chiefly by agriculture, raising many sorts of esculent fruits and roots,
particularly yams, taro, plantains, bread-fruit, sweet potatoes,
bananas, coco-nuts, ivi nuts, and sugar-cane; but the chief proportion
of their food is derived from yams (_Dioscorea_), of which they
cultivate five or six varieties.[650] It has been observed that "the
increase of cultivated plants is regular on receding from the Hawaiian
group up to Fiji, where roots and fruits are found that are unknown on
the more eastern islands."[651] Yet the Fijians in their native state,
like all other Melanesian and Polynesian peoples, were entirely ignorant
of the cereals; and in the opinion of a competent observer the
consequent defect in their diet has contributed to the serious defects
in their national character. The cereals, he tells us, are the staple
food of all races that have left their mark in history; and on the other
hand "the apathy and indolence of the Fijians arise from their climate,
their diet and their communal institutions. The climate is too kind to
stimulate them to exertion, their food imparts no staying power. The
soil gives the means of existence for every man without effort, and the
communal institutions destroy the instinct of accumulation."[652] Nor
are apathy and indolence the only or the worst features in the character
of these comparatively advanced savages. Their ferocity, cruelty, and
moral depravity are depicted in dark colours by those who had the best
opportunity of knowing them in the old days before their savagery was
mitigated by contact with a milder religious faith and a higher
civilisation. "In contemplating the character of this extraordinary
portion of mankind," says one observer, "the mind is struck with wonder
and awe at the mixture of a complicated and carefully conducted
political system, highly finished manners, and ceremonious politeness,
with a ferocity and practice of savage vices which is probably
unparalleled in any other part of the world."[653] One of the first
civilised men to gain an intimate acquaintance with the Fijians draws a
melancholy contrast between the baseness and vileness of the people and
the loveliness of the land in which they live.[654]
[Sidenote: Scenery of the Fijian islands.]
For the Fijian islands are exceedingly beautiful. They are of volcanic
origin, mostly high and mountainous, but intersected by picturesque
valleys, clothed with woods, and festooned with the most luxuriant
tropical vegetation. "Among their attractions," we are told, "are high
mountains, abrupt precipices, conical hills, fantastic turrets and crags
of rock frowning down like olden battlements, vast domes, peaks
shattered into strange forms; native towns on eyrie cliffs, apparently
inaccessible; and deep ravines, down which some mountain stream, after
long murmuring in its stony bed, falls headlong, glittering as a silver
line on a block of jet, or spreading like a sheet of glass over bare
rocks which refuse it a channel. Here also are found the softer features
of rich vales, cocoa-nut groves, clumps of dark chestnuts, stately palms
and bread-fruit, patches of graceful bananas or well-tilled taro-beds,
mingling in unchecked luxuriance, and forming, with the wild
reef-scenery of the girdling shore, its beating surf, and far-stretching
ocean beyond, pictures of surpassing beauty."[655] Each island is
encircled by a reef of white coral, on which the sea breaks, with a
thunderous roar, in curling sheets of foam; while inside the reef
stretches the lagoon, a calm lake of blue crystalline water revealing in
its translucent depths beautiful gardens of seaweed and coral which fill
the beholder with delighted wonder. Great and sudden is the contrast
experienced by the mariner when he passes in a moment from the tossing,
heaving, roaring billows without into the unbroken calm of the quiet
haven within the barrier reef.[656]
[Sidenote: Fijian doctrine of souls.]
Like most savages, the Fijians believed that man is animated by a soul
which quits his body temporarily in sleep and permanently at death, to
survive for a longer or a shorter time in a disembodied state
thereafter. Indeed, they attributed souls to animals, vegetables,
stones, tools, houses, canoes, and many other things, allowing that all
of them may become immortal.[657] On this point I will quote the
evidence of one of the earliest and best authorities on the customs and
beliefs of the South Sea Islanders. "There seems," says William Mariner,
"to be a wide difference between the opinions of the natives in the
different clusters of the South Sea islands respecting the future
existence of the soul. Whilst the Tonga doctrine limits immortality to
chiefs, _matabooles_, and at most, to _mooas_, the Fiji doctrine, with
abundant liberality, extends it to all mankind, to all brute animals, to
all vegetables, and even to stones and mineral substances. If an animal
or a plant die, its soul immediately goes to Bolotoo; if a stone or any
other substance is broken, immortality is equally its reward; nay,
artificial bodies have equal good luck with men, and hogs, and yams. If
an axe or a chisel is worn out or broken up, away flies its soul for the
service of the gods. If a house is taken down, or any way destroyed, its
immortal part will find a situation on the plains of Bolotoo; and, to
confirm this doctrine, the Fiji people can show you a sort of natural
well, or deep hole in the ground, at one of their islands, across the
bottom of which runs a stream of water, in which you may clearly
perceive the souls of men and women, beasts and plants, of stocks and
stones, canoes and houses, and of all the broken utensils of this frail
world, swimming or rather tumbling along one over the other pell-mell
into the regions of immortality. Such is the Fiji philosophy, but the
Tonga people deny it, unwilling to think that the residence of the gods
should be encumbered with so much useless rubbish. The natives of
Otaheite entertain similar notions respecting these things, viz. that
brutes, plants, and stones exist hereafter, but it is not mentioned that
they extend the idea to objects of human invention."[658]
[Sidenote: Reported Fijian doctrine of two human souls, a light one and
a dark one.]
