Solomon Islands—Ingova’s head-hunters—How whole tribes were wiped
out—Savage invasions and clever tactics.
The Solomon Islands, not being of such importance as New Guinea, have
had much less attention paid to them.
No doubt the extreme danger which has always attached to a visit to
these islands has made the white man give them as wide a berth as
possible, only going there when compelled to either for trading or
scientific purposes. It is here that cannibalism flourishes, and the
head-hunters go forth on expeditions in all their savage grandeur to
strike down the unsuspecting neighbour.
If there is uncertainty about life in New Guinea, there is precious
little in the Solomon Islands, for the chances are ten to one against
one’s living to tell the tale, unless he keep strictly to the trading
parts of the islands.
[Illustration 30: PORTRAIT OF A SOLOMON ISLAND CANNIBAL
This man was said to have “kaikaied-man plenty” (to have eaten plenty
of men). He told me in island English that I was no good to eat. His
teeth were stained red by chewing the betel-nut.]
Travellers, scientists, and traders still visit the {95} interior,
and some come out all right, but to every one that survives a dozen
succumb, simply because cannibalism is to a certain extent a religious
ceremony to these natives.
They do not kill and eat human beings for the sake of their taste,
or because they are hungry, as some writers will insist on having us
believe. The cause is farther back than this; in nearly every case
when human beings are killed and eaten, it is on occasions when such a
sacrifice is necessary, according to the natives’ religious beliefs.
Like the prophets and priests of old they believe in sacrifices; they
honestly consider that they are doing the correct thing when they
kill, cook, and eat a man or woman, and it will take many years and
many missionaries to persuade them to the contrary. Of late, however,
there are indications that in some of the islands head-hunting is
losing favour, particularly with the younger generation, which sounds
satisfactory, for if the rising generation decide against the practice
it will soon die out. Other causes sometimes arise which may help to
stop the custom. For instance, in one part of New Georgia the chief,
some years ago, gave orders that no more human flesh was to be eaten,
which to many might look as if his cannibalistic views were {96}
changing, but the cause of it was not a moral, but a physical one: the
last feast of man they had indulged in caused an epidemic of sickness
to run through the tribe, and the chief did not wish such a thing
to occur again. He felt that either the digestion of his tribe had
altered, or that the particular tribe on which he had been feasting was
no longer palatable, so he stopped it. Again, in other parts certain
chiefs boast that they do not eat human flesh, and hope is again raised
that these savages are reforming, but a little closer inquiry shows
that the particular chief deals in human flesh, trading it to other
natives, and, like the man who makes the sausage, he does not eat it.
Throughout these islands there are very few tribes who are still
actually cannibals, in the sense of the word as it is generally
accepted, but in spite of this grain of promise life is just as
uncertain, because one can never tell when a head is needed for a
religious ceremony. You may live on the most friendly terms with a
tribe for months, and go away with the idea that cannibalism is dead,
and laugh at those who have tried to make you believe otherwise, but
had you remained one day longer, or the chief’s son died one day
sooner, that laugh would never have come off, but instead your head
would {97} have, and your comely carcase would have been frizzling in
the kai-kai dish; and the very men who had made so much of you a little
before, would with equal glee have made less of you then.
[Illustration 31: SACRED SKULL SHRINES, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS
The skull houses are small erections supported, in this case, on
pedestals; the length is about three feet, with an overhanging roof.
The box is open at the back as well as in the front, and charms of
Tredacua shell and leaves are suspended in front. The houses in the
background are made of canes and grass; that in the foreground is of
wood. The native is carrying a shield.]
When standing before a chief, who is smiling at you and treating you
to all the courtesies his nature can conjure up, and knowing that with
him you have trusted yourself for many an hour’s smoke or solitary
ramble in the bush, it is difficult to realise that the same chief a
week before was on the warpath, concocting the most devilish schemes,
and carrying out the most fiendish atrocities on men, women, and
children in his pursuit of heads. But such is the case, and one can
only account for the inconsistency of it by putting these acts down
to a religious mania, and thus giving these otherwise amiable and
interesting creatures a certain excuse for actions which to us would
seem inexcusable.
Tribe after tribe has been completely wiped out by certain powerful
chiefs through a continued series of head-hunting expeditions. The
methods adopted by the aggressive party are simple and generally most
effective. The Rubiana natives are perhaps the most bloodthirsty of all
the Solomon group, and, being both rich and powerful, they can descend
on a village and overpower it by sheer {98} force of numbers, even
without the use of modern weapons, which are now owned by nearly all
the important tribes. The most notorious head-hunter in later years was
Ingova of Rubiana lagoon, New Georgia, to whom I have already alluded.
He is old and wizened now, and his hand trembles as he lifts the glass
of grog he begs from you, after telling a yarn of the good old days.
Yes, Ingova’s strength and valour are gone now, and could the departed
spirits of the hundreds he has killed in days gone by see him as he
is to-day—his feeble limbs, his shaking hand, his bloodshot eyes, and
seared face—they would indeed wonder what it was they feared in him.
Where is the great spirit that once possessed him? they would ask. They
would scorn him now, and the women would laugh at him—poor, feeble,
tottering Ingova.
Years ago Ingova’s Euro was hung with skulls, hundreds of them were
strung in the cross-beams, with staring, vacant eyeholes, which looked
out of nothing and yet seemed to see everything. Their drooping lower
jaws, showing sets of white teeth which glistened in the rays of the
moon, made Ingova’s heart throb with pride as he stood and tried to
count them. White naked skulls of brave men all hung in rows—they had
all belonged to {99} men, for a woman’s head is not worthy of such an
honour.
