A NATIVE ENTERTAINMENT
It was not in accordance with Niuéan custom that visitors should
go away empty-handed. At three o'clock one sunny afternoon we were
summoned to an entertainment on the square of grass before the
Mission-house. Sitting with our backs to the gate, we faced a grassy
stage, built, as it were, of palm trees--their stems for wings, their
feathery, glistening fronds for flies, and for background the blue
Pacific clear to the horizon, save for the _Porpoise_ lying at anchor
below.
First there came a band of shy girls with garlands twined in their
black tresses and presents in their hands, shepherded by a few armed
warriors (in coat and trousers, be it confessed) and three or four aged
women capering grotesquely. Sitting down in two double rows facing one
another, they began to chant pæans in our honour to the cadence of an
English drum. Mr. Lawes, sitting at my elbow, translated as they sang.
It must be confessed that both in voice and melody they fell far behind
the Samoans and the Tongans, but a people who in a single night can
compose and teach to a chorus of fifty persons words and music, with
the accompanying gestures, is not lightly to be called unmusical. One
of the songs described the hoisting of the flag; the girls imitated the
action of hauling on a rope and the salute fired from the ship as they
sang "_Fusi! Fusi!_" ("Pull up! Pull up!"). Viewed in a body like this,
the women were not prepossessing. Their straight, greasy-looking black
hair, fat cheeks, ill-shaped features, and clumsy figures wanted more
than a good-natured expression and bright smiles to redeem them from
ugliness. The songs were led by the composer, a daughter of the late
king and sister to the young gentleman who had acted as our pilot, an
enormously fat girl, with a smile that seemed to lose itself behind her
ears. After the singing had been protracted into the second half-hour
the old gentleman of the nautical uniform, whom we had nicknamed "the
Admiral," broke in upon the stage to expostulate. It appeared that he
too had a band of singers behind the scenes, and that the first choir
was cheating him of his fair share of our attention. He had now
discarded his ancient beaver for a homemade cocked hat, hastily
constructed in imitation of mine. At his remonstrance the first choir
good-naturedly yielded him place, which meant that every member of
the troupe came up to us in turn, presenting us with some trinket
with the left hand and shaking hands with the right. The pile of
presents between our feet rose higher and higher, and the garlands
wreathed our knees until we looked too Bacchanalian for the gravity of
the crowd of blue-jackets who were looking on. There were fans and
shells and coloured pebbles, and crab shells with scarlet spots upon
them, and tail feathers of the frigate bird, and live chickens bound
fast by the leg, and necklaces of little yellow shells, which, as we
afterwards found, are highly prized in Tonga.
[Illustration: THE KING AND QUEEN TAKE THEIR SEATS
The man on the right is armed with both spear and paddle-club
To face page 118
]
The Admiral's troupe now advanced upon the stage, and we were again
reminded that dignity is little accounted of in Niué. At its head
capered the Admiral and three old ladies, and warriors with spears in
poise danced awkwardly in the rear. While the song was in progress
the Admiral's sister, a dame as old as himself, danced before us in a
flame-coloured nightgown. No stately measure was this, but a vulgar
caper of the Moulin Rouge that recked not of singers or of drum-beat.
With her fists clenched on a level with her ears, this weird old
person pranced solemnly in the background until she wore down the
other dancers and was left to caper by herself. When flesh and blood
would bear no more, she sat down panting beside us. Blown though she
was, she had no intention of yielding the _crachoir_ to the legitimate
performers, for now she called for a wooden drum, upon which she beat
vigorously for a few minutes quite out of time to the music. Then,
flinging it aside, she whipped a nose-flute from the bosom of her
nightgown, and blew soft notes upon it with one nostril, watching us
the while out of the corner of her eye, lest our attention should
stray from her. Whatever further tricks she had to show us were cut
short by the close of the singing and the consequent handshaking, in
which she gravely took her part, presenting me with her nose-flute.
Her buffoonery did not provoke a smile from the other performers until
they noticed our amusement, when some of the girls smiled indulgently
upon her. It is possible that she was touched in the head, though Mr.
