The Fijians Part 26

In regionibus interioribus feminae in medio fluvio, mares in virgeto, defaecare solent; apud tribus litorales feminae morem hominum obsequuntur; igitur carnem porcorum, qui foedam sentinam comedunt, edere non fas est. Feminae fragmento panni (tapa), mares calamo deflecto usi, se detergent. Morem Europensem papyro se detergere contemnunt; igitur pueri Vitienses comites mestizos derident, clamantes "Ngusi veva!" (Ecce puer qui se papyro deterget!)

There is so much difference between the carriage of the body in chiefs and in commoners that in some districts on ceremonial occasions the att.i.tude is an indication of the rank. For the commoner, having always to leave the path and squat down as a chief is pa.s.sing, or at least lower and avert the head, acquires a habit of stooping, while the chief, accustomed to command, carries himself erect and dignified, every inch a king. There is nothing remarkable about the gait of a Fijian, except the freedom and swing which are common to all men unhampered with clothing.

The women do not walk as gracefully as the men, especially in the hill districts, where they begin to carry burdens on their backs at a very early age. They seldom carry anything upon their heads; everything is packed in bales and baskets, which are slung on the back by cords pa.s.sing over the shoulders and under the armpits. In the old days the men carried nothing but their weapons if they could help it. They now carry all burdens slung to a pole or a bamboo. A single carrier will make his load into two packages of equal weight at either end of the pole, and balance them across his shoulder, but a heavy load is slung midway between two carriers, who do not hold the pole in position while walking, and touch it only when s.h.i.+fting it to the other shoulder for a change. In moving any heavy object they seldom push, preferring to haul upon it by rhythmical jerks delivered in time to a chant. They have never taken kindly to an English saw, because it is against their instinct to exert force in pus.h.i.+ng, and their own tool, the adze, delivers its blow towards them.

[Pageheader: A QUARREL BETWEEN BROTHERS]

They are the best tree-climbers in the world. While other races use a rattan round the waist or round the ankles in climbing cocoanut palms, the Fijians plant their soles against the trunk, grasp it with both hands, and simply walk up it to a height of fifty feet or more.

Though very voluble in speech, they do not gesticulate, and, as a rule, use their hands only to indicate the size of an object they are describing. They point with the open hand, and they beckon with a downward sweep of the hand as if they were hooking the person towards them with their fingers. They raise the head and the eyebrows simultaneously in token of a.s.sent, and shake it as we do in negation.

They show astonishment by cracking the finger-joints, or by shaking the fingers loosely from side to side from the wrist, with the hand raised to the level of the shoulder, or, if the emotion is intense, by pouting out the lips in trumpet shape, and crying "O--o--o," on a high note, while patting the lips with the open fingers. Their gesture of defiance is to cross the arms on the breast and slap the biceps with the fingers of the other hand. In sudden anger the complexion grows darker and the eyes flash, but they have their features so well under control that they seldom betray anger, but nurse it and brood over it, while waiting for an opportunity for revenge. Only once have I seen an open rupture, and that was between two first cousins, who "slanged" one another across the barrack square, hurling imputations against the virtue of the female ancestors who were common to them both. Their companions spent the whole day in trying to patch the quarrel, for, they said, "a quarrel between brethren is the most difficult of all to heal," and towards evening they were successful, for I saw the two enemies strolling up and down with their little fingers linked, and dressed in one another's clothes.

Their laughter is hearty, open-mouthed, and not unmusical, though I fear that it is heartiest when the subject is of a kind of which the missionary would not approve.

Clever as they are in not betraying their emotions in their faces, they are very apt at making secret signals with their eyes, and many an a.s.signation is made by question and answer with the eyes when the house is full of people.

They show shame or embarra.s.sment by drooping the heads and picking at the gra.s.s or the floor-mats. Their behaviour when in acute pain is much the same as that of a European. When a native submits to have the _soki_, or soft corn on the sole of the foot, to which many are subject, touched with nitric acid, he grasps the foot with both hands, and rolls about on the floor, sucking the air in through his teeth with a hissing noise. When under the lash for serious offences their pride deserts them; they dance and howl, and either implore the gaoler to have mercy, or curse his ancestresses to the fourth generation. Yet three minutes later the same man is laughing at the contortions of a fellow-sufferer who has taken his place at the triangle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Hair plastered with bleaching lime.]

