Cruel and degraded as the Fijians are, they mark a considerable
advance over the Australian savages. A further advance is to be noted
as we come to the Samoans. Cannibalism was indulged in occasionally in
more remote times, but not, as in Fiji, owing to a relish for human
flesh, but merely as a climax of hatred and revenge. To speak of
roasting a Samoan chief is a deadly insult and a cause for war
(Turner, 108). Sympathy was a feeling known to Samoans; their
treatment of the sick was invariably humane (141). And whereas in
Australia, Borneo, and Fiji, it is just as honorable to slay a female
as a male, Samoans consider it cowardly to kill a woman (196). Nor do
they practise infanticide; but this abstinence is counterbalanced by
the fact that the custom of destroying infants before birth prevailed
to a melancholy extent (79).
Yet here as everywhere we discover that the sexual refinement on which
the capacity for supersensual love depends comes last of the virtues.
The Rev. George Turner, who had forty years of experience among the
Polynesians, writes (125) that at their dances "all kinds of obscenity
in looks, language, and gesture prevailed; and often they danced and
revelled till daylight." The universal custom of tattooing was
connected with immoral practices (90). During the wedding ceremonies
of chiefs the friends of the bride
"took up stones and beat themselves until their heads
were bruised and bleeding. The ceremony to prove her
virginity which preceded this burst of feeling will not
bear the light of description.... Night dances and the
attendant immoralities wound up the ceremonies."
The same obscene ceremonies, he adds, were gone through, and this
custom, he thinks, had some influence in cultivating chastity,
especially among young women of rank who feared the disgrace and
beating that was the lot of faithless brides. Presents were also given
to those who had preserved their virtue; but the result of these
efforts is thus summed up by Turner (91):
"Chastity was ostensibly cultivated by both sexes; but it
was more a name than a reality. From their childhood their
ears were familiar with the most obscene conversation; and
as a whole family, to some extent, herded together,
immorality was the natural and prevalent consequence. There
were exceptions, especially among the daughters of persons
of rank; but they were the exceptions, not the rule.
Adultery, too, was sadly prevalent, although often severely
punished by private revenge."
When a chief took a wife, the bride's uncle or other relative had to
give up a daughter at the same time to be his concubine; to refuse
this, would have been to displease the household god. A girl's consent
was a matter of secondary importance: "She had to agree if her parents
were in favor of the match." Many marriages were made chiefly for the
sake of the attendant festivities, the bride being compelled to go
whether or not she was willing. In this way a chief might in a short
time get together a harem of a dozen wives; but most of them remained
with him only a short time:
"If the marriages had been contracted merely for the sake of
the property and festivities of the occasion, the wife was
not likely to be more than a few days or weeks with her
husband."