Holy Week—How the rum was saved during the storm—An Easter Sunday
“Celebration”—The Governor, Commissaire Bauda and I have a
discussion—Paul Vernier, the Protestant pastor, and his Church—How
the girls of the valley imperilled the immortal souls of the first
missionaries—Jimmy Kekela, his family—A watch from Abraham Lincoln.
HOLY Week passed in a riot of uncommon amusement. Its religious
significance—the most sacred period of the year both for Catholics and
Protestants—was emphasized by priest and preacher with every observance
of the church, but the lay white harked back to the mood of the ancient
feast of spring and drew the natives with them. Permits to buy rum and
wine were much sought for by the Marquesans, to whom drink was
forbidden. The governor was of an easy disposition, and few who had the
price of a _dame-jeanne_ of rum or wine failed to secure it. As Lutz,
the German trader at Tahauku, the adjoining valley, was the only
importer of intoxicants, the canoes were active between our beach of
Atuona and the stone steps at Tahauku, while others rode a-horse or
walked. On Holy Thursday an uninformed new-comer might have pronounced
the Marquesans a bustling race with a liquid diet.
Cloudbursts had swollen the streams, and made the trails troughs of mud,
so that when Exploding Eggs and Mouth of God and I arrived at Atuona
beach with our empties we were glad to place the receptacles in the
canoe of a fisherman for transport to Lutz’s. A gesture of my cupped
hand to my mouth made him eager to oblige me. We walked up the hill and
past the Scallamera leper-house. My friends’ bare feet and skill made it
hard for me to keep up with them. Shoes are clumsy shifts for naked
soles. After a glass of Munich beer and a pretzel with Lutz, Exploding
Eggs finding his own little canoe at the stone steps, we loaded the
demi-johns in it and the fisherman’s. I went with the latter, and Mouth
of God with my valet. The canoes were narrow and they sank to the
gunwales with the weight. The tide of the swollen river tore through the
bay, and soon Mouth of God cried out that we must take Exploding Eggs in
our craft. The boy transferred himself deftly, and Mouth of God’s canoe
shot ahead. It became necessary for us to bail, for the water poured in
over the unprotected sides, and the boy and I used our hats actively.
Suddenly the fisherman in agonizing voice announced that we could not
stay afloat. He gave no thought to our bodily plight, the racing
current, and the rapacious sharks, but laid stress on our freight.
“_Aue!_ The rum will be lost!” he shouted, as the canoe weltered deeper,
and then, without ado, both he and Exploding Eggs leaped into the brine.
The canoe staggered and rose, and, after freeing it from water, I
paddled it to shore, while the pair swam alongside, watching the
precious burden.
All night the torrent roared near my home. The big boulders rolled down
the rocky bed, groaning in travail. The solid shot of cocoanut and
breadfruit, sped by the gale, fell on my iron roof while the furious
rain was like cannister. The trees made noises as a sailing ship in a
storm, singing wildly, whistling as does the cordage, and the crash of
their fall sounding as the freed canvas banging on the yards. Sleep was
not for me, but I smoked and wrote, and listened to the chorus of
angered nature until daybreak.
In the first light I saw Father David, in _soutane_ and surplice,
attended by two barelegged acolytes, fording the breast-high river. He
held aloft the golden box containing the sacred bread, and one of the
acolytes carried a bell of warning. Paro had the black leprosy, and in
his hut far up the valley, on his mat of suffering, waited for the
comfort of communion. All day three priests moved up and down urging the
people to confess and “make their Easter.”
Titihuti, the magnificently tattooed matron, went with me to the
ceremony of _Honi Peka_, the Kissing of the Crucifix. Honi really meant
to rub noses or smell each other’s faces, for the Marquesans had no
labial kiss. The Catholic church was well filled, and each native in
turn approached the railing of the channel, and rubbed his nose over the
desolate figure of the Savior. It was a wonderful magic to them. The
next day, Good Friday or _Venini Tapu_, I asked Great Fern what event
that day commemorated.
“Ietu Kirito was killed by his enemies, the tribe of Iuda,” he replied,
as he might relate a tribal feud in these islands.