[Pageheader: SENSE OF SMELL]

Though the enormous heads of hair worn by the warriors of olden times have disappeared, being regarded as the badge of heathenism, the young men still cultivate mops which, being dyed with lime, stand out like a golden aureole. The lime is smeared over the head on Sat.u.r.days and washed out on Sunday morning, more than an hour being spent in combing and oiling it with cocoanut oil scented with grated sandalwood. The arms, neck and breast are also plentifully besmeared. Young girls wear the hair shorter, but dyed and clipped symmetrically like the men, and many wear the long _tombe_ locks. In Mathuata (Vanualevu) and some other places young unmarried men also wear a cl.u.s.ter of _tombe_. After middle age the men cut their hair shorter, but continue to lime it for the sake of cleanliness even after it is grey. Widows allow their hair to grow without liming it for a year or more after their husband's death as a symbol of mourning. Baldness is not very common. The natives say that baldness and bad teeth have only been known since the introduction of sugar and other foreign goods, but though there may be some truth in this as regards their teeth, there can be no doubt that baldness has always existed. They never brush or cleanse their teeth, which nevertheless are, as a rule, beautifully white. Corpora sua non depilant Vitienses; et feminam pilosam etiam diligunt. Morem Tongic.u.m p.u.b.es et alas depilare derident.

Painting the face, which was inseparable from warfare, is now used for ceremonial dances. Lampblack and vermilion are the favourite colours.

Soot is also smeared over the face as a protection from sunburn on a journey. Girls sometimes decorate themselves with a patch of vermilion for a dance.

The Fijians are free from the peculiar smell which is exhaled by the negro, and though one is always aware of his presence in a room, I am not sure that his scent differs much from that of a European under the same conditions of nudity, physical exertion in hot weather, and absence of soap in was.h.i.+ng; for though the Fijian has a bath every day, mere immersion in cold water does not do much towards cleansing his skin. The odour of perspiration is more marked in males than in females, and in the hill people than the coast natives. Fijians have a keener sense of smell than we have; in examining an unknown object they will generally carry it to the nose, and I have heard one say that they detected a peculiar smell in Europeans and disliked it, but the man who said this was probably retaliating for some remark of a trader in disparagement of his race. As with us, the intensity of odour varies much with the individual, and it is more noticeable in old men than young.

CHAPTER XXIV

TRAITS OF CHARACTER

As the natural disposition with which a child enters this world, restrained though it may be by caution or fear of public opinion from expressing itself in acts, remains unaltered till he leaves it, so the character of natural man is untouched, even superficially, by the decay of his customary law. The surface of the lake is lashed into foam by the pa.s.sing squall; but a fathom beneath the water lies untroubled.

Though the Fijian character has been described as full of contradictions, when it is examined by the light of their moral code, which differs vitally in some respect from ours, it will be found to be as consistent as our own. How, it may be asked, can a people addicted to cannibalism and to acts of ferocious cruelty be the most timid, polite and hospitable of mankind? To any one intimately acquainted with the people these facts are perfectly consistent, though it is a little difficult to reconcile them in cold print. Timidity, as Williams stated many years ago, is the key to the Fijian character. Beset by a myriad perils from the cradle-mat to the burial-cave, he went in terror of his life. On the one hand there were the Unseen Powers quick to avenge every infringement of a tabu, however unwitting; on the other was his own chief, quick to take offence, and beyond him the enemy, ever ready to waylay the unwary in a lonely part of the road. In such an atmosphere the cardinal virtues do not thrive, and it is not to be wondered at that the Fijian was suspicious, and held craft and adroit lying in high esteem. He was polite and hospitable, because, with so many enemies already, his instinct was always to convert every new potential foe into an ally, or at least not to give him an excuse for thinking himself slighted. His cruelty also proceeded in part from timidity. "_Moku na katikati_" (Slay the women and children) was, as a Christian native once a.s.sured me, a sound maxim, for the object in war was to crush your enemy beyond the power of retaliation, and women and children breed avengers to hara.s.s your old age. The horrible cruelties inflicted on captives were in part propitiations to the War-G.o.d, and in part the same thoughtless love of mischief that moves English school-boys to tie a kettle to a dog's tail, because its sufferings are amusing to watch, and they do not understand.

[Pageheader: CONTRADICTIONS IN CHARACTER]

The sympathies of the Fijian reached to the limit of his tribe and no further, but within that limit they were active enough. After torturing, mutilating, and devouring his helpless captives, the warrior washed off his war-paint, went home and played with his children, received his visitors with stately politeness, and performed his part in the ornate and elaborate ceremonial of social life. Both phases were custom, and to his mind not in the least incongruous.

