The Fijians Part 19

[Pageheader: PRACTICES OF THE GILBERT ISLANDS]

As the Gilbert Islanders are credited with being excessively prolific, and are said to be the only race in the South Seas that would increase if artificial means were not used to prevent the population exceeding the capacity of the islands, it will be well to compare their methods of midwifery as described by Tearabugu, a professional midwife. On her island--Tamana--much attention is paid to pregnant women. They do no work during the first two months of pregnancy. At the seventh month they are anointed with oil; about the eighth their limbs are given pa.s.sive exercise, and they go to a separate house to be shampooed by expert ma.s.seuses, in order to train their muscles to bear the labour pains. The umbilical cord is measured to the middle of the child's forehead, and cut, but not tied. The placenta is extracted by hand if it does not come away naturally. In cases of mal-presentation the midwives know how to give a.s.sistance. The mother does no work during suckling, and, if it is necessary to wean the child prematurely, a subst.i.tute for the mother's milk is found in a b.u.t.ter made from the fresh fruit of the panda.n.u.s. The midwives are reputed to be exceptionally clever, and the labours easy and safe. Tearabugu could not remember a single case which had terminated fatally for the mother. She said that four or five children are considered enough, and any above that number are not allowed to come to maturity. All the women practise abortion because they are so prolific. If they did not they would have from ten to twenty children apiece. But neither medicine nor instruments are used. The common method is to pound the abdomen with a billet of wood, and this is not fatal to the mother. Now, however, the practice is being abandoned, because the missionaries have persuaded the people that it is dangerous.

Lactation

The Fijian child begins life with a dose of medicine. As soon as it has been washed in cold water a little of the juice of the candle-nut-tree (_Aleurites triloba_) is put into its mouth to make it vomit. Then a ripe cocoanut, or in some places a plantain, is roasted and chewed into a pulp, which is dropped into a cocoanut-sh.e.l.l cup. A piece of bark-cloth, shaped like a nipple, is dipped into this, and given to the child to suck. The mother's first milk, being considered unwholesome, is drawn off, and for the first day, or, in the case of a chief's child, for the first three days, the baby is put to the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a wet nurse, if its rank is sufficient to command her services. The wet nurse is strictly forbidden to bathe or fish in salt water, and there must not be too great a disparity of age between her own and her foster child. When the mother's b.r.e.a.s.t.s are full, her child is given to her to suckle, but now, as in the old days, the children of chiefs are suckled by more than one woman. In Tonga the mother suckles her child as soon as the milk comes.

In one respect only have the ancient customs relating to suckling children begun to break down; the missionaries have tried to discourage the employment of a wet nurse, probably because her own child is likely to suffer from neglect.

Among the common people it has always been the custom for two girls from the wife's and two from the husband's family to feed and tend the new mother, unless her rank is too lowly to ent.i.tle her to the services of more than one. The two grandmothers of the child, if living, also help to tend the mother. But at the tenth day they all leave her to the care of her husband. This custom fits into the waning practice of concubitous marriage, (_q. v._ ante), for if the husband and wife belong to different islands the wife's relations are unable to contribute their services to her support. During the first ten days the mother is confined to a vegetable diet. She is forbidden to eat what the native call _ka ndamu_ (red things, _i.e._ fish, crabs, pork, or broths made therefrom), and is fed upon taro or bread-fruit puddings (_vakalolo_), yams, taro, or spinach. At the end of ten days she goes about her house-work, and if she cannot command the services of her relations to enable her to lay up for the _bongi ndrau_ (hundred days), she resumes all her ordinary outdoor work except sea-fis.h.i.+ng, for, as the natives say, "there is _dambe_ in the sea, and if the mother wets her leg above the calf in salt water, her milk will be spoiled."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Women Fis.h.i.+ng with the Seine.]

[Pageheader: REMARKABLE CASE]

It is perhaps owing to their hard work and low diet that Fijian mothers so often suffer from a deficiency of breast milk, and that so many children die from _matha na mena suthu_ (drying up of the milk) and _londo i suthu_ (privation of milk), _i.e._ from the death, absence, or neglect of the mother. When the mother's milk fails her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are oiled and steamed and painted with turmeric, and are kept warm by bandages of bark-cloth, while she eats spinach, _mba vakoro_ (a mixture of spinach with sh.e.l.l-fish), and drinks fish soup and spinach water.

