In Fiji, says Crawley (225), women are kept away from participation in
worship. "Dogs are excluded from some temples, women from all." In
many parts of the group woman is treated, according to Williams,
"as a beast of burden, not exempt from any kind of labor,
and forbidden to enter any temple; certain kinds of food she
may eat only by sufferance, and that after her husband has
finished. In youth she is the victim of lust, and in old
age, of brutality."
Girls are betrothed and married as children without consulting their
choice. "I have seen an old man of sixty living with two wives both
under fifteen years of age." Such of the young women as are acquainted
with foreign ways envy the favored women who wed "the man to whom
their spirit flies." Women are regarded as the property of the men,
and as an incentive to bravery they are "promised to such as shall, by
their prowess, render themselves deserving." They are used for paying
war-debts and other accounts; for instance, "the people submitted to
their chiefs and capitulated, offering two women, a basket of earth,
whales' teeth, and mats, to buy the reconciliation of the Rewans."
"A chief of Nandy, in Viti Levu, was very desirous to
have a musket which an American captain had shown him.
The price of the coveted piece was two hogs. The chief
had only one; but he sent on board with it a young
woman as an equivalent."
At weddings the prayer is that the bride may "bring forth male
children"; and when the son is born, one of the first lessons taught
him is "to strike his mother, lest he should grow up to be a coward."
When a husband died, it was the national custom to murder his wife,
often his mother too, to be his companions. To kill a defenceless
woman was an honorable deed.
"I once asked a man why he was called Koroi. 'Because,' he
replied, 'I, with several other men, found some women and
children in a cave, drew them out and clubbed them and was
then consecrated.'"
So far have sympathy and gallantry progressed in Fiji.
"Many examples might be given of most dastardly cruelty,
where women and even unoffending children were abominably
slain." "I have labored to make the murderers of females
ashamed of themselves; and have heard their cowardly
cruelty defended by the assertion that such victims
were doubly good--because they ate well, and because of
the distress it caused their husbands and friends."
"Cannibalism does not confine itself to one sex." "The
heart, the thigh, and the arm above the elbow, are
considered the greatest dainties."
One of these monsters, whom Williams knew, sent his wife to
fetch wood and collect leaves to line the oven. When she had
cheerfully and unsuspectingly obeyed his orders, he killed her, put
her in the oven, and ate her. There had been no quarrel; he was simply
hungering for a dainty morsel. Even after death the women are
subjected to barbarous treatment.
"One of the corpses was that of an old man of seventy,
another of a fine young woman of eighteen.... All were
dragged about and subjected to abuse too horrible and
disgusting to be described."[185]