The history of the Marquesas is, of late years, much confused by the
coming and going of the French. At least twice they have seized the
archipelago, at least once deserted it; and in the meanwhile the natives
pursued almost without interruption their desultory cannibal wars.
Through these events and changing dynasties, a single considerable figure
may be seen to move: that of the high chief, a king, Temoana. Odds and
ends of his history came to my ears: how he was at first a convert to the
Protestant mission; how he was kidnapped or exiled from his native land,
served as cook aboard a whaler, and was shown, for small charge, in
English seaports; how he returned at last to the Marquesas, fell under
the strong and benign influence of the late bishop, extended his
influence in the group, was for a while joint ruler with the prelate, and
died at last the chief supporter of Catholicism and the French. His
widow remains in receipt of two pounds a month from the French
Government. Queen she is usually called, but in the official almanac she
figures as ‘_Madame Vaekehu_, _Grande Chefesse_.’ His son (natural or
adoptive, I know not which), Stanislao Moanatini, chief of Akaui, serves
in Tai-o-hae as a kind of Minister of Public Works; and the daughter of
Stanislao is High Chiefess of the southern island of Tauata. These,
then, are the greatest folk of the archipelago; we thought them also the
most estimable. This is the rule in Polynesia, with few exceptions; the
higher the family, the better the man—better in sense, better in manners,
and usually taller and stronger in body. A stranger advances blindfold.
He scrapes acquaintance as he can. Save the tattoo in the Marquesas,
nothing indicates the difference of rank; and yet almost invariably we
found, after we had made them, that our friends were persons of station.
I have said ‘usually taller and stronger.’ I might have been more
absolute,—over all Polynesia, and a part of Micronesia, the rule holds
good; the great ones of the isle, and even of the village, are greater of
bone and muscle, and often heavier of flesh, than any commoner. The
usual explanation—that the high-born child is more industriously
shampooed, is probably the true one. In New Caledonia, at least, where
the difference does not exist, has never been remarked, the practice of
shampooing seems to be itself unknown. Doctors would be well employed in
a study of the point.
Vaekehu lives at the other end of the town from the Residency, beyond the
buildings of the mission. Her house is on the European plan: a table in
the midst of the chief room; photographs and religious pictures on the
wall. It commands to either hand a charming vista: through the front
door, a peep of green lawn, scurrying pigs, the pendent fans of the
coco-palm and splendour of the bursting surf: through the back, mounting
forest glades and coronals of precipice. Here, in the strong
thorough-draught, Her Majesty received us in a simple gown of print, and
with no mark of royalty but the exquisite finish of her tattooed mittens,
the elaboration of her manners, and the gentle falsetto in which all the
highly refined among Marquesan ladies (and Vaekehu above all others)
delight to sing their language. An adopted daughter interpreted, while
we gave the news, and rehearsed by name our friends of Anaho. As we
talked, we could see, through the landward door, another lady of the
household at her toilet under the green trees; who presently, when her
hair was arranged, and her hat wreathed with flowers, appeared upon the
back verandah with gracious salutations.
Vaekehu is very deaf; ‘_merci_’ is her only word of French; and I do not
know that she seemed clever. An exquisite, kind refinement, with a shade
of quietism, gathered perhaps from the nuns, was what chiefly struck us.
Or rather, upon that first occasion, we were conscious of a sense as of
district-visiting on our part, and reduced evangelical gentility on the
part of our hostess. The other impression followed after she was more at
ease, and came with Stanislao and his little girl to dine on board the
_Casco_. She had dressed for the occasion: wore white, which very well
became her strong brown face; and sat among us, eating or smoking her
cigarette, quite cut off from all society, or only now and then included
through the intermediary of her son. It was a position that might have
been ridiculous, and she made it ornamental; making believe to hear and
to be entertained; her face, whenever she met our eyes, lighting with the
smile of good society; her contributions to the talk, when she made any,
and that was seldom, always complimentary and pleasing. No attention was
paid to the child, for instance, but what she remarked and thanked us
for. Her parting with each, when she came to leave, was gracious and
pretty, as had been every step of her behaviour. When Mrs. Stevenson
held out her hand to say good-bye, Vaekehu took it, held it, and a moment
smiled upon her; dropped it, and then, as upon a kindly after-thought,
and with a sort of warmth of condescension, held out both hands and
kissed my wife upon both cheeks. Given the same relation of years and of
rank, the thing would have been so done on the boards of the _Comédie
Française_; just so might Madame Brohan have warmed and condescended to
Madame Broisat in the _Marquis de Villemer_. It was my part to accompany
our guests ashore: when I kissed the little girl good-bye at the pier
steps, Vaekehu gave a cry of gratification, reached down her hand into
the boat, took mine, and pressed it with that flattering softness which
seems the coquetry of the old lady in every quarter of the earth. The
next moment she had taken Stanislao’s arm, and they moved off along the
pier in the moonlight, leaving me bewildered. This was a queen of
cannibals; she was tattooed from hand to foot, and perhaps the greatest
masterpiece of that art now extant, so that a while ago, before she was
grown prim, her leg was one of the sights of Tai-o-hae; she had been
passed from chief to chief; she had been fought for and taken in war;
perhaps, being so great a lady, she had sat on the high place, and
throned it there, alone of her sex, while the drums were going twenty
strong and the priests carried up the blood-stained baskets of long-pig.
