The Marquesans at ten o'clock mass; a remarkable conversation about
religions and Joan of Arc in which Great Fern gives his idea of the
devil.
I was surprised to note that the few natives within view when we
landed were dressed in the stiff and awkward clothes of the European;
some fête must have been arranged during my absence, I thought. Then
with a shock I realized that the day was Sunday. In the lovely,
timeless valley of Vait-hua the calendar had dropped below the
horizon of memory as my native land had dropped below the rim of the
sea. Here in Atuona, whose life was colored by the presence of whites,
the days must take up their constricted regular march again.
Already through the crystal air of a morning after rain the mission
bells were ringing clear, and Chief Neo, forgetting the night of
toil and danger past, was eager to accompany me to church. It would
be an honor befitting his chiefly rank to sit with the distinguished
white man in the house of worship, and I, remembering his perfect
hospitality, was glad to do him honor in my own valley.
We hastened to my cabin, Exploding Eggs running before us up the
trail with my luggage balanced on his shoulders. Cocoanuts and
_popoi_, coffee and tinned biscuits, were waiting when we arrived.
We ate hastily and then donned proper garments, Exploding Eggs
rejoicing in a stiff collar and a worn sailor-hat once mine. They
sat oddly upon him, being several sizes too large, but he bore
himself with pride as we set out toward the church.
In the avenue of bananas leading to the mission I lingered to
observe the beauty of the flakes upon the ground. They are the
outside layers of the pendulum of that graceful plant, the purple
flower-cone that hangs at the end of the fruit cluster with its
volute and royal-hued stem. The banana-plants, which we call trees,
lined the road and stood twenty feet high, their long slender leaves
blowing in the light wind like banners from a castle wall.
The flakes that had dropped upon the ground were lovely. Large as a
lady's veil, ribbed satin, rose and purple, pink and scarlet, the
filmy edges curled delicately, they hinted the elegance and luxury
of a pretty woman's boudoir. And, like all such dainty trifles, the
charming flower that hangs like a colored lamp in the green chapel
of the banana-grove it is useless after it has served its brief
purpose. The fruit grows better when it is cut off.
Opposite the spacious mission grounds the worshippers were gathering
beneath two gnarled banian-trees, giant-like in height and spread.
Behind them a long hedge of bananas bordered the cocoanut plantation
of the church, and across the narrow road rose the chapel, the
priests' residence and the nuns' house, with several school
buildings now empty because of the French anti-clerical law.
Exploding Eggs in his new finery and the visiting chief from
Vait-hua found welcome among the waiting natives, while Titihuti of
the tattooed legs took her seat beside me. She had combed her Titian
tresses and anointed them with oil till they shone like the kelp beds
of Monterey. Her tunic was of scarlet calico, and she carried in her
hand a straw hat with a red ribbon, to put on when she entered the
church. "_Kaoha!_" I said to her, and she smiled, displaying her even,
white teeth.
Suddenly, looking past her at the church, my eye caught a sight that
transfixed me. In the misty light I saw the Christ upon the cross as
on Calvary. The sublime figure was in the agony of expiration, and at
the foot of the cross stood the ever faithful mother and the loving
John in attitudes of amazement and grief. The reality was startling;
for the moment I forgot all about me.
But Titihuti coughed, and I saw her tattooed legs and felt the rough
roots of the banian under me, and I was back in the courtyard. The
spectacle of the Crucifixion was raised on a basalt platform fully
twenty feet long. The figures were of golden bronze, and the cross
was painted white. Over it hung the branches of a lofty
breadfruit-tree, a congruous canopy for such a group. The Bread of
Life, in truth.
A tablet on the cross bore the inscription:
"1900
Le Christ Dieu Homme
Vit
Regne
Commande
Christo Redemptori
Jubilé 1901
Atuona."
"The _tiki_ of the true god," said Titihuti, observing my gaze, and
crossed herself with the fervor of the believer in a new charm.
On the roof a score of doves were cooing as we filed into the church.
