grave pursuits.
HORATIUS.
They seem to know that
Care and the desire for more
Attend the still increasing store.
HORATIUS.
Desire for great wealth does not exist among the natives. Nature has
supplied them with nearly all they need, hence little remains for them
to do to meet their modest desires.
Religion has not done away entirely with superstition, and has improved
their morals little, if any. Old European residents of Papeete agree
that the morality of the natives has not improved since they have been
under the influence of civilization, forced on them by the European
invaders. The greatest fault of the people is their incurable laziness,
a vice for which they are not entirely responsible, as Nature has
provided so bountifully for their needs. Robbery, stealing and murder
are almost unknown; petty thefts, on the contrary, are quite common. The
people, young and old, are affable, extremely courteous and hospitable
to a fault; the family ties strong, and extending to the remotest
relatives.
Man is a social animal, and born to live together so as to regard the
world as one house.
SENECA.
Nowhere in the world are the people more sociable than in Tahiti. This
sociability was perhaps more pronounced before the island was discovered
than it is now, but it remains to this day as one of the prominent
characteristics of the Polynesian race. Respect and love for parents,
strong attachments to relatives and friends, are striking virtues of the
Tahitians. They love social intercourse and have the highest regard for
friendship. Poverty and misfortunes do not intercept friendships, on the
contrary they cement them more firmly.
The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity; as iron
is most strongly united by the fiercest flames.
COLTON.
Before European influence had made itself felt in the island, each tribe
constituted a large family, and property lines were not sharply defined.
As long as there was anything to eat, no one was left hungry. The
Tahitians are extremely fond of mingling with their relatives, friends,
members of the same and other tribes. They appreciate to the fullest
extent that "we have been born to unite with fellow-men, and to join in
community with the human race" (Cicero). They treat old age with
reverence and respect, and take the very best care of the sick and poor.
Unity of feelings and affections is the strongest relationship.
PUBLIUS SYRUS.
Under the teachings of the missionaries, Protestant and Catholic,
paganism has disappeared from the island. All are church-members and
attend service regularly. The denominations represented are the
Episcopalians, Catholics and Latter-day Saints in above numerical order.
Most of the priests and preachers are natives. Christianity, has,
however, failed to suppress immorality and do away entirely with the
inborn superstition of the natives. The former evil is firmly rooted,
the latter difficult of complete eradication.
Nothing has more power over the multitude than superstition: in other
respects powerless, ferocious, fickle, when it is once captivated by
superstitious notions, it obeys its priests better than its leaders.
QUINTUS CURTIUS RUFUS.
Wicked habits are productive of vice, and vice follows long-standing
habits. The Tahitians are by nature kind, affectionate, and their
opinions are easily moulded for good or bad, but many of their customs
and habits cling to them in spite of civilization and Christianization,
for "how many unjust and wicked things are done from mere habit!"
(Terentius); and "so much power has custom over tender minds"
(Virgilius).
The children of Tahiti are given excellent opportunities for obtaining a
good elementary education. In all of the larger villages there is a
government school, usually two churches. Catholic and Protestant, and
their respective parochial schools. The natives love their language and
are averse to the French, hence, as a rule, the parochial are better
patronized than the government schools. The literature in the Tahitian
language is limited to translations of the Bible, catechisms, religious
song books and a few school books. Children of the better classes who
seek a higher education, go abroad, in preference to the United States.
Few show any ambition to enter any of the professions with the exception
of the clerical. The mass of the people are content in leading an easy,
dreamy life, showing no disposition either to acquire wealth or fame.
Agriculture, manufacture and commerce have no attraction for them. They
are children from the cradle to the grave, have the desires of children,
and are pleased with what pleases children. Their tastes are simple,
their desires few, and instead of in care and worry, they live through
their span of life in peace of mind and contentment.
But if men would live according to reason's rules, they would find the
greatest riches to live content with little, for there is never want
where the mind is satisfied.
LUCRETIUS.
In contrast to the Westerner, the favored Tahitian can say:
I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing,
still of nothing am I in want.
TERRENCE.
The natives are temperate in drinking, and frugal in eating. Fish and
fruit are their principal articles of diet. Their habits in this
direction have not undergone much change since Captain Cook wrote:
Their common diet is made up of at least nine-tenths vegetable food;
and, I believe, more particularly, the _mahee_, or fermented breadfruit,
which enters almost every meal, has a remarkable effect upon them,
preventing a costive habit, and producing a very sensible coolness
about them, which could not be perceived in us who fed on animal food.
And it is, perhaps, owing to this temperate course of life that they
have so few diseases among them.
Smoking is indulged in only to a moderate extent, cigarettes and pipe
being the favorite methods of consuming the weed.