Lawes had always known her as a staid matron and a regular attendant at
church. We were told that this dance of old women, which is practised,
so far as I know, in no other part of Polynesia, and which Mr. Lawes
had never seen, was a revival of an ancient custom.
The warriors now engaged in mimic duel. A short man brandishing a
paddle-club with both hands challenged another armed with a spear.
Contorting his features into the most horrible grimaces, the club man
rushed upon his antagonist, and appeared to be on the point of cracking
his skull, when he seemed to take alarm at the spear and retired step
by step before the other's onset. Thus by alternate rushes the fight
swayed to and fro, until both the duellists were out of breath and gave
place to others. The feints were so cleverly done that more than once I
feared for a moment that they had lost their heads in the excitement,
and that one or the other would receive a dangerous wound. What they
must have looked in war paint, with tangled locks over their eyes and
matted beards chewed between their teeth, it was easy to imagine, and I
think that the success of the performance, which was so popular that we
had to interfere when we had had enough of it, was due to the fact that
it was not play-acting at all, but actual warfare as it was waged in
the old days; for, as I shall presently explain, there is good reason
to believe that hand-to-hand fighting was seldom more than a series
of feints persisted in until the weaker vessel ran away, leaving his
antagonist master of the field.
When the dancers had withdrawn a man rose from the ring of spectators
and began an oration of welcome. He was the headman of Avatele, and it
soon became evident that the headmen of each of the eleven villages
intended to deliver themselves of the oratory of which I had defrauded
them when the Treaty was signed. Mr. Lawes achieved the difficult
feat of interpreting in a rapid undertone without interrupting the
speakers, whose fluency and declamation would shame the average
public speaker in England. The fact is that you will scarcely find in
the Pacific a native who cannot make a fair speech in public on any
subject at a moment's notice. There is none of the hesitation, the
tiresome reiteration, the halting delivery, and the dependence upon
the rhetorical conjunction "er-er-er" when the reservoir of thought
runs dry, that distinguish the efforts of the male Briton who is called
suddenly to his feet. (I say _male_ Briton because I have been given
to understand that the oratory of platform ladies, having none of
these defects, is a pure delight to listen to.) The Polynesian is never
at a loss for a word, for a phrase, or for an illustration. He owes,
perhaps, something to his language, for I am not the only Englishman
who finds it easier to make a speech in a Polynesian language than in
English.
Niué, lying east of the 180th degree of longitude, keeps western
time, and our Sunday was the natives' Saturday. Captain Ravenhill, in
compliance with my hint that the natives should have none but pleasant
recollections of our visit, allowed no one to go on shore who was
below the rank of petty officer. I do not think that, if he had, the
result would have been different, for after six weeks' stay in Tonga,
where every man on board was allowed the usual shore leave, the king
assured me that the _Porpoise's_ was the best-behaved ship's company
that had ever visited his kingdom. But the British petty officers are
a class apart, and if I were set the task of winning the confidence
of suspicious and hostile natives, I should ask for an escort of the
first naval petty officers that came to hand and consider the work
done. On returning from a walk late in the afternoon we heard sounds
of merrymaking in the village square, and found the whole population
sitting convulsed with laughter at an entertainment provided by their
visitors. It appeared that the shore party, returning to their boat,
had discovered a band of urchins playing catch with oranges, and seized
upon the opportunity for teaching the new British subjects the British
national game. With sticks for wickets and cocoanut butts for bats,
they soon had the game going, and when we came up a boy of eight was
bowling to a bearded engine-room artificer, who was going through the
antics of clown-cricket to the huge delight of the onlookers. The
little boys positively wept when the boat came to carry away their
new-found friends.