There were bas-reliefs of cherubim and seraphim over the doorway, fat,
distorted bodies with wings a-wry, yet with a celestial vision
showing through the crude workmanship. A loop-holed buttress on
either side of the facade spoke of the days when the forethought of
the builders planned for defence in case a reaction of paganism
caused the congregation to attack the Christian fathers.
Inside the doorway a French nun in blue robes tugged at a rope
depending from the belfry, and above us the bells rang out from two
tiny towers. She looked curiously at me and my savage companion, her
pale peasant's face hard, homely, unhealthy; then she kicked at a
big dog who was trying to drink the holy water from the clam-shell
beside the door. "_Allez_, Satan!" she said.
The _benetier_, large enough to immerse an infant, was fixed to a
board, a fascinating, blackened old bracket, carved with the
instruments of torture, the nails, the spear, the scourge, and thorns.
Ivory and pearl, stained by a century or more, were inlaid. As I
dipped my hand in the shell a huge lizard that made his nest in the
hollow of the bracket ran across my knuckles.
Within, there were seats with kneeling-planks, hewed out of hard
wood and still bearing the marks of the adze. Upon them the
congregation soon assembled, the women on one side, the men on the
other. The women wore hats, native weaves in semi-sailor style,
decorated with Chinese silk shawls or bright-colored handkerchiefs.
All were barefooted except the pale and sickly daughters of Baufré,
who wore clumsy and painful shoes. Many Daughters, the little,
lovely leper, came with Flower, of the red-gold hair, the Weaver of
Mats, who had her names tattooed on her arm. They dipped in the font
and genuflected, then bowed in prayer.
Many familiar faces I recognized. Ah Yu, the Chinaman who owned the
little store beyond the banian-tree and had murder upon his soul;
Lam Kai Oo, my erstwhile landlord; Flag, the gendarme; Water, in all
the glory of European trousers; Kake, with my small namesake on her
arm. The old women were tattooed on the ears and neck in scrolls,
and their lips were marked in faint stripes. The old men, their eyes
ringed with tattooing, wore earrings and necklaces of whale's teeth.
The church was painted white inside, with frescoes and dados of
gaudy hues, and windows of brilliantly colored glass. The altar, as
also the statues of Joseph and Mary, had a reredos handsomely carved.
Outside the railing was a charming Child in the Manger, lying on
real straw, surrounded by the Virgin, Joseph, the Magi, the shepherds,
and the kings, all in bright-hued robes, and pleasant-looking cows
and asses with red eyes and green tails.
The singing began before the priest came from the sacristy. The men
sang alone and the women followed, in an alternating chant that at
times rose into a wail and again had the nasal sound of a bag-pipe.
The Catholic chants sung thus in Marquesan took on a wild, barbaric
rhythm that thrilled the blood and made the hair tingle on the scalp.
Bishop David le Cadre appeared in elegant vestments, his eyes grave
above a foot-long beard, and the mass began. The acolyte was very
agile in a short red cassock, below which his naked legs, and bare
feet showed. The people responded often through the mass, rising,
sitting down, and kneeling obediently. Baufré sat on a chair in the
vestibule and added accounts.
Ah Kee Au was the sole communicant at the rail. No cloth was spread,
but the bell announced the mystery of transubstantiation, and all
bowed their heads while Ah Kee Au reverently offered his communion to
the welfare of Napoleon, his grandson who had accidentally shot
himself.
The service over, the people poured from the church into the
brilliant sunshine of the road, and Ah Kee Au said to me, "You savee
thlat communio' blead b'long my place. My son makee for pliest." Lam
Kai Oo, pressing forward, offered the communicant a draught of fiery
rum he had obtained by the governor's permission. He had been told
that to give a glass of water to a communicant, who must of course
have fasted and abstained from any liquid since midnight according to
the law of the Church, was a holy act which brought the giver a
blessing, and so the subtle Chinese thought to make his blessing
greater by offering a drink better than water.
Ah Kee Au drank with fervor. "My makee holee thliss morn'," he said
gladly. "Makee Napoleon more happy." Sincerity is not a matter of
broken English or a drink of rum; the poor old grandfather of the
Little Corporal's namesake believed earnestly that Napoleon would
improve by his sacramental offering. He, like most Marquesans, took
the white man's religion with little understanding. It is new magic
to them, a comfort, an occupation, and an entertainment. But who
knows the human heart, or understands the soul?