And now behold her, out of that past of violence and sickening feasts,
step forth, in her age, a quiet, smooth, elaborate old lady, such as you
might find at home (mittened also, but not often so well-mannered) in a
score of country houses. Only Vaekehu’s mittens were of dye, not of
silk; and they had been paid for, not in money, but the cooked flesh of
men. It came in my mind with a clap, what she could think of it herself,
and whether at heart, perhaps, she might not regret and aspire after the
barbarous and stirring past. But when I asked Stanislao—‘Ah!’ said he,
‘she is content; she is religious, she passes all her days with the
sisters.’
Stanislao (Stanislaos, with the final consonant evaded after the
Polynesian habit) was sent by Bishop Dordillon to South America, and
there educated by the fathers. His French is fluent, his talk sensible
and spirited, and in his capacity of ganger-in-chief, he is of excellent
service to the French. With the prestige of his name and family, and
with the stick when needful, he keeps the natives working and the roads
passable. Without Stanislao and the convicts, I am in doubt what would
become of the present regimen in Nuka-hiva; whether the highways might
not be suffered to close up, the pier to wash away, and the Residency to
fall piecemeal about the ears of impotent officials. And yet though the
hereditary favourer, and one of the chief props of French authority, he
has always an eye upon the past. He showed me where the old public place
had stood, still to be traced by random piles of stone; told me how great
and fine it was, and surrounded on all sides by populous houses, whence,
at the beating of the drums, the folk crowded to make holiday. The
drum-beat of the Polynesian has a strange and gloomy stimulation for the
nerves of all. White persons feel it—at these precipitate sounds their
hearts beat faster; and, according to old residents, its effect on the
natives was extreme. Bishop Dordillon might entreat; Temoana himself
command and threaten; at the note of the drum wild instincts triumphed.
And now it might beat upon these ruins, and who should assemble? The
houses are down, the people dead, their lineage extinct; and the
sweepings and fugitives of distant bays and islands encamp upon their
graves. The decline of the dance Stanislao especially laments. ‘_Chaque
pays a ses coutumes_,’ said he; but in the report of any gendarme,
perhaps corruptly eager to increase the number of _délits_ and the
instruments of his own power, custom after custom is placed on the
expurgatorial index. ‘_Tenez_, _une danse qui n’est pas permise_,’ said
Stanislao: ‘_je ne sais pas pourquoi_, _elle est très jolie_, _elle va
comme ça_,’ and sticking his umbrella upright in the road, he sketched
the steps and gestures. All his criticisms of the present, all his
regrets for the past, struck me as temperate and sensible. The short
term of office of the Resident he thought the chief defect of the
administration; that officer having scarce begun to be efficient ere he
was recalled. I thought I gathered, too, that he regarded with some fear
the coming change from a naval to a civil governor. I am sure at least
that I regard it so myself; for the civil servants of France have never
appeared to any foreigner as at all the flower of their country, while
her naval officers may challenge competition with the world. In all his
talk, Stanislao was particular to speak of his own country as a land of
savages; and when he stated an opinion of his own, it was with some
apologetic preface, alleging that he was ‘a savage who had travelled.’
There was a deal, in this elaborate modesty, of honest pride. Yet there
was something in the precaution that saddened me; and I could not but
fear he was only forestalling a taunt that he had heard too often.
