pandanus leaves, then weighted with stones and buried at sea. However,
at some places they were deposited in deep underground watercourses or
caverns. Towards the northern end of New Ireland corpses were burned on
large piles of firewood in an open space of the village. A number of
images curiously carved out of wood or chalk were set round the blazing
pyre, but the meaning of these strange figures is uncertain. Men and
women uttered the most piteous wailings, threw themselves on the top of
the corpse, and pulled at the arms and legs. This they did not merely to
express their grief, but because they thought that if they saw and
handled the dead body while it was burning, the ghost could not or would
not haunt them afterwards.[634] Amongst the natives of the Gazelle
Peninsula in New Britain the dead are generally buried in shallow graves
in or near their houses. Some of the shell money which belonged to a man
in life is buried with him. Women with blackened bodies sleep on the
grave for weeks.[635] When the deceased was a great chief, his corpse,
almost covered with shell money, is placed in a canoe, which is
deposited in a small house. Thereupon the nearest female relations are
led into the house, and the door being walled up they are obliged to
remain there with the rotting body until all the flesh has mouldered
away. Food is passed in to them through a hole in the wall, and under no
pretext are they allowed to leave the hut before the decomposition of
the corpse is complete. When nothing of the late chief remains but a
skeleton, the hut is opened and the solemn funeral takes place. The
bones of the dead are buried, but his skull is hung up in the taboo
house in order, we are told, that his ghost may remain in the
neighbourhood of the village and see how his memory is honoured. After
the burial of the headless skeleton feasting and dancing go on, often
for more than a month, and the expenses are defrayed out of the riches
left by the deceased.[636] Even in the case of eminent persons who have
been buried whole and entire in the usual way, a special mark of respect
is sometimes paid to their memory by digging up their skulls after a
year or more, painting them red and white, decorating them with
feathers, and setting them up on a scaffold constructed for the
purpose.[637]
[Sidenote: Disposal of the dead among the Sulka of New Britain.]
Somewhat similar is the disposal of the dead among the Sulka, a tribe of
New Britain who inhabit a mountainous and well-watered country to the
south of the Gazelle Peninsula. When a Sulka dies, his plantation is
laid waste, and the young fruit-trees cut down, but the ripe fruits are
first distributed among the living. His pigs are slaughtered and their
flesh in like manner distributed, and his weapons are broken. If the
deceased was a rich man, his wife or wives will sometimes be killed. The
corpse is usually buried next morning. A hole is dug in the house and
the body deposited in it in a sitting posture. The upper part of the
corpse projects from the grave and is covered with a tower-like
structure of basket-work, which is stuffed with banana-leaves. Great
care is taken to preserve the body from touching the earth. Stones are
laid round about the structure and a fire kindled. Relations come and
sleep for a time beside the corpse, men and women separately. Some while
afterwards the soul of the deceased is driven away. The time for
carrying out the expulsion is settled by the people in whispers, lest
the ghost should overhear them and prepare for a stout resistance. The
evening before the ceremony takes place many coco-nut leaves are
collected. Next morning, as soon as a certain bird (_Philemon
coquerelli_) is heard to sing, the people rise from their beds and set
up a great cry. Then they beat the walls, shake the posts, set fire to
dry coco-nut leaves, and finally rush out into the paths. At that
moment, so the people think, the soul of the dead quits the hut. When
the flesh of the corpse is quite decayed, the bones are taken from the
grave, sewed in leaves, and hung up. Soon afterwards a funeral feast is
held, at which men and women dance. For some time after a burial taro is
planted beside the house of death and enclosed with a fence. The Sulka
think that the ghost comes and gathers the souls of the taro. The ripe
fruit is allowed to rot. Falling stars are supposed to be the souls of
the dead which have been hurled up aloft and are now descending to bathe
in the sea. The trail of light behind them is thought to be a tail of
coco-nut leaves which other souls have fastened to them and set on fire.