Kava, which was absolutely forbidden to women of the last generation, is now drunk by both pregnant and nursing women under the belief that it induces easy labour and promotes a flow of milk when all other means fail. But if the flow of milk is re-established, the more nutritious diet is at once discontinued, for quant.i.ty is all that is aimed at.

When the milk fails or the mother dies the child's chances of surviving are slender indeed. Its grandmother will carry it from house to house imploring nursing mothers to give it suck. With one accord they all begin to make excuses. They have not milk enough for their own children; there are many other women more able to than they. In Thakaundrove a woman who is not nursing sometimes takes the place of the mother. She is fed on spinach, and is oiled and tended like the real mother, and in course of time, if the child continues to suck her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the milk comes, and the child is reared. There is a well-attested case--and it is said to be by no means a solitary instance--in which the grandmother suckled the children during the mother's frequent absences from home.

They were the children of her youngest daughter, and yet she contrived to induce a flow of milk for each of the four children in succession. It is not surprising that all the children died in infancy, for such milk could have little nutritive value.

Statistics show that, even counting the children that are fortunate enough to find a wet nurse to adopt them, in at least three cases out of four the death of the mother means the death of the child also, and that the mortality is only a shade lower in cases where the mother is deficient in breast milk. The father's absence from home is also a fatal condition, for the mother is then obliged to take her baby with her to the plantation, where it is left under a tree while its mother works in the sun. Among the Motu tribes in New Guinea a sort of creche is improvised in the corner of the field; every nursing mother goes to work with her child slung in a net bag. These bags are slung from the branches of a tree, and are guarded by one of the women told off for the duty in rotation. I remember coming suddenly upon one of these trees at a turn in the path. Its dead branches bore a round dozen of this strange fruit--fat brown babies fast asleep with their knees doubled up to their chins and their flesh oozing from the meshes of the net bags. Near the same village I saw a woman, who had probably lost her baby, doing her maternal duty to a sucking-pig and a puppy.

The only subst.i.tute for milk known to the Fijians is _mba_ water, _i.e._ water in which the stalks of the taro (_Calladium esculentum_) have been boiled. It contains a large proportion of glucose, a little starch, a trace of alb.u.men, some malic acid, a pinkish or pale violet colouring matter intensified by acids, water and cellulose, but no tannic or gallic acids. The microscope showed it to be free from oxalate of lime or other raphides. In the uncooked stalks and leaves there is a highly acrid oily matter, which, however, is completely dissipated by heat even below 200 Fahrenheit. _Mba_ is not unlike boiled beet stalks, and the sweet and mucilaginous liquor must be a palatable and not unsatisfying food for a child in ordinary health, though it is far from being as nutritive as mother's milk. It is strange that the Fijians have never thought of adding to it the strainings of grated cocoanuts which abound in every village, though even so the food would still be deficient in proteids.

In Tonga, on the other hand, children are generally reared safely by hand upon a diet of cooked breadfruit made into a liquid with cocoanut-milk. I have heard of one instance of a child that was reared on sugar-cane. The Gilbert Islanders use a b.u.t.ter made of the fruit of the panda.n.u.s made fresh every day, and they also give their children young cocoanuts to suck through a hollow rush.

[Pageheader: INSANITARY HABITS]

Weaning

If all goes well the child is weaned when three or four of both the upper and lower incisors appear. For a month or two before this the mother has been in the habit of giving it a slushy mess of yam to prepare it for solid food. While weaning it she gives it chewed yam or taro in addition to _mba_, and there is something to be said both for and against this practice. The saliva is rich in ptyalin, which does not act upon proteids or fats, and is therefore not secreted in any appreciable quant.i.ty during the first year of infant life. As the starch that is so plentiful in yam and taro is insoluble, it must be converted into something more digestible before it can be a.s.similated. The acid of the gastric juice would r.e.t.a.r.d this conversion, but the ptyalin of the saliva, like the diastase of malt, has the property of converting moistened starch, when kept at a warm and even temperature such as that of the body, into dextrin and glucose, which are easily a.s.similated.

Thus, while the mother feeds her child upon a diet which it is not yet prepared to deal with, she supplies from her own mouth the necessary moisture, warmth and ptyalin for making it digestible. Without the chewing the mashed yam would produce diarrhoea.