[Illustration:
Photo from Underwood and Underwood
The Coral road and the traders’ stores
]
Holy Saturday was a joyous holiday, and on Easter Sunday the climax of
the feasting and merriment came. The communion-rail was crowded, many
complying with the church compulsion of taking the sacrament once a year
under pain of mortal sin. There was compensation for celibacy and exile
in Father David’s expression of delight as he put into each
communicant’s mouth the host. He was the leading actor in a divine
drama, the conversion by his few words of consecration of a flour wafer
into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ. The histrionic was mixed
with and a moving part of his exaltation.
[Illustration:
Photo by Brown Bros.
Scene on beach a few miles west of Papeete
]
He gave to all, including Peyral and me, the only white attendants, a
little loaf of bread he had blessed; _faraoa benetitio_ in Marquesan, or
flour _benedicto_. Ah Suey took communion, and after mass hurried to me.
The reputed murderer of Wagner, the American, was prideful because he
was the baker of the _faraoa benetitio_.
“How you likee that bleadee?” he asked me. “My bake him bleadee, pliest
make him holee. Bimeby me ketchee heaven,” he said in all seriousness.
Titihuti, my neighbor, joined me to walk to our homes, and, knowing her
to miss no masses on Sundays, I asked her why she had not received the
sacrament. She said she had never partaken of it, that she had yet to
make her first communion of the Lord’s supper.
“But, Titihuti,” I remonstrated, “you know that you are in danger of
hell-fire. You believe in the Catholic doctrine, you say, and despite
that you disregard its strict order.”
Titihuti I realized was a heathen, still full of animist superstitions,
and I was not unprepared to hear her answer:
“If I took the host into my mouth I would die. The _manakao_ would seize
me. I will wait until I am about to die, and then Père David will give
me the _viaticum_, and I will go straight to _aki_.”
The _manakao_ is a demon, and _aki_ is paradise. Titihuti was intending
to take the chance that kings and others took in the early days of
Christianity, when, being taught that baptism wiped out all sins, they
kept an alert clergyman always near them to sprinkle them and speed them
to heaven, and meanwhile they sinned as they pleased.
By noon the entire village was chanting and dancing. The unusual removal
of the restriction against beverages made Easter a pagan rout. The
natives became uninhibited, if not natural, for a few hours. Several
times the governor had had groups at his palace to give exhibitions of
their aboriginal dances, but this feast-day he extended a general
invitation to a levee. Fifty or sixty men or women enjoyed the utmost
hospitality. The young ruler was bent on seeing their fullest expression
of mirth, without any restraint of sobriety. The noise of their songs
echoed to the mission, where the nuns prayed that some brand might be
spared from the holocaust. Swaggering chiefs and beauteous damsels
abandoned themselves to the spirit of the day. The dances were without
order. Whenever a man or woman felt the urge they sprang to their feet
and began the _tapiriata_. Under the palms, upon the verandas, in the
_salle à manger_, in every corner of the palace and its grounds, the
people, astonished at such unwonted freedom and such lavish bounty,
showed their appreciation in movements of their bodies and legs. The
fairest girls surrounded the host, and with sinuous circlings and a
thousand blandishments entertained and thanked him. The chants by the
elders were of his greatness. The young sang of passion.
From the hill near the cemetery where Guillitoue, the anarchist, dwelt,
sounded the drums. I was the especial guest there in the afternoon, and
those who were not too deep in the pool of pleasure at the palace
climbed the mountain. The orator had built a shelter of bamboo and
cocoanut leaves, graceful and clean, and upon its carpet of leaves we
sat. Guillitoue in a loin-cloth and black frock-coat moved about among
the three score with a _dame-jeanne_ in each hand, and poured rum or
wine at request. Occasionally he broke into a wild _hula_, grotesque as
he whirled about with the wickered bottles at arms-length. From other
valleys whites and natives had come to the _koina_. Thirty horses were
tied to the cemetery railing. Amiable gaiety and ludicrous baboonery
passed the afternoon.
Frederick Tissot, a storekeeper at Puamau, a Swiss in his fifties, ten
years in the Foreign Legion of Algiers, a worker upon the Chicago
Exposition buildings in the early nineties, and seventeen years here,
spoke of the “good time” when he worked at Zinkand’s restaurant in San
Francisco.
“I drank thirty quarts of beer a day. I was cook, and the bartenders
stood in with me for _bonnes bouches_. I never tasted solid food. I had
soup and booze. I nearly died in a year, and had to leave.”
He sighed at the memory of those golden days. Later I saw him falling
off his horse, and laid upon a mat in a native house.