In like manner the phosphorescent glow on the sea comes from souls
disporting themselves in the water. Persons who at their death left few
relations, or did evil in their life, or were murdered outside of the
village, are not buried in the house. Their corpses are deposited on
rocks or on scaffolds in the forest, or are interred on the spot where
they met their death. The reason for this treatment of their corpses is
not mentioned; but we may conjecture that their ghosts are regarded with
contempt, dislike, or fear, and that the survivors seek to give them a
wide berth by keeping their bodies at a distance from the village. The
corpses of those who died suddenly are not buried but wrapt up in leaves
and laid on a scaffold in the house, which is then shut up and deserted.
This manner of disposing of them seems also to indicate a dread or
distrust of their ghosts.[638]
[Sidenote: Disposal of the dead among the Moanus of the Admiralty
Islands. Prayers offered to the skull of a dead chief.]
Among the Moanus of the Admiralty Islands the dead are kept in the
houses unburied until the flesh is completely decayed and nothing
remains but the bones. Old women then wash the skeleton carefully in
sea-water, after which it is disjointed and divided. The backbone,
together with the bones of the legs and upper arms, is deposited in one
basket and put away somewhere; the skull, together with the ribs and the
bones of the lower arms, is deposited in another basket, which is sunk
for a time in the sea. When the bones are completely cleaned and
bleached in the water, they are laid with sweet-smelling herbs in a
wooden vessel and placed in the house which the dead man inhabited
during his life. But the teeth have been previously extracted from the
skull and converted into a necklace for herself by the sister of the
deceased. After a time the ribs are distributed by the son among the
relatives. The principal widow gets two, other near kinsfolk get one
apiece, and they wear these relics under their arm-bands. The
distribution of the ribs is the occasion of a great festival, and it is
followed some time afterwards by a still greater feast, for which
extensive preparations are made long beforehand. All who intend to be
present at the ceremony send vessels of coco-nut oil in advance; and if
the deceased was a great chief the number of the oil vessels and of the
guests may amount to two thousand. Meantime the giver of the feast
causes a scaffold to be erected for the reception of the skull, and the
whole art of the wood-carver is exhausted in decorating the scaffold
with figures of turtles, birds, and so forth, while a wooden dog acts as
sentinel at either end. When the multitude has assembled, and the
orchestra of drums, collected from the whole neighbourhood, has sent
forth a far-sounding crash of music, the giver of the feast steps
forward and pronounces a florid eulogium on the deceased, a warm
panegyric on the guests who have honoured him by their presence, and a
fluent invective against his absent foes. Nor does he forget to throw in
some delicate allusions to his own noble generosity in providing the
assembled visitors with this magnificent entertainment. For this great
effort of eloquence the orator has been primed in the morning by the
sorcerer. The process of priming consists in kneeling on the orator's
shoulders and tugging at the hair of his head with might and main, which
is clearly calculated to promote the flow of his rhetoric. If none of
the hair comes out in the sorcerer's hands, a masterpiece of oratory is
confidently looked forward to in the afternoon. When the speech, for
which such painful preparations have been made, is at last over, the
drums again strike up. No sooner have their booming notes died away over
land and sea, than the sorcerer steps up to the scaffold, takes from it
the bleached skull, and holds it in both his hands. Then the giver of
the feast goes up to him, dips a bunch of dracaena leaves in a vessel of
oil, and smites the skull with it, saying, "Thou art my father!" At that
the drums again beat loudly. Then he strikes the skull a second time
with the leaves, saying, "Take the food that has been made ready in
thine honour!" And again there is a crash of drums. After that he smites
the skull yet again and prays saying, "Guard me! Guard my people! Guard
my children!" And every prayer of the litany is followed by the solemn
roll of the drums. When these impressive invocations to the spirit of
the dead chief are over, the feasting begins. The skull is thenceforth
carefully preserved.[639]
[Sidenote: Disposal of the dead in the Kaniet Islands. Preservation of
the skull.]