According to one account, the Fijians imagined that every man has two
souls, a dark soul, consisting of his shadow, and a light soul,
consisting of his reflection in water or a looking-glass: the dark soul
departs at death to Hades, while the light soul stays near the place
where he died or was killed. "Probably," says Thomas Williams, "this
doctrine of shadows has to do with the notion of inanimate objects
having spirits. I once placed a good-looking native suddenly before a
mirror. He stood delighted. 'Now,' said he, softly, 'I can see into the
world of spirits.'"[659] However, according to another good authority
this distinction of two human souls rests merely on a misapprehension of
the Fijian word for shadow, _yaloyalo_, which is a reduplication of
_yalo_, the word for soul.[660] Apparently the Fijians pictured to
themselves the human soul as a miniature of the man himself. This may be
inferred from the customs observed at the death of a chief among the
Nakelo tribe. When a chief dies, certain men who are the hereditary
undertakers call him, as he lies, oiled and ornamented, on fine mats,
saying, "Rise, sir, the chief, and let us be going. The day has come
over the land." Then they conduct him to the river side, where the
ghostly ferryman comes to ferry Nakelo ghosts across the stream. As they
attend the chief on his last journey, they hold their great fans close
to the ground to shelter him, because, as one of them explained to a
missionary, "His soul is only a little child."[661]
[Sidenote: Absence of the soul in sleep. Catching the soul of a rascal
in a scarf.]
The souls of some men were supposed to quit their bodies in sleep and
enter into the bodies of other sleepers, troubling and disturbing them.
A soul that had contracted this bad habit was called a _yalombula_. When
any one fainted or died, his vagrant spirit might, so the Fijians
thought, be induced to come back by calling after it. Sometimes, on
awaking from a nap, a stout man might be seen lying at full length and
bawling out lustily for the return of his own soul.[662] In the windward
islands of Fiji there used to be an ordeal called _yalovaki_ which was
much dreaded by evil-doers. When the evidence was strong against
suspected criminals, and they stubbornly refused to confess, the chief,
who was also the judge, would call for a scarf, with which "to catch
away the soul of the rogue." A threat of the rack could not have been
more effectual. The culprit generally confessed at the sight and even
the mention of the light instrument; but if he did not, the scarf would
be waved over his head until his soul was caught in it like a moth or a
fly, after which it would be carefully folded up and nailed to the small
end of a chief's canoe, and for want of his soul the suspected person
would pine and die.[663]
[Sidenote: Fijian dread of sorcery and witchcraft.]
Further, the Fijians, like many other savages, stood in great terror of
witchcraft, believing that the sorcerer had it in his power to kill them
by the practice of his nefarious art. "Of all their superstitions," says
Thomas Williams, "this exerts the strongest influence on the minds of
the people. Men who laugh at the pretensions of the priest tremble at
the power of the wizard; and those who become christians lose this fear
last of all the relics of their heathenism."[664] Indeed "native agents
of the mission who, in the discharge of their duty, have boldly faced
death by open violence, have been driven from their posts by their dread
of the sorcerer; and my own observation confirms the statement of more
than one observer that savages not unfrequently die of fear when they
think themselves bewitched."[665] Professed practitioners of witchcraft
were dreaded by all classes, and by destroying mutual confidence they
annulled the comfort and shook the security of society. Almost all
sudden deaths were set down to their machinations. A common mode of
effecting their object was to obtain a shred of the clothing of the man
they intended to bewitch, some refuse of his food, a lock of his hair,
or some other personal relic; having got it they wrapped it up in
certain leaves, and then cooked or buried it or hung it up in the
forest; whereupon the victim was supposed to die of a wasting disease.
