The following sad story is correct in its details; it occurred within
the writer's ken, and may serve to illustrate how English civilisation
and laws affect the Fijian mind and mode of thought. About four years
ago Ravuso Ioni was the principal chief of Waia, one of a group of
islands the most westerly in Fiji, called the Yasawas. About that time
the parvenu Fijian government had just been formed; and we planters and
natives were blessed with a travesty of English laws and institutions
down in the Yasawas: one of our planters was made a warden, a
court-house was established, and a posse of native police sent down.
It need hardly be said that these proceedings were a mystery to the
natives; and even close to Levuka, the more enlightened of them could
at first hardly be brought to understand the idea of any government.
At all events, Ravuso troubled himself very little about the new
_nata-ni-tu_, as the government was called by the natives, but carried
on in the old Fijian style of his fathers. Now there was a young man
in Waia who made love to all the young girls; and not content with
that, he also paid his attentions to the married women. The Fijians
are a jealous lot; and by-and-by a mob of angry husbands complained
of this young fellow to their chief Ravuso, who, with the advice of
the old men in full council, decided that this gay lover was to be
buturaka-ed, or turkey tramped as we whites call it. This buturaka-ing
is an institution peculiar to Fiji. The unfortunate is knocked down;
and the natives dance and jump on him until he is insensible and nearly
dead. A man seldom recovers thoroughly from a good, or rather a bad,
buturaka-ing.
Some, doubtless, of the jealous husbands or their friends were among
the party that buturaka-ed the gay deceiver, because they carried out
their orders so well that in three weeks after the young fellow died
from the effects.
In the old times, most of us whites and natives would have said: 'Serve
him right,' and the matter would have ended. But now there was law
in the land; our warden was just appointed, and, new-broomish-like,
ordered the arrest of Ravuso. After some trouble, he was coaxed to
surrender, and was confined at Somo-Somo, awaiting trial. Nothing so
puzzles a Fijian as the slow procedure of our English law; and poor
Ravuso pined in prison. So one day he asked his _Ban_ (jailers) to be
allowed a walk: they accompanied him; and all sat down under a large
ivi tree. After a time the chief proposed to get some ivis, and climbed
the tree for the purpose. When he got to the top, he called out to his
astonished guards that he was going to throw himself down headlong.
'Tell your white judge,' said he, 'that I am a chief and the son of a
chief; that I can't survive the disgrace of being imprisoned like a
felon; that the punishment given to the man of mine was just--he was a
bad man; that I am a chief, and had a right to punish him vaka-viti'
(after the manner of Fiji). So saying, he threw himself down, broke his
back, and died shortly afterwards.
In a day or two the news of the chief's death reached Waia, and a wail
went up from each little village embowered in its cocoa-nut grove, for
the death of their 'Turaga,' as they call their chiefs. His wife, Lau
Wai (to strike water as in fishing), and young daughter (fifteen years
only) made up their minds that their chief should not go unaccompanied
to Hades, but have some one to cook and look after him there. So one
night they tied a rope between two trees, twisted it round their necks,
and so strangled themselves after the old Fijian fashion. These people
had been Christians ten years, but evidently believed in their old
traditions still. Our warden was not a bad fellow, and I believe the
unfortunate result of his first attempt at enforcing English law among
the natives caused him many a pang.
And now the sad tale of the death of this unfortunate Waia chief and
his family is told in many a Fijian hamlet, in the cool evenings, as
the sun goes down under the shade of the lofty ivis and cocoa-nut
trees; and the women and children hear with a thrill of the power of
that mysterious mata-ni-tu whose action hurled a Fijian chief from his
high estate, and sent him and his devoted wife and daughter prematurely
before the face of their Maker.
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