Art has never had a place in the minds of the Tahitians. All attempts in
this direction in design, carving and sculpture, are rude. Like all
primitive peoples, they are fond of music. Their voices are sweet, but
the airs of their music are monotonous. The primitive drum, and a little
crude instrument made of bamboo, something like a flute, placed in one
of the nostrils when played, are the instruments in most common use. The
national dance, formerly the principal amusement of the people, is
discouraged by the government, but is allowed once a year as a special
favor to the natives.
FOREIGNERS IN TAHITI
Most of the foreigners who remain permanently in Tahiti become attached
to the island by marriage, the strongest possible incentive to make it
their permanent home. Many of these men are adventurers. Some of them
have honest intentions to make this beautiful island their permanent
home. Far away from their place of birth and relatives, charmed by the
beauties of the island, they conclude:
I will take some savage woman; she shall rear my dusky race.
TENNYSON.
In many instances such unions have resulted very happily. On the voyage
from San Francisco to Tahiti, I met Mr. George R. Richardson, a native
of Springfield, Mass., who had lived for the last thirty years, with his
native wife on the little atoll island, Kaukuaia of the Tuamotu group,
one hundred and sixty-eight miles from Tahiti. He was suffering from
carcinoma of the esophagus, and was returning from San Francisco,
whither he had gone for medical advice. His parents were still living,
but he had no desire to visit the place of his birth, so fully had he
become acclimated to the climatic and native conditions of the Society
Islands. He was then fifty-five years of age. He left the United States
March 4, 1874, on a sailing vessel, and six months later landed at
Tahxa. In six months he had obtained a fair knowledge of the native
language, and married in Kaukuaia a woman who could not speak a word of
English. This union resulted in sixteen children, three of whom died,
six girls and seven boys living at the present time, and of these, three
girls and two boys are married. Through his wife he inherited from her
mother five acres of land with three thousand cocoanut-palms. To this
land he obtained a legal ownership eight years ago by virtue of a law of
legal registration passed by the government. The island on which he
lives contains only one hundred and fifty inhabitants and the only
income is obtained from copra and mother-of-pearl.
The inhabitants of this island are Catholics and Mormons. A Catholic
priest comes once a month to minister to the spiritual needs of the
adherents to the faith of his church. The services of both denominations
are conducted in the native language. He and a Frenchman are the only
white inhabitants of the island.
On February 16, 1878, a great storm overflooded the island and our
American, who spent a whole night in the crown of a cocoanut tree, lost
everything. Only five thousand cocoanut trees were left on the whole
island. A man-of-war came from Tahiti three days later and ministered to
the urgent needs of the survivors.
The inhabitants of this little island suffer frequently from malaria and
grippe. The latter disease returns regularly almost every year. Of the
remaining diseases, diarrhea and dysentery are the most common.
Tuberculosis is prevalent and claims many victims. This island has now a
population of one hundred and fifty, and during his residence he has
never seen a physician, although the inhabitants were frequently in need
of medical services. He was obliged to render his wife assistance at the
birth of all of his children, and strangely, each time without any
mishap, either to mother or child. What happened on that island must
have happened on the many other distant islands under similar
circumstances. Here, like elsewhere, in the South Sea Islands, are
medicine-men who attend to tooth-pulling, and, when any cutting is to be
done, a scalpel is made of a piece of glass. In case of sickness they
make use of roots and herbs of their own gathering.
BUSINESS IN TAHITI
The Tahitian is not a business man. What little business is transacted
in the island is done by foreigners. The larger stores in Papeete are
owned and managed by French, Germans and Americans. The smaller stores
in the city, and nearly all small shops in the villages, are in the
hands of Chinamen.
The fertile soil of Tahiti is not made use of to any considerable
extent. The sugar industry has been tried but has been entirely
abandoned, owing to high wages for labor and exorbitant freight rates.
The principal articles of export are copra, cocoanuts, vanilla-beans and
mother-of-pearl shells. Copra (dried meat of cocoanut), brings three
cents a kilo and cocoanuts are sold at a cent apiece. The raising of
vanilla-beans was a paying industry five years ago, when they commanded
a price of seventeen dollars a pound, and were then eagerly sought for
in the market, as they were considered superior in flavor to those of
any other country. The Chinamen have ruined this source of income as
well as the reputation of the product. These shrewd business men control
the local market completely and go from place to place long before
harvest-time, buy the whole crop for the year for cash, and have the
beans picked before they are ripe and mature them artificially. The
result of such dishonest transactions has been that, owing to the poor
quality of the beans thus treated, the price of the article has been
reduced to three or four dollars per pound.