In the matter of lying he drew a nice distinction. It was a crime to lie to his chief; it was, if not a virtue, at least a t.i.tle to public admiration to display something cruder than the craft of Odysseus to an enemy, or to a person not a member of his tribe. The maxim "All is fair in love and war" was applied literally. To pretend alliance, and then treacherously to smite the ally from behind, as Namosimalua did to the people of Naingani, was more esteemed than barren courage. I have heard a young chief boast of having gratified his pa.s.sion by compelling the lover of the girl he coveted to overcome her scruples while he hid in the dark behind him, so that at the last he might push him aside and personate him. In these days the European has dropped easily into the place formerly occupied by the extra-tribal man. By an administrative fiction the Governor of the colony is supreme chief over the natives, and the natives have fallen easily into the habit of paying him all the external marks of respect which are due to their own chiefs, even, rather incongruously, greeting him with the _tama_, or shout of respect which is due only to the chief in whom is enshrined the ancestral spirit of the man who utters it. There have been governors who have been deceived into the belief that they really enjoy _ex officio_ the prestige of a supreme chief, and that the natives will not dare to lie to them. In 1888 an European named Stewart was murdered on the Sambeto coast. Another European was arrested and tried for the crime, but the issue was confused by a number of native witnesses, who came forward with two wholly incompatible stories, both designed to fasten the guilt upon the accused man. One of these stories hung upon a letter said to have been written by a petty chief who in heathen times would have held an office akin to that of hereditary executioner. The governor interrogated this man, and, convinced from his knowledge of native character that the man would not dare to lie solemnly to his supreme chief, accepted the story, and placed the matter in my hands as Acting Head of the Native Office. Everything turned upon the question whether the man had himself written the letter, and I knew that he could not write, but since the Governor could not be convinced without proof, I induced him to send for the chief, and put my statement to the test. I could not help admiring the native's courage and persistence. Even when writing materials were put before him in the Governor's presence, and he was ordered to copy a verse from the Fijian Bible, he did not falter.

For a full ten minutes he plodded away with an implement that he had never had between his fingers before, trailing a drunken zigzag across the paper like the track of a fly rescued from drowning in an inkpot. He took his unmasking with quiet dignity, however, and the murder remains a mystery to this day. To his own chief he would not have lied: the Governor of the colony was simply a foreigner to whom he owed no allegiance.

[Pageheader: DEFRAUDING WITH DIGNITY]

Europeans hold opinions regarding the honesty of Fijians according to their individual experience. There is no equivalent for the word in the language, though there is a word for theft. In the ancient moral code theft and cheating were virtues or vices according to whether they were practised upon a stranger or a member of the tribe and inasmuch as the white man falls into the former category, and is possessed of priceless treasures to boot, it was not to be expected that the Fijian would regard cheating him as an offence against morality. It was an injury, and since to injure a man who had befriended you is a mean action, public opinion would mildly condemn the robbing of a friendly white man.

Cheating and theft really date from the arrival of Europeans, for in the small communities of the old time it was well-nigh impossible to rob a fellow-tribesman without being found out, and to despoil an enemy was, as it is with us, legitimate.

In the matter of dishonesty it is, of course, the country storekeeper who suffers most, and it is therefore he who gives the Fijian the worst character. The native, from the highest to the lowest, will run into debt under the most solemn promises, and would never pay unless induced by cajolery, or compelled under the pressure of a refusal to give further credit. Even so he will display great ingenuity. A few years ago the Government, anxious to introduce copper coinage into a colony where a silver threepenny piece was the lowest currency, tried the experiment of paying a portion of the tax refund in copper. The natives showed a great unwillingness to accept it, but the late Roko Tui Lau, an old chief noted for his stately and dignified manners, won the grat.i.tude of his people by including all the copper coins in his own share. On the following day, accompanied by his train carrying bags of money, he presented himself at the German store, where his credit had long been overstrained, and intimated that he had come to pay off his debts. The heavy bags were clapped on the counter, and the unsuspecting trader, believing the coins to be florins, pressed fresh supplies upon his ill.u.s.trious client, who loaded his men with goods and departed. The trader's feelings (and, I suspect, his language) when he came to open the bags and found not a florin among the lot, need not be dwelt upon.