James Nichols, son of a Chicagoan, dignified, tall and thin, almost
white, with side-whiskers, a black cutaway, overalls, and bare feet, a
shoeless butler for all the world, had a tale for me of his father’s
marrying in Tahiti a member of the royal family of Pomaré, and of
himself being born on Christmas Island.
“A wild island that,” said the quasi-butler in English. “Captain Cook
discovered it when he was steering north from Borabora on Christmas day.
He stayed there a few weeks and saw an eclipse of the sun. He took away
three hundred turtles. When I lived there they melted cocoanuts into
oil, and my father was the cooper. Cook had planted cocoanuts there. It
is an atoll, a lonely place, and I was glad to leave. I learned English
from my father, and married a Paumotu lady. I was in Tahiti until eight
years ago, when the cyclone wiped me out. Here I work for the mission,
making copra, and I am the tinker and tinsmith. Here’s looking at you!”
Jensen, the young and engaging Dane, who will never return to
civilization, trod a measure with a charming girl from Hanamenu.
“The clan of the Puna has left its bare _paepaes_ all over her valley,”
he said. “She is the last.”
At dark the cavalcade reeled down the hill, leaving Pierre Guillitoue
sleeping beside the drum. Despite his late fifties and his, to say the
least, irregular way of living, Pierre is strong and healthy.
Captain Cook marveled in his diary that “since the arrival of the ship
in Batavia [Java] every person belonging to her has been ill, except the
sailmaker, who was more than seventy years old; yet this man got drunk
every day while we remained there.”
A white man lured away the consort of Ahi, an agreeable young man much
in love. I found the lorn husband screaming in grief.
“Tahiatauani, my wife, my wife!” he cried out. The Marquesan weeps with
facility. Hour after hour this stalwart fellow let fall tears, lying on
the ground in agony. Then he rose and said no more about it.
Easter Sunday went out in a blaze of riotous glory. I saw Ah Suey after
nightfall inquiring anxiously and angrily for his daughter. The nuns had
reported to him that she had failed to appear for vespers. That night in
the breadfruit-grove by the High Place they enacted the old orgies of
pre-Christian days. Thirty men and women, mostly young, sang the ancient
songs and danced by the lights of lanterns, of candlenuts and fagots,
and to the sound of the booming drums.
I sat at wine the next day with Father David in the mission-house. It
was bare and ugly as all convents, having the scant, ascetic,
uncomfortable atmosphere that monks and nuns dwell in all over the
world—no ornaments, no good pictures, no ease. Stark walls, stiff
chairs, and the staring, rude crucifix over the door. The apostolic
vicar censured the Government severely. He plucked his long, black beard
nervously, and spoke his feelings in the imperious manner of a mortal
who holds the keys of the kingdom of heaven, castigating fools who
wouldn’t even learn there was a door. There was no trace of personal
pride.
“The government here and in France is unjust to the church. We suffer
from the impiety and wickedness of French officials. The people of
France are right at heart, but the politicians are Antichrists. The
Protestants are bad enough, but the French are Catholics, or should be.
This young governor here is a veritable heathen, and has shown the
people the road to hell again, when they had hardly trod the _via trita,
via tuta_. He and Bauda are godless men. Monsieur, rum is forbidden to
be given to a Marquesan, yet the valley floats in rum. I know that to
get copra made one must stretch the strict rod of the law a trifle, but
not to drunkenness, nor to dances of the devil, dances, that, frowned
upon, might be forgotten.”
The governor, _Commissaire_ Bauda, and I dined that night on the palace
veranda, and afterward we had an animated discussion. I wrote it down
verbatim:
GOVERNOR. What was it _Père_ David said to you, _mon ami_?
I. He said that the Catholic church was badly treated by the officials
here.
GOVERNOR. Yes, he wants another great slice of land. Oh, that church is
insatiable! One of my predecessors, Grosfillez, fought them. Here is his
report in the archives: He says that, contrary to their claims that they
have caused the republic to be loved here, that they have taught the
Franch language, and have raised the natives from savagery, from
immorality and evil manners, the facts are that they have not changed a
particle the morals of the Marquesans, that they taught in their schools
a trifling smattering of French, and that they did not make France loved
and respected, but sought the domination of their order, the Picpus
Congregation, at the expense of the Government. This domination they
forced in the early days at the point of the bayonet, to the sacrifice
of the lives of French officers and soldiers.
