A feast to the men of Motopu; the making of _kava_, and its drinking;
the story of the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.
The Vagabond, Kivi, who lived near the High Place, came down to my
_paepae_ one evening to bid me come to a feast given in Atuona
Valley to the men of Motopu, who had been marvelously favored by the
god of the sea.
Months of storms, said Kivi, had felled many a stately palm of
Taka-Uka and washed thousands of ripe cocoanuts into the bay, whence
the current that runs swift across the channel had swept the
fruitage of the winds straight to the inlet of Motopu, on the island
of Tahuata. The men of that village, with little effort to themselves,
had reaped richly.
Now they were come, bringing back the copra dried and sacked. Seven
hundred francs they had received for a ton of it from Kriech, the
German merchant of Taka-Uka, from whose own groves it had been
stolen by the storms.
On the morrow, their canoes laden with his goods, they would sail
homeward. One day they had tarried to raft redwood planks of
California from the schooner in the bay to the site of Kivi's new
house. So that night in gratitude he would make merry for them. There
would be much to eat, and there would be _kava_ in plenty. He prayed
that I would join them in this feast, which would bring back the
good days of the _kava_-drinking, which were now almost forgotten.
[Illustration: Kivi, the _kava_ drinker with the _hetairae_ of
the valley]
[Illustration: A pool in the jungle]
I rose gladly from the palm-shaded mat on which I had lain vainly
hoping for a breath of coolness in the close heat of the day, and
girded the red _pareu_ more neatly about my loins. Often I had heard
of the _kava_-drinking days before the missionaries had insisted on
outlawing that drink beloved of the natives. The traders had added
their power to the virtuous protests of the priests, for _kava_ cost
the islanders nothing, while rum, absinthe, and opium could be sold
them for profit. So _kava_-drinking had been suppressed, and after
decades of knowing more powerful stimulants and narcotics, the
natives had lost their taste for the gentler beverage of their
forefathers.
The French law prohibited selling, exchanging, or giving to any
Marquesan any alcoholic beverage. But the law was a dead letter, for
only with rum and wine could work be urged upon the Marquesans, and
I failed to reprove them even in my mind for their love of drink.
One who has not seen a dying race cannot conceive of the prostration
of spirit in which these people are perishing. That they are
courteous and hospitable--and that to the white who has ruined
them--shows faintly their former joy in life and their abounding
generosity. Now that no hope is left them and their only future is
death, one cannot blame them for seizing a few moment's forgetfulness.
Some years earlier, in the first bitterness of hopeless subjugation,
whole populations were given over to drunkenness. In many valleys
the chiefs lead in the making of the illicit _namu enata_, or
cocoanut-brandy. In the Philippines, where millions of gallons of
cocoanut-brandy are made, it is called _tuba_, but usually its name
is arrack throughout tropical Asia. Fresh from the flower spathes of
the cocoanut-tree, _namu_ tastes like a very light, creamy beer or
mead. It is delicious and refreshing, and only slightly intoxicating.
Allowed to ferment and become sour, it is all gall. Its drinking
then is divided into two episodes--swallowing and intoxication.
There is no interval. "Forty-rod" whiskey is mild compared to it.
I had seen the preparation of _namu_, which is very simple. The
native mounts the tree and makes incisions in the flowers, of which
each palm bears from three to six. He attaches a calabash under them
and lets the juice drip all day and night. The process is slow, as
the juice falls drop by drop. This operation may be repeated
indefinitely with no injury to the tree. In countries where the
liquor is gathered to sell in large quantities, the natives tie
bamboo poles from tree to tree, so that an agile man will run
through the forest tending the calabashes, emptying them into larger
receptacles, and lowering these to the ground, all without descending
from his lofty height.
The _namu_ when stale causes the Marquesans to revert to wickedest
savagery, and has incited many murders. Under the eye of the
gendarme its making ceases, but a hundred valleys have no white
policemen, and the half score of people remaining amid their
hundreds of ruined _paepaes_ give themselves over to intoxication. I
have seen a valley immersed in it, men and women madly dancing the
ancient nude dances in indescribable orgies of abandonment and
bestiality.
_Namu enata_ means literally "man booze." The Persian-Arabic word,
_nam_, or _narm-keffi_, means "the liquid from the palm flower."
From this one might think that Asia had taught the Marquesans the
art of making _namu_ during their prehistoric pilgrimage to the
islands, but the discoverers and early white residents in Polynesia
saw no drunkenness save that of the _kava_-drinking. It was the
European, or the Asiatic brought by the white, who introduced
comparatively recently the more vicious cocoanut-brandy, as well as
rum and opium, and it is these drinks that have been a potent factor
in killing the natives.
