EXIT THE NOBLE SAVAGE
1
To the primitive or simple races of the world marriage, divorce, and
supply of only the elemental wants are the most intense problems.
Nourishment and reproduction make up the rounds of life. While the
highly developed nations around the Pacific are concerned with the
exploitation of the resources of the islands, and with political
problems growing out of their reciprocal interests, the natives are
struggling with matters that lie nearer the real foundations of life.
For them the question of survival is an immediate and pressing one.
Extinction is facing many of them, absorption by inflowing races is
creating altogether new difficulties and relationships, such as marriage
and divorce, while newer conceptions of exchange and trade, the buying
and selling of meats and vegetables, are introducing social and moral
factors they could not as yet be expected to understand. Nor can we who
have thrust ourselves upon them or accepted responsibility for their
well-being understand our obligations unless we think of them as human
beings, or without visualizing their problems by human examples. Nor can
we escape these responsibilities or shirk them. Out of the stuff their
lives are made of grow the larger problems, those of the relationship of
the great civilizations that touch each other on the Pacific--Asia,
Australasia, America.
Threnodies and elegies a-plenty have mourned the passing of the
Polynesians of the South Seas. The noble savage whose average height
often measured six feet--plus thick callouses--has stalked among us, as
a mythical figure, maidens unabashed in their naked loveliness have
lured men to the tropics oblivious of home ties. Leisure and unlimited
harems in prospect have afforded many a civilized man salacious joys the
like of which the white race has not altogether abandoned, but which few
have the courage to pursue in the open. The passing of these Pacific
peoples has in some quarters been hailed as an indication of the
viciousness of civilization; their yielding to virtue has been deplored
by others. The sentimentalist has clothed them in romance; the cynic has
stuck horns in their brows. But whether the romancer is wrong or the
missionary devoid of appreciation of nature unadorned, the passing of
the Polynesian is an admitted danger. Whether it was the vice of the
drunken sailor or the clothes of the devout disciple that brought about
this downfall shall not here be determined. It will be mine merely to
depict in living examples the episodes that indicate their evanescence,
and to point to the silent forces of regeneration that are at
work,--forces that, having accomplished the virtual decease of some of
the finest races in the world, and yet are bringing about their rebirth.
One cannot live in the tropics without romancing. The simplicity, the
earnestness of life, devoid of many of the outer signs of avarice so
consonant with the individualism of our civilization; the slovenliness
unhampered by too many clothes,--these take one by a storm of pleasure.
One forgets the natives once were cannibals; or rather, one delights in
saying to oneself "they were," and forgets to thank the missionary and
the trader for having altered these tastes before one arrived; one
exalts every sprawling female into a symbol of naturalness, though
Heaven knows the soft white skins and hidden bosoms of the North come as
welcome reminders in face of native temptations. And with Professor
Brown of New Zealand, one deplores that the selfsame missionaries and
traders "in spite of their antipodal purposes and methods, alike force
the race to decay." Their contract with the white race is demoralizing
even where it aims to be most just and helpful. Their lands, made secure
to them by legislation (as in New Zealand), often become the means of
gratifying wild tastes for motor-cars and fineries which leave them
bankrupt physically and morally.
2
It was a steaming day. I had been up from before dawn in order to make
my pilgrimage to Vailima. Half the morning was not yet gone when I
returned to the little hotel in Apia, situated beside the reefs, to hide
myself away from the burning sun. Even within the shade of the upper
veranda my flesh squirmed beneath my shirt and the shoes upon my feet
became unbearable. So off went my shoes. Nothing merely romantic could
have induced me to crawl from under the shadows. There I was content to
listen to the lapping of the broken waves as they washed shoreward over
the reefs. There I inhaled the scent of tropical vegetation as it
reached me, tempered and sifted to the satisfaction of one who dreads
the sun and its overweening brilliance.
