The crime of Huahine for love of Weaver of Mats; story of Tahia's
white man who was eaten; the disaster that befell Honi, the white
man who used his harpoon against his friends.
During my absence in Taaoa there had been crime and scandal in my
own valley. André Bauda met me on the beach road as I returned and
told me the tale. The giant Tahitian sailor of the schooner _Papeite_,
Huahine, was in the local jail, charged with desertion; a serious
offense, to which his plea was love of a woman, and that woman
Weaver of Mats, who had her four names tattooed on her right arm.
Huahine, seeing her upon the beach, had felt a flame of love that
nerved him to risk hungry shark and battering surf. Carried from her
even in the moment of meeting, he had resisted temptation until the
schooner was sailing outside the Bay of Traitors, running before a
breeze to the port of Tai-o-hae, and then he had flung himself naked
into the sea and taken the straight course back to Atuona, reaching
his sweetheart after a seven-hour's struggle with current and breaker.
Flag, the gendarme, found him in her hut, and brought him to the
calaboose.
The following morning I attended his trial. He came before his judge
elegantly dressed, for, besides a red _pareu_ about his middle, he
wore a pink silk shawl over his shoulders. Both were the gift of
Weaver of Mats, as he had come to her without scrip or scrap. He
needed little clothing, as his skin was very brown and his strong
body magnificent.
He was an acceptable prisoner to Bauda, who had charge of the making
and repair of roads and bridges, so Huahine was quickly sentenced
and put to work with others who were paying their taxes by labor.
Weaver of Mats moved with him to the prison, where they lived
together happily, cooking their food in the garden and sleeping on
mats beneath the palms.
On all the _paepaes_ it was said that Huahine would probably be sent
to Tahiti, as there are strict laws against deserting ships and
against vagabondage in the Marquesas. Meantime the prisoner was happy.
Many a Tahitian and white sailor gazes toward these islands as a
haven from trouble, and in Huahine's exploit I read the story of
many a poor white who in the early days cast away home and friends
and arduous toil to dwell here in a breadfruity harem.
"There is a tale told long ago by a man of Hanamenu to a traveler
named Christian," I said to Haabunai, the carver, while we sat
rolling pandanus cigarettes in the cool of the evening. "It runs thus:
"Some thirty years ago a sailor from a trading schooner that had put
into the bay for sandalwood was badly treated by his skipper, who
refused him shore-leave. So, his bowels hot with anger, this sailor
determined to desert his hard and unthanked toil, wed some island
heiress, and live happy ever after. Therefore one evening he swam
ashore, found a maid to his liking, and was hidden by her until the
ship departed.
"Now Tahia was a good wife, and loved her beautiful white man; all
that a wife could do she did, cooking his food, bathing his feet,
rolling cigarettes for him all day long as he lay upon the mats. But
her father in time became troubled, and there was grumbling among the
people, for the white man would not work.
"He would not climb the palm to bring down the nuts; he lay and
laughed on his _paepae_ in the Meinui, the season of breadfruit,
when all were busy; and when they brought him rusty old muskets to
care for, he turned his back upon them. Sometimes he fished, going
out in a canoe that Tahia paddled, and making her fix the bait on
the hook, but he caught few fish.
"'_Aue te hanahana, aua ho'i te kaikai_,' said his father-in-law. 'He
who will not labor, neither shall he eat.' But the white man laughed
and ate and labored not.
"A season passed and another, and there came a time of little rain.
The bananas were few, and the breadfruit were not plentiful. One
evening, therefore, the old men met in conference, and this was
their decision: 'Rats are becoming a nuisance, and we will abate them.'
"Next morning the father sent Tahia on an errand to another valley.
Then men began to dig a large oven in the earth before Tahia's house,
where the white man lay on the mats at ease. Presently he looked and
wondered and looked again. And at length he rose and came down to
the oven, saying, 'What's up?'
"'Plenty _kaikai_. Big pig come by and by,' they said.
"So he stood waiting while they dug, and no pig came. Then he said,
'Where is the pig?' And at that moment the _u'u_ crashed upon his
skull, so that he fell without life and lay in the oven. Wood was
piled about him, and he was baked, and there was feasting in Hanamenu.