It has ever been thus with men of other races subjugated by the
whites. Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography tells that when he
was a commissioner to the Indians at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he and
his fellow-commissioners agreed that they would allow the Indians no
rum until the treaty they earnestly sought was concluded, and that
then they should have plenty.
He pictures an all-night debauch of the red men after they had
signed the treaty, and concludes: "And, indeed, if it be the design
of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for
cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that rum may be
the appointed means. It has annihilated all the tribes who formerly
inhabited the sea-coast."
It was not for me to speculate upon the designs of Providence with
respect to the Marquesans. _Kava_ had been the drink ordained by the
old gods before the white men came. Its making was now almost a lost
art; I knew no white man who had ever drunk from the _kava_-bowl. So
it was with some eagerness that I followed Kivi down the trail.
Broken Plate, a sturdy savage in English cloth cap and whale's-teeth
earrings, stood waiting for us in the road below the House of
the Golden Bed, and together the three of us went in search of
the _kava_ bush. While we followed the narrow trail up the
mountain-side, peering through masses of tangled vines and shrubs
for the large, heart-shaped leaves and jointed stalks we sought,
Kivi spoke with passion of the degenerate days in which he lived.
Let others secretly make incisions in the flower of the cocoanut and
hang calabashes to catch the juice, said he. Or let them crook the
hinges of the knee that rum might follow fawning on the whites. Not
he! The drink of his fathers, the drink of his youth, was good
enough for him! Agilely he caught aside a leafy branch overhanging
the trail, and in the flecks of sunshine and shade his naked, strong
brown limbs were like the smooth stems of an aged manzanita tree.
He had not the scaly skin or the bloodshot eyes of the _kava_
debauchee, whose excesses paint upon their victim their own vivid
signs. I remembered a figure caught by the rays of my flashlight one
might on a dark trail--a withered creature whose whole face and body
had turned a dull green, and at the memory of that grisly phantom I
shuddered. But Broken Plate, on the trail ahead, called back to us
that he had found a goodly bush, and without more words we clambered
to it.
The _kava_, a variety of the pepper-plant, grows to more than six
feet in height, and the specimen we had found thrust above our heads
its many jointed branches rustling with large, flat leaves. The
decoction, Kivi explained, comes from the root, and we set to work to
dig it.
It was huge, like a gigantic yam, and after we had torn it from the
stubborn soil it taxed the strength and agility of two of us to
carry it to the _paepae_ of Broken Plate, where the feast was to be.
A dozen older women, skilled in grating the breadfruit for _popoi_
making, awaited us there, squatting in a ring on the low platform.
The root, well washed in the river, was laid on the stones, and the
women attacked it with cowry-shells, scraping it into particles like
slaw. It was of the hardness of ginger, and filled a large _tanoa_,
or wooden trough of ironwood.
The scraping had hardly well begun, while Broken Plate and I rested
from our labors, smoking pandanus-leaf cigarettes in the shade, when
up the road came half a dozen of the most beautiful young girls of
the village, clothed in all their finery.
Teata, with all the arrogance of the acclaimed beauty, walked first,
wearing a tight-fitting gown with insertions of fishnet, evidently
copied from some stray fashion-book. She wore it as her only garment,
and through the wide meshes of the novel lace appeared her skin, of
the tint of the fresh-cooked breadfruit. She passed us with a
coquettish toss of her shapely head and took her place among her
envious companions.
They sat on mats around the iron-wood trough and chewed the grated
root, which, after thorough mastication, they spat out into
banana-leaf cups. This chewing of the Aram-root is the very being of
_kava_ as a beverage, for it is a ferment in the saliva that
separates alkaloid and sugar and liberates the narcotic principle.
Only the healthiest and loveliest of the girls are chosen to munch
the root, that delectable and honored privilege being refused to
those whose teeth are not perfect and upon whose cheeks the roses do
not bloom.
Nevertheless, as I smoked at ease in my _pareu_ upon the _paepae_ of
my simple hosts I felt some misgivings rise in me. Yet why cavil at
the vehicle by which one arrives at Nirvana? Had I not tasted the
_chicha_ beer of the Andes, and found it good? And vague analogies
and surmises floated before me in the curls of smoke that rose in
the clear evening light.
What hidden clue to the remotest beginnings of the human race lies
in the fact that two peoples, so far apart as the Marquesans and the
South American Indians, use the same method of making their native
beverage? In the Andes corn takes the place of the _kava_ root, and
young girls, descendants of the ancient Incas, chew the grains,
sitting in a circle and with a certain ceremoniousness, as among
these Marquesans. The Marquesas Islands are on the same parallel of
latitude as Peru. Were these two peoples once one race, living on
that long-sunken continent in which Darwin believed?