Suddenly a wail lanced the silence. It sounded for all the world like
the melancholy "extra" which New York newsboys cry through the side
streets when they wish to make a fire the concern of the world. I sprang
up and, leaning over the veranda rail, strained my neck in the direction
of the crier, who was still behind the bend in the road which is Apia's
Main Street. It seemed to take him an unconscionable time to come into
view, his voice approaching and receding, and being battologized as
though by a hundred megaphones. Prancing, crouching, and shading his
eyes in the manner of an Amerindian scout, he finally made his
appearance,--a grotesque fiend, one to strike terror to the heart of a
god. His oiled body glistened in the sun; his charcoal-blackened jaw
resembled that of a gorilla; while a scarlet turban of cheese-cloth
wound after the fashion of the Hindu gave flaming finish to this
frightful impersonation of the devil. Nothing but the presence of the
army of occupation and the _Encounter_ out in the harbor could have
allayed my apprehension, not even the vanity of racial superiority or
the oft-repeated prophecies about this vanishing race. For he seemed
savagery come to life.
Presently four others, similar personifications of deviltry, came on
behind him. In addition to make-up, each brandished a long knife used
for cutting sugar-cane, or a clumsy ax. They squatted, they jumped,
whirling their weapons in heavy blows at imagined enemies. Never was
make-believe played with greater conviction, never was the wish father
to the act with more pathetic earnestness. The pitcher of a chosen nine
never hurled his ball across an empty field with greater determination
to win the coming game than did these warless warriors wield their
weapons.
Slowly from the rear came the army, four abreast, in stately procession.
There were seventy-five Samoans, each over six feet tall, men of girth
and bone and pride. Their glistening bodies reflected the sun like a
heaving sea. Their loins were draped in leaves in place of the every-day
sulu, with girdles of pink tissue paper round them. Their faces, too,
were blackened with charcoal, and turbans of red cheese-cloth capped
them. Those of them who could not secure knives or axes, wielded sticks
with threatening realism.
In an instant I was in my shoes again and out upon the road, a bit of
flotsam in the wake of a great pageant.
I fell in with a Samoan policeman, dressed like an English Bobby,
trailing along in the rear. "What's the trouble?" I asked. "Is this a
preliminary uprising?" There was much talk of the Germans stirring the
natives to rebellion against British occupation, but evidently the
natives had had enough of alien squabbles, and it seemed to matter
little to them by which of the white invaders they were ruled. A strange
expression came into the policeman's face, a mixture of awe and
contempt. He could speak only a very scant amount of English, but enough
to unlock this awe-inspiring secret. "Tamasese, the king he dead," he
said. I fumbled about in my memory for coincidences. The policeman was
old enough to have been an understanding boy at the time Stevenson took
up the cause of Mataafa as opposed to the German interests and
antagonistic even to the British and American attitude. It must have
been strange to him, therefore, to find himself a British policeman in a
uniform of blue, with a heavy helmet, timidly following a funeral
procession in honor of the son of a king disfavored of Stevenson,--while
all about were the soldiers of New Zealand. I got nothing from him of
any political significance, but much in the way of the spirit of his
race. For though an officer of "the" law, perhaps the only one of his
kind in Samoa, he dared not go too close to the ranks of these
stalwarts. They had come from every islet of the Samoan group, the pick
of the race, representatives declaring before the whole world: Our race
is not dead; long live our race!
So, all along the way for over a mile into the country behind Apia,
continued the procession. Not for a moment did the antics cease; not for
a moment did the wail of the warriors subside. Every time the advance
scouts called out, "O-o-o-o-s-o-o-o" [The king is dead], the four behind
him thundered their denial, "E sa" [Long live the king], and the entire
regiment droned the confession "O so." For the king was truly no more.
Not only the king but his kingdom. For not only was there now no
struggle of aliens over its precincts, but the second conqueror,
Britain, who once did not think Samoa worthy as spoils, had stepped in
and taken possession.
The procession filled the native population with awe. No one ventured
near. A dog ran across the road and was immediately cut down by the
sugar-cane knife in a warrior's hand. A Chinese, with the contempt of
the fanatic for the fanaticism of others, drove his cart indifferently
into their line. Knives, axes, and other borrowed, stolen, or improvised
weapons found their way into the chariot of the Celestial.
Half-way along, a limping old man whose leg was swollen with
elephantiasis advanced against them. He challenged their approach. They
cut the air with furious blows aimed in his direction. He pretended to
fall, in the manner of a Russian dancer, picked himself up and started
on a wild retreat. The army had routed an enemy.
Here the roadside spread in open land dotted everywhere with native
huts. Presently the army arrived at the king's grounds, where a simple
hut sat back about two hundred feet from the road, with a bit of green
before it. The army broke "rank," and squatted in a double row just at
the side of the road. For a few minutes there was silence.