The commoner forms of dishonesty--putting white stones among the _yankona_, and watering the tobacco and the copra to increase the weight--are well-nigh universal, and there have been a few instances of childish attempts at forgery among domestic servants, but when the Fijians are compared with Indian coolies, it must be confessed that pilfering is rare. I have myself lived for years in native districts without a door to my house, which has stood open night and day even in my absences, and I can only recall one theft of a few s.h.i.+llings. A Fijian servant will sometimes secrete a thing which he covets to see whether it is missed. If inquiries are made for it he will be most active in the search, and will eventually discover it in some unlikely place, hoping to acquire merit by his diligence, but deceiving n.o.body.

On the other hand, money is a temptation which few natives can resist, and it is to be feared that few native magistrates or scribes have not at some time or other borrowed from the funds entrusted to them. They might well plead the excuse that their wants and the calls of hospitality have greatly increased, while their wretched salaries of from 3 to 12 a year have not. It is much to say for them that bribery is uncommon, and that though they may show partiality in the administration of justice they are not corrupt.

Considering what must appear to the Fijian as the fabulous wealth of the white man, unprotected save by a wooden wall and a crazy door, and so temptingly placed at the mercy of the village as is the native store, it is surprising that house-breaking is not more frequent. It is the belief of many Fijians that every white man has a chest of money in his house, and occasionally some restless spirit organizes a burglary among his chosen a.s.sociates. I have related elsewhere[103] how Kaikai robbed a store at Navua, set it on fire, and sank the safe in the bed of the river, but in order to show the school-boy light-hearted inconsequence of the burglars, I may repeat here the confession of one of them:--

[Pageheader: NATIVE BUSHRANGERS]

"Sir, the root of the matter was Kaikai. He seduced us to do this thing. We therefore are innocent. It happened thus: Kaikai came into our house in the evening and said 'Eroni, let us have prayers.' So we had prayers. Then Kaikai said, 'How would it be to break open the white man's store?' And we said, 'It is well.' And when we came near the store, Kaikai said, 'How would it be to set the store on fire, and then perhaps the white man will come out?'

So we set the store on fire, and presently the white man did come out. Then Kaikai said, 'Let us trample him.' And so we did, and having put the chest of money in the river, we all went home."

"And what did you do then?" asked the Court.

"Kaikai said prayers."

A similar case occurred in Vanualevu, while the Australian papers were of full of the exploits of the Kelly gang of bushrangers. Fired by the halting translation of the local storekeeper, three otherwise blameless youths, church-goers every one, resolved to take to the bush and make the world ring with the story of their crimes. They began tentatively by setting fire to an empty house, and waxing bolder, they waylaid an elderly German storekeeper in broad day, and by dint of yelling their tribal war-cry into his ears, put sufficient heart into themselves to cut him down with a hatchet. A couple of mission teachers, attracted by their shouts, put them to flight, and thereafter they seem to have lost heart, for a week later their dead bodies were discovered far up the mountain. They had perished like the Fijian widows of old. Two of them had strangled the third by hauling on the loose ends of a noose of bark-cloth; the first had then strangled the second by tying one end of the noose to a tree, and pulling on the other, and had then hanged himself, English fas.h.i.+on, from a bough.

Though naturally so timid, the Fijian has shown himself upon occasion to be capable of extraordinary courage and self-devotion, generally, however, when a.s.sailed by the forces of nature. There is no reason to doubt the truth of the story that a Kandavu chief, whose canoe capsized a mile from the Serua reef, when attacked by sharks, was protected by his men, who formed a ring round him as he swam. As man after man was dragged down, the rest closed in, until there were but three left to reach the sh.o.r.e. I myself questioned two girls, the survivors of a party of twelve, who had been picked up by a cutter off the mouth of the Rewa, after all their companions had been devoured by sharks, and they had been eight hours swimming in a rough sea. They described without a shudder how a huge shark, glutted with the body of the last of their playmates, had rubbed himself along their naked backs as they swam, and had played about them until the moment of their rescue. Their fort.i.tude seemed, however, to be due to a lack of imagination.