"In the twilight Tahia came over the hills, weary and hungry, and
asked for her white man. 'He has gone to the beach,' they said.
"He will return soon, therefore sit and eat, my daughter," said her
father, and gave her the meat wrapped in leaves. So she ate heartily,
and waited for her husband. And all the feasters laughed at her, so
that little by little she learned the truth. She said nothing, but
went away in the darkness.
"And it is written, Haabunai, that searchers for the _mei_ came upon
her next day in the upper valley, and she was hanging from a tall
palm-tree with a rope of _purau_ about her neck."
"That may be a true story," said Haabunai. "Though it is the custom
here to eat the _eva_ when one is made sick by life. And very few
white men were ever eaten in the islands, because they knew too much
and were claimed by some woman of power." He paused for a moment to
puff his cigarette.
"Now there was a sailor whom my grandfather ate, and he was white.
But there was ample cause for that, for never was a man so provoking.
"He was a harpooner on a whale-ship, a man who made much money, but
he liked rum, and when his ship left he stayed behind. They sent two
boats ashore and searched for him, but my grandfather sent my father
with him into the hills, and after three days the captain thought he
had been drowned, and sailed away without him.
"My grandfather gave him my father's sister to wife, and like that
man of whom you told, he was much loved by her, though he would do
nothing but make _namu enata_ and drink it and dance and sleep.
Grandfather said that he could dance strange dances of the sailor
that made them all laugh until their ribs were sore.
"This man, whose name was Honi--"
"Honi?" said I. "I do not know that word."
"Nor I. It is not Marquesan. It was his name, that he bore on the
ship."
"Honi?" I repeated incredulously, and then light broke. "You mean
Jones?"
"It may be. I do not know. Honi was his name, as my grandfather said
it. And this Honi had brought from the whale-ship a gun and a harpoon.
This harpoon had a head of iron and was fixed on a spear, with a
long rope tied to the head, so that when it was thrust into the
whale he was fastened to the boat that pursued him through the water.
There was no weapon like it on the island, and it was much admired.
"Honi fought with us when our tribe, the Papuaei, went to war with
the Tiu of Taaoa. He used his gun, and with it he won many battles,
until he had killed so many of the enemy that they asked for peace.
Honi was praised by our tribe, and a fine house was built for him
near the river, in the place where eels and shrimp were best.
"In this large house he drank more than in the other smaller one. He
used his gun to kill pigs and even birds. My grandfather reproved
him for wasting the powder, when pigs could easily be killed with
spears. But Honi would not listen, and he continued to kill until he
had no more powder. Then he quarreled with my grandfather, and one
day, being drunk, he tried to kill him, and then fled to the
Kau-i-te-oho, the tribe of redheaded people at Hanahupe.
"Learning that Honi was no longer with us, the Tiu tribe of Taaoa
declared war again, and the red-headed tribe had an alliance with
them through their chief's families intermarrying, so that Honi
fought with them. His gun being without powder, he took his harpoon,
and he came with the Tui and the Kau-i-te-oho to the dividing-line
between the valleys where we used to fight.
"Where the precipices reared their middle points between the valleys,
the tribes met and reviled one another.
"'You people with hair like cooked shrimp! Are you ready for the
ovens of our valley?' cried my grandfather's warriors.
"'You little men, who run so fast, we have now your white warrior
with us, and you shall die by the hundreds!' yelled our enemies."
This picture of the scene at the line was characteristic of
Polynesian warfare. It is almost exactly like the meeting of armies
long ago in Palestine and Syria, and before the walls of Troy.
Goliath slanged David grossly, threatening to give his body to the
fowls of the air and the beasts of the field, and David retorted in
kind. So, when Ulysses launched his spear at Soccus, he cried:
"Ah, wretch, no father shall they corpse compose,
Thy dying eye no tender mother close;
But hungry birds shall tear those balls away,
And hungry vultures scream around their prey."
"For a quarter of an hour," said Haabunai, "my grandfather's people
and the warriors of the enemy called thus to each other upon the top
of the cliffs, and then Honi and the brother of my grandfather, head
men of either side, advanced to battle.
"The first time Honi threw his harpoon, he hooked my great-uncle. He
hooked him through the middle, and before he could be saved, a half
dozen of the Tiu men pulled on the rope and dragged him over the line
to be killