least the winds are in our favour, and two weeks’ sailing would see us
in Fiji or near it; and then in a few weeks more we might be on our
return homeward. For all considered, we must make up our minds either to
let this thing go on, and drift about the South Seas, taking up the
island groups one by one, as chance will have it, or we must make a
stern choice and hold to that. And that choice points more and more to
our saying good-bye to these eastern islands, and to determining that we
have really seen Brown Polynesia, even if it be only in these three
groups, and that the rest is a matter of detail. But it may not be so
easy to leave by that little schooner or by any other.
There is a demand for small schooners--that is to say, they have to go
around to the groups to pick up cargoes; and the one German firm whose
boat runs near enough would like to put the screws on to the uttermost.
_More Germanico_, even money is not enough--there must be no
equality--and the last alternative so far has been the offer of a
passage in a little boat, with other passengers, native women, and a
full cargo; which means every available space filled (so that we would
merely have our berths to lie in); and that passage to certain places
first, and then afterward, when the schooner has discharged its cargo at
leisure, to take us from the last point to Fiji. For these discomforts
we should have to pay $2,700, within $300 of the value of the schooner.
The other passengers would pay $15, which would be the average value. We
offered $3,000 for the use of another schooner, having ascertained that
she was unprofitable to the same owner; to which he answered by sending
her off; and told us that upon conditions of a like nature we might
have her by and by. The place develops curious sides of what is called
business; and this may be an example. Fancy anywhere else a person
offered the full value of a bit of non-productive property for a few
weeks’ rent, and hesitating so as to couple difficult conditions with
his leave. But I think our German will come short of his enormous
profit: the steamer that brings cattle here from Auckland and carries
back fruit will probably be our choice; it is only waiting three weeks
more, and economizing several hundred dollars a week--never a cruel
thing to endure.
And our stay is such an easy thing; it is only because neither of us has
the future before him, but on the contrary, a considerable past filled
with the habit of work, that we make the slightest effort to resist our
contentment. The weather is such as people might travel far to seek: an
equable warmth, a little coolness at night and in the morning, an
evenness that makes a couple of degrees count for a great deal, plenty
of moving air, a beautiful sea, a beautiful sky, and a beautiful
distance at all hours of the day and even of the moonlit nights.
The Moorea lies in front of us, on half of the horizon; the little
shipping blocks up part of the space; grass-covered quays are before us,
shaded with trees under which pass groups of natives or straggling
French soldiers and sailors, or the few residents that live this way. At
times all is silent and solitary; at others carts roll noisily; horses,
ridden wildly by native boys, canter past, or some schooner comes in and
unloads almost in front of us. Great excitement comes upon us with these
arrivals, far greater than with the arrival or departure of the war
steamer that serves to carry about the Governor or officials on tours of
inspection, and whose presence brings the sunset gun, saluted by the
customary refrain of the clarion, and the eight o’clock gun with another
blast, as if reporting that the discharge had struck.
Lately too we have been interested in the arrival of Narii Salmon in his
boat from the Pomotus, bringing other members of the family. This
impending arrival has brought several times to our verandah the two
younger ladies of the family, to scan the distance with our glasses.
Since the night when Narii ran in, passing the reef in the twilight, our
beautiful new sisters have been less frequent. It was a pretty event,
the arrival of the little boat, for which others had daily been
mistaken; the settling of its identity by its marks; the recognition of
its owner by its sailing bravely in through the pass in the dark; then
the calls from the shore to know if it were he for sure, and who was on
board; and the boats hurrying out and coming back, all in a silence so
great that the slightest rustle of sail or cordage or steps on deck
could be distinctly heard.
At times the only sound is the wavering fall of the little column of
water that drips from the mouth of a fountain into the sea--to which we
go for our supply of pure water. Its threads, thicker or thinner, with
the pulsations of the headstream thousands of feet far back, or with the
draught of the wind, make a corded silver fan against the blue sea
during the day; in the night a line of tinted light.
These are fine days; but our first stay after our return from Moorea ran
over a week of wet weather that kept all asoak, filled the house with
damp and mould, and carried into and about it disagreeable things taking
refuge in comparative dryness: the centipede that runs away, but bites
if interfered with; the scorpion that lurks around dark corners, and
scuttles off harmlessly enough, but looking like a child’s dream of a
devil. The cockroach seems to rule over them, however, and to drive them
away; and as the scorpion appears rarely in the house, and only in the
verandah or outhouses, we have been lucky. Tauraatua has been bitten,
but after a sharp pain like a cut, the matter has faded away. The memory
is there, however, and I am glad of the changed weather. Our house, from
whose verandah we look upon the sea across the road, and the reef near
the horizon and Moorea swimming in light, is the historic consulate
empty of the Consul, whose place we take, his duties only being filled
by Captain Hart, the Vice-Consul.
Behind us, across the yard, is our dear old Chiefess’s home, where the
Queen, Marau, and her sisters Piri and Manihinihi reside; so that we are
near our new family, and we call in as often as our fears of intrusion
may allow, or need of society, or freedom from so-called occupation.
Tauraatua goes over more than I do; he has given up painting, and has
returned to congenial and accustomed studies, by working at the
genealogy of our new family, and helping to get it into written shape.
For the old lady, Hinaarii, has begun to open the registers of memory,
and to correct and make clear things kept obscure, partly from purpose
as defences, partly from kindly motives toward others; partly because it
is written that memories must perish and the past continually fade and
disappear, in part at least. Genealogy, you know, in the South Seas,
indicates not only one’s standing but one’s rights to land. Nothing is
ever sold, nothing alienated by any law; so that in one’s name and in
the names of one’s relations are the title deeds of what one has. And
now the French Government, in its anxiety to extend all benefits of
civilization, and to make all its peoples equals has desired to have
everything put into proper shape; and as in Samoa, so everybody here
must put in his claim to the land, which thus will be duly recorded for
good and all. For never again will be the time when a family might claim
the fruit of a branch of a given tree. These genealogies, kept by
hearsay, will be unfolded to the public, so far as needed, and claims
settled; there will be no need of concealment, no fear that some side
relation, in a little country, where such relationship must exist, will
know enough to make out a tree of his own and come in with some claim.
Everything conspires for getting some definite record just before the
last veil closes over a past already dim enough. And Marau and Moetia
are writing out songs and legends, and may be inspired, if their ardour
can continue, to help to save something.
Some years ago King Kalakaua of Hawaii had wished to obtain the
traditions and genealogies; but the old lady had never been favourable;
so that we feel that at least we have done no harm to the family, at
least in our western notions, since we may help to save its records.
It is a part of the charm of Tahiti that with it there is a history:
that it has been the type of the oceanic island in story; that the names
of Cook and Bougainville and Wallis and Bligh belong to it most
especially; that from it have radiated other stories: the expeditions of
the mutineers of the _Bounty_, and the missionary enterprises that have
gone through the Pacific.
With its discovery begins the interest that awoke Europe by the apparent
realization of man in his earliest life--a life that recalled at least
the silver if not the golden age. Here men and women made a beautiful
race, living free from the oppression of nature, and at first sight also
free from the cruel and terrible superstitions of many savage tribes. I
have known people who could recall the joyous impressions made upon them
by these stories of new paradises, only just opened; and both Wallis’s
and Bougainville’s short and official reports are bathed in a feeling of
admiration, that takes no definite form, but refers both to the people
and the place and the gentleness of the welcome.
That early figure of Purea (Oberea) the Queen, for whom Wallis shed
tears in leaving, remains the type of the South Sea woman. With Cook she
is also inseparably associated and the anger of the first missionaries
with her only serves to complete and certify the character. One will
always remember the imposing person who, after the terrors of the first
mistaken struggle, approached Wallis with the dignity he describes,
welcomed him and took care of him, even, as he says, to carrying him,
since he was ill, in her arms, as if he were a child. One would like to
go back in mind to the time, if it were possible to realize the thoughts
that must have come upon Oberea and Amo her husband on this appearance
of the great ship and the strange men--a floating island as they first
thought it, which they attacked as a portent of ill. Something like this
will be felt by our descendants when from some distant planet the first
discoverers shall drop on earth. And so Amo and Oberea come in and out
of the stories of the first discoverers, even until forty years after,
when the missionaries of the _Duff_ speak of the poor lady with harsh
words and (1799-1800) no pity for her frailties.