In the Kaniet Islands, a small group to the north-west of the Admiralty
Islands, the dead are either sunk in the sea or buried in shallow
graves, face downward, near the house. All the movable property of the
deceased is piled on the grave, left there for three weeks, and then
burnt. Afterwards the skull is dug up, placed in a basket, and having
been decorated with leaves and feathers is hung up in the house. Thus
adorned it not only serves to keep the dead in memory, but is also
employed in many conjurations to defeat the nefarious designs of other
ghosts, who are believed to work most of the ills that afflict
humanity.[640] Apparently these islanders employ a ghost to protect them
against ghosts on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief.
[Sidenote: Death attributed to witchcraft.]
Amongst the natives of the Bismarck Archipelago few persons, if any, are
believed to die from natural causes alone; if they are not killed in war
they are commonly supposed to perish by witchcraft or sorcery, even when
the cause of death might seem to the uninstructed European to be
sufficiently obvious in such things as exposure to heavy rain, the
carrying of too heavy a burden, or remaining too long a time under
water. So when a man has died, his friends are anxious to discover who
has bewitched him to death. In this enquiry the ghost is expected to
lend his assistance. Thus on the night after the decease the friends
will assemble outside the house, and a sorcerer will address the ghost
and request him to name the author of his death. If the ghost, as
sometimes happens, makes no reply, the sorcerer will jog his memory by
calling out the name of some suspected person; and should the ghost
still be silent, the wizard will name another and another, till at the
mention of one name a tapping sound is heard like the drumming of
fingers on a board or on a mat The sound may proceed from the house or
from a pearl shell which the sorcerer holds in his hand; but come from
where it may, it is taken as a certain proof that the man who has just
been named did the deed, and he is dealt with accordingly. Many a poor
wretch in New Britain has been killed and eaten on no other evidence
than that of the fatal tapping.[641]
[Sidenote: Burial customs in the Duke of York Island. Preservation of
the skull.]
When a man of mark is buried in the Duke of York Island, the masters of
sorcery take leaves, spit on them, and throw them, with a number of
poisonous things, into the grave, uttering at the same time loud
imprecations on the wicked enchanter who has killed their friend. Then
they go and bathe, and returning they fall to cursing again; and if the
miscreant survived the first imprecations, it is regarded as perfectly
certain that he will fall a victim to the second. Sometimes, when the
deceased was a chief distinguished for bravery and wisdom, his corpse
would be exposed on a high platform in front of his house and left there
to rot, while his relatives sat around and inhaled the stench,
conceiving that with it they absorbed the courage and skill of the
departed worthy. Some of them would even anoint their bodies with the
drippings from the putrefying corpse for the same purpose. The women
also made fires that the ghost might warm himself at them. When the head
became detached from the trunk, it was carefully preserved by the next
of kin, while the other remains were buried in a shallow grave in the
house. All the female relatives blackened their dusky faces for a long
time, after which the skull was put on a platform, a great feast was
held, and dances were performed for many nights in its honour. Then at
last the spirit of the dead man, which till that time was supposed to be
lingering about his old abode, took his departure, and his friends
troubled themselves about him no more.[642]
[Sidenote: Prayers to the spirits of the dead.]
