A savage dance, a drama of the sea, of danger and feasting; the rape
of the lettuce.
Drums were beating all the morning, thrilling the valley and
mountain-sides with their barbaric _boom-boom_. The savage beat of
them quickened the blood, stirring memories older than mankind,
waking wild and primitive instincts. Toho's eyes gleamed, and her
toes curled and uncurled like those of a cat, while she told me that
the afternoon would see an old dance, a drama of the sea, of war,
and feasting such as the islands had known before the whites came.
The air thrummed with the resonance of the drums. All morning I sat
alone on my _paepae_, hearing them beat. The sound carried one back
to the days when men first tied the skins of animals about hollow
tree-trunks and thumped them to call the naked tribes together under
the oaks of England. Those great drums beaten by the hands of
Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale made one want to be a savage,
to throw a spear, to dance in the moonlight.
Erase thirty years, and hear it in Atuona when the "long pig that
speaks" was being carried through the jungle to the dark High Place!
Then it was the thunder of the heavens, the voice of the old gods
hungry for the flesh of their enemies.
We who have become refined and diverse in our musical expression,
using a dozen or scores of instruments to interpret our subtle
emotions, cannot know the primitive and savage exaltation that
surges through the veins when the war-drum beats. To the Marquesans
it has ever been a summons to action, an inspiration to daring and
bloody deeds, the call of the war-gods, the frenzy of the dance.
Born of the thunder, speaking with the voice of the storm and the
cataract, it rouses in man the beast with quivering nostrils and
lashing tail who was part of the forest and the night.
Music is ever an expression of the moods and morals of its time. The
bugle and the fife share with the drum the rousing of martial spirit
in our armies to-day, but to our savage ancestors the drum was
supreme. Primitive man expressed his harmony with nature by imitating
its sounds. He struck his own body or a hollow log covered with skin.
Uncivilized peoples crack their fingers, snap their thighs, or
strike the ground with their feet to furnish music for impromptu
dancing. In Tonga they crack their fingers; in Tahiti they pound the
earth with the soles of their feet; here in Atuona they clap hands.
The Marquesans have, too, bamboo drums, long sections of the hollow
reed, slit, and beaten with sticks. For calling boats and for
signaling they use the conch-shell, the same that sounded when
"the Tritons blew their wreathed horn." They also have the jew's-harp,
an instrument common to all Polynesia; sometimes a strip of bark
held between the teeth, sometimes a bow of wood strung with gut.
[Illustration: The _haka_, the Marquesan national dance]
[Illustration: Hot Tears (on the left) with Vai Etienne]
Civilization is a process of making life more complex and subtle. We
have the piano, the violin, the orchestra. Yet we also have rag-time,
which is a reaction from the nervous tension of American commercial
life, a swinging back to the old days when man, though a brute, was
free. There is release and exhilaration in the barbaric, syncopated
songs and in the animal-like motions of the jazz dances with their
wild and passionate attitudes, their unrestrained rhythms, and their
direct appeal to sex. These rag-time melodies, coming straight from
the jungles of Africa through the negro, call to impulses in man that
are stifled in big cities, in factory and slum and the nerve-wearing
struggle of business.
So in the dance my Marquesan neighbors returned to the old ways and
expressed emotions dying under the rule of an alien people. With the
making light of their reverenced _tapus_, the proving that their
gods were powerless, and the ending of their tribal life, the dance
degraded. They did not care to dance now that their joy in life was
gone. But the new and jolly governor, craving amusement, sought to
revive it for his pleasure. So the drums were beating on the palace
lawn, and afternoon found the trails gay with _pareus_ and brilliant
shawls as the natives came down from their _paepaes_ to the seat of
government.
Chief Kekela Avaua, adopted son of the old Kekela, and head man of
the Paamau district, called for me. He was a dignified and important
man of forty-five years, with handsome patterns in tattooing on his
legs, and Dundreary whiskers. He was quite modishly dressed in brown
linen, beneath which showed his bare, prehensile-toed feet.
Kirio Patuhamane, a marvelous specimen of scrolled ink-marks from
head to foot, who sported Burnside whiskers, an English cricket cap,
and a scarlet loin-cloth, accompanied us down the road.
A hundred natives were squatting in the garden of the palace, and
rum and wine were being handed out when we arrived. Haabunai and
Song of the Nightingale, the man under sentence for making palm
brandy, were once more the distributors, and took a glass often. The
people had thawed since the dance at the governor's inauguration. As
Kirio Patuhamane explained, they had waited to observe the
disposition of their new ruler, the last having been severe,
dispensing no rum save for his own selfish gain, and having a wife
who despised them.