Now Oberea (Purea) was our old Chiefess’s great-great-grand-aunt, as Amo
was her great-great-grand-uncle; and now, with one remove further, she
is ours by adoption.[20] (You must ever remember that we belong to Amo;
that is the special name of place attached to ours.)
And everything that concerns the family of the Tevas interests us
exceedingly. Does it not interest you also? This _living connection_
with the indefinite archaic past, does it not bring back the freshness
of early days, in which, reading of the voyages, our minds shaped
pictures of what these places and their people were? Now for me it is a
pleasure, half touching, half absurd, to look upon the queer pictures of
the little place we lived in at the end of Uponohu Bay, as it is
represented in the prints of Cook’s voyages, or the later one of the
_Duff_; that place where Melville last lived during his last days on
Moorea, as he tells in “Omoo”; and then to think of my own sketches, and
the different eyes with which I must have seen it. In the same way, or a
similar way, my impressions of to-day become confused and connected with
these old printed records of the last century, until I seem to be
treading the very turf that the first discoverers walked on, and to be
shaded by the very trees.
I have been drawing and painting somewhat lately, so I have been able to
take fewer notes than Tauraatua. He is working assiduously, partly
because he is engaged in congenial work, partly to urge Marau to go on
and write her memoirs, which would then go back to a record of her
ancestors. I, on my part, could not do it so well; and I am busy at my
drawings, trifling as they are. But I regret it, as I see less of our
neighbours, all of whom have their various degrees of charm.
But I like to gather in without strict order these records and memories,
even at the risk of Marau’s supposing that I am going to put into verse
the extremely difficult poems she recites to us. This idea of hers is
evidently a devilish suggestion of Tauraatua, who thereby shares the
responsibility or throws
[Illustration: SUN COMING OVER MOUNTAIN, EARLY MORNING, UPONOHU]
it off on me at will. Still I shall transcribe into prose some of the
poems at least, to please you. They are woven into the story of the
family and form part of its record, if one may say so; some of these
form parts of methods of address, if one might so call it--that is to
say, of the poems or words in order recited upon occasions of visiting,
or that serve as tribe cries and slogans. So with the verses connected
with the name of Tauraatua that are handed down. The explanations may
(and do) _embrouiller_ or confuse it; they did for me; but they make it
all the more authentic, if I may so say, because all songs handed down
and familiar must receive varying glosses. Where one sees, for instance,
a love song, another sees a song of war. The Tauraatua of that far back
day was enamoured of a fair maiden (her name was Maraeura) and lived
with or near her. This poem, which is an appeal to him to return to duty
or to home, or to wake him from a dream, is supposed to be the call of
the bird messenger and his answer:
(To) Tauraatua that lives on the “Paepae” Roa (says)
“euriri” the (bird) that has flown to the Rua roa:
Papara is a land of heavy leaves that drag down
the branches:
Go to Teva, at Teva is thy home:
to Papara that is attached to thee,
thy golden land.
The mount that rises before (thee) that
is Mount Tamaiti.
(“Outu”) The point that stands on the shore is
Outo monomono:
It is the (place of) the crowning of a king who
makes sacred
Teriitere of Tooarai.[21] (Teriitere is the chief’s name
as ruling over Papara)
(Answer) Then let me push away the golden leaves
of the Rua roa
That I may see the twin buds of Maraeura
on the shore.[22]
Of this translation Tati made mincemeat one evening, describing as
frivolous the feminine connection, and giving the whole a martial
character. The few lines he changes I shall not give here in full;
suffice it that he ends with this, which is fine enough:
“He is swifter (Tauraatau who is supposed to rush off) than the one
who carries the fort.