The souls of the dead are always regarded by these people as beings
whose help can be invoked on special occasions, such as fighting or
fishing or any other matter of importance; and since the spirits whom
they invoke are always those of their own kindred they are presumed to
be friendly to the petitioners. The objects for which formal prayers are
addressed to the souls of ancestors appear to be always temporal
benefits, such as victory over enemies and plenty of food; prayers for
the promotion of moral virtue are seemingly unknown. For example, if a
woman laboured hard in childbirth, she was thought to be bewitched, and
prayers would be offered to the spirits of dead ancestors to counteract
the spell. Again, young men are instructed by their elders in the useful
art of cursing the enemies of the tribe; and among a rich variety of
imprecations an old man will invoke the spirit of his brother, father,
or uncle, or all of them, to put their fingers into the ears of the
enemy that he may not hear, to cover his eyes that he may not see, and
to stop his mouth that he may not cry for help, but may fall an easy
prey to the curser and his friends.[643] More amiable and not less
effectual are the prayers offered to the spirits of the dead over a sick
man. At the mention of each name in the prayer the supplicants make a
chirping or hissing sound, and rub lime over the patient. Before
administering medicine they pray over it to the spirits of the dead;
then the patient gulps it down, thus absorbing the virtue of the
medicine and of the prayer in one. In New Britain they reinforce the
prayers to the dead in time of need by wearing the jawbone of the
deceased; and in the Duke of York Island people often wear a tooth or
some hair of a departed relative, not merely as a mark of respect, but
as a magical means of obtaining supernatural help.[644]
[Sidenote: North Melanesian views as to the land of the dead.]
Sooner or later the souls of all the North Melanesian dead take their
departure for the spirit land. But the information which has reached the
living as to that far country is at once vague and inconsistent. They
call it _Matana nion_, but whereabout it lies they cannot for the most
part precisely tell. All they know for certain is that it is far away,
and that there is always some particular spot in the neighbourhood from
which the souls take their departure; for example, the Duke of York
ghosts invariably start from the little island of Nuruan, near Mioko.
Wherever it may be, the land of souls is divided into compartments;
people who have died of sickness or witchcraft go to one place, and
people who have been killed in battle go to another. They do not go
unattended; for when a man dies two friends sleep beside his corpse the
first night, one on each side, and their spirits are believed to
accompany the soul of the dead man to the spirit land. They say that on
their arrival in the far country, betel-nut is presented to them all,
but the two living men refuse to partake of it, because they know that
were they to eat it they would return no more to the land of the living.
When they do return, they have often, as might be expected, strange
tales to tell of what they saw among the ghosts. The principal personage
in the other world is called the "keeper of souls." It is said that once
on a time the masterful ghost of a dead chief attempted to usurp the
post of warden of the dead; in pursuance of this ambitious project he
attacked the warden with a tomahawk and cut off one of his legs, but the
amputated limb immediately reunited itself with the body; and a second
amputation was followed by the same disappointing result. Life in the
other world is reported to be very like life in this world. Some people
find it very dismal, and others very beautiful. Those who were rich here
will be rich there, and those who were poor on earth will be poor in
Hades. As to any moral retribution which may overtake evil-doers in the
life to come, their ideas are very vague; only they are sure that the
ghosts of the niggardly will be punished by being dumped very hard
against the buttress-roots of chestnut-trees. They say, too, that all
breaches of etiquette or of the ordinary customs of the country will
meet with certain appropriate punishments in the spirit land. When the
soul has thus done penance, it takes possession of the body of some
animal, for instance, the flying-fox. Hence a native is much alarmed if
he should be sitting under a tree from which a flying-fox has been
frightened away. Should anything drop from the bat or from the tree on
which it was hanging, he would look on it as an omen of good or ill
according to the nature of the thing which fell on or near him. If it
were useless or dirty, he would certainly apprehend some serious
misfortune. Sometimes when a man dies and his soul arrives in the spirit
land, his friends do not want him there and drive him back to earth, so
he comes to life again. That is the explanation which the natives give
of what we call the recovery of consciousness after a faint or
swoon.[645]
[Sidenote: The land of the dead. State of the dead in the other world
supposed to depend on the amount of money they left in this one.]
