for a gun and various other articles Mr. Whalon was released. The
missionary took him to his house, and with his intelligent wife showed
him the greatest kindness and attention.
The ship, on account of this tragic event, had gone out to sea, keeping
at a safe distance from land until the mate was brought on board with
great rejoicing.
[Sidenote: _A Fighting Congregation._]
Mr. Lincoln was then President of the United States. Hearing of this
deed of Mr. Kekela and his helpers, he sent out the value of five
hundred dollars, with a letter of congratulation, as a reward for the
prompt and successful action which saved an American citizen from death
at the hands of Marquesan cannibals.
Kekela had only twenty-six pupils in all, and those were very irregular
in their attendance. We spent a Sabbath at Puamau, and I preached
to fifty people inside of the house, while numbers were standing or
walking outside, some looking in at the windows, some pacing to and
fro, talking, laughing, or lying down, getting up, lighting pipes
and smoking. Old warriors, fantastically decorated with feathers and
sharks’ teeth, and carrying axes, hatchets, spears, old muskets and
rusty swords, and whalers’ harpoons, scouted around us among the trees,
with their sharp, black eyes glaring upon us, and anon disappearing in
the thicket.
In the afternoon I preached to an assembly of one hundred, who sat
quietly before me under a large tree. Boys meanwhile were climbing
trees around us, swinging upon the branches and chattering like
monkeys, and noisy children were gamboling upon the ground. Guns were
often fired during the day; the ring of the tapa-beater was heard
from the huts; fishing canoes were scattered over the bay, and the
multitudes went on with their work or sport as on other days. There
was no Sunday.
Near Kekela’s house there is a Catholic station; but it was painful to
hear that the priests do little to create respect for the Lord’s day in
the minds of the people.
Several individuals appeared interested in religious instructions, and
we believe that faith and love and patient labor will not be lost upon
this benighted people. But they are a hard race, bold, independent, and
defiant. The longer I remained, the more deeply I was impressed with
the depravity into which they are sunk. In theft, in licentiousness, in
guile, they are unrivaled; in revenge they are implacable. They know no
mercy, and their selfishness is unmixed.
Their government, so far as they have any, is feudal. Every valley has
its chief; some have twenty or thirty chiefs; and feuds, robberies,
wars, and bloodshed are the normal condition of the people. Scarcely a
clan can live in peace with its neighbors. There are no laws to forbid
or to punish crime. Every man must be his own protector and avenger. If
his wife is ravished, his house burned, his property stolen, he has no
appeal but to his own arm, his own weapon, and the red vengeance which
boils in his heart. If he is a weak man, he keeps a close mouth, lest a
lance or a bullet pierce his heart. His only redress is to watch his
opportunity and do as he has been done by.
[Sidenote: _Marquesan Fashions._]
Among the men, tattooing, which is a long and painful process, is
nearly universal. Their faces and bodies are so nearly covered with
grotesque figures that they appear almost as black as Africans.
The shaving of their heads is equally grotesque and fantastic. Some
shave only the crown, or one side; some leave a small tuft of hair on
the apex only; others shave a zone quite around the center of the head,
and others still shave several such belts.
Were it not for these artificial disfigurations, the Marquesan physique
would be fine. The males are tall and well formed, and dwarfishness and
obesity are very uncommon with them. But at Puamau we saw one monstrous
exception, a man with a full-sized head and body, with legs only one
foot four inches long, and arms but one foot long. The limbs were of
ordinary thickness.
In the valley of Hanahi, Mr. James Bicknell, son of one of the English
missionaries of the Society Islands, was stationed by his own request.
Capt. Brown hearing that there was no safe harbor here, sent Mr.
Bicknell’s supplies in a boat, in which I took passage. This is a
new station, with a population of only ninety souls, but there is a
populous valley on each side of it. There was no school here, but Mr.
Bicknell has one convert, whom he has baptized. The valley is small,
rocky, not well watered, and less inviting than the others that I
visited.
In 1859 a little boy was roasted alive in Hanahi as a sacrifice to the
gods, and I was shown the place where this horrid deed was done.
The romantic little valley of Hanatita, on the north side of Hivaoa, is
occupied by the Rev. A. Kaukau and wife, Hawaiian missionaries.