BAUDA. That is true here and everywhere we French have gone. We have
died to spread the power of the church. _Nom d’un chien!_ Six campaigns
in Africa, me! _Et pire alors!_ Did not General La Grande pin this
decoration on me?
GOVERNOR. Here is the very letter of Grosfillez to the authorities. He
says that he visited the school at Taiohae, and that when he spoke to
the pupils, many of them three or four years in the school, the good
sister asked permission to translate his simple words into _canaque_ so
they could understand. _Sapristi!_ Is that teaching French? Is not the
calendar of the church here filled with foolishness, and almost all in
_canaque_? _Hein_? Read this:
The governor thrust into my hands the almanac written by Father Simeon
Delmas, of Taiohae, and published by the mission. It was in hektograph,
neatly and beautifully written, and contained the religious calendar of
the year, and sermons, admonitions, and anecdotes, in Marquesan, with a
small minority in French; a photograph of Monseigneur Etienne Rouchouze,
former vicar apostolic to Oceanica, with praise for his career; an
anecdote of Bernadette of Lourdes, the famous peasant girl to whom the
Virgin Mary appeared, together with a list of the apparitions of the
Virgin in France, beginning in 1830, the other dates being ’46, ’58,
’71, and ’76; a prayer to Joan of Arc, with an attack on Protestantism
(_Porotetane_) for burning her, and something about the Duke of Guise; a
stirring article on Nero’s persecution of the Christians; an account of
the Fall of the Bastille; a comparison between Clovis, king of France,
and Napoleon; a tale of Charles V; and a table showing that the Catholic
church had established missions in all the inhabited islands of this
group since 1858, and giving the number of children in the schools when
they were closed by the government as clerical.
“The mountain groaned and brought forth a mouse, a soldier,” said the
almanac.
“That is treason,” said the governor, looking over my shoulder, “and
what has all that foolishness to do with a dying race that does not know
what it means? The church has done nothing for these people. They are
not changed except for the worse. What has the church done for their
health? Nothing. My predecessor wanted to stop the eating of _popoi_. He
knew that it is dirty, not healthful, and the promiscuous way of eating
it spreads disease. The church fought him and said _popoi_ was all
right. France! Have we not suffered enough by that church since the
Edict of Nantes? Since time immemorial? The church is a corporation,
selfish, scheming, always against any government it does not control. It
has been the evil genius of France. Only Napoleon harnessed the beast
and made it do his work, but it saw his humbling. The priests tell the
_canaques_ the Government is against the church, and that the church is
in the right; that it is the duty of every Catholic to love the church
first, because the church is Christ. They do not preach disaffection.
_Peut-être, non._ But they do not preach affection.
I. But you must admit that these priests lead lives of self-sacrifice;
that personally they gain nothing. A meager fare and hard work. They
visit the sick——
GOVERNOR. Visit the sick? They do that, and they bury the dead. But they
do nothing to better conditions. We teach sanitation. The priests are
themselves either ignorant or neglectful of sanitation. Their calendars,
their tracts, their preaching, say not a word about health, cleanliness;
nothing about the body, but all about the soul, about duties to the
church. I am here primarily to study and aid the lepers, the
consumptives and the other sick. To try and halt the disease which has
killed thousands of unborn children, and the tuberculosis which takes
most of the Marquesans in youth. I am a soldier, experienced in Africa,
used to leprosy, and the care of natives. In Africa the church gives
nothing to the people but its ritual. What has the church done here
after seventy years?
I. Ah, governor, that is the very question _Père_ David asked me as to
the Government. He says they looked after the lepers when they had a
free hand here.
GOVERNOR. Looked after them. They were not physicians. Those men are
peasants crammed with a pitiful theology. They shall have nothing from
me but the law.
He attacked the intermezzo of “Cavalleria Rusticana” on his flute, as
Many Daughters arrived. Over her ear was a sprig of fern, and about her
neck a string of fragrant nuts. Her very large eyes were singularly
brilliant.
“_C’est toi qui pousse le pu me metai._” she complimented and tutoyed.
“_C’est toi qui n’a pas la pake?_ It is thou who playest the flute
wonderfully. It is thou who has not any tobacco?”
“Ah, _ma fille_, you are well? You will have a drop of absinthe?” said
the governor.
“With pleasure; I am as dry as the inside of an old skull.”
“But, my friend,” I remonstrated with the executive, aside. “She is a
leper. Her sister is, too. Are you not afraid? She drinks from our
glasses.”