Some of the natives of the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain imagine that
the home of departed spirits is in Nakanei, the part of the coast to
which they sail to get their shell money. Others suppose that it is in
the islands off Cape Takes. So when they are sailing past these islands
they dip the paddles softly in the water, and observe a death-like
stillness, cowering down in the canoes, lest the ghosts should spy them
and do them a mischief. At the entrance to these happy isles is posted a
stern watchman to see that no improper person sneaks into them. To every
ghost that arrives he puts three questions, "Who are you? Where do you
come from? How much shell money did you leave behind you?" On his
answers to these three questions hangs the fate of the ghost. If he left
much money, he is free to enter the realm of bliss, where he will pass
the time with other happy souls smoking and eating and enjoying other
sensual delights. But if he left little or no money, he is banished the
earthly paradise and sent home to roam like a wild beast in the forest,
battening on leaves and filth. With bitter sighs and groans he prowls
about the villages at night and seeks to avenge himself by scaring or
plaguing the survivors. To stay his hunger and appease his wrath
relatives or friends will sometimes set forth food for him to devour.
Yet even for such an impecunious soul there is hope; for if somebody
only takes pity on him and gives a feast in his honour and distributes
shell money to the guests, the ghost may return to the islands of the
blest, and the door will be thrown open to him.[646]
[Sidenote: Fiji and the Fijians.]
So much for the belief in immortality as it is reported to exist among
the Northern Melanesians of New Britain and the Bismarck Archipelago. We
now pass to the consideration of a similar belief among another people
of the same stock, who have been longer known to Europe, the Fijians.
The archipelago which they occupy lies to the east of the New Hebrides
and forms in fact the most easterly outpost of the black Melanesian race
in the Pacific. Beyond it to the eastward are situated the smaller
archipelagoes of Samoa and Tonga, inhabited by branches of the brown
Polynesian race, whose members are scattered over the islands of the
Pacific Ocean from Hawaii in the north to New Zealand in the south. Of
all the branches of the Melanesian stock the Fijians at the date of
their discovery by Europeans appear to have made the greatest advance in
culture, material, social, and political. "The Fijian," says one who
knew him long and intimately, "takes no mean place among savages in the
social scale. Long before the white man visited his shores he had made
very considerable progress towards civilisation. His intersexual code
had advanced to the 'patriarchal stage': he was a skilful and diligent
husbandman, who carried out extensive and laborious agricultural
operations: he built good houses, whose interior he ornamented with no
little taste, carved his weapons in graceful and intricate forms,
manufactured excellent pottery, beat out from the inner bark of a tree a
serviceable papyrus-cloth, upon which he printed, from blocks either
carved or ingeniously pieced together, elegant and elaborate patterns in
fast colours; and, with tools no better than a stone hatchet, a pointed
shell, and a firestick, he constructed large canoes capable of carrying
more than a hundred warriors across the open sea."[647]
[Sidenote: Political superiority of the Fijians over the other
Melanesians.]
Politically the Fijians shewed their superiority to all the other
Melanesians in the advance they had made towards a regular and organised
government. While among the other branches of the same race government
can hardly be said to exist, the power of chiefs being both slender and
precarious, in Fiji the highest chiefs exercised despotic sway and
received from Europeans the title of kings. The people had no voice in
the state; the will of the king was generally law, and his person was
sacred. Whatever he touched or wore became thereby holy and had to be
made over to him; nobody else could afterwards touch it without danger
of being struck dead on the spot as if by an electric shock. One king
took advantage of this superstition by dressing up an English sailor in
his royal robes and sending him about to throw his sweeping train over
any article of food, whether dead or alive, which he might chance to
come near. The things so touched were at once conveyed to the king
without a word of explanation being required or a single remonstrance
uttered. Some of the kings laid claim to a divine origin and on the
strength of the claim exacted and received from their subjects the
respect due to deities. In these exorbitant pretensions they were
greatly strengthened by the institution of taboo, which lent the
sanction of religion to every exertion of arbitrary power.[648]
Corresponding with the growth of monarchy was the well-marked gradation
of social ranks which prevailed in the various tribes from the king
downwards through chiefs, warriors, and landholders, to slaves. The
resulting political constitution has been compared to the old feudal
system of Europe.[649]
[Sidenote: Means of subsistence of the Fijians. Ferocity and depravity
of the Fijians.]