My tawny feminine friends resented keenly white women's airs of
superiority, and many were the cold glances cast by Malicious Gossip,
Apporo, and Flower at the stiffly gowned Madame Bapp, who sat on the
veranda drinking absinthe. They scorned her, because she beat her
husband if he but looked at one of them, though he owned a store and
desired their custom. Poor Madame Bapp! She thought her little man
very attractive, and she lived in misery because of the
openly-displayed charms of his customers. She loved him, and when
jealous she sought the absinthe bottle and soon was busy with whip
and broom on the miserable Bapp, who sought to flee. It was useless;
she had looked to doors and windows, and he must take a painful
punishment, the while the crockery smashed and all Atuona Valley
listened on its _paepaes_, laughing and well knowing that the little
man had given no cause for jealousy.
She greeted me with cold politeness when I mounted to the veranda,
and the governor dispensed glasses of "Dr. Funk," a drink known to
all the South Seas. Its secret is merely the mixing of a stiff drink
of absinthe with lemonade or limeade. The learned man who added this
death-dealing potion to the pleasures of the thirsty was Stevenson's
friend, and attended him in his last illness. I do not know whether
Dr. Funk ever mixed his favorite drink for R.L.S., but his own fame
has spread, not as a healer, but as a dram-decocter, from Samoa to
Tahiti. "Dr. Funk!" one hears in every club and bar. Its particular
merits are claimed by experts to be a stiffening of the spine when
one is all in; an imparting of courage to live to men worn out by
doing nothing.
The governor in gala attire was again the urban host, assisted by
André Bauda, now his close friend and confidant. Bauda himself had
been in the island only a few months, and knew no more Marquesan
speech than the governor. Both these officials were truly hospitable,
embarrassingly so, considering my inability to keep up with them in
their toasts.
Soon the demijohn of rum had been emptied into the glasses passing
from hand to hand in the garden; Haabunai and Song of the
Nightingale again evoked the thrumming beat of the great drums, and
the dance began. This was a tragedy of the sea, a pantomine of
danger and conflict and celebration. For centuries past the
ancestors of these dancers had played it on the Forbidden Height.
Even the language in which they chanted was archaic to this
generation, its words and their meanings forgotten.
The women sat upon the grass in a row, and first, in dumb show, they
lifted and carried from its house to the beach a long canoe. The
straining muscles of their arms, the sway of their bodies, imitated
the raising of the great boat, and the walking with its weight, the
launching, the waiting for the breakers and the undertow that would
enable them to pass the surf line, and then the paddling in rough
water.
Meantime at a distance the men chanted in chorus, giving rhythmic
time to the motions of the dancers and telling in the long-disused
words the story of the drama. And the drums beat till their rolling
thunder resounded far up the valley.
After the canoe was moving swiftly through the water the women rested.
It seemed to me that the low continued chant of the men expressed a
longing for freedom, for a return to nature, and a melancholy comment
on the days of power and liberty gone forever. Though no person
present understood the ancient language of the song, there was no
need of words to interpret the exact meaning of the dance. Though no
word had been uttered, the motions of the women would have clearly
told the tale.
When they began again, the sea grew more agitated. Now the wail of
the men reproduced the sound of waves beating on the canoe, and the
whistling of the wind. The canoe was tossed high by the pounding sea;
it slid dizzily down into the troughs of waves and rocked as the
oarsmen fought to hold it steady. The squall had grown into a gale,
roaring upon them while they tried to hold it steady. The canoe
began to fill with water, it sank deeper and deeper, and in another
moment the boatsmen were flung into the ocean. There they struggled
with the great seas; they swam; they regained the canoe; they
righted it, climbed into it. The storm subsided, the seas went down.
Again the women rested, their arms and bodies shining with
perspiration. All this time they had remained immobile from the
waist downward; their naked legs folded under them like those of
statues. The chant of the men was quieter now, expressing a memory
of the old gaiety now crushed by the inhibitions of the whites, by
ridicule of island legends, and by the stern denunciations of
priests and preachers. Yet it was full of suggestion of days gone by
and the people who had once sailed the seas among these islands.
Again the dancers raised their arms, and the canoe sailed over sunny
waters. At length it touched at an isle, it was carried through the
breakers to a resting place on the sand. Its oarsmen rejoiced, they
danced a dance of thanksgiving to their gods, and wreathed the
_ti_ leaves in their hair.
At this moment Haabunai, master of ceremonies, gave a cry of dismay
and ceased to beat his drum. With an anguished glance at the
assembled spectators, he dashed around the corner of the house, to
reappear in an instant with his hands full of green leaves.
"_Mon dieu!_" cried the governor. "_Mon salade! Mon salade!_"
Haabunai, busied with his duties, had forgotten to provide the real
and sacred _ti_. In despair at the last moment he had raided and
utterly destroyed the governor's prized lettuce bed, the sole
provision for salad-making in Atuona. He hastily divided the precious
leaves among the dancers, and with wilting lettuce enwreathed in
their tresses the oarsmen launched the canoe once more in the waves
and returned to their own isle, praising the gods.