“Me? I am a soldier, and a student of leprosy. It is my hobby. It is
mysterious, that disease. I watch her closely.”
If the apostolic vicar felt keenly his inability to manage the affairs
of the village and the islands to suit his ideas of morality and
religion, so did the Protestant pastor. My house was very near the
mission, and it was some days after I had arrived before I went to the
dissenting church, half a mile across the valley. Monsieur Paul Vernier,
the Protestant pastor, had been many years in the Marquesas. He was
respected by the ungodly. Guillitoue hailed him as a brother, anarchist
and infidel though he was himself. Vernier alternated between hunting
souls to save and bulls to shoot, for he was a very son of Cush, and his
quest of the wild cattle of the mountains had put him upon their horns
more than once. Salvation he held first, and he was canny in copra, but
many nights he lay upon the tops of the great hills when pursuit of game
had led him far.
Vernier had a background, for, though born in Tahiti, his father had
been a man of culture and his mother a charming Frenchwoman, whose home
in Tahiti was memorable to visitors. Vernier had devoted his life to the
Marquesans, and lived in this simple atmosphere without regret for
Tahiti. The apostolic vicar said that Vernier was Antichrist made
manifest in the flesh, but that was on account of the _odium
theologicum_, which here was as bitter as in Worms or Geneva of old. The
spirit of _Père_ David was pierced by the occasional defections from his
flock caused by the proselytizing of Vernier. Before I met him I had
gone to his church with Great Fern and Apporo. It was a box-like,
redwood building, its interior lacking the imagery and coloring of the
Roman congregation. The fat angels of Brother Michel, the cherubim and
seraphim in plaster on the _façade_ of Father David’s structure were
typical of the genius of that faith, round, smiling, and breathing good
will to the faithful. Protestantism was not in accord with the palms,
the flowers, and the brilliancy of the sunlight. Thirty made up the
congregation, of whom fourteen were men, twelve women, and four
children, though the benches would seat a hundred. The women, as in the
Catholic church, wore hats, but I was the only person shod.
Men and women sat apart. During the service, except when they sang, no
man paid any attention to the preacher, nor did but three or four of the
men. They seemed to have no piety. The women with children walked in and
out, and four dogs coursed up and down the aisle. No one stirred a hand
or tongue at them.
Fariura, a Tahitian preacher, who replaced Vernier, was a devout figure
in blackest alpaca suit and silk tie, but barefooted. As he stood on a
platform by a deal table and read the Bible, I saw his toes were well
spread, which in this country was like the horny hand of the laborer,
proof of industry. Climbing the cocoanut-trees made one’s toes ape one’s
fingers in radiation.
Tevao Kekela led the singing in a high-pitched coppery voice, and those
who sang with her had much the same intonation and manner. Often the
sound was like that of a Tyrolean yodel, and the lingering on the last
note was fantastic. They sang without animation, rapidly, and as if
repeating a lesson. In the Catholic church the natives were assisted by
the nuns. These words were, of course, Marquesan, and I copied down a
stanza or two:
Haere noara ta matorae
Va nia i te ea tiare,
Eare te pure tei rave,
Hiamai, na roto i te,
Taehae ote merie?
O te momona rahi
O te paraue otou, ta mata noaraoe?
Momona rahi roa
O te reira eiti to te merie?
Parau mai nei Ietue
Etimona Peteroe tia mai nioe,
Haa noara vau i tei nei po
Areva tuai aue.
Fariura prayed melodiously and pleadingly for ten minutes, during which
Tevao Kekela’s father never raised his head but remained bowed in
meditation. A tattooed man in front of me bent double and groaned
constantly during the invocation. The others were occupied with their
thoughts.
Then said Fariura, “_Ma teinoa o Ietu Kirito, Metia_ _kaoha nui ia_, in
the name of Jesus Christ, a good day to all the world.”
He began his hour’s sermon. The discourse was about Rukifero and his
fall from Aki, and I discovered that Rukifero was Lucifer and Aki was
paradise. He described the fight preceding the drop as much like one of
the old Marquesan battles, with bitter recriminations, spears, clubs,
and slings as weapons, and Jehovah narrowly escaping Goliath’s fate. In
fact, the preacher said He had to dodge a particularly well-aimed stone.