All the missionaries of the three islands met in this place to hold
a convention. There were eight in all, with most of their wives and
several delegates, representing 3,000 Marquesans and reporting 34
church members, 221 pupils, 76 readers, 40 writers, 67 in the outlines
of geography, and 104 in arithmetic. The chief woman of Kauwealoha’s
station labored over the lofty ridges on foot with her 24 girls to
attend this convention and examination. As all canoes and boats are
rigidly taboo to the women, they have no other way to leave their
valley except to climb the rugged steeps, or swim around the cliffs and
headlands, resting now and then by clinging to some jutting crag or
rock along the sea-walls.
These twenty-four bright-eyed girls were neatly robed in a profusion
of thin white tapa, worn loosely and tied in a large knot on the
shoulder. Their hair was gathered into a crown on the top of the head,
and confined by bands and nets of tapa so thin and delicate as to
resemble gauze. Many of them wore delicate ear and wrist ornaments
made by the natives. This picture looked like the dawn of civilization,
and was in delightful contrast with most of the scenes I had witnessed
in the group. After the examination of Kaukau’s school of nine girls,
we went on with the business of the convention, spending five days
in deliberations and discussions on a great variety of practical
questions, interspersed with frequent prayers. The meetings grew in
interest from day to day, and the parting scene was touching. Every
member of the convention offered prayer, and there was not a dry eye in
the company.
[Sidenote: _A Hard Climb._]
Learning that a landing could be effected at Heteani, on the south
side of the island, where Paul Kapohaku, “Paul the Rock,” had been
stationed, our captain agreed to return the missionaries to Fatuhiva,
and then sail round the eastern end of Hivaoa, and lie off and on
opposite Heteani, while I with Mr. Bicknell, Kapohaku, and his wife,
should climb the heights of the mountain, some 3,500 feet, to visit
that lone station where he would send in his boat to receive me on
board.
Early the next morning, May 1st, taking one of the ridges which led to
the summit of the mountain, we commenced our toilsome ascent, sometimes
on an angle of 10°, and at other places of 30° to 40°. Our path led up
steep and sharp ridges, down which on either hand we looked into depths
of 500 or 1,000 feet below. I measured the breadth of the spur or rib
on which we ascended; it was two feet and four inches wide in one part
of the way; in another it was only one foot in width, with awful gorges
on either side. Mr. Darwin, describing a similar climb which he took in
the island of Tahiti, says: “I did not cease to wonder at these ravines
and precipices; when viewing the country from one of the knife-edged
ridges, the point of support was so small that the effect was nearly
the same as it must be from a balloon.” The extraordinary sharpness of
these ridges and abruptness of these mountain slopes may be accounted
for by the absence of violent storms in these groups, and more
especially by the fact that there is never any frost to disintegrate
these sharp ridges and fine-drawn peaks.
After two hours of exhausting toil and heat we stood on the dividing
ridge of the island. The summit was a level plateau about half a mile
broad, and covered in most part with a dense jungle of ferns, hibiscus
and other trees and shrubs. Here we were shown the fighting grounds of
the clans from the north, where they met those of the southern valleys,
and engaged in deadly conflict with spears, clubs, and stones. Many of
the abraded stones brought up from the shore were still seen scattered
over the battle-field.
[Sidenote: _Descent to Heteani._]
The scene from this height was grand in the extreme. At our feet lay
the broad Pacific, shining like molten silver, and from this elevation
showing no ripple. Around us was a vast panorama of cones, ridges,
spurs, and valleys. Hills heaped on hills, and spires bristling among
spires, the whole appeared as if a sea of molten rocks, while raging,
tossing, and spouting in angry billows, had been suddenly solidified by
an omnipotent power. It was a wild assemblage of hills and ridges, of
gulfs and chasms, of towers and precipices.
Our descent on the south side of the island occupied three and a half
hours, and was even more difficult than the ascent, on account of the
roughness of the trail. Over many steep declivities we had to let
ourselves down over the rocks with the utmost caution; one false step
would have plunged us into certain destruction. But we arrived at the
shore safe and weary at 4 +P.M.+
We found the people of Heteani cordial, and our labors there were as at
other places. Nowhere did we meet a more enthusiastic “_kaoha!_” But in
all the valleys on this side of the island cannibalism is fearful. Paul
showed me the place where he had witnessed the cooking and eating of
human flesh by the heathen party, and he had no power to prevent it. He
also told me shuddering stories of the fightings, the murders, and the
fearful cannibalism which prevailed all around him.