Another way was to bury a coco-nut, with the eye upward, beneath the
hearth of the temple, on which a fire was kept constantly burning; and
as the life of the nut was destroyed, so the health of the person whom
the nut represented would fail till death put an end to his sufferings.
"The native imagination," we are told, "is so absolutely under the
control of fear of these charms, that persons, hearing that they were
the object of such spells, have lain down on their mats, and died
through fear."[666] To guard against the fell craft of the magician the
people resorted to many precautions. A man who suspected another of
plotting against him would be careful not to eat in his presence or at
all events to leave no morsel of food behind, lest the other should
secrete it and bewitch him by it; and for the same reason people
disposed of their garments so that no part could be removed; and when
they had their hair cut they generally hid the clippings in the thatch
of their own houses. Some even built themselves a small hut and
surrounded it with a moat, believing that a little water had power to
neutralise the charms directed against them.[667]
[Sidenote: The fear of sorcery has had the beneficial effect of
enforcing habits of personal cleanliness.]
"In the face of such instances as these," says one who knows the Fijians
well, "it demands some courage to assert that upon the whole the belief
in witchcraft was formerly a positive advantage to the community. It
filled, in fact, the place of a system of sanitation. The wizard's tools
consisting in those waste matters that are inimical to health, every man
was his own scavenger. From birth to old age a man was governed by this
one fear; he went into the sea, the graveyard or the depths of the
forest to satisfy his natural wants; he burned his cast-off _malo_; he
gave every fragment left over from his food to the pigs; he concealed
even the clippings of his hair in the thatch of his house. This
ever-present fear even drove women in the western districts out into the
forest for the birth of their children, where fire destroyed every trace
of their lying-in. Until Christianity broke it down, the villages were
kept clean; there were no festering rubbish-heaps nor filthy
_raras_."[668]
[Sidenote: Fijian dread of ghosts. Uproar made to drive away ghosts.]
Of apparitions the Fijians used to be very much afraid. They believed
that the ghosts of the dead appeared often and afflicted mankind,
especially in sleep. The spirits of slain men, unchaste women, and women
who died in childbed were most dreaded. After a death people have been
known to hide themselves for a few days, until they supposed the soul of
the departed was at rest. Also they shunned the places where people had
been murdered, particularly when it rained, because then the moans of
the ghost could be heard as he sat up, trying to relieve his pain by
resting his poor aching head on the palms of his hands. Some however
said that the moans were caused by the soul of the murderer knocking
down the soul of his victim, whenever the wretched spirit attempted to
get up.[669] When Fijians passed a spot in the forest where a man had
been clubbed to death, they would sometimes throw leaves on it as a mark
of homage to his spirit, believing that they would soon be killed
themselves if they failed in thus paying their respects to the
ghost.[670] And after they had buried a man alive, as they very often
did, these savages used at nightfall to make a great din with large
bamboos, trumpet-shells, and so forth, in order to drive away his spirit
and deter him from loitering about his old home. "The uproar is always
held in the late habitation of the deceased, the reason being that as no
one knows for a certainty what reception he will receive in the
invisible world, if it is not according to his expectations he will most
likely repent of his bargain and wish to come back. For that reason they
make a great noise to frighten him away, and dismantle his former
habitation of everything that is attractive, and clothe it with
everything that to their ideas seems repulsive."[671]
[Sidenote: Killing a ghost.]
However, stronger measures were sometimes resorted to. It was believed
to be possible to kill a troublesome ghost. Once it happened that many
chiefs feasted in the house of Tanoa, King of Ambau. In the course of
the evening one of them related how he had slain a neighbouring chief.
That very night, having occasion to leave the house, he saw, as he
believed, the ghost of his victim, hurled his club at him, and killed
him stone dead. On his return to the house he roused the king and the
rest of the inmates from their slumbers, and recounted his exploit. The
matter was deemed of high importance, and they all sat on it in solemn
conclave. Next morning a search was made for the club on the scene of
the murder; it was found and carried with great pomp and parade to the
nearest temple, where it was laid up for a perpetual memorial. Everybody
was firmly persuaded that by this swashing blow the ghost had been not
only killed but annihilated.[672]
[Sidenote: Dazing the ghost of a grandfather.]