Fariura, Kekela, Terii, the catechist, and his wife, Toua, received
communion, with fervent faces, while the others departed, lighting
cigarettes on the steps, some mounting horses, and the women fording the
river with their gowns rolled about their foreheads.
The preacher shook hands with me, the only white. He was in a lather
from the heat and his unusual clothes, and the rills of sweat coursed
down his body. His pantomime of the heavenly faction fight had been
energetic. I took him to my house for a swig of rum, and we had a long
chat on the activities of the demon, and ways of circumventing his
wiles.
Men like Vernier were not deceived by dry ecclesiasticism. They knew how
little the natives were changed from paganism, and how cold the once hot
blast of evangelism had grown. Religion was for long the strongest tide
in the affairs of the South Seas both under the heathen and the
Christian revelation. Government was not important under Marquesan
communism, for government is mostly concerned with enforcing opportunity
for acquisitive and ambitious men to gain and hold wealth and power. In
the days of the _tapus_ gods and devils made sacred laws and religious
rites. The first missionaries in the Marquesas, who sailed from Tahiti,
were young Englishmen, earnest and confident, but they met a severe
rebuff. They relate that a swarm of women and girls swam out to their
vessel and boarded it.
“They had nothing on,” says the chronicle, “but girdles of green ferns,
which they generously fed to the goats we had on board, who seemed to
them very strange beings. The goats, deprived for long of fresh food,
completely devastated the garments of the savage females, and when we
had provided all the cloth we had to cover them, we had to drive the
others off the ship for the sake of decency.”
Harris, one of the English missionaries, ventured ashore, and the next
morning returned in terror, declaring that nothing would induce him to
remain in the Marquesas. He feared for his soul. He said that despite
his protestations and prayers the girls of the valley had insisted on
examining him throughout the night hours to see if he was like other
humans, and that he had to submit to excruciating intimacies of a
“diabolical inspiration.” Crooks, Harris’s partner, dared these and
other dangers and remained a year. Crooks said that in Vaitahu, the
valley in which Vanquished Often and Seventh Man Who Wallows in the Mire
lived, there were deified men, called _atuas_, who, still in life,
wielded supernatural power over death, disease, the elements, and the
harvests, and who demanded human sacrifices to appease their wrath.
Crooks believed in the supremacy of Jehovah, but, like all his cloth
then, did not doubt diabolism and the power of its professors.
For half a century American and English centers of evangelism despatched
missionaries to the Marquesas, but all failed. The _tapus_ were too much
feared by the natives, and the sorcerers and chiefs held this power
until the sailors and traders gradually broke it. They sold guns to the
chiefs, and bought or stole the stone and wooden gods to sell to museums
and collectors. They ridiculed the temples and the _tapus_, consorted
with the women, and induced them for love or trinkets to sin against
their code, and they corrupted the sorcerers with rum and gauds. They
prepared the ground for the Christian plow, but it was not until
Hawaiian missionaries took the field that the harvest was reaped. Then
it was because of a man of great and loving soul, a man I had known, and
whose descendants I met here.
I was picking my way along the bank of a stream when a deep and ample
pool lured me to bathe in it. I threw off my _pareu_ and was splashing
in the deliciously cool water when I heard a song I had last heard in a
vaudeville theater in America. It was about a newly-wedded pair, and the
refrain declared that “all night long he called her Snookyookums.” The
voice was masculine, soft, and with the familiar intonation of the
Hawaiian educated in American English. I swam further and saw a big
brown youth, in face and figure the counterpart of Kamehameha I, the
first king of Hawaii, whose gold and bronze statue stands in Honolulu.
He was washing a shirt, and singing in fair tune.
“Where’s your Snookyookums?” I asked by way of introduction.
He was not surprised. Probably he heard and saw me before I did him.
“Back on Alakea Street in Honolulu,” he replied, smilingly, “where I
wish I was. You’re the _perofeta_ [prophet] they talk about. I been
makin’ copra or I’d been see you before. My name is Jimmy Kekela, and I
was born here in that house up on the bank, but I was sent to school in
Honolulu, and I played on the Kamehameha High scrub team. The only
foot-ball I play now is with a cocoanut. I had a job as chauffeur for
Bob Shingle, who married a sister of the Princess Kawananakoa, but my
father wrote me to come back here. I’ll wring out this shirt, and we’ll
go up and see my folks.”
