For the Samoans I have always had a great admiration and affection.
Practically I began my island career in Samoa. More than a score of
years before Robert Louis Stevenson went to die on the verdured slopes
of Vailima Mountain, where he now rests, I was gaining my living by
running a small trading cutter between the beautiful islands of Upolu,
Savai'i, and Tutuila, and the people ever had my strong sympathies in
their struggle against Germany for independence. Even so far back as
1865, German agents were at work throughout the group, sowing the seeds
of discord, encouraging the chiefs of King Malietoa to rebel, so that
they could set up a German puppet in his place. And unfortunately they
have succeeded only too well, and Samoa, with the exception of the
Island of Tutuila, is now German territory. But it is as well, for the
people are kindly treated by their new masters.
The Samoans were always a warlike race. When not unitedly repelling
invasion by the all-conquering Tongans who sent fleet after fleet to
subjugate the country, they were warring among themselves upon various
pretexts--successions to chiefly titles, land disputes, abuse of neutral
territory, and often upon the most trivial pretexts. In my own time I
witnessed a sanguinary naval encounter between the people of the island
of Manono, and a war-party of ten great canoes from the district of
Lepâ on the island of Upolu. I saw sixteen decapitated heads brought
on shore, and personally attended many of the wounded. And all this
occurred through the Lepâ people having at a dance in their village
sung a song in which a satirical allusion was made to the Manono
people having once been reduced to eating shell-fish. The result was an
immediate challenge from Manono, and in all nearly one hundred men lost
their lives, villages were burnt, canoes destroyed, and thousands of
coco-nut and bread-fruit trees cut down and plantations ruined.
Sometimes in battle the Samoans were extremely chivalrous, at others
they were demons incarnate, as merciless, cold-blooded, and cruel as the
Russian police who slaughter women and children in the streets of the
capital of the Great White Czar, and I shall now endeavour to describe
one such terrible act, which after many years is still spoken of with
bated breath, and even amidst the suppressed sobs and falling tears of
the descendants of those who suffered.
On the north coast of Upolu there is a populous town and district named
Fasito'otai. It is part of the A'ana division of Upolu, and is noted,
even in Samoa, a paradise of Nature, for its extraordinary fertility and
beauty.
The A'ana people at this time were suffering from the tyranny of Manono,
a small island which boasted of the fact of its being the birthplace
and home of nearly all the ruling chiefs of Samoa, and the extraordinary
respect with which people of chiefly lineage are treated by Samoans,
generally led them to suffer the greatest indignities and oppressions
by the haughty and warlike Manonoans, who exacted under threats a
continuous tribute of food, fine mats and canoes. Finally, a
valorous young chief named Tausaga--though himself connected with
Manono--revolted, and he and his people refused to pay further tribute
to Manono, and a bloody struggle was entered upon.
For some months the war continued. No mercy was shown on either side to
the vanquished, and there is now a song which tells of how Palu, a
girl of seventeen, with a spear thrust half through her bosom by her
brother-in-law, a chief of Manono, shot him through the chest with a
horse pistol, and then breaking off the spear, knelt beside the dying
man, kissed him as her “brother” and then decapitated him, threw the
head to her people with a cry of triumph--and died.
At first the A'ana people were victorious, and the haughty Manonoans
were driven off into their fleets of war canoes time and time again.
Then Manono made alliance with other powerful chiefs of Savai'i and
Upolu against A'ana, and two thousand of them, after great slaughter,
occupied the town of Fasito'otai, and the A'ana people retired to inland
fortresses, resolved to fight to the very last. Among the leaders of the
defeated people were two white men--an Englishman and an American--whose
valour was so much admired, even by the Manono people, that they were
openly solicited to desert the A'ana people, and come over to the other
side, where great honours and gifts of lands awaited them. To their
credit, these two unknown men rejected the offer with scorn, and
announced their intention to die with the people with whom they had
lived for so many years. At their instance, many of the Manono warriors
who had been captured had been spared, and kept prisoners, instead of
being ruthlessly decapitated in the usual Samoan fashion, and their
heads exhibited, with much ignominy, from one village to another, as
trophies.
For two years the struggle continued, the Manonoans generally proving
victorious in many bloody battles. Then Fasito'otai was surprised in
the night, and two-thirds of its defenders, including many women and
children, slaughtered. Among those who died were the two white men. They
fell with thirty young men, who covered the retreat of the survivors of
the defending force.
The extraordinary valour which the A'ana people had displayed,
exasperated the Manono warriors to deeds of unnamable violence to
whatever prisoners fell into their cruel hands. One man--an old Manono
chief--who had taken part in the struggle, told me with shame that he
saw babies impaled on bayonets and spears carried exultingly from one
village to another.