All relaxed now, to receive the praises of the governor and the
brimming glasses once more offered by the diligent Haabunai and Song,
aided by the gendarme.
A gruesome cannibal chant followed, accompanied by the booming of
the drums, and then, warmed by the liquor that fired their brains,
the dancers began the _haka_, the sexual dance. Inflamed by the rum,
they flung themselves into it with such abandon as I have never seen,
and I saw a _kamaaina_ in Hawaii and have seen Caroline, Miri, and
Mamoe, most skilled dancers of the Hawaiian Islands. With the
continued passing of the cup, the _hurahura_ soon became general. The
men and women who had begun dancing in rows, in an organized way,
now broke ranks and danced freely all over the lawn. Men sought out
the women they liked, and women the men, challenging each other in
frenzied and startling exposition of the ancient ways.
The ceaseless booming of the drums added incitement to the frenzy;
the grounds of the governor's palace were a chaos of twisting brown
bodies and agitated _pareus_, while from all sides rose cries, shouts,
hysterical laughter, and the sound of clapping hands and thumping
feet. Here and there dancers fell exhausted, until by elimination
the dance resolved itself into a duet, all yielding the turf to Many
Daughters, the little, lovely leper, and Kekela Avaua, chief of
Paumau. These left the lawn and advanced to the veranda, where so
contagious had become the enthusiasm that the governor was doing the
_hurahura_ opposite Bauda, and Ah Yu danced with Apporo, while Song,
the prisoner, and Flag, the gendarme, madly emulated the star
performers.
Kekela, who led the rout, was a figure at which to marvel. A very
big man, perhaps six feet four inches in height, and all muscle, his
contortions and the frenzied movements of his muscles exceeded all
anatomical laws. Many Daughters, her big eyes shining, her red lips
parted, followed and matched his every motion. Her entire trunk
seemed to revolve on the pivot of her waist, her hips twisting in
almost a spiral, and her arms akimbo accentuating and balancing her
lascivious mobility.
The governor and the commissionaire, Ah Yu and Apporo, Monsieur Bapp
with Song of the Nightingale and Flag, made the palace tremble while
the _thrum_ of the great drums maddened their blood.
Exhausted at last, they lay panting on the boards. Song was telling
me that the liquor of the governor's giving surpassed all his
illicit make, and that when his sentence expired he would remain at
the palace as cook. Ah Yu, in broken English, sang a ditty he had
heard forty years earlier in California, "Shoo-fle-fly-doan-bodder-me."
Apporo, overcome by the rum and the dance, was lying among the
rose-bushes. Many others were flung on the sward, and more rose
again to the dance, singing and shouting and demanding more rum. The
girls came forward to be kissed, as was the custom, and Madame Bapp
drove them away with sharp words.
Soon the hullabaloo became too great for the dignity of the governor.
He gave orders to clear the grounds, and Bauda issued commands from
the veranda while Song and Flag lugged away the drums and drove the
excited mob out of the garden and across the bridge. All in all,
this Sunday was typical of Atuona under the new régime.
After a quiet bath in the pool below my cabin I got my own dinner,
unassisted by Exploding Eggs, and went early to bed to forestall
visitors. The crash of a falling cocoanut awakened me at midnight,
and I saw on my _paepae_ Apporo, Flower, Water, and Chief Kekela
Avaua, asleep. The chief had hung his trousers over the railing, and
was in his _pareu_, his pictured legs showing, while the others lay
naked on my mats. There was no need to disturb them, for it is the
good and honored custom of these hospitable islands to sleep wherever
slumber overtakes one.
The night was fine, the stars looked down through the
breadfruit-trees, and Temetiu, the giant mountain, was dark and
handsome in the blue and gold sky. Two sheep were huddled together
by my trail window, the horses were lying down in the brush, and a
nightingale lilted a gay love song in the cocoanut-palms above the
House of the Golden Bed.
Next morning all Atuona had a tight handkerchief bound over its
forehead. I met twenty men and women with this sign of repentance
upon their brows. Watercress, the chief of Atuona, who guards the
governor's house, was by the roadside.
"You have drunk too much," I remarked, as I spied the rag about his
head.
"Not too much, but a great deal," he rejoined.
"_Faufau_," I said further, which means that it is a bad thing.
"_Hana paopao_" he said sadly. "It is disagreeable to work. One
likes to forget many things."
There was bitterness and sorrow in his tone. His father was a warrior,
under the protection of Toatahu, the god of the chiefs, and led many
a victorious foray when Watercress was a child. The son remembers the
old days and feels deeply the degradation and ruin brought by the
whites upon his people. A distinguished-looking man, dignified and
haughty, he was one of half a dozen who were working out taxes by
repairing the roads, and he was one of the few who worked steadily,
saying little and seldom smiling.