On the other hand, the human mouth is the hotbed of bacteria, which, though innocuous to the adult, may well be hurtful to an infant. The Fijian uses no toothbrush but his index finger, which is seldom as clean as the mouth it is intended to cleanse. It is therefore possible that the fermentative action that causes diarrhoea in children may be set up by the chewing, and the germs of specific const.i.tutional disease may be sometimes introduced. Tuberculosis and leprosy, so far as our present knowledge of them goes, appear likely to be transmissible in this way, and the Fijians are largely affected by both tubercle and leprosy. Most Fijian mothers are heavy smokers, and the residuum of tobacco may well impart a poisonous property to the food.

CHAPTER XII

CIRc.u.mCISION AND TATTOOING

Like the Arabs, the Fijians circ.u.mcised their boys when just entering upon p.u.b.erty, about the twelfth year. In heathen times the age seems to have been somewhat earlier, for Williams gives the age at from seven to twelve, which corresponds with the custom of the ancient Egyptians, from whom the Jews probably derived the custom. It does not appear to have been strictly a religious rite, though, like all ceremonial acts of the Fijians, it was invested with a religious observance of the tabu. The operation was generally performed in the village _mbure_, upon ten or twenty youths at a time, by one of the old men, who used a piece of split bamboo. The blood was caught on a strip of bark-cloth, called _kula_ (red), which in some places was suspended from the roof of the temple or the house of the chief. Food, consisting of a mess of greens, was taken to the boys by women, who, in some places, as they carried it, chanted the following words:--

"Memu wai onkori ka kula, Au solia mai loaloa, Au solia na ndrau ni thevunga, Memu wai onkori ka kula."

"Your broth, you, the circ.u.mcised, From the darkness I give it, I give you _thevunga_ leaves, Your broth, you, the circ.u.mcised."

[Pageheader: CIRc.u.mCISION A RELIGIOUS RITE]

The word for circ.u.mcision, _teve_, may not be uttered before women; in their presence it must be called _kula_. The proper time for performing the rite is immediately after the death of a chief, and it is accompanied by rude games--wrestling, sham fights, mimic sieges, which vary according to the locality. Uncirc.u.mcised youths were regarded as unclean, and were not permitted to carry food for the chiefs. The ceremony was generally followed by the a.s.sumption of the _malo_, or perineal bandage, for children of both s.e.xes went naked to the tenth year, or even later if of high rank; but this was not invariable, for the _malo_ was worn sometimes many months before, and sometimes not a.s.sumed till some time after the ceremony. The a.s.sumption of the _malo_, or of the _liku_ (gra.s.s petticoat) by the child of a chief was the occasion of a great feast, and the postponement of this feast sometimes condemned the child to go naked until long after p.u.b.erty. The daughter of the late chief of Sambeto was thus still unclad till past eighteen, and the unfortunate girl was compelled, through modesty, to keep the house until after nightfall.

The custom of circ.u.mcision still persists despite the abandonment of the ceremonial that attended it. The instrument is now usually a trade knife, and the operation is performed in the privacy of the boy's family, who may, or may not, give a feast to his near relations. I have tried unsuccessfully to obtain any traditions that would give a clue to its origin. The most that a Fijian can say is that to be uncirc.u.mcised is a reproach, though to a people who cover the pudenda with the hand even while bathing, and probably never expose their nakedness even to their own s.e.x throughout their lives, this can have but little weight.

No doubt the Fijians brought the custom with them in remote times, and its origin is probably the same in their case as in that of the Nacua of Central America, the Egyptians, and the Bantu races of Africa--namely, the idea of a blood sacrifice to the mysterious spirit of reproduction.

Shortly before p.u.b.erty every Fijian girl was tattooed. This was not for ornament, for the marks were limited to a broad horizontal band covering those parts that were concealed by the _liku_, beginning about an inch below the cleft of the b.u.t.tocks and ending on the thighs about an inch below the fork of the legs. The pattern covered the Mons Veneris and extended right up to the v.u.l.v.a. There is not much art in the patterns, which are, as a rule, mere interlacing of parallel line and lozenges, the object being apparently to cover every portion of the skin with pigment. The operation is performed by three old women, two to hold the patient, and the third to use the fleam. It is done in the daytime, when the men are absent in their plantations. The girl is laid stripped upon the mats opposite the open door, where the light is best.