The vanilla-bean grows best in the shady forests, and requires but
little attention except artificial fertilization of the flowers and
picking of the beans. In the West Indies the numerous insects fertilize
the monogamous flowers; in this island, this has to be done largely by
artificial fecundation. Women and children do this work. With a sharp
little stick, the pollen is taken from the anthers and rubbed over the
stigma of the pistil. A child who is active can fertilize fifteen
hundred flowers a day. It is a great pity that this industry has been
cheapened by the avaricious Chinamen, as it is an industry that requires
very little labor and should be remunerative, as the soil and climate
are peculiarly well adapted for the cultivation of this valuable
aromatic.
Most of the fruit which grows in Tahiti is too perishable for
transportation and is consequently very cheap. The largest and most
luscious pineapples can be bought for three cents apiece, oranges
one-fourth of a cent. Alligator pears, the finest fruit grown anywhere,
are sold at the market for two and three cents apiece. At the time of my
visit, eggs were sold at forty cents a dozen. Meat, with the exception
of pork, is imported from New Zealand and the United States. Most of the
native families raise hogs, and this animal is found also in a wild
state in the jungles of the forests.
The wages, for this island, are rather high. An ordinary laborer is paid
seventy-five cents a day, and the women who are willing to work can earn
fifty cents a day. The average Tahitian works only long enough to
procure the necessities of life, and, as these are few, it is difficult
to find men and women for ordinary labor and housework.
The fact that there is no bank in the whole island shows that the amount
of money which circulates among the people is very small. Some
enterprising American attempted to establish a telephone line encircling
the island, but lack of patronage soon paralyzed the undertaking. The
island is a place for a dreamy, easy existence, and not for business.
The communication with the outside world is carried on by two regular
steamer lines, one from San Francisco, the other from Auckland, but both
of these lines are supported by liberal government subsidies to make
them remunerative, as the passenger traffic and the exports and imports
of the island would not suffice to make them independent of government
aid.
OLD TAHITI
What will not length of time be able to change?
CLAUDIANUS.
Tahiti is exceedingly interesting to-day, but how much more so must it
have been to Captain Wallis and his crew, who first set their eyes on
this gem of the Pacific! When the _Dolphin_ came in sight of this
beautiful island that never before had been seen by a white man, we can
readily imagine officers and crew straining their eyes to see first its
rugged outlines, and later the details of the wonderful landscapes.
Under the blue sky and lighted up by the vigorous rays of the tropic
sun, they could see the mountain-peaks clothed in the verdure of a
tropic forest, the little island set like a gem in the ocean, and, as
they beheld these mountains and turned their eyes upward they could also
see
They were canopied by the blue sky, so cloudless, clear, and purely
beautiful that God alone was to be seen in heaven.
BYRON.
As they approached nearer and saw the natural wealth of the island and
its happy inhabitants basking in the sunshine, eating what Nature had
provided for them without care or toil on their part, they must have
come to the unavoidable conclusion that they at last had found a land
where
There was a never-ending spring, and flowers unsown were kissed by the
warm western breeze. Then the unploughed land gave forth corn, and the
ground, year after year, was white with full ears of grain. Rivers of
milk, rivers of nectar ran, and the yellow honey continued to pour
from the ever-green oak.
OVIDIUS.
On landing, having overcome the animosity of the natives and ascertained
the boundless resources of the island, they could not escape the
conviction that they in their wanderings over the limitless sea, had at
last found "a heaven on earth" (Milton).
What wonderful stories those men must have brought to Europe on their
return after the long and hazardous voyage, when they related what they
had seen in Tahiti, then in its primitive native state! Captain Cook
made a longer stay in the island on his first visit and had therefore a
better opportunity to study the island, its resources and its
interesting inhabitants. It is on his descriptions we will rely in
giving an account of some of the traits, customs and habits of the
people as they existed at that time.
RELIGION OF THE NATIVES
Every one is, in a small degree, the image of God.
MANLIUS.
The most primitive of all races have some conception of a divinity and a
life hereafter, for
A god has his abode within our breast; when he rouses us, the glow of
inspiration warms us; this holy rapture springs from the seeds of the
divine mind sown in man.
OVIDIUS.
Let us listen to Captain Cook concerning the religion of the Tahitians
before they knew the name of God and the story of the Saviour while on
earth:
The common people have only a very vague idea of the religious
sentiments of the race, but the priests, who are quite numerous, have
established quite an extensive and somewhat complicated system. They
do not worship one God, as possessing preeminence; but believe in a
plurality of divinities, who are all supposed to be very powerful,
and, as different parts of the island, and the other islands in the
neighborhood, have different ones, the inhabitants of such, no doubt,
think that they have chosen the most potent and considerate one. Their
devotion in serving their gods is remarkably conspicuous. Not only the
whattas or offering-places of the morals are commonly loaded with
fruits and animals, but there are few houses lacking a small place of
the same sort. Many of them are so impressed with their obligations to
their divinity that they will not begin a meal without first laying
aside a morsel for their Eatooa (their god).