“He is gone and he is past before even the morning star was up.
“The grass covering the Pare (Mapui-cliff) is trampled by
Tauraatua.”
I shall not have time to reconcile the versions, but Moetia seems
impressed with the possibility of getting these things translated; and
if all will unite, even if two versions are made, the songs will at
least be _saved_.
I have received from Marau two poems: one about a girl asked to wed an
old chief, one in honour of Pomaré; but Adams has become more Teva than
the Tevas, and will not note it.
And as a woman has come again into the story, as she has done often with
the Tevas, for good and ill, let us go back to Oberea, the Teva princess
whom Wallis first met, and met almost by chance, for she and her husband
Amo were on a visit to the place where Wallis anchored and landed, and
by this accident helped to displace later the centre of power, as has
always happened where the white man has made his harbour.
Oberea was on a visit to Haapape, where is the anchorage of Matavai; its
chief Tutaharii. Tutaha (in Wallis’s book) was connected with the Papara
family to which Amo, Oberea’s husband, belonged (and stripped, as a sign
of respect, in presence of Amo and his little son Teriitere).
The Tevas, whom Amo and Oberea represented, held the political supremacy
of Tahiti. Their lands were further down the coast to the south than the
districts which the first discoverers first knew, and separated from
them by inimical chiefs, momentarily quiescent from fear and doubt. They
were especially the Purionu and Teaharo, from whom the first discoverers
received a great part of their information; then came, on the west
coast, the little district of Faaa (or Tefanai Ahurai), from which came
Oberea (Purea; her proper name, Tevahine Avioroha i Ahurai), the
daughter of its chief, Teriivaetua.
Then came a large district known as the Oropaa, consisting of Paea,
adjoining Papara, the chief place of the Tevas, and of Punavia, both
these connected by family alliances with the Tevas.
The Tevas (and family) held after them, further to the south, the whole
south of the main island, and the whole of that half island called
Taiarapu, which joins the main island at the narrow Isthmus of Taravao.
The east was divided into three districts, but had no common head. Hence
the Tevas, usually well combined, with strong clan feelings that last
until to-day, controlled all the south and west of the island and
Taiarapu, or two thirds of the population, and had only themselves to
blame when deprived of their ascendency.
The Tevas were divided, as they still are on the map to-day, into Inner
and Outer Tevas; the Outer Tevas on Taiarapu (into which we were adopted
by Ori), and the Inner Tevas on the main island (into which we were
adopted by our good chiefess of Papara). These made the eight Tevas.
Their origin, like that of all clans, is hidden in the night of legend,
with the old myths of a semi-divine ancestor and an earthly mother.
And as the women were to play a great part in the history of the Tevas,
it is but fair to begin, then, with that part of the life of Queen
Hototu that made them.
THE ORIGIN OF THE TEVAS
This, the earliest of the traditions of the family, was told me at
different times by Queen Marau.
At certain hours Tauraatua goes to the low cottage behind our house,
that is open toward the King’s palace and the government house, but is
entirely shut in by trees that fill the little garden, and which has a
strange resemblance to many a little American home and is all the more
wonderfully unreal. Then the Queen comes from some inner apartment and
repeats the legends, poems and genealogies, and one or more of the
sisters are often there and add comments or contradiction. During our
absence the ladies are supposed to have prepared the material and to
have arranged what documents they have, so that in many cases what
little I shall quote will be the very words of our royal historian.
Sometimes in early evening the Queen has walked down to the shore with
her sister Manihinihi, and, sitting on the rocks under the lofty trees,
answered my questions about these early ancestors. I can tell you the
bald story. I cannot give you with it all that would have made any old
story charming--the faces and forms of my instructors, their beautiful
voices, the slight wash of the sea into which Manihinihi sometimes put
her bare foot, the wonderful stillness, the slight rush of the surf far
out on the reef, the light of the afterglow, the blue ocean far away,
the mountains of ancestral Moorea lit up after sundown, the shadows of
the big trees moving over the water, and on our side right above us the
great heights of the Aorai appearing and disappearing behind the many
coloured clouds. At such moments I could forget for the present the
little meannesses introduced by us Europeans and feel as if I were back
in the time when my name was Teraaitua.