With an instrument called a _mbati_, or tooth, and a cocoanut sh.e.l.l filled with a mixture of charcoal and candle-nut oil, the operator first paints on the lines with a twig, and then drives them home with the _mbati_, which consists of two or more bone teeth embedded in a wooden handle about six inches long, dipping it in the pigment between each stroke of the mallet, and wiping away the blood with bark-cloth, while the other two control the struggles of the patient. The operation is continued until the patient can bear no more, for in the tender parts between the thighs it is excessively painful. There is usually some inflammation, but the wounds heal quickly. A ceremonial feast is generally given by the girl's parents.

In addition to this tattooing, barbed lines and dots were marked upon the fingers of young girls to display them to advantage when handing food to the chiefs, and after childbirth a semicircular patch was tattooed at each corner of the mouth. In the hill districts of Vitilevu these patches are sometimes joined by narrow lines following the curve of both lips. The motive for this practice, which even Fijians admit to be a disfigurement, is to display publicly a badge of matronly staidness and respectability. The wife who has borne children has fulfilled her mission, and she pleases her husband best by ceasing for the remainder of her life to please other men.

The tattooing of the b.u.t.tocks has undoubtedly some hidden s.e.xual significance which is difficult to arrive at. It is said to have been inst.i.tuted by the G.o.d Ndengei, and in the last journey of the Shades an untattooed woman was subjected to various indignities.

[Pageheader: REASON FOR TATTOOING WOMEN]

The motive of the girl in submitting to so painful an operation was the same as that which underlies all subservience to grotesque decrees of Fas.h.i.+on--the fear of ridicule. If untattooed, her peculiarity would be whispered with derision among the gallants of the district, and she would have difficulty in finding a husband. But the reason for the fas.h.i.+on itself must be sought for in some s.e.xual superst.i.tion. When I was endeavouring to obtain some of the ancient chants used in the Nanga celebrations on the Ra coast, I was always a.s.sured that the solemn vows of secrecy which bound the initiated not to divulge the _mbaki_ mysteries sealed the lips even of their Christian descendants. I was persuaded either that they had forgotten the chants, or that they considered them unfit for my ears, for it was impossible to believe that the reward I was able to offer would fail to tempt a Fijian to risk offending deities in whom it was evident that he no longer believed.

After infinite persuasion the son of a _Vere_ was induced to dictate one of the chants, and it proved to be an extremely lascivious ode in praise of b.u.t.tock tattooing--the only instance I am acquainted with in Fijian chants in which lechery and not religious awe animated the composer.

Vaturemba, the chief of Nakasaleka in the Tholo hills, who was always plain-spoken, chuckled wickedly when I questioned him upon the matter, and declared that physically there was the greatest difference in the world between mating with a tattooed and an untattooed woman (_Sa matha vinaka nona ka vakayalewa, na alewa nkia_), and that the idea of marriage with an untattooed woman filled him with disgust. He left me with the impression that besides the other advantages he had mentioned, tattooing was believed to stimulate the s.e.xual pa.s.sion in the woman herself.

The Mission teachers have long waged war against the practice as a heathen custom, and in most of the coast districts it has fallen into disuse, but in the upper reaches of the Singatoka river, though the people have long been Christians, it still persists, though not universally. Interference with it by a man, albeit a Mission teacher, was evidently considered indecent in itself, for men cannot, without impropriety, concern themselves with so essentially feminine a business.

More than one teacher was charged before my court with indecency for having returned to the village to admonish the tattooers while the operation was being performed.

With the introduction of writing it has become common for young men and women to tattoo their names on the forearm or thigh of the person to whom they happen to be attached, and there are comparatively few who do not carry some memento of their heart's history thus ineffaceably recorded. The inconvenience of this custom in a people as fickle as the Fijians does not seem to trouble them.

The keloids, or raised cicatrices, that may still be seen (though the custom is dying out) upon the arms and backs of the women are formed by repeatedly burning the skin with a firebrand, so as to keep the sore open for several weeks. The wart-like excrescences that result are arranged in lines with intervals of about an inch, in half-moons or curves, or in concentric circles. Sometimes they are formed by pinching up the skin, and thrusting a fine splinter through the raised part. They are intended only for ornament, and have no other significance.