I recall with interest two interviews with Stanislao. The first was a
certain afternoon of tropic rain, which we passed together in the
verandah of the club; talking at times with heightened voices as the
showers redoubled overhead, passing at times into the billiard-room, to
consult, in the dim, cloudy daylight, that map of the world which forms
its chief adornment. He was naturally ignorant of English history, so
that I had much of news to communicate. The story of Gordon I told him
in full, and many episodes of the Indian Mutiny, Lucknow, the second
battle of Cawn-pore, the relief of Arrah, the death of poor
Spottis-woode, and Sir Hugh Rose’s hotspur, midland campaign. He was
intent to hear; his brown face, strongly marked with small-pox, kindled
and changed with each vicissitude. His eyes glowed with the reflected
light of battle; his questions were many and intelligent, and it was
chiefly these that sent us so often to the map. But it is of our parting
that I keep the strongest sense. We were to sail on the morrow, and the
night had fallen, dark, gusty, and rainy, when we stumbled up the hill to
bid farewell to Stanislao. He had already loaded us with gifts; but more
were waiting. We sat about the table over cigars and green cocoa-nuts;
claps of wind blew through the house and extinguished the lamp, which was
always instantly relighted with a single match; and these recurrent
intervals of darkness were felt as a relief. For there was something
painful and embarrassing in the kindness of that separation. ‘_Ah_,
_vous devriez rester ici_, _mon cher ami_!’ cried Stanislao. ‘_Vous êtes
les gens qu’il faut pour les Kanaques_; _vous êtes doux_, _vous et votre
famille_; _vous seriez obéis dans toutes les îles_.’ We had been civil;
not always that, my conscience told me, and never anything beyond; and
all this to-do is a measure, not of our considerateness, but of the want
of it in others. The rest of the evening, on to Vaekehu’s and back as
far as to the pier, Stanislao walked with my arm and sheltered me with
his umbrella; and after the boat had put off, we could still distinguish,
in the murky darkness, his gestures of farewell. His words, if there
were any, were drowned by the rain and the loud surf.
I have mentioned presents, a vexed question in the South Seas; and one
which well illustrates the common, ignorant habit of regarding races in a
lump. In many quarters the Polynesian gives only to receive. I have
visited islands where the population mobbed me for all the world like
dogs after the waggon of cat’s-meat; and where the frequent proposition,
‘You my pleni (friend),’ or (with more of pathos) ‘You all ’e same my
father,’ must be received with hearty laughter and a shout. And perhaps
everywhere, among the greedy and rapacious, a gift is regarded as a sprat
to catch a whale. It is the habit to give gifts and to receive returns,
and such characters, complying with the custom, will look to it nearly
that they do not lose. But for persons of a different stamp the
statement must be reversed. The shabby Polynesian is anxious till he has
received the return gift; the generous is uneasy until he has made it.
The first is disappointed if you have not given more than he; the second
is miserable if he thinks he has given less than you. This is my
experience; if it clash with that of others, I pity their fortune, and
praise mine: the circumstances cannot change what I have seen, nor lessen
what I have received. And indeed I find that those who oppose me often
argue from a ground of singular presumptions; comparing Polynesians with
an ideal person, compact of generosity and gratitude, whom I never had
the pleasure of encountering; and forgetting that what is almost poverty
to us is wealth almost unthinkable to them. I will give one instance: I
chanced to speak with consideration of these gifts of Stanislao’s with a
certain clever man, a great hater and contemner of Kanakas. ‘Well! what
were they?’ he cried. ‘A pack of old men’s beards. Trash!’ And the
same gentleman, some half an hour later, being upon a different train of
thought, dwelt at length on the esteem in which the Marquesans held that
sort of property, how they preferred it to all others except land, and
what fancy prices it would fetch. Using his own figures, I computed
that, in this commodity alone, the gifts of Vaekehu and Stanislao
represented between two and three hundred dollars; and the queen’s
official salary is of two hundred and forty in the year.
But generosity on the one hand, and conspicuous meanness on the other,
are in the South Seas, as at home, the exception. It is neither with any
hope of gain, nor with any lively wish to please, that the ordinary
Polynesian chooses and presents his gifts. A plain social duty lies
before him, which he performs correctly, but without the least
enthusiasm. And we shall best understand his attitude of mind, if we
examine our own to the cognate absurdity of marriage presents. There we
give without any special thought of a return; yet if the circumstance
arise, and the return be withheld, we shall judge ourselves insulted. We
give them usually without affection, and almost never with a genuine
desire to please; and our gift is rather a mark of our own status than a
measure of our love to the recipients. So in a great measure and with
the common run of the Polynesians; their gifts are formal; they imply no
more than social recognition; and they are made and reciprocated, as we
pay and return our morning visits. And the practice of marking and
measuring events and sentiments by presents is universal in the island
world. A gift plays with them the part of stamp and seal; and has
entered profoundly into the mind of islanders. Peace and war, marriage,
adoption and naturalisation, are celebrated or declared by the acceptance
or the refusal of gifts; and it is as natural for the islander to bring a
gift as for us to carry a card-case.