Then out of the group rose Maii, the leader. Silently he strode the full
width of the space in front of the thirty seated men, leaning lightly
upon the long rough stick in his hand. His giant-like figure was the
personification of dignity; his roughened face the acme of sobriety; he
seemed lost in thought. Facing about, he started to retrace his steps in
front of the seated men, then, as though suddenly recollecting himself,
turned his head in the direction of the king's hut and in a subdued tone
no higher than that in ordinary conversation, addressed the house of
Tamasese, which stood fully half a block away. Quietly, but not without
emotion, he spoke and paused; and every time he paused the leading four
men would shout "O-o-o-s-o-o," and the entire group would answer "O sa."
Convincing and convinced, the leader proceeded with his oration. An
hour later, to the minute, he finished.
At the king's house appeared an old man in a snow-white sulu, leaning
heavily on a stick. I could see his lips moving, but could not hear a
word. He was speaking to the leader, who could not hear any more than I.
They kept up the pretense at conversation for a few minutes and all was
agreed upon. A servant, who had followed the old man with a soft mat in
his hand which to me looked like silk, advanced cautiously toward the
warriors.
Two of them jumped instantly to their feet, brandishing their knife and
ax furiously as though to protect the leader or to drive away evil
spirits, I knew not which. But certain it was the cautious servant
became still more cautious, timidly arriving with his offering and
presenting it to the chief. The manner in which the gift was accepted,
though solemn enough, was full of admonition, much as to say: "Now,
don't you do that again." The mat-bearer's heart seemed relieved of a
great terror, and he started back to the house of the king. On his way
he passed a mango-tree, stopped, looked up as though he had spied an
evil spirit, picked up a mango, stepped back, and dramatically hurled it
at the tree as a boy would who was playing make-believe. At that the
whole army of stalwarts rose and departed to the right.
As soon as they left the grounds, eleven girls, in single file, each
with a mat of the loveliest texture imaginable flung to the breeze, came
out upon the road from the other side of the grounds and followed round
the front to the right after the way of the warriors. And the ceremony
was over.
I had squatted on the ground, close to the warriors. They treated me as
though I were an innocent child who did not know the dangers of evil
things, nor enough to respect my superiors. Not so the natives. Even the
policeman with whom I had arrived had retreated to the protection of a
hut some three hundred feet away from the road. All the people in the
neighborhood--men, women and children--kept within their own huts, their
solemn faces full of awe and respect. Nor did the tension slacken until
the last of the maidens had made her way out of sight.
Thus was the son of the last Samoan king escorted in safety along the
other way,--a way which to the native mind seemed as vivid and real as
heaven and hell were to Dante and Swedenborg.
3
Exit the Noble Savage. "Think," says Bancroft, spokesman of the arrogant
"Blond Beast," "what it would mean to civilization if all these
worthless primitives were to pass away before us." The beginning of this
end was witnessed and told by Stevenson in 1892, but the natives'
version of it has yet to be related. Against those who mourn his loss as
the Hellenist the Greeks, are some of our most practical men.
The Samoans are not vanishing as rapidly as are the Hawaiians and the
Maories, for two very simple reasons: their climate is not so suitable
to the white man as is that of New Zealand and of Hawaii. Nor, like
Fiji, has Samoa been hampered by indentured coolieism, though Chinese do
come. Racially there seems no immediate prospect of Samoa being
submerged, though politically it fell before Hawaii did. Socially,
however, it is going, as are the native features of most of the more
progressive and more assimilable peoples of the Pacific.
Simple naturalness is fast fading even from Samoa. I do not mean to say
that because Samoans are drifting farther and farther from their
primitive customs they are losing their "charm." With progress, one
expects not oddity, but simplicity; not shiftlessness, but a certain
tightening up of the finer fibers of the race. It is satisfying to see
the contrast between the loosely built native hut and that whose pillars
are set in concrete and roofed with durable materials. But it is
disheartening when the change is only from thatch, which needs to be
replaced every so often, to corrugated iron, without any other signs of
durability. In other words, the corrugated iron roof is no proof that
the race is becoming more thrifty, less lazy,--but the reverse. It
indicates that indolence has found an easier way, a more permanent
manner.