That afternoon while Neo and I lay on my _paepae_ awaiting the
favoring wind which should carry him back to his own isle, my
neighbors gathered from far and near to lounge the sunny hours away
in conversation. Squatted on the mats, they engaged in serious
discussion of the puzzles of religion, appealing to me often to
settle vexing questions which they had long wearied of asking their
better-informed instructors in religious mysteries.
Their native tongue has no word for religion. Bishop Dordillon had
been obliged to translate it, "_Te mea e hakatika me te mea e hana
mea koaha toitoi i te Etua_" which might be rendered, "Belief in the
works and love of a just God." Etua, often spelled Atua, was the
name of divinity among all Maori peoples, but religion was so
associated with natural things, the phenomena of nature, of living
things, and of the heavens and sea, that it was part of daily life
and needed no word to distinguish it.
Never were people less able to comprehend the creeds and formulas in
which the religious beliefs of the white men are clothed. Marquesans
are not deep thinkers. In fact, they have a word, _tahoa_, which
means, "a headache from thinking." Ten years of ardent and nobly
self-sacrificing work by missionaries left the islands still without
a single soul converted. It was not until the chiefs began to set
the seal of their approval on the new outlandish faiths that the
people flocked to the standard of the cross. And when they did begin
to meditate the doctrines preached to them as necessary beliefs in
order to win salvation, their heads ached indeed.
Even after years of faithful church-going many of my friends still
struggled with their doubts, and when these were propounded to me I
was fain to wrinkle my own brow and ponder deeply.
The burning question as to the color of Adam and Eve had long been
settled. Adam and Eve were brown, like themselves. But if, as the
priests said was most probable, Adam and Eve had received pardon and
were in heaven, why had their guilt stained all mankind?
Also, would Satan have been able to tempt Eve if God had not made
the tree of knowledge _tapu_? Was not knowledge a good thing? What
motive had led the Maker and Knower of all things to do this deed?
What made the angels fall? Pride, said the priests. Then how did it
get into heaven? demanded the perplexed.
The resurrection of the body at the last judgment horrified them.
This fact, said the husband of Kake, had led to the abandonment of
the old manner of burying corpses in a sitting posture, with the
face between the knees and the hands under the thighs, the whole
bound round with cords. Obviously, a man buried in such a position
would rise deformed. Their dead in the cemetery on the heights slept
now in long coffins of wood, their limbs at ease. But other and less
premeditated interments still befell the unwary islander.
What would God do in cases where sharks had eaten a Marquesan? And
what, when the same shark had been killed and eaten by other
Marquesans? And in the case of the early Christian forefathers, who
were eaten by men of other tribes, and afterward the cannibals eaten
in retaliation, and then the last feaster eaten by sharks? _Aue!_
There was a headache query!
At this point in the discussion an aged stranger from the valley of
Taaoa, a withered man whose whole naked chest was covered with
intricate tattooing, laid down his pipe and artlessly revealed his
idea of the communion service. It was, he thought, a religious
cannibalism, no more. And he was puzzled that his people should be
told that it was wrong to feed on the flesh of a fellow human
creature when they were urged to "eat the body and drink the blood"
of _Ietu Kirito_ himself.
It was long afterward, in that far-away America so incomprehensible
to my simple savage friends, that I read beneath the light of an
electric lamp a paragraph in "Folkways," by William Graham Summer,
of Yale:
"Language used in communion about eating the body and
drinking the blood of Christ refers to nothing in our _mores_ and
appeals to nothing in our experience. It comes down from
very remote ages; very probably from cannibalism."
The printed page vanished, and before my eyes rose a vision of my
_paepae_ among the breadfruit- and cocoanut-trees, the ring of
squatting dusky figures in flickering sunlit leaf-shade, Kake in her
red tunic with the babe at her breast, Exploding Eggs standing by
with a half-eaten cocoanut, and the many dark eyes in their circles
of ink fixed upon the shriveled face of the reformed cannibal whose
head ached with the mysteries of the white man's religion.