As no one has yet done justice to the enormous political influence
wielded by English blue-jackets in these seas, I will here set down an
unwritten chapter of history, related to me by the King of Tonga, in
His Majesty's own words:--
"I think that it is because the English joke with us Tongans that
they are our friends. Now, when the _Taulanga_ (H.M.S. _Tauranga_)
was here, there was a marine who used to carry the letters to the
post-office. He could not speak our language, yet he spent much time
with my guard-boys in the guard-room at the end of the wharf, and was
beloved of them. One day another man-of-war was signalled. She was the
flagship of the French admiral, and we all watched through telescopes,
wondering whether the two ships would salute one another, and whether
the French admiral would first call upon the English captain, or the
English captain would first call upon the admiral, for we thought that
the first to call would acknowledge himself to be the inferior of the
other. And while we watched, a boat put off from the _Taulanga_ to
carry the captain to the French ship; therefore some said, 'See, the
Englishman admits his inferiority.' But they did not speak thus on
the next day. It was a Sunday, and the French sailors, to the number
of about eighty, landed in boats, and marched to the Roman Catholic
church at Maofanga to attend the service. The English marine was in
the guard-room when they passed, and the Tongan guard-boys jested with
him, saying how fine the Frenchmen looked and how terrible they must be
in battle, at which the marine spat upon the ground, but said nothing,
and presently he went away to walk in the town. About noon the sentry
called the guard to the door, saying, 'Here come the Frenchmen!' and
while they watched them marching proudly in lines of four, they saw
also their friend, the English marine, coming down a cross-road from
the town, so that he must encounter the Frenchmen at the place where
the two roads met, though as yet he saw them not because of the trees.
'Now,' they said, 'we shall see an Englishman abashed, for our friend
loves not the French, and when he comes upon these suddenly, he will
turn and slink back into the town as white clergymen of rival churches
are used to do when they encounter one another in the street.' But they
were false prophets, for as soon as their friend saw the Frenchmen he
threw back his head proudly and stepped high, behaving like a general
about to lead his troops into battle. So waited he at the cross-road,
and when they had come up to him he put himself at their head, and
marched so bravely in his red coat, that the Tongans cried out, 'Lo,
a king is approaching us with his bodyguard! It behoves us to salute
him with all humility!' The face of the French officer was not good to
look upon, for when he called upon his men to stamp the ground and let
the marine go on, he also stamped the ground, and when they pressed
forward to pass him he quickened his steps and kept with them, as if
he was indeed their leader. Nor was it better when they passed the
guard-room, and saw even the Tongan sentry dissolved in laughter, for
the marine behaved as if he was too exalted to know his friends, save
for a secret sign that he made to them with one eyelid. So they went on
together to the boat. The rumour of this thing was carried throughout
Tonga, and the people thought more of this marine than of the French
admiral and all his men."
When I read the narratives of Captain Cook and John Williams, the
missionary, I believed the Niuéans to be the most ferocious warriors
that the world has ever seen. Now I have my doubts. The sham duel
performed in our honour at Alofi was no doubt a very terrifying
performance, and to witness, as Williams did, an old gentleman of sixty
in a state of nature, smeared with charcoal, with a long grey beard
plaited into rats'-tails, poising and quivering his spear, distorting
his features most horribly by distending his mouth, gnashing his teeth,
and forcing his eyeballs almost out of their sockets, "thrusting his
long grey beard into his mouth, and gnawing it with the most savage
vengeance," and maintaining throughout the performance a loud and
hideous howl, must have made a lasting impression. And King Tongia,
it is true, could talk of little less than the warlike exploits of
himself and his fathers. But one of His Majesty's anecdotes has left
me to wonder whether Niuéan warfare often overstepped the limits of
beard-chewing. He was relating how an ancestor of his, the greatest
warrior the world has known, met the second greatest warrior in single
combat. The battle-light glowed in Tongia's left eye as he described
the weapons, the strength, the courage, and the ferocious aspect of
the warriors. At his recital the stoutest heart must have quailed.