My presence at the ceremony in honor of the royal demise gave me an
opportunity to see at once some of the best specimens of Samoan manhood.
It left me with the impression that no race capable of mustering so many
men of such build was on the decline. There was nothing in their manner
to indicate servility or despair. And some day Setu, with his knowledge
of Western civilization gained at first hand, may be the means of
arousing his fellow-Samoans to great things.
4
The process of assimilation and decline is taking place with far more
rapidity in Hawaii. Hawaii crashed like a meteor into America and was
comminuted and absorbed. The finer dust of its primitive civilization is
giving more color to our atmosphere than any other American possession.
But the real Hawaii is rapidly receding into the past. On the beach at
Waikiki there is a thatch-roofed hut, but like most of the Hawaiians
themselves, it bears too obviously the ear-marks of the West, the
imprint of invasion.
What there is left of the Hawaiians still possesses a measure of
strength and calmness. Big, burly, self-satisfied, they wend their way
unashamed of having been conquered. Only a few thousand can now claim
any racial purity. The mixture of Hawaiians with the various peoples
now in occupation of their lands is growing greater every year; those of
pure Hawaiian blood, fewer. And after all, is it any reflection upon any
race that it has been assimilated by its conquerors?
And assimilated to the point of extinction Hawaii has been. It has
become an integral part of a continental nation of whose existence it
had hardly known a hundred years ago. When Captain Cook discovered
Hawaii he estimated its population at 400,000. Fifty years later there
were only 130,000. To-day there may not be more than 30,000. The white
race has had its revenge on these natives for the death of this intrepid
captain. And the last of the great Hawaiian rulers, Queen Liliuokalani,
shorn of her power, passed away on November 11, 1917. She, the
descendant of great warriors and remarkable political leaders, had
turned to the only thing left her--expressing the sentiments of her
people in music.
The submersion is nearly complete. Politically, there isn't a son among
them who would feel any happier for a revival. So little fear is there
of such a hope ever rising even for a moment in the Hawaiian breast that
the key to the former throne-room hangs indifferently on a nail in the
outer office of the present government. I believe that that is the only
throne-room under the American flag. It is a small room, modern and
finished in every detail. On its walls hang paintings of kings and
queens and ministers of state. There is a musty odor about it, which
could easily be removed. All one need do is open the windows and an
inrush of sensuous air would sweeten every corner of it. This would be
doing only what the race is doing with every intake of alien blood.
A broad-shouldered, broad-nosed, broad-faced--and seemingly
broad-hearted--Hawaiian clerk took me into the room. As we wandered
about he told who the worthies were, enframed in gilt and under glass.
Interspersed with some facts was inherited fancy. His enthusiasm rose
appreciably when he recited the deeds of Kamehameha I, their most
renowned king.
"Once he saw an enemy spy approach," said my guide. "He threw his spear
with such force that it penetrated the trunk of the cocoa-palm behind
which the traitor was hiding, and pierced the man's heart." A merry
twinkle lit up the cicerone's eyes. That twinkle was something almost
foreign to the man: it must have been the white blood in him that was
mocking the tales of his native ancestry.
Aside from these few portraits there was nothing in the throne-room
which gave evidence of Hawaii's former prestige. Here that king's
descendants planned to lead his race to glory among nations. And here
they were outwitted. The guide had recounted among the king's exploits
his ability to break the back of his strongest enemy with his naked
hands. Yet the white man came along and broke the Hawaiian back. And
to-day he who wishes to learn the habits, the arts, and the exploits of
these people has to go to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
A primer got up for children, to be learned parrot-like, and distributed
to tourists, tells us "the Hawaiians never were savages." We are also
assured they "never were cannibals," and "speedily embraced religion."
The first is an obvious misstatement; the second is an apology of
uncertain value; as to the third, the son of one of Hawaii's best
missionaries, who just died in his eighty-fifth year, said: "Not until
the world shall learn how to limit the quantity and how to improve the
quality of races will future ages see any renewal of such idyllic life
and charm as that of the ancient Polynesians." Dr. Titus Munson Coan,
whose father converted some fifteen thousand Hawaiians to Christianity,
deplored the effect on the native of the high-handed suppression of
native taboos and attributes their extinction--which seems
inevitable--to the imposition of clothes which they put on and off
according to whim, and to customs unsuited to their natures. Dr. Coan
said that though his father had a powerful voice he remembered that
often he could not hear him preach because of the coughing and sneezing
of the natives.