Broken and disorganised, the beaten A'ana people dispersed in parties
large and small. Some sought refuge in the mountain forests, others
put to sea in frail canoes, and mostly all perished, but one party of
seventeen in three canoes succeeded in reaching Uea (Wallis Island),
three hundred miles to the westward of Samoa. Among them was a boy of
seven years of age, who afterwards sailed with me in a labour vessel.
He well remembered the horrors of that awful voyage, and told me of his
seeing his father “take a knife and open a vein in his arm so that a
baby girl, who was dying of hunger, could drink”.
Relentless in their hate of the vanquished foe, the Manono warriors
established a cordon around them from the mountain range that traverses
the centre of Upolu to the sea, and at last, after many engagements,
drove them to the beach, where a final battle was fought. Exhausted,
famine-stricken, and utterly disheartened by their continuous reverses,
the unfortunate A'ana people were easily overcome, and the fighting
survivors surrendered, appealing to their enemies to at least spare the
lives of their women and children.
But no mercy was shown. As night began to fall, the Manonoans began to
dig a huge pit at a village named Maotâ, a mile from the scene of the
battle, and as some dug, others carried an enormous quantity of dead
logs of timber to the spot. By midnight the dreadful funeral pyre was
completed.
In case that it might be thought by my readers that I am exaggerating
the horrors of “The Pit of Maotâ,” I will not here relate what I,
personally, was told by people who were present at the awful deed,
but repeat the words of Mr. Stair, an English missionary of the London
Missionary Society, whose book, entitled Old Samoa, tells the story
in quiet, yet dramatic language, and although in regard to some minor
details he was misinformed, his account on the whole is correct, and is
the same as was told to me by men who had actually participated in the
tragedy.
The awful preparations were completed, and then the victors, seizing
those of their captives who were bound on account of their strength and
had a few hours previously surrendered, hurried them to the fatal pit,
in which the huge pile of timber had been lit. And as the flames roared
and ascended, and the darkness of the surrounding forest was made as
light as day, the first ten victims of four hundred and sixty-two were
cast in to burn, amid the howls and yells of their savage captors.
Mr. Stair says: “This dreadful butchery was continued during one or two
days and nights, fresh timber being heaped on from time to time, as it
was with difficulty that the fire could be kept burning, from the number
of victims who were ruthlessly sacrificed there.
“The captives from Fasito'otai were selected for the first offerings,
and after them followed others in quick succession, night and day,
early and late, until the last wretched victim had been consumed. Most
heartrending were the descriptions I received from persons who had
actually looked on the fearful scenes enacted there.
“Innocent children skipped joyfully along the pathway by the side of
their conductors and murderers,{*} deceived by the cruel lie that they
were to be spared, and were then on their way to bathe; when suddenly
the blazing pile (in the Pit of Noatâ) with the horrid sight of their
companions and friends being thrown alive into the midst, told them the
dreadful truth; whilst their terror was increased by the yells of savage
triumph of the murderers, or the fearful cries of the tortured victims
which reached their ears.”
* I was told that the poor children were led away as they
thought to be given si mea ai vela--“something hot” (to
eat).--[L.B.]
When I first saw the dreadful Tito (pit) of Moatâ, it was at the close
of a calm, windless day. I had been pigeon-shooting in the mountain
forest, and was accompanied by a stalwart young Samoan warrior. As we
were returning to Fasito'otai, he asked me if I would come a little
out of the way and look at the “Tito,” a place he said “that is to our
hearts, and is, holy ground”. He spoke so reverently that I was much
impressed.
Following a winding path we suddenly came in view of the pit. The sides
were almost covered with many beautiful varieties of crotons, planted
there by loving hands, and it was very evident to me that the place was
indeed holy ground. At the bottom of the pit was a dreadful reminder of
the past--a large circle of black charcoal running round the sides,
and enclosing in the centre a large space which at first I thought was
snow-white sand, but on descending into the pit with uncovered head,
and looking closer, found it was composed of tiny white coral pebbles.
Hardly a single leaf or twig marred the purity of the whiteness of the
cover under which lay the ashes of nearly five hundred human beings.
Every Saturday the women and children of Fasito'otai and the adjacent
villages visited the place, and reverently removed every bit of
_débris_, and the layer of stones, carefully selected of an equal size,
was renewed two or three times a year as they became discoloured by
the action of the rain. Encompassing the wooded margin of the pit were
numbers of orange, lime and banana trees, all in full fruit. These were
never touched--to do so would have been sacrilege, for they were sacred
to the dead. All around us were hundreds of wood-doves and pigeons, and
their peaceful notes filled the forest with saddening melody. “No one
ever fires a gun here,” said my companion softly, “it is forbidden. And
it is to my mind that the birds know that it is a sacred place and holy
ground.”