Dusk fell slowly while I pondered on the mysteries in which our life
is rooted, and on the unknown beginnings and forgotten significances
of all human customs. The iron-wood trough was filled with the
masticated root, and in groups and in couples the girls slipped away
to bathe in the river. There they were met by arriving guests, and
the sound of laughter and splashing came up to us as darkness closed
upon the _paepae_ and the torches were lit.
Lights were coming out like stars up the dark valley as each
household made its vesper fire to roast breadfruit or broil fish,
and lanterns were hung upon the bamboo palisades that marked the
limits of property or confined favorite pigs. A cool breeze rose and
rustled the fronds of cocoanut and bamboo, bringing from forest
depths a clean, earthy odor.
The last bather came from the brook, refreshed by the cooling waters
and adorned with flowers. All were in a merry mood for food and fun.
Half a dozen flaring torches illuminated their happy, tattooed faces
and dusky bodies, and caught color from the vivid blossoms in their
hair. The ring of light made blacker the rustling cocoanut grove,
the lofty trees of which closed in upon us on every side.
Under the gaze of many sparkling eyes Kivi pierced green cocoanuts
brought him fresh from the climbing, and poured the cool wine of
them over the masticated _kava_. He mixed it thoroughly and then
with his hands formed balls of the oozy mass, from which he squeezed
the juice into another _tanoa_ glazed a deep, rich blue by its
frequent saturation in _kava_. When this trough was quite full of a
muddy liquid, he deftly clarified it by sweeping through it a net of
cocoanut fiber. All the while he chanted in a deep resonant voice
the ancient song of the ceremony.
"_U haanoho ia te kai, a tapapa ia te kai!_" he called with
solemnity when the last rite was performed. "Come to supper; all is
ready."
"_Menike_," he said to me, "You know that to drink _kava_ you must
be of empty stomach. After eating, _kava_ will make you sick. If you
do not eat as soon as you have drunk it, you will not enjoy it. Take
it now, and then eat, quickly."
He dipped a shell in the trough, tossed a few drops over his
shoulder to propitiate the god of the _kava_-drinking, and placed
the shell in my hands.
Ugh! The liquor tasted like earth and water, sweetish for a moment
and then acrid and pungent. It was hard to get down, but all the men
took theirs at a gulp, and when Kivi gave me another shellful, I
followed their pattern.
"_Kai! Kai._ Eat! Eat!" Kivi shouted then. The women hurried forward
with the food, and we fell to with a will. Pig and _popoi_, shark
sweetbreads, roasted breadfruit and sweet potatoes, fruits and
cocoanut-milk leaped from the broad leaf platters to wide-open mouths.
Hardly a word was spoken. The business of eating proceeded rapidly,
in silence, save for the night-rustling of the palms and the soft
sound of the women's hastening bare feet.
Only, as he saw any slackening, Kivi repeated vigorously, "_Kai! Kai!_"
I sat with my back against the wall of the house of Broken Plate, as
I ate quickly at the mandate of my host, and soon I felt the need of
this support. The feast finished, the guests reclined upon the mats.
Women and children were devouring the remnants left upon the leaf
platters. The torches had been extinguished, all but one. Its
flickering gleam fell upon the aged face of Kivi, and the whites of
his eyes caught and reflected the light. The tattooing that framed
them appeared like black holes from which the sparks glinted
uncannily, and the _kava_ mounting to his brain or to mine gave those
sparks a ghastliness that fascinated me in my keen, somnolent state.
From the shadows where the women crouched the face of Teata rose
like an eerie flower. She had adorned the two long black plaits of
her hair with the brilliant phosphorescence of Ear of the Ghost Woman,
the strange fungus found on old trees, a favored evening adornment
of the island belles. The handsome flowers glowed about her bodiless
head like giant butterflies, congruous jewels for such a temptress
of such a frolic. The mysterious light added a gleam to her velvet
cheek and neck that made her seem like the ghost-woman of old legend,
created to lead the unwary to intoxicated death.
The palaver came to me out of the darkness, like voices from a
phonograph-horn, thin and far away. One told the tale of Tahiapepae,
the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.
Famine had come upon Atuona Valley. Children died of hunger on the
_paepaes_, and the breasts of mothers shrunk so that they gave
forth no milk. Therefore the warriors set forth in the great canoes
for Motopu. Meat was the cry, and there was no other meat than
_puaa oa_, the "long pig."
Then in the darkness the hungry fighting men of Atuona silently
beached their canoes and crept upon the sleeping village of Motopu.
Seven were killed before they could fly to the hills, and one was
captured alive, a slender, beautiful girl of ten years, whom they
tied hands and feet and threw into the canoe with the slain ones.