Their prayers are also very frequent, which they chant, much after the
manner of songs, in their festive entertainments. They also believe in
an evil spirit, they call Etee, who sometimes does them mischief, and
to whom, as well as to their god, they make offerings.
But the mischiefs they fear from any superior invisible beings are
confined only to temporal things. They believe the soul to be both
immaterial and immortal. They say that it keeps fluttering about the
lips during the pangs of death, and that then it ascends and mixes
with, or, as they express it, is eaten by the deity. In this state it
remains for some time; after which it departs to a certain place
destined for the reception of the souls of men, where it exists in
eternal night, or, as they sometimes say, in twilight or dawn. They
have no idea of any permanent punishment after death for crimes that
they have committed on earth. They believe in the recognition of
relatives and friends after death and in resuming the same relations
as on earth. If the husband dies first, the soul of his wife is known
to him on its arrival in the land of spirits. They resume their former
acquaintance, in a spacious house, where the souls of the deceased
assemble to recreate themselves with the gods. From here man and wife
retire to their own habitation, where they remain forever.
The most singular part of their faith consists in claiming that not
only man, but all other animals, trees, fruit and even stones are
endowed with a soul, which at death, or upon being consumed or broken,
ascends to the divinity, with whom they first mix, and afterward pass
into the mansion allotted to each.
The temples of the Tahitians were the maraes, enclosures of stones,
where the offerings were rendered, and on certain occasions human beings
were sacrificed. The largest marae ever built in Tahiti is located at
Papara and the ruins of it remain to-day. At the time of Captain Cook's
visit there were numerous maraes all over the island, which served as
places of worship, sacrifice and burial. The supreme chief of the whole
island was always housed in a marae and after his death the marae was
appropriated to his family and some of the principal people. Such a
marae differed little from the common ones, except in extent. Its
principal part is a large, oblong pile of stones, lying loosely upon
each other, about twelve or fourteen feet high, contracted towards the
top, with a square area on each side, loosely packed with pebble stones,
under which the bones of the chiefs are buried. At a little distance
from the end nearest the sea is the place where the sacrifices are
offered, which, for a considerable extent, is also loosely paved. There
is here a very large scaffold, or whatta, on which the offerings, and
other vegetables, are laid. But the animals are deposited on a smaller
one, already mentioned, and the human sacrifices are buried under
different parts of the pavement. The marae is the altar of other
nations. The skulls of the human sacrifices, after a few months, are
exhumed and preserved in the marae.
Captain Cook counted forty-nine such skulls in the marae in which he
witnessed the human sacrifice.
Cannibalism did not exist in Tahiti when the island was discovered, but
human sacrifices were quite frequently offered as a kind of religious
ceremony to appease the anger or displeasure of some offended god. The
victims were tramps and persons of no vocation. They were either clubbed
or stoned to death by persons designated for this purpose by the
priests. On Saturday, August 30, 1777, while Captain Cook was stationed
at Matavai for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus, he
received a message that on the following day a human sacrifice would be
made at Attahura, to Eatooa, to implore the assistance of the deity
against the inhabitants of the island of Moorea, who were then in a
state of war with Tahiti. Towha, a chief and relative of the then
reigning king, had killed a man for the sacrifice. Captain Cook, with
several friends, accompanied King Otoo to witness the ceremony, and
describes the event in detail:
On our way we landed upon a little island, which lies off Tettaha,
where we found Towha and his retinue. After some little conversation
between the two chiefs, on the subject of the war, Towha addressed
himself to me, asking my assistance. When I excused myself, he seemed
angry; thinking it strange I, who had always declared myself to be the
friend of their island, should not go and fight against its enemies.
Before we parted he gave to Otoo two or three red feathers, tied up in
a tuft; and a lean, half-starved dog was put in a canoe that was to
accompany us. We then embarked again, taking on board a priest who was
to assist at the solemnity. As soon as we landed at Attahura, which
was about two o'clock in the afternoon, Otoo expressed his desire that
the seamen might be ordered to remain in the boat, and that Mr.
Anderson, Mr. Webber and myself might take off our hats as soon as we
should come to the marai, to which we immediately proceeded, attended
by a great many men, and some boys, but not one woman. We found four
priests and their attendants, or assistants, waiting for us.