midst of the forest.

Every act of his life reveals and marks this mania of independence. I will quote a rare case. Should a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law not be able to agree in consequence of the difference in their characters no tragic scenes or petty quarrels occur; the young couple merely take up their scanty belongings, destroy their own hut and march off to build another at a sufficient distance to avoid troublesome contact or the possibility of further misunderstandings and discord.

It is so: n.o.body will submit to the will of another and even when settling some particular question unless they are all of the same identical opinion the matter has to be abandoned.

Sons-in-law and daughters-in-law love their fathers-in-law and mothers-in-law well enough and _viceversa_, and they all respect each other and can live peaceably together, but no one can impose his own will without determining a strike.

They put into practice the same simple remedy when there is not very good harmony in the conjugal state. A man and woman cannot exactly agree as husband and wife? They cheerfully divorce themselves instead of poisoning their existence by continual altercations and the reluctance they both feel at doing what the other wishes.

How much regarding the human spirit civilized people have yet to learn from savages! Do you not think so, kind reader?

The Sakai is commonly believed to be lazy by nature. This is an error, for their so-called laziness is nothing but the result of the circ.u.mstances amidst which they live.

Once their daily food is provided and they have prepared a good supply of poisons and darts what remains for them to do in the depth of the forest, where there is no thirst for riches (because unknown to them), for honours (of which they have no idea at all), or for power (which their individual independence repudiates)?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Manufacturing poisoned arrows.

_p._ 123.]

There is no race for wealth, position or fame in their parts, no struggle for life which amongst us is the inexhaustible source of progress as well as the incentive to crime and corruption.

The desire expressed by Henry IV that each one of his subjects might boil his own fowl in his own pot is more than realized amongst the Sakais.

They do not cook their fowls because they are only reared as a means of barter, but it seldom happens that they cannot enjoy a choice bit of monkey, snake, deer or wild boar, which they like much better. If (a very strange case) somebody should be without, he goes to the nearest hut, enters without speaking, and sits down without being greeted. Some food is placed before him that he devours without being invited to do so and then departs as he came without any one saying a word beyond perhaps (in an excess of courtesy) a muttered "_abor_" (meaning "very good" and used as "good-bye" by the Sakais), from the visitor as he leaves.

The Sakai does not understand the reason of working when there seems to be no need, but what he finds strictly necessary he does with alacrity and good will. Whatever they have to do they all work together, the head of the family, the elder, the young men, the boys, everyone gives a hand to the best of his capacity. When they have finished, the oldest of the company lie down to doze and chew tobacco or sirih, the other men squat themselves about to chat and prepare poisons or make blow-pipes and arrows, whilst the children play and the women busy themselves over the cooking.

The terms of indolent and lazy as erroneously applied to these savages might be used with the same force in speaking of many who live in the vortex of civilized society.

We frequently see, amongst us, inexhaustible treasures of energy displayed when ambition or pure need demands it but when one or the other has been satisfied, or the necessity for such continual effort no longer seems imperative, or either the desired point has been attained or the future has been fully a.s.sured, then little by little energy gives place to a longing for repose.

As I have before said, the Sakai never provides for the morrow. His work begins and finishes with the day. Give him some tobacco and in his happiness he will stay awake all the night to smoke or chew it.

He works only in proportion to the urgency of the moment and then throws himself down to rest upon the ground, because beds and chairs are unknown to him, and it is not always that dried leaves and gra.s.ses are used as a subst.i.tute for the former.

The evolution of our society has brought us on the contrary to this curious condition: he who does not work at all and consequently has no honest fatigue to rest from, lies upon a soft feather bed, there to restore his strength wasted in fast living and dissipation, whilst....

But I had better stop or I may be mistaken for a dangerous cla.s.s agitator!

I will only say this: that could the Sakai look into some of our houses and palaces he would make haste to return to his own forest and if he were obliged or knew how to write his impressions he would certainly commence: "The men of the West are effeminate, lazy and indolent".

But he would do wrong to generalize for they are Western men who have conquered his forest.

I will conclude this chapter by confessing a remorse. Out of pity for these poor creatures sleeping on the cold ground, huddled together to keep each other warm, I, one day, gave a hair mattress to a Sakai family.

All of them took their places on it and slept soundly, but in the morning their bones ached so much that they gave me back my mattress in a hurry and without a single word of thanks.

And I could not blame them for this.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Boys practising shooting.

_p._ 127.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: A little more than five feet. Translator's Note.]

[Footnote 8: Let to-morrow take care of itself If to-day is ours to enjoy.]

[Footnote 9: The latter is a sort of acorn which keeps good for a long time. When pounded into an oily paste it is not altogether disagreeable to the taste.]

CHAPTER X.

The Sakai woman--Conjugal fidelity--A life of labour--Betrothals and nuptials--Love among the Sakais--Divorcement--No kissing-- Chast.i.ty--Bigamy--Maternity and its excesses--Aged before the time--Fas.h.i.+on and coquetry.

Woman, who has been compared to nearly every sort of animal that flies, creeps, swims or runs by poets and others of chivalrous sentiments, amongst the Sakais is simply a woman. In speaking of her those good sons of the East neither calumniate the dove nor the gazelle, and they do not slander the tiger and the snake but when they are inclined to praise her charms they do so with affection and brevity And this is not to be wondered at when one considers that the female s.e.x in the jungle, although not beautiful to our taste (but very much so according to the Sakay criterion) is good, laborious and incorruptible. These three virtues, if they were better known in our parts would spare poor, suffering humanity a great deal of prose, as well as poetry, without the least damage to Art.

It is for this reason that the savages in the Malay States have always considered, and still consider, the Woman as the faithful companion of their life and as the mother of their children. They have never imputed to her the sin committed by Eve, which in other countries, where ever so little of Sacred History is known, has made her the b.u.t.t of every insulting, sarcastic and opprobrious term. They have never discussed, as at the Macon council, the probability of a woman having a soul or not; what little is necessary to harmonize with their own they have recognized without any argument and they have found it in the care and affection shown towards her dear ones and in her unswerving faithfulness.