On the morning of the 3d of May, the good _Morning Star_ came into the
offing, and the boat landed and took me on board.
Sailing down the smooth channel, three miles wide, which separates
Hivaoa from Tahuata, we looked into all the valleys as we opened them,
until we rounded the bluffs of Tahuata. On the 4th we were off the
mouth of the spacious harbor Taiohai, the principal harbor of Nuuhiva.
This bay is about two miles deep, half a mile wide at the entrance,
between two grand headlands, and expanding to a mile in breadth as
we came to the center. Its shore is a beautiful crescent of sand,
interrupted here and there with shingle and boulders.
The French, on seizing this island, fortified the harbor at great
expense, and for many years kept up a strong garrison on the land
with ships in the harbor. They built a large arsenal, a house for a
governor, a cathedral for a bishop. We looked into the fort, and upon
the shore battery cut into the rock, called on the bishop and the
governor, saw all the public buildings, and rambled over the town.
We also found the house where our missionary brethren, Armstrong,
Alexander, and Parker, with their families, sojourned for eight months
in 1833. But we found no war-vessels and no garrison except half a
dozen gensd’armes. The shore battery was dismantled, the fort and other
public works in a state of dilapidation, and the folly of making
war on savages as a means of civilizing and Christianizing them was
apparent.
[Sidenote: _Taiohai--The Tabu._]
We also visited the grounds where the gallant Captain Porter of the
United States ship _Essex_ pitched his tents in 1813, indulging his
crew in those pleasures which were but the prelude to the day of
slaughter which soon fell upon them in Valparaiso. The steep and lofty
precipice was also shown us up which his marines were made to drag
his cannon to thunder terror and death upon the poor Marquesans in an
adjoining valley.
The tabu system, in the Marquesas Islands as in other parts of
Polynesia, is ancient, complex, and deeply rooted in the social and
religious polity of the people. A few notes upon it may interest the
student of the subject. The following are forms of the tabu:
_Toua_, war.--When the men go to war it is tabu for the women to go out
of doors to bathe, to attend to their toilet, or to eat more than is
necessary to sustain life. The god of this tabu is _Fu_.
_Fae Pue_, house of prayer.--This house is built and dedicated to
the god _Hiniti_ by a feast, at which swine’s flesh and other food
are offered to the god. No woman can ever enter this house, and no
man except those who are invited to the dedication feast. After the
dedication the _fae pue_ is closed, signals are placed upon it, and it
is never again entered. I saw many of these houses.
_Tehe_, circumcision.--This must be done in a new or sacred house,
dedicated to the god _Nukukoko_.
_Wauupoo_, shaving the head.--This must be done in the sacred house,
and no one must ever step on a lock of the hair.
_Utatapu_, the _hula_ or dance.--The actresses undergo long previous
training, during which time their persons are sacred to the gods.
_Tahu_, tattooing.--During this long and painful process the subject
is shut up in a house with the operator, and may not be seen by his
friends until he is healed. This often requires months.
Boring the Ears.--The subject and the operator are closely confined in
a sacred house, where offerings of food, fish, hogs, etc., are made to
the gods.
Tabu Food.--_Poi_ pounded by a man is strictly _tabu_ to women; not
so _vice versa_. Bananas, cocoanuts, squid, skipjack, and many other
articles, must not be eaten by men and women together, though each may
eat cocoanuts from separate trees. Food planted, cooked, or pounded by
a child may not be eaten by the mother.
Tabu Places.--Houses standing on posts, and all raised structures, as
platforms and seats around _hula_ or other public places, and stone
structures for the pounding of _poi_, are _tabu_ to women.
[Sidenote: _Marquesan Tabus._]
All roads and paths made by men are _tabu_ to women.
Places of human sacrifice are _tabu_ to all but priests. We could not
get consent to visit one.
Charnel houses are _tabu_ to all but friends.
Miscellaneous _tabus_.--Mats may never be carried or handled by men,
though they sleep on them.