Back they came from their triumph, and landed on the shore here,
within spear's-throw from the _paepae_ of Broken Plate. Their people
met them with drum-beating and with chanting, bringing rose-wood
poles for carrying the meat. The living girl was slung over the
shoulder of the leader, still bound and weeping, and in single file
heroes and their people marched up the trail past the Catholic
mission. Tohoaa, Great Sea Slug, chief of Atuona and grandfather of
Flag, the gendarme, was foremost, and over his massive shoulder hung
the Girl Who Had Lost Her Strength.
Then from the mission came Père Orens, crucifix in hand. Tall he
stood in his garment of black, facing the Great Sea Slug, and
lifting on high his hand with the crucifix in it. Père Orens had
been made _tapu_ by Great Sea Slug, to whom he had explained the
wonders of the world, and given many presents. To touch him was death,
for Great Sea Slug had given him a feast and put upon him the white
_tapa_, emblem of sacredness.
Powerful was the god of Père Orens, and could work magic. In his
pocket he carried always a small god, that day and night said
"_Mika! Mika!_" and moved tiny arms around and around a plate of
white metal. This man stood now before the Great Sea Slug, and the
chief paused, while his hungry people came closer that they might
hear what befell.
"Where are you going?" said Père Orens.
"To Pekia, the High Place, to cook and eat," said Great Sea Slug.
Then for a space Père Orens remained silent, holding high the
crucifix, and the chief heard from his pocket the voice of the small
god speaking.
"Give to me that small piece of living meat," said Père Orens then.
"_Me mamai oe_. If it is your pleasure, take it," said Great Sea Slug.
"It is a trifle. We have enough, and there is more in Motopu."
With these words he placed his burden upon the shoulder of the priest,
and heading his band again led them past the mission, over the river
and to the High Place, where all night long the drums beat at the
feasting.
But The Girl Who Lost Her Strength remained in the house of Père
Orens, who cut her bonds, fed her, and nursed her to strength again.
Baptized and instructed in the religion of her savior, she was
secretly returned to her surviving relatives. There she lived to a
good age, and died four years ago, grateful always to the God that
had preserved her from the oven.
He who spoke was her son, and here at the _kava_ bowl together were
the men of Motopu and the men of Atuona, enemies no longer.
The voice of the Motopu man died away. A ringing came in my ears as
when one puts a seashell to them and hears the drowsy murmur of the
tides. My cigarette fell from my fingers. A sirocco blew upon me, hot,
stifling. Kivi laughed, and dimly I heard his inquiry:
"_Veavea?_ Is it hot?"
"_E, mahanahana_. I am very warm," I struggled to reply.
My voice sounded as that of another. I leaned harder against the
wall and closed my eyes.
"He goes fast," said Broken Plate, gladly.
A peace passing the understanding of the _kava_-ignorant was upon me.
Life was a slumbrous calm; not dull inertia, but a separated activity,
as if the spirit roamed in a garden of beauty, and the body, all
suffering, all feeling past, resigned itself to quietude.
I heard faintly the chants of the men as they began improvising the
after-feasting entertainment. I was perfectly aware of being lifted
by several women to within the house, and of being laid upon mats
that were as soft to my body as the waters of a quiet sea. It was as
if angels bore me on a cloud. All toil, all effort was over; I
should never return to care and duty. Dimly I saw a peri waving a fan,
making a breeze scented with ineffable fragrance.
I was then a giant, prone in an endless ease, who stretched from the
waterfall at the topmost point of the valley to the shore of the sea,
and about me ran in many futile excitements the natives of Atuona,
small creatures whose concerns were naught to me.
That vision melted after eons, and I was in the Oti dance in the
Paumotas, where those old women who pose and move by the music of
the drums, in the light of the burning cocoanut husks, leap into the
air and remain so long that the white man thinks he sees the law of
gravitation overcome, remaining fixed in space three or four feet
from the ground while one's heart beats madly and one's brain throbs
in bewilderment. I was among these aged women; I surpassed them all,
and floated at will upon the ether in an eternal witches' dance of
more than human delight.
The orchestra of nature began a symphony of celestial sounds. The
rustling of the palm-leaves, the purling of the brook, and the song
of the _komoko_, nightingale of the Marquesas, mingled in music
sweeter to my _kava_-ravished ears than ever the harp of Apollo upon
Mount Olympus. The chants of the natives were a choir of voices
melodious beyond human imaginings. Life was good to its innermost
core; there was no struggle, no pain, only an eternal harmony of joy.
* * * * *
I slept eight hours, and when I awoke I saw, in the bright oblong of
sunlight outside the open door, Kivi squeezing some of the root of
evil for a hair of the hound that had bitten him.
[Illustration: The Pekia, or Place of Sacrifice, at Atuona]
[Illustration: Marquesan cannibals, wearing dress of human hair]