The Kekela home was a large, bare house of pine planks from California
raised a dozen feet on a stone _paepae_. Unsightly and unsuitable, it
was characteristic of the architecture the white had given the Marquesan
for his own graceful and beautiful houses of hard wood, bamboo, and
thatch, of which few were left. I wrung out my _pareu_, replaced it, and
scrambled up the bank with him. The house was in a cocoanut forest, the
trees huge and lofty, some growing at an amazing angle owing to the wind
shaping them when young. They twisted like snakes, and some so
approached parallelism that a barefooted native could walk up them
without using his hands, by the mere prehensility of his toes and his
accustomed skill. In front of the steps to the veranda of the home were
mats for the drying of the copra, and a middle-aged man, very brown and
stout, was turning over the halves of the cocoanut meat to sun them all
over.
[Illustration:
Tahiatini, Many Daughters, the little leper lass
]
[Illustration:
François Grelet, the Swiss, of Oomoa
]
“My father,” said Jimmy to me, and “_Perofeta_” to him. He shook hands
gingerly in the way all people do who are unaccustomed to that greeting,
and said, “_Kaoha!_” My answer, “_Aloha nui oe!_” surprised him, for it
was the Hawaiian salute. On the veranda I was presented to the entire
Kekela family, four generations. By ones and twos they drifted from the
room or the grounds. Hannah, the widow of Habuku, was very old, but was
eager to talk.
“I am a Hawaiian,” she said in that language, “and I have been in
Atuona, on this piece of land, sixty years. My husband brought me here,
and he was pastor in that church till he died. _Auwe!_ What things went
on here then! I have seen many men being carried by toward the _Pekia_,
the High Place of Atuona, for roasting and eating. That was in war time,
when they fought with the people of Taaoa, or other valley. Kekela and
my husband with the help of God stopped that evil thing. Matanui, a
chief, came to Hawaii in a whale-ship, and asked for people to teach his
people the word of the true God. Four Hawaiians listened to Matanui, and
returned with him to Hanavave, where the French priest Father Olivier,
is now. A week later a French ship arrived with a Catholic priest.
_Auwe!_ He was angry to find the Protestants and tried to drive them
out. They stayed with the help of the Lord, though they had a hard time.
Then Kekela and we came, and we have seen many changes. He was a
warrior, and not afraid of anything, even the devil. There are his sons,
Iami and Tamueli, and his grandsons and granddaughters and their
children. We are Hawaiian. We have no drop of Marquesan blood in us. Did
you know Aberahama Linoconi?”
Hannah lifted herself from the mat on the floor, and brought from the
house a large gold watch, very heavy and ornate, of the sort successful
men bought fifty years ago. It was inscribed to James Kekela from
Abraham Lincoln in token of his bravery and kindness in saving the life
of an American seaman, and the date was 1864.
“That watch,” she said, “was given to Kekela by the big chief of
America. When he died he gave it to his son, Tamueli. Tell the prophet
why Aberahama Linoconi gave it to your grandfather, Iami!”
Jimmy, the former chauffeur, tried to persuade his uncle, Samuel, a
missionary on another island, to tell the story, but finally himself
narrated it in English.
“Grandfather Kekela was at Puamau, across this island, when he got this
watch. He had been at Puamau some years and teachin’ people stop
fightin’ an’ go church, when a whale-ship come in from Peru, an’ shot up
the town. The Peru men killed a lot of Marquesans, and stole plenty of
them to work in the mines like slave. They had guns an’ the poor Puamau
native only spear and club, so that got away with it good an’ strong.
Well, nex’ year come American whale-ship, an’ the mate come up the
valley to ketch girl. He saw girl he love an’ chase her up the valley.
The Puamau people let him go, an’ ask him go further. Then they tie him
up and beat him like the Peru people beat them, and then they got the
oven ready to cook him. The chief of Puamau come tell my grandfather
what they goin’ do, an’ he was some sore. He put on his Sunday clothes
he bring from Hawaii, an’ high collar an’ white necktie, an’ he go start
something. He was young and not afraid of all hell. The mate was tied in
a straw house, an’ everybody ‘roun’ was getting paralyzed with _namu
enata_—you know that cocoanut booze that is rougher than sandpaper gin
in Hawaii.
“They were scarin’ the mate almost to death when grandfather come along.
The mate could see the _umu_ heatin’ up, and the stones bein’ turned
over on which he was goin’ to be cooked. Grandfather went in the hut.