None too soon for me, the talk turned about history, the tales of
which were confused in my guests' minds with those of the saints.
Great Fern insisted that if the English roasted Joan of Arc they ate
her, because no man would apply live coals, which pain exceedingly,
to any living person, and fire was never placed upon a human body
save to cook it for consumption. This theory seemed reasonable to
most of the listeners, for since such cruelty as the Marquesans
practiced in their native state was thoughtless and never intentional,
the idea of torture was incomprehensible to their simple minds.
Malicious Gossip, a comely savage of twenty-five with false-coffee
leaves in her hair, declared, however, that the governor had told
her the English roasted Joan alive because she was a heretic. The
statement was received with startled protests by those present who
had themselves incurred that charge when they deserted Catholicism
for Protestantism some time earlier.
"Exploding Eggs," said I hastily, "make tea for all." Every shade
vanished from shining eyes when I produced the bottle of rum and
added a spoonful of flavor to each brimming shellful. All perplexing
questions were forgotten, and simple social pleasure reigned again
on my _paepae_, while Great Fern explained to all his idea of the
Christian devil.
The Marquesan deity of darkness was Po, a vague and elemental spirit.
But the _kuhane anera maaa_ of the new religion had definite and
fearful attributes explained by the priests. So Great Fern conceived
him as a kind of cross between a man and a boar, with a tail like
that of a shark, running through the forests with a bunch of lighted
candlenuts and setting fire to the houses of the wicked.
And the wicked? Morals as we know them had nothing to do with their
sin in his mind. The wicked were the unkind, those who were cruel to
children, wives who made bad _popoi_, and whites with rum privileges
who forgot hospitality.
Non-Christians may grin at the efforts of missionaries among heathens.
But the missionaries are the only influence for good in the islands,
the only white men seeking to mitigate the misery and ruin brought
by the white man's system of trade. The extension of civilized
commerce has crushed every natural impulse of brotherliness, kindness,
and generosity, destroyed every good and clean custom of these
children of nature. Traders and sailors, whalers and soldiers, have
been their enemies.
Whatever the errors of the men of God, they have given their lives
day by day in unremitting, self-sacrificing toil, suffering much to
share with these despoiled people the light of their own faith in a
better world hereafter. In so far as they have failed, they have
failed because they have lacked what proselytizing religion has
always lacked--a joy in life that seeks to make this mundane
existence more endurable, a grace of humor, and a broad simplicity.
Polynesians have always been respecters of authority. Under their
own rule, where priest and king equally rose to rank because of
admired deeds, the _tapus_ of the priests had the same force as
those of chiefs, and life was conducted by few and simple rules. Now,
when sect fights sect; when priests assure the people that France is
a Catholic nation and the Governor says the statement is false;
where the Protestant pastor teaches that Sunday is a day of
solemnity and prayer, and the Frenchmen make it a day of merriment
as in France; where salvation depends on many beliefs bewildering
and incompatible, the puzzled Marquesan scratches his head and
swings from creed to creed, while his secret heart clings to the old
gods.
The Marquesan had a joyful religion, full of humor and abandon,
dances and chants, and exaltation of nature, of the greatness of
their tribe or race, a worship that was, despite its ghastly rites
of human sacrifice, a stimulus to life.
The efforts of missionaries have killed the joy of living as they
have crushed out the old barbarities, uprooting together everything,
good and bad, that religion meant to the native. They have given him
instead rites that mystify him, dogmas he can only dimly understand,
and a little comfort in the miseries brought upon him by trade.
I have seen a leper alone on his _paepae_, deep in the Scriptures,
and when I asked him if he got comfort from them I was answered,
"They are strong words for a weak man, and better than pig." But
only a St. Francis Xavier or a Livingstone, a great moral force,
could lift the people now from the slough of despond in which they
expire.
Upon this people, sparkingly alive, spirited as wild horses, not
depressed as were their conquerors by a heritage of thousands of
years of metes and bounds, religion as forced upon them has been not
only a narcotic, but a death potion.