When a man is in the cabin or hold of a vessel, it is _tabu_ for a
woman to be on deck. So of all other superposition. On board the
_Morning Star_ we had some droll scenes resulting from this _tabu_.
The heads of all males are _tabu_. One day I ignorantly laid my hand
on the head of a man who sat on the ground beside me. He instantly
started, shook his head, brushed off my hand, looked wild, and ran
off as if his hair had been lighted with a lucifer match. I saw him
no more. Seeing us laugh with incredulity at their faces, another man
crawled up to my feet, took my hand and laid it on his head. Most of
the Marquesans observe this tabu, though some are brave enough to
despise it.
Canoes are strictly _tabu_ to women. They never sail in them, nor dare
they touch them. This is a cruel tabu. If a woman wishes to visit a
ship, she must swim to it. If she have wares to sell, as pigs, bananas,
fowls, etc., she must swim them off to the vessel. All the women that
came on board the _Morning Star_ swam from the shore. If she wishes
to visit friends on another island, she can never do it; if to go
to another valley, she must climb rugged mountains and struggle over
ridges where her life is in danger; or if the way by land be quite
impassable, as is often the case, she must swim around bluffs and along
the rugged shores until she reaches some point or crag where she can
hold on and rest; pursuing her way, endangered by sharks and by the
surf, until she makes her port, or perishes in the attempt.
It will be seen from the above, that the subjection and servitude of
women are a principal feature of the tabu.
Returning on board the _Star_, we bore away around the western side
of Nuuhiva, looking into all the valleys and dells as they opened one
after another to our view. Among others, we passed the famed valley of
Taipi (Typee), the scene of Herman Melville’s narrative drawn from the
life. Bearing away for Hawaii, we dropped anchor in Hilo on the 16th of
May, having been absent just two months.
On this visit to the Marquesas I gathered, from the reports of the
missionaries at their general convention, the following statistics:
The whole number of pupils, more or less, under their instruction, 221
Whole number of readers, 76
Whole number of writers, 40
Whole number in rudiments of geography, 68
Whole number in mental arithmetic, 125
Whole number of church members, 34
Whole number of the population to whom they had access, 2,800
[Sidenote: _Some Results._]
These results, though on a small scale, seemed encouraging, compared
with the long, repeated, and unfruitful efforts which had been made
before, and there seemed hope that, by patience and perseverance, many
of these savages might be tamed, and the diabolical and bloody rites
which had been practiced from time immemorial be utterly abolished.
The laws enacted and enforced by the French governors in the Marquesas
have checked murders and cannibalism wherever they could be brought
to bear upon the guilty. And some of the governors have been liberal
in their sentiments, and willing that the savages should be tamed and
Christianized by any who would undertake the self-denying task.
XIV.
_Second Visit to the Marquesas--The Paumotu Archipelago--Arrival
at Uapou--An Escape by Two Fathoms--Nuuhiva--Hivaoa--Kekela’s
Trials--Savage Seducers--A Wild Audience._
On the 3d of April, 1867, I embarked again, on board the _Morning Star
No. 2_, to revisit our Marquesan mission. The _Star_ was commanded
by the Rev. Hiram Bingham, Jr., who had brought her out from Boston,
and who was still her captain. My associate delegate was Rev. B. W.
Parker, and we had for fellow-passengers Mrs. Bingham and Mr. Parker’s
daughter, and a daughter of our missionary Kekela.
We also had on board the body of Joseph Tiietai, one of the first
converts of Omoa, who had died at Honolulu while on a visit there.
[Sidenote: _Second Voyage to the Marquesas._]
In 1865 Mr. Bicknell left the Marquesas and returned to Oahu, bringing
with him seventeen Marquesans, male and female, in order to train
them on the Hawaiian Islands, and then return them to teach their
people. Of these seventeen, nine died within two years, and the eight
who survived were anxious to return to their old homes. We therefore
took them on board. They were all baptized before they left Oahu, Mr.