They were my ancestors in fairyland of whom fairy stories were being
told, and even the absurdities had the same charm of the stories of our
nurseries which they so much resembled.
The great ancestress Hototu, from whom come all the Teva, was the first
queen of Vaieri. She married Temanutunu,[23] the first king of Punaauia.
All this is in the furthest of historical records, as you will see by
what happened to this king and queen at the time when gods and men and
animals were not divided as they are to-day, or when, as in the Greek
stories, the gods took the shapes of men or beasts to come and go more
easily in this lower world which they had begun to desert.
In the course of time this king left the island and made an
[Illustration: EDGE OF THE AORAI MOUNTAIN COVERED WITH CLOUD.
MIDDAY, PAPEETE, TAHITI]
expedition to the far-away Paumotu (pr. Pomotu). It is said that he went
to obtain the precious red feathers that have always had a mysterious
value to South Sea Islanders, and that he meant them for the _maro ura_
or royal red girdle of his son, for he had a son by Hototu who was named
Terii te Moanarao. The investiture with the girdle, red or white,
according to circumstances, has the same value as our form of crowning,
and took place as a solemn occasion in the ancestral temple or _marae_
of these islands of the South Sea, but the red girdle seemed even in
some Samoan lore to have an ancient meaning of royalty; I remember
Mataafa, the great chief, asking me why the English Consul wore the red
silk sash which he probably affected in his dress as being of an
agreeable colour.
While the king was far away in the pursuit of these red feathers to be
gathered, perhaps, one by one, the queen Hototu travelled into the
adjoining country of Papara, where we were the past month, and there she
met in some way the mysterious personage, Paparuiia.[24] With this
wonderful creature the queen was well pleased so that from them was born
a son who later was called Teva, but this is anticipating.
This was the time as we have told you when men and animals and gods
were mixed, and this great ancestor of the Tevas was evidently some form
of god. The story came to an end in a sudden way. While the king was
still away, his dog Pihoro returned, and finding the queen he ran up to
her and fawned upon her to the jealous disgust of Tino iia, one half of
whom said to the other, “she cares for that dog more than for me. See
how he caresses her!”
So then he arose and departed in anger, telling her, however, that she
would bear a son whom she should call Teva: that for this son he had
built a temple at Mataua, and that there he should wear the _maro tea_,
the white or yellow girdle, the chiefs of Punauia or Vaiari, who in this
case were the king and queen, being the only ones that had the right to
the _maro ura_, the red _maro_ or girdle, for which you will remember
that the king was hunting. Then he departed and was met by Temanutunu,
the husband who had landed at Vairoa, and who entreated him to return.
He refused just as the two Shark-princes, of whom I told you at Vaima,
the little river that ran so clear near Taravao, refused another husband
for a similar reason, saying that his wife was a woman too fond of dogs.
“Vahine na te uri” (woman to the dogs). When I asked if he never came
back, the queen, or was it Moetia, told me that since that day the
man-fish had been seen many times.
The dog is however much connected with the Papara family, and his
presence is occasionally felt. Tati the brother of the queen told some
stories of him. One of these stories refers to what happened to Narii
when a child. His mother had him with her at the occasion of the
building of a bridge near Papara. There were many hundred people there.
Tati was there with his two nurses according to custom, and Narii had
also the two who had charge of him. At evening one of the nurses saw
something like a dog run up a tree above them, and into the branches,
and at the same time something waved from him like rags. Just then the
child was drawn from the arms that held him, his mother’s, but something
grasped him firmly, while a ball of fire rushed out above him and went
on to the sea some quarter of a mile distant. So many people saw part of
this, namely, the ball of fire that there was no doubt of it.