But noticing that the battlefield of this historic duel was no larger
than the dining-room of a suburban villa, and knowing that only one
of them could have come alive from a combat in so confined a space,
Mr. Lawes inquired which of them was killed. "Oh, neither!" said the
king, and passed lightly to other battle stories. I believe that in
Niué the battle was not to the strong, but to the ugly. Your object in
battle was not so much to crack your opponent's skull as to frighten
him off the field, and if your grimaces and howls failed to make him
run, you knew that he meant business, and you ran away yourself. If
you could make up well, you became a _toa_ (brave), and the ball was
at your feet, for the _toa_ ruled their rulers, made and unmade kings,
and lived on the fat of the land. We have no photographs of the famous
men of old, but I suspect that they were blessed from birth with a
natural uncomeliness which they fostered with art, by plaiting their
beards into rats'-tails, and by assiduous practice of the battle-howl.
That a whole people should devote itself to the cult of ugliness is,
I think, uncommon even among the most primitive races. Nearly every
warlike people do something to "make-up" for the part of a warrior,
but their object is to strike fear into their enemies by an effect
of noble and awful dignity. The Samoans don a lofty headdress; the
Fijians disguise themselves with black and white paint; the people of
New Britain wear masks. The Aztecs and the Mallicolo Islanders, it is
true, compress their skulls to a point, and the Maories disfigure their
faces with tattooing, but only because what we regard as disfigurements
minister to their ideas of beauty. With the sole exception of the
Niuéans the Polynesian races never forget their dignity so far as to
make themselves either ludicrous or grotesque. In the whole island of
Niué I saw but one man with a trace of dignity about him, and he was
a Samoan teacher. As for the rest, from the grey-bearded elder to the
smallest child, they all behaved like schoolboys. Some alien strain in
the blood has debased a race of Polynesian aristocrats into Melanesian
republicans.
The loss of life from warfare can never have been great. I imagine that
in place of desperate assaults upon fortified strongholds, as in Tonga
and New Zealand, the Niuéan warrior contented himself with cutting off
defenceless stragglers and slaying individuals by ambush. Naturally
timorous, the Niuéans did not even dare to execute their criminals
honestly.
Their arms did not lend themselves to precision. The paddle-club was
almost as ineffective a weapon as an oar, for, being flimsy and light,
the blade caught the air, and the force of the stroke was diminished.
The spear was a mere stick sharpened at one end, and, as we have
seen, the warrior who launched one at Cook at five yards range failed
to hit him. If the slings and the hand-grenades fashioned from the
cave-stalactites, rounded and polished, had been accurate in aim,
scarce a man of Cook's party would have escaped. But the club and the
spear were excellent weapons for brandishing, and scaring the enemy
was all that the Niuéan warrior aimed at. The Fijians, who are often
quoted as types of ferocity, expended their heroism in the preliminary
_mbole_, or "boasting," before they encountered the enemy. Striking the
earth with his club before his chief, one cries, "I cause the earth
to tremble; it is I who meet the enemy to-morrow!" Another, swinging
his club, shouts, "This club is a defence, a shade from the heat of
the sun and the cold of the rain; you may come under it!" But in the
face of an enemy who will not run away the performance fell short of
the promise, and the frontal attack was unknown unless a contingent
of Tongans happened to be of the party. I have never myself witnessed
a fight between two war parties of natives armed with nothing but
their own weapons, but a European, the late Mr. English, who saw one
in Cloudy Bay, British New Guinea, thus described it to me. One party
having been pursued on to the open beach made a stand, whereupon the
pursuers halted, uncertain what to do. The pursued, taking heart,
shouted their battle-cry and made a move towards them; the others ran
back for fifty yards or so, and rallied in their turn. This bloodless
see-saw having continued for three or four rounds, accompanied by much
abusive language, the battle ended by the invaders taking to flight.
Never once did either side get within spear-throw of the other, though
spears enough flew harmlessly into the sand.
This dislike of hard knocks is a provision of Nature for perpetuating
island races. Were it otherwise, how could an island thirteen miles by
four continue to be populated? With pigs, women, and land to quarrel
about, a race of warriors cooped up within such narrow limits would be
reduced to a single survivor in less than a century.