Be that as it may, a visit to the Bishop Museum would quickly contradict
the primer. There the array of weapons shows that the natives were not
only barbarous but savage. This is no serious condemnation, for none of
Europe's races can show any cleaner record. Arts, indeed, the Hawaiians
had, and sense of form and color. An apron of feathers worn by the king
required a tax of a feather apiece on hundreds of birds. After this
feather was extracted, the bird was set free, an indication of thrift if
not kindliness. Yet they did not hesitate to strip the flesh off every
bone of Captain Cook and distribute portions among the native chiefs. No
one has proved that they ate it; but cannibalism is, after all, a
relative vice and was not unknown in northwestern Europe.
5
The passing of the Hawaiians, like that of many other races in the
Pacific, is due to a cannibalism and a barbarism which are less
emphasized in the ordinary discussions of the problem. There are more
ways than one of eating your neighbor. However harrowing that savage
diet was, it did not work for the destruction of any of these South Sea
islanders as ruthlessly as did the practice among the Hawaiians of
infanticide. Mothers were in the habit of disposing of their impetuous
children by the simple method of burying them alive, frequently under
the very shelter of their roofs, lying down upon the selfsame floor and
sleeping the sleep of the just with the tiny infant squirming in its
grave beside them. Parents were not allowed to have more than a given
number of children because of the strain on the available food supply.
This more than anything else depleted the number of natives most
disastrously. But in addition came the white man with his diseases,
contagious and infectious,--a form of destruction that, from the native
point of view, is quite as dastardly as eating the flesh of the
vanquished.
Certainly, whatever the viciousness of the occasional or annual
outbursts of passion among these primitive folk, there was no example of
regulated, insistent pandering to vice such as has been set them by the
Europeans, especially in Hawaii. There one evening I wandered through
the very depths of degradation; there I witnessed a process of fusion of
races which had only one possible end,--extinction. Its Hawaiian name
had a strange similarity to the word evil: it is _Iwilei_. McDuffie,
Chief of Detectives of Honolulu, was making his inspection of medical
certificates, which was part of the work of "restriction," and took me
with him.
Mr. McDuffie had been standing near the window of the outer office, with
one foot upon a chair, talking to another detective, when I called out
his name. Tall, massive, with hair almost gray, a rather kindly face, he
looked me up and down without moving. I explained my mission.
"Who are you?" he asked bluntly.
A mean question, always asked by the white man in the tropics. Well,
now, who in thunder was I, anyway? I murmured that I was a "writer."
"Be round at seven-thirty, and you can come along," he said dryly.
On his office walls hung hatchets, daggers, pistols, sabers, and many
other such toys of a barbarous world hacking away against or toward
perfection. On the floor were dozens of opium pipes, taken in a raid
upon Chinese dens,--toys of another kind of world trying to forget its
progress away from barbarism. One Japanese continued his game of cards
nonchalantly. Flash-lights were in evidence, fearlessly protruding from
hip pockets.
At half-past seven I was there again. As we were about to enter the
motor-car, I ventured some remark, thinking to make conversation. "Get
in there," said the chief, abruptly. For an instant he must have thought
he was taking a criminal to confinement.
Zigzagging our way through the streets and across the river, we entered
an unlighted thoroughfare, hardly to be called a street. A steady stream
of straggling shadows moved along like spirits upon the banks of the
river Styx. Our way opened out upon a lighted section, crowded with
negro soldiers and civilians of all nationalities. Here, then, and not
only beyond the grave, class and distinction and race dissolve. A
perfect hubbub of conversation, soda fountains and plain noise, and
reeling of drunkies. A futurist conception of confusion would do it
justice. We were at the gates of Babylon.
A closely boarded fence surrounded this city of dreadful night. Hundreds
of men crowded the passageway. Within were rows and rows of shacks and
cottages. Men stood gazing in at open doors and windows. Outside one
shack a negro soldier remained fixed with his foot upon the door-step,
but ventured no farther. Within, on a bed in full view, sat a Portuguese
female, smoking, an Hawaiian woman companion lounging beside her. Both
ignored the male at the door. But he remained, silent. Hope fading from
his mind, and some interest elsewhere creeping in, he moved away. The
Hawaiian woman smiled contemptuously.