The mate was lyin’ on his back with his hands an’ feet tied with a
_purau_ rope, an’ his face was as white as a shirt. I remember
grandfather used to say how white his face was. Kekela knelt down an’
prayed for the mate, an’ he prayed that the chief would give him his
life. He prayed an’ prayed, and the chief listen an’ say nothin’. ‘Long
toward mornin’ the chief couldn’t hold out no longer, an’ said if
grandfather would give him the whale-boat he brought from Hawaii, his
gun, an’ his black coat, he would let him go. Grandfather handed them
all over, an’ took the mate to our house, and cured his wounds, and
finally got him on a boat an’ away. It was no cinch, for the American
ship had sailed away, and he had to keep the mate till another ship
came. Many time the young men of Puamau tried to get the mate, to eat
him, an’ when another ship arrived, an’ Kekela put the mate on board,
they followed in their canoes to grab him. They pretty near were killin’
grandfather for what he did.
“The mate must have told the Pres’ent of United States about his trouble
here, for grandfather got a bag of money, this watch, a new whaleboat,
an’ a fine black coat brought him by an American ship with a letter from
Mr. Lincoln. Father wrote back to Pres’ent Lincoln in Hawaiian, an’
thank him proper.”
“He must have lived to be a very old man,” I said, “because I was in
_Kawaiahao_ Church in Honolulu when he preached. He was asking for money
for this church, and he took out the watch Lincoln gave him, and banged
it on the pulpit so that we thought he would break it. He was greatly
excited. I wrote a piece about his sermon in the Honolulu paper and it
was printed in the _Nupepa Kukoa_, the Hawaiian edition of the _Honolulu
Advertiser_.”
Samuel Kekela leaped to his feet and rushed into the house, from which
he came with a yellowed copy of the _Nupepa Kukoa_, containing the
article, with Kekela’s picture. To my own astonishment I read that the
fourteen Hawaiians of the Kekela families who had accompanied the aged
pioneer to Honolulu had journeyed in a schooner captained by my own
shipmate, Lying Bill. I had seen the schooner in Honolulu Harbor.
Here was a remarkable group, a separate and alien sept, which, though
living since before Lincoln’s Presidency in this wild archipelago, had
preserved their Hawaiian inheritances and customs almost intact. This
had been due to the initial impetus given them by their ancestor, and it
had now ceased to animate them, so that they were declining into
commonplace and dull copra makers, with but a tiny spark of the flame of
piety that had lighted the soul of their progenitor.
“I am not the man my father was,” said John, the father of Jimmy. “I am
an American because I am a Hawaiian citizen. My father had us all sent
to Hawaii to be educated and to marry.”
The old Kekela had been a patriarch in Israel. Not alone had he lessened
cannibalism and the rigidity of the _tapu_ in the “great, cannibal isle
of Hiva-Oa,” but he had instructed them in foreign ways. He had acquired
lands, and now this family was the richest in the Marquesas. Only the
Catholic mission owned more acres. They were proud, and convinced that
they were anointed of the Lord, though Jimmy, being young, had no
interest at all in religion. If Kekela the first had not been a
missionary he would have been a chief or a capitalist. Hannah showed me
the photographs of the kings and queen of Hawaii since Kamehameha IV
with their signatures and affectionate words for Kekela. Now they were
disintegrating, and another generation would find them as undone as the
Marquesans. The contempt of government, trader, and casual white for all
religion had affected them, who for two generations had been Christian
aristocrats and leaders among a mass of commoners and admiring
followers. The ten commandments were as dead as the _tapus_, and the
church had become here what it is in America, a social and entertainment
focus for people bored by life. The German philosopher has said that the
apparent problem of all religions was to combat a certain weariness
produced by various causes which are epidemic. Christianity for
civilized people may be “a great storehouse of ingenuous sedatives, with
which deep depression, leaden languor, and sullen sadness of the
physiologically depressed might be relieved,” but for the Marquesans it
had been a narcotic, perhaps easing them into the grave dug by the new
dispensation brought by civilized outsiders. The gentle Jesus had been
betrayed by the culture that had developed in his name, but which had no
relation to his teaching or example. These good-willed Kekelas were as
feeble to arrest the decay of soul and body of their charges as was the
excellent Pastor Vernier or the self-sacrificing Father David. In the
dance at the governor’s the flocks, at least, had an expression,
corrupted as it was, of their desire for pleasure and forgetfulness of
the stupid present.
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