A more humane method of dealing with an importunate ghost used to be
adopted in Vanua-levu, the largest but one of the Fijian islands. In
that island, as a consequence, it is said, of reckoning kinship through
the mother, a child was considered to be more closely related to his
grandfather than to his father. Hence when a grandfather died, his ghost
naturally desired to carry off the soul of his grandchild with him to
the spirit land. The wish was creditable to the warmth of his domestic
affection, but if the survivors preferred to keep the child with them a
little longer in this vale of tears, they took steps to baffle
grandfather's ghost. For this purpose when the old man's body was
stretched on the bier and raised on the shoulders of half-a-dozen stout
young fellows, the mother's brother would take the grandchild in his
arms and begin running round and round the corpse. Round and round he
ran, and grandfather's ghost looked after him, craning his neck from
side to side and twisting it round and round in the vain attempt to
follow the rapid movements of the runner. When the ghost was supposed to
be quite giddy with this unwonted exercise, the mother's brother made a
sudden dart away with the child in his arms, the bearers fairly bolted
with the corpse to the grave, and before he could collect his scattered
wits grandfather was safely landed in his long home.[673]
[Sidenote: Special relation of grandfather to grandchild. Soul of a
grandfather reborn in his grandchildren.]
Mr. Fison, who reports this quaint mode of bilking a ghost, explains the
special attachment of the grandfather to his grandchild by the rule of
female descent which survives in Vanua-levu; and it is true that where
exogamy prevails along with female descent, a child regularly belongs to
the exogamous class of its grandfather and not of its father and hence
may be regarded as more closely akin to the grandfather than to the
father. But on the other hand it is to be observed that exogamy at
present is unknown in Fiji, and at most its former prevalence in the
islands can only be indirectly inferred from relics of totemism and from
the existence of the classificatory system of relationship.[674] Perhaps
the real reason why in Vanua-levu a dead grandfather is so anxious to
carry off the soul of his living grandchild lies nearer to hand in the
apparently widespread belief that the soul of the grandfather is
actually reborn in his grandchild. For example, in Nukahiva, one of the
Marquesas Islands, every one "is persuaded that the soul of a
grandfather is transmitted by nature into the body of his grandchildren;
and that, if an unfruitful wife were to place herself under the corpse
of her deceased grandfather, she would be sure to become pregnant."[675]
Again, the Kayans of Borneo "believe in the reincarnation of the soul,
although this belief is not clearly harmonised with the belief in the
life in another world. It is generally believed that the soul of a
grandfather may pass into one of his grandchildren, and an old man will
try to secure the passage of his soul to a favourite grandchild by
holding it above his head from time to time. The grandfather usually
gives up his name to his eldest grandson, and reassumes the original
name of his childhood with the prefix or title _Laki_, and the custom
seems to be connected with this belief or hope."[676]
[Sidenote: A dead grandfather may reasonably reclaim his own soul from
his grandchild.]
Now where such a belief is held, it seems reasonable enough that a dead
grandfather should reclaim his own soul for his personal use before he
sets out for the spirit land; else how could he expect to be admitted to
that blissful abode if on arriving at the portal he were obliged to
explain to the porter that he had no soul about him, having left that
indispensable article behind in the person of his grandchild? "Then you
had better go back and fetch it. There is no admission at this gate for
people without souls." Such might very well be the porter's retort; and
foreseeing it any man of ordinary prudence would take the precaution of
recovering his lost spiritual property before presenting himself to the
Warden of the Dead. This theory would sufficiently account for the
otherwise singular behaviour of grandfather's ghost in Vanua-levu. At
the same time it must be admitted that the theory of the reincarnation
of a grandfather in a grandson would be suggested more readily in a
society where the custom of exogamy was combined with female descent
than in one where the same custom coexisted with male descent; since,
given exogamy and female descent, grandfather and grandson regularly
belong to the same exogamous class, whereas father and son never do
so.[677] Thus Mr. Fison may after all be right in referring the
partiality of a Fijian grandfather for his grandson in the last resort
to a system of exogamy and female kinship.
[Footnote 627: G. Brown, D.D., _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London,
1910), pp. 23 _sq._, 125, 320 _sqq._]
[Footnote 628: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 294 _sqq._; P. A. Kleintitschen,
_Die Küstenbewohner der Gazellehalbinsel_ (Hiltrup bei Münster, N.D.),
pp. 90 _sqq._ The shell money is called _tambu_ in New Britain, _diwara_
in the Duke of York Island, and _aringit_ in New Ireland.]
[Footnote 629: Rev. G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 307, 313, 435, 436.]
[Footnote 630: Rev. G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 270 _sq._, compare pp. 127,
200.]
[Footnote 631: Rev. G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. v., 18.]
[Footnote 632: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 141 _sq._, 144, 145, 190-193.]
[Footnote 633: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 142, 192, 385, 386 _sq._]
[Footnote 634: G. Brown, _op. cit._ p. 390. The custom of cremating the
dead in New Ireland is described more fully by Mr. R. Parkinson, who
says that the life-sized figures which are burned with the corpse
represent the deceased (_Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee_, pp. 273 _sqq._).