Then for three-quarters of an hour we made strange calls. Our card was a
club which the assistant to the detective--a massive Hawaiian--rapped on
every porch step, announcing the expected visitor. He was not unwelcome.
From every door emerged a woman, covered with a light kimono, and neatly
shod. At cottage after cottage, door after door, they appeared, showed
their "health" certificates, and retreated. Japanese, Hawaiian, white,
brown, and yellow. Some extremely pretty and not altogether unrefined
in manner; some ugly and coarse. The inspection was done hastily. Where
appearance of the inmate was delayed, a stamp of the foot brought the
tardy one scurrying out. Some greeted the detective familiarly; others
showed their certificates and retreated. One Japanese woman called after
us when we had passed her door without stopping.
Wherever there was any transgression against the proprieties, the
inspector commanded the guilty to desist, and went on. One woman
complained that a negro had just attacked her with a knife. She whistled
and called, she said, "But I might have been killed for all the
assistance I got." The inspector spoke kindly to her, assured her he
would order the guard to come round. But nothing was done.
Two or three doors farther on a fat and playful woman entertained a
number of men who stood outside her porch. The inspector told her to
keep still. "Just such remarks as that cause trouble. You get inside and
stay there." She shrugged her shoulders, made faces at him, and danced
playfully within-doors.
We came upon two groups of negroes, gambling. The inspector slapped one
of them upon the shoulder in a kindly way and told them to get out of
sight. "You know it's not allowed here." They moved away.
It was a network of streets. Not an underworld but a hinterland, a dark
swamp-land, full of scum and squirming creatures. A dreadful city, full
of "joy" and abandon. A city in which women are the monarchs, the
business factors, the independent, fearless beings, needing no
protection. Protection from what could they need? Surely not from
poverty, for wealth seemed to favor these. From loss of reputation? They
had no reputations to lose. Protection they needed, but rather from
themselves than from outside dangers.
For this was a restricted district which harbored no restrictions. This
was the crater of human passion, of animal passion. The well-ordered
universe without; within, the toils of voluptuousness. In this pit the
lava of lust kept stirring, the weight of unbalanced emotion overturned
within itself. The crater was thought to be deep and secure against
overflow. But if it did boil over, was it far from the city?
In the city the sound of pianos playing, people reading, swimming-pools
full, streets crowded with racing automobiles, soda fountains crowded,
theaters agog, gathering of folks in homes and cafés,--a great world
with allotted places to keep men and women and children happy; that is,
away from themselves. A heavy curtain of order protects one section. The
most disgusting polyandry shrieks from out the other. Yet no savage
community needed such an outlet for its emotions.
From various sources I learn that that little crater has overflowed. The
Chamber of Commerce, backed by the missionaries and others, secured
legislation against the "regulation" of the district in 1917. From
another source I got it that it was not the forces for good that
banished it, but that two contending and competing forces for evil had
mutually eliminated themselves. But still another source gives it out
that certain "slum" sections where housing facilities are inadequate are
now the center of evil, and that Filipino panderers are the most guilty.
And a year after _Iwilei_ was "done away with"--in April, 1918--the
Chief of Detectives asked for "thirty days" in which to show what he
could do to clean up the place so as to make it fit for the soldiers to
come to Honolulu.
Little wonder that, with such examples of "self-respect" and
shamefulness, lovers of the Hawaiians are throwing themselves into the
work of saving the few remaining natives from demoralization. Before
Cook's time these people did not know what prostitution was. Now they
have lost hope and confidence in themselves. The less pessimistic say
that another hundred years will see the last of the Hawaiians, as we
have seen the last of the Tasmanians. Others fear it will come sooner.
The Hawaiian Protective Association is stimulating racial pride in them
so that they may take courage anew, and, with what sturdy men and women
there still are, rejuvenate the race. But the odds are against them, for
besides disease and demoralization we have introduced Japanese, Chinese,
and all sorts of other coolies who have completely undermined the
Hawaiian status in the islands, and are rapidly outnumbering them in the
birth-rate and survival rate. What factors are at work for possible
regeneration will be discussed in a later chapter.