The only other interference with Nature is the distension of the ear-lobes in the older men of the hill districts. The ear is first pierced, and gradually distended by the insertion of pieces of wood of increasing size, until the lobe forms a thin cord, like a stout elastic band, and is large enough to receive a reel of cotton, or a circular tin match-box, which are both in favour as ear ornaments. Sometimes the cord breaks, and if the owner has not ceased to care about his personal appearance he will excoriate the broken ends, and splice them with gra.s.s fibre until they reunite.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PRACTICE OF PROCURING ABORTION

Procuring abortion in the old days appears to have been limited to women of high rank who, for reasons of policy, were not allowed to have children. When it is remembered that every lady of rank who married into another tribe might bear children who, as _vasu_, would have a lien upon every kind of property belonging to their mother's tribe, it is not surprising that means were taken to limit the number of her offspring.

In a polygamous society every wife had an interest in preventing her rivals from bearing sons who might dispute the succession with her own offspring, and the chief wife wielded an authority over the inferior wives that enabled her to carry her wishes into effect. Waterhouse mentions that professional abortionists were sent in the train of every lady who married out of the tribe, with instructions to procure the miscarriage of her mistress. The Rev. Walter Lawry, who visited Mbau in 1847, declares, on the authority of all the resident missionaries, that the practice was reduced to a system. But these motives did not operate with the common people, who were seldom in a position to pay the pract.i.tioner's fee, although, no doubt, dislike of the long abstinence enjoined during suckling and disinclination to bear children to a man they hated were motives strong enough to induce a few women in every cla.s.s to rid themselves of their children. The abortionist's craft was then in the hands of a few professional experts, who made too good a thing of their trade to trust their secrets to any but their daughters who were to succeed to their practice.

All this is now changed. Both the motive and the means have spread far and wide. The secrets of the trade are common property, and the act is unskilfully attempted by the mother or older female relation of every pregnant woman who cares to take the risk of an operation. By a strange irony the rapid increase in the practice of abortion in recent years is to some extent the doing of the missionaries. With the decay of the custom of separating the s.e.xes at night intrigues with unmarried women increased, and to fight this growing vice the missionaries visited the breach of the Seventh Commandment with expulsion from Church members.h.i.+p.

The girls have come to prize highly their _thurusinga_ (_lit._, entrance into daylight), as communion with the Wesleyan Church is called, and, when they find themselves pregnant, the dread of exposure, expulsion and disgrace drive them to the usual expedients for destroying the evidence of their frailty. Although by suppressing the usual feasts and presentations in the case of illegitimate births, and by refusing the sacrament of baptism to illegitimate children, the Mission authorities may have given some impetus to the practice of abortion, there can be little doubt that an illegitimate birth brought even more shame upon families of every rank but the lowest in heathen times than at present--unless the putative father was of high rank. There still exists enough of the stern customary law that punished incontinency to cast a social stigma upon the mother of an illegitimate child; there still survives enough of the ethical code that refused to regard the procurement of abortion as a criminal act to warrant women in choosing what is to them the lesser of two evils. Moreover, the tendency to the practice of abortion is c.u.mulative. A girl induces miscarriage to escape the shame of her first pregnancy. To the natural tendency of women who have once miscarried to repeat the accident is added the temptation to undergo, for the second time, an operation that has already been successful. If Fijian women dislike the burden of tending children born in wedlock, much more do they shrink from maternity coupled with the disgrace of illegitimacy. The natives themselves quote instances of a number of minor motives, such as the dread of the pains of childbirth, and the determination of a wife not to bear children to a man she hates or quarrels with--motives which have influenced women of every race from the beginning of time, and which will continue to do so until the end.

[Pageheader: METHODS VEILED IN SECRECY]

A high birth-rate is not incompatible with the extensive practice of abortion, where the proportion of stillbirth is also high, and the women are so careful to conceal their practices that it is highly probable that they conspire to represent to the native registrars as post-natal deaths miscarriages that have been caused artificially. The natives of Vanualevu are reputed to be the most adept in procuring abortion, and the three provinces included in that island show the abnormal stillbirth-rate of 10 per cent, of the total births, while their general birth-rate is the lowest in the colony. It must be remembered that, since procuring abortion is regarded as a criminal act, the practice is now concealed, not from any sense of shame, but from fear of criminal prosecution. The practice is veiled with so much secrecy that very few prosecutions have taken place.