In the central part of New Ireland the dead are buried in the earth;
afterwards the bones are dug up and thrown into the sea. See Albert
Hahl, "Das mittlere Neumecklenburg," _Globus_, xci. (1907) p. 314.]
[Footnote 635: R. Parkinson, _Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee_ (Stuttgart,
1907) p. 78; P. A. Kleintitschen, _Die Küstenbewohner der
Gazellehalbinsel_ (Hiltrup bei Münster, N.D.), p. 222.]
[Footnote 636: Mgr. Couppé, "En Nouvelle-Poméranie," _Les Missions
Catholiques_, xxiii. (1891) pp. 364 _sq._; J. Graf Pfeil, _Studien und
Beobachtungen aus der Südsee_ (Brunswick, 1899), p. 79.]
[Footnote 637: R. Parkinson, _op. cit._ p. 81.]
[Footnote 638: _P._ Rascher, _M.S.C._, "Die Sulka, ein Beitrag zur
Ethnographic Neu-Pommern," _Archiv für Anthropologie_, xxix. (1904) pp.
214 _sq._, 216; R. Parkinson, _Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee_, pp.
185-187.]
[Footnote 639: R. Parkinson, _Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee_, pp.
404-406.]
[Footnote 640: R. Parkinson, _op. cit._ pp. 441 _sq._]
[Footnote 641: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 176, 183, 385 _sq._ As to the
wide-spread belief in New Britain that what we call natural deaths are
brought about by sorcery, see further _P._ Rascher, _M.S.C._, "Die
Sulka, ein Beitrag zur Ethnographic Neu-Pommern," _Archiv für
Ethnographie_, xxix. (1904) pp. 221 _sq._; R. Parkinson, _Dreissig Jahre
in der Südsee_, pp. 117 _sq._ 199-201; P. A. Kleintitschen, _Die
Küsten-bewohner der Gazellehalbinsel_ (Hiltrup bei Münster, N.D.), p.
215.]
[Footnote 642: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 387-390.]
[Footnote 643: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 35, 89, 196, 201.]
[Footnote 644: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 177, 183, 184.]
[Footnote 645: G. Brown, _op. cit._ pp. 192-195.]
[Footnote 646: P. A. Kleintitschen, _Die Küstenbewohner der
Gazellehalbinsel_, pp. 225 _sq._ Compare R. Parkinson, _Dreissig Jahre
in der Südsee_, p. 79.]
[Footnote 647: Lorimer Fison, _Tales from Old Fiji_ (London, 1904), p.
xiv.]
[Footnote 648: Thomas Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, Second Edition
(London, 1860), i. 22-26.]
[Footnote 649: Charles Wilkes, _Narrative of the United States Exploring
Expedition_, New Edition (New York, 1851), iii. 77; Th. Williams, _op.
cit._ i. 18.]
[Footnote 650: Charles Wilkes, _Narrative of the United States Exploring
Expedition_, New Edition (New York, 1851), iii. 332 _sqq._; Thomas
Williams _Fiji and the Fijians_, Second Edition (London, 1860), i. 60
_sqq._; Berthold Seeman, _Viti_ (Cambridge, 1862), pp. 279 _sqq._; Basil
Thomson, _The Fijians_ (London, 1908), pp. 335 _sq._]
[Footnote 651: Th. Williams, _op. cit._ i. 60 _sq._]
[Footnote 652: Basil Thomson, _The Fijians_, pp. 338, 389 _sq._ The
Fijians are in the main vegetarians, but the vegetables which they
cultivate "contain a large proportion of starch and water, and are
deficient in proteids. Moreover, the supply of the principal staples is
irregular, being greatly affected by variable seasons, and the attacks
of insects and vermin. Very few of them will bear keeping, and almost
all of them must be eaten when ripe. As the food is of low nutritive
value, a native always eats to repletion. In times of plenty a
full-grown man will eat as much as ten pounds' weight of vegetables in
the day; he will seldom be satisfied with less than five. A great
quantity, therefore, is required to feed a very few people, and as
everything is transported by hand, a disproportionate amount of time is
spent in transporting food from the plantation to the consumer. The time
spent in growing native food is also out of all proportion to its value"
(Basil Thomson, _op. cit._ pp. 334 _sq._). The same writer tells us (p.
335) that it has never occurred to the Fijians to dry any of the fruits
they grow and to grind them into flour, as is done in Africa.]
[Footnote 653: Capt. J. E. Erskine, _Journal of a Cruise among the
Islands of the Western Pacific_ (London, 1853), pp. 272 _sq._]