[Illustration 32: INGOVA’S HEAD-HUNTERS, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS]
One day, soon after one of Ingova’s rash ventures amongst white men,
Commander, now Rear-Admiral, Davis played havoc with his village,
burning and sacking it. It was no ordinary attack but a clean sweep he
made of Rubiana, and then the shore was littered with Ingova’s skulls:
skulls that he and his fathers had collected for generations were
scattered in all directions, and lay bleaching on the beach, some half
burnt and others cracked and broken.
That was an awful day for Ingova, and for months after he was a
broken-hearted man. But the savage spirit was still in him, and he was
not long in recovering from the shock, and to rectify his loss he set
out on a big head-hunting expedition.
His mode of attack was an ingenious one. He would start out with every
war canoe he possessed (some twenty or thirty, manned with a force of
five or six hundred men—swarthy, hard, muscular, dark-skinned men),
and a British built whaling-boat. Having previously decided on the
island he meant to surprise, he would send out two flanking parties
and probably land a small force lower down the {100} coast. Then,
accompanied by the whaling-boat, he would make straight for the front
of the village like an innocent trader, and having enticed the natives
to the shore he would commence his slaughter. The two arms of his force
would close in and kill all those who failed to get away, the others he
would drive back to the centre of the island where the land force would
be waiting to drive them to the shore again, killing men all the time.
Thus hustled and attacked on both sides they were trebly trapped, and
would fall like sheep before the shots and tomahawks of Ingova’s five
hundred.
But with all his efforts Ingova never regained the long rows of heads
of which he used to be so proud, and now he is too old to go out and
look for more, but not too old to forget Captain Davis’s little visit
to Rubiana.
He wears no necklace round his neck now, for Admiral Davis has it, it
having been given him by Ingova many years after that little visit as a
kind of peace offering—they are quite friendly now.
Mai was another chief whose reputation for head-hunting and absolute
brutality was a household word in the South Pacific. He was chief of
Sapuna in Santa Anna, and periodically raided {101} the adjoining
islands, killing and butchering every one who crossed his path.
[Illustration 33: A CANOE SHOWING THE “TOTOISHU,” NEW GEORGIA, SOLOMON
ISLANDS
The idea of this carved wooden head on the prow is to frighten off
the evil spirits, or kesoko, of the waters and look out for dangerous
reefs.]
Dr. H. B. Guppy, in giving an account of his acquaintance with him,
says, that on his (Dr. Guppy’s) arrival at Santa Anna he learned that
Mai had just been out on one of his raids. He had led a war party
across to Fanarita, on the opposite coast of St. Christoval, to avenge
the death of a fugitive from a labour vessel, who, having escaped at
Santa Anna, subsequently found his way to Fanarita, where he was killed.
The excuse, although somewhat circuitous, was quite sufficient for Mai,
who really thought more of this chance of gaining new laurels than of
the untimely end of a native whose death he pretended to be so eager to
avenge. Having reached the part of the coast where this man was killed,
the war party lay in ambush and slaughtered a chief and two women
as they were returning from their yam patches, whilst they severely
wounded another woman who escaped into the bush with a spear through
her back.
Mai had a knack of keeping his followers up to the mark by working on
their superstitions and never letting old feuds die out.
The islands of Isabel and Guadalcanar were the {102} hunting grounds
for the New Georgia chiefs, whilst occasional visits to Florida Island
helped them along. From ninety to a hundred heads were often brought in
by some of these chiefs, the result of a long and successful raid, and
many travellers who visited these islands between forty and fifty years
ago state frankly that the lives of the natives in the less powerful
islands were not worth a day. They never knew when a canoe might land
with a force superior to theirs and wipe them all out; the wonder is
that there are so many still alive. It is only owing to the falling off
of these ghastly expeditions that they have had time to recover and
repopulate their villages.
With such massacres going on and the practice of infanticide always in
vogue, the present state of the natives is almost marvellous, and only
shows the hardiness and regenerating powers of these islanders.
Nowadays head-hunting, as I have already stated, is only resorted to on
certain occasions, and when a head is needed a sum of money will often
be offered for one, and the chiefs of different villages are acquainted
with the fact. A hunt round is immediately made, and any native who has
made himself objectionable to his neighbours is sold for the purpose.
[Illustration 34: A LAGOON IN NEW FLORIDA, SOLOMON ISLANDS]
{103}
Neither the time of his death nor the fact that he is to die is
told him, so that he is relieved from all worry. He is watched most
carefully, and a certain hunter is told off to procure his head. It may
not be for weeks after the sentence has been passed that it is carried
out, but when once the decree has gone forth the man is as good as
dead. The hunter may have been ingratiating himself in his victim’s
good books, and thus waiting his opportunity for months; then one day,
when the unsuspecting victim is quite off his guard, the flash of a
spear or the dull thud of a tomahawk is all that he knows. The next day
his head is carried to the chief and the shell money paid over for it.
Then the feast or ceremony for which this ghastly object is required
takes place amid much rejoicing. White men have often fallen victims
to this custom, and many a trader has only received warning from a
friendly native just in time to escape the same fate. Money has often
been paid down for the head of a white man, and if he has not heard of
it in time to escape, his death has followed.
The missionaries, however, have seldom suffered; they are tolerated,
and seem to go on in a quiet and peaceful way, quite secure where every
other white man’s life is in his hand.
{104}