Bicknell recommending them as converts to Christianity. On our eighth
day from Hilo, Meto, the wife of one of the returning Marquesans, died
after a sickness of several weeks, professing her faith in Jesus. At
four +P.M.+ the corpse, having been prepared for burial, the _Morning
Star_, as she was rushing along at the rate of nine knots an hour, was
hove to, and lay quietly on the bosom of the deep, as if conscious of
the power, and listening to the voice of Him who “rules the raging
of the sea.” All hands were assembled in the cabin, and appropriate
services were held, when the remains of the poor woman were committed
to the deep, to be seen no more until “the sea shall give up her dead.”
It was a solemn scene, and the first of the kind I had ever witnessed.
All the attendant circumstances of committing a fellow-being to a lone
grave in the deep and dark waters of a vast ocean combined to impress
us with the worth of man. The winds, the waves, the inanimate ship, and
all surrounding objects, seemed to pause, and, with rational beings, to
bow in silent reverence before Him whose high behest remands our bodies
to the grave and calls our spirits before His bar.
Sleep, Meto, in thy cold and silent tomb, and let the waves of
mid-ocean roll over thee! They shall not disturb thy quiet slumbers
until the voice of the archangel calls thee from thy long repose. Thou
wast once blind, and a savage, but “the day-spring from on high” dawned
upon thee ere thou wast called away, and we have hope for thee that
thou wilt appear a shining angel among the joyous throng who have been
redeemed from among all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues.
On the 21st of April we made the Paumotu Archipelago, a group of about
one hundred atolls, or coral reefs, enclosing lagoons. This group lies
between the Marquesas and the Society Islands. Their name, Paumotu,
signifies “all islands.” Those that we sighted were Taroa and Taputa,
in lat. 14° 22′ south, and lon. 144° 58′ west. We sailed within two
miles of the shore, and saw the beautiful islets resting like swans
upon the smooth water, while the rippling wavelets lapped the white
beach, and the palm and emerald shrubbery adorned the coral ring.
Different islands of this archipelago were discovered by different
navigators and at various times: by Quinos, in 1606; Maire and
Schouter, in 1616; Roggewein, in 1722; Byron, in 1765; Wallis and
Carteret, in 1767; Cook, in 1769, 1773, and 1774; Bougainville,
in 1763; Boenecheo, in 1772 and 1774; Edwards, in 1791; Bligh, in
1792; Wilson, in 1797; Turnbull, in 1803. Later and more careful
observations have been made on this beautiful group by Kotzebue, in
1816; Bellingshausen, in 1819; Duperry, in 1823; Beechey, in 1826;
Fitzroy, in 1835; and Wilkes, in 1841. Wilkes estimated the population
at 10,000. The people were represented as in a semi-savage state. The
islands are all of coral formation, and were built up by that silent
and wonder-working architect, the so-called coral insect.
[Sidenote: _Arrival at Uapou._]
Our view of these islands, garlanded with green, and shining under
a tropical sky, was enchanting, but the moral picture was dark. Why
are these thousands of immortal beings left to perish in ignorance,
poverty, and paganism?
The _Star_ went about and stood off from the shore, and in a short time
these beautiful gems of the Pacific, with their white beaches, their
silvery lagoons, and their emerald chaplets sunk below the horizon and
disappeared, and we bade adieu to the charming sight with a sigh.
Our first anchorage at the Marquesas Islands was on the 28th of April,
in the bay of Hakahekau, island of Uapou. The Rev. Samuel Kauwealoha,
whom we left in 1860 in his beautiful valley and nice stone house at
Hivaoa, and who, as before reported, was driven out by savage war, had
come with his wife and a few Marquesan friends to this island, which
had not been occupied before by our missionaries.
Before we had anchored he came on board the _Star_, and in an ecstasy
of delight, welcomed us to his simple home. He piloted our vessel
into the harbor, where she was anchored. We sat down to dinner after
prayers and thanksgiving, supposing that all was well. On rising and
going on deck, Capt. Bingham perceived that the _Star_ had dragged her
anchor. The current was strong, and the wind was blowing in squalls
from one side of the bay to the other. Every strong gust caused the
anchor to drag, and we were going slowly but surely toward a jagged and
rock-bound shore. All hands were called, a kedge was carried out from
the bows and planted in the bay, to check the drag; but anchor, kedge,
and schooner were all moving at every gust toward the shore, on which
the vessel must, if not arrested, be smashed like a cockle-shell.
[Sidenote: _A Narrow Escape._]