To the European the natives must always seem wanting in natural affection. Parents are fond of their children until sickness calls for sustained effort or self-sacrifice, but their love will not bear the strain of these. As with all races such affection as there is tends downward and not upward. The mother is fonder of her child than the child of his mother. In the old days the young man obeyed his father, because he was one of the elders, the repositories of tribal lore, not because he was his father; but when the father grew infirm he helped to bury him alive without a trace of emotion beyond the mourning which customary law enjoined. In these days of schools and Government employment the young man regards the opinion of his elders no more. A few years ago the senior Wesleyan missionary appealed to one of Thakombau's sons to mend his ways, saying, "What would the chief, your father, have said?" The young man jerked his thumb contemptuously towards the tomb on the hill above them, and replied, "My father? Why, he's dead." While there is a certain comrades.h.i.+p between brothers and the first cousins who are cla.s.sed as brothers, the customary law that forbids brothers and sisters to speak to one another is a bar to any affection between these. On the other hand, there is loyalty and fidelity between husbands and wives, though it is more perhaps the mutual regard of partners in the same firm than warm attachment. The only instance of demonstrative family affection that I can recall occurred in Lomaloma when a prisoner sentenced by the Provincial Court was being sent on board a vessel bound for Levuka. His aged mother caught hold of him, to prevent him from entering the boat, wailing and storming at the native policeman by turns. When they had been separated by force, and he was fairly afloat, she cast herself down on the beach, shrieking and throwing the sand over her head in utter abandonment of grief. Though not more noisy, this was a very different exhibition from the ceremonial wailing at a death. At the funeral of Tui Nandrau, one of the last of the cannibal chiefs, I came upon two or three of the widows howling with dry eyes, like dogs baying the moon. Seeing me, one of them nudged her neighbour to point me out, and grinned knowingly, and then drowned her sister wives in a howl of peculiar shrillness and poignancy.

During a cricket match at Lomaloma a canoe arrived carrying news of the death of the father of one of the bowlers. At the end of the over his aunt came over to the pitch to tell him, and I overheard the conversation.

[Pageheader: CEREMONIAL WAILING]

"Here is a painful thing," she said; "Wiliame is dead. Pita has just landed and brought the news."

"O Veka!" exclaimed the boy.

"How then? Shall we wail now, or after the game is finished?"

They discussed the point for a few moments. There were, it seemed, only three female relations on the ground, and if the others were sent for it would make a braver show. The boy decided the point. "Send for them," he said, "and let us finish the match first; then we can weep."

As soon as the last wicket was down I was startled by a piercing shriek from the scoring tent: the wailing had begun. The aunt and half-a-dozen old crones were howling "_Oo-au-e-e_" with a peculiar long-drawn wail, ending in a sob, while real tears coursed down their wrinkled cheeks. It was difficult to believe that the grief was only simulated.

The reasoning power of the Fijian is not easy to cla.s.sify. He is extraordinarily observant, and in respect of natural phenomena he shows a high power of deduction. He is an acute weather-prophet; he knows the name and the nature of every tree and almost every plant that grows in his forest; he is a most skilful gardener. A broken twig, a fallen berry, are enough for him to a.s.sert positively where a wild hog has its lair; he knows by the look of the weather where the fish are to be found. He will tell you correctly from a footprint in the sand which of his fellow-villagers has pa.s.sed that way and when, and whether he went in haste or leisurely, for he knows the footprints of his people as he knows their faces, and will swear to them in court. He will probe the secret motive that lay behind every action of one of his own people, and he is beginning to draw deductions even from the manner of Europeans.

"Mr. ----," a Fijian once said to me of a colleague of blunt manners, "is from Scotland. I suppose that Scotland is a 'bush' village!"

When justice has to be defeated he is remarkably acute in the story he will concoct. a.s.sembling the false witnesses into a house by night, he will cunningly dissect it, dictating to each witness the part he is to tell, repeating it over and over until the man has it by heart, even interpolating some trifling discrepancy, so as to render it more life-like. It is only by showing in cross-examination that none of the witnesses will budge an inch beyond his original narrative that the fraud can be detected.

Fijian boys, educated at an European school, are probably quite equal in capacity and intelligence to European boys of the same age, but, though there has. .h.i.therto been no case in which their education has been continued beyond boyhood, there is no reason to think that this equality would not be maintained through manhood. In early boyhood they show some talent for arithmetic, and an extraordinary power of learning by rote.

Those who had been sent to school in Sydney speak English with but little foreign accent. For drawing, for science, and for mechanics they do not appear to have much apt.i.tude. As might be expected from a people to whom oratory comes easily, they write with ease, and their letters and articles for the native newspaper, _Na Mata_, show close reasoning, and sometimes scathing satire. One contributor, Ilai Moto-ni-thothoka, displayed both imagination and literary talent.

[Pageheader: PRODUCTS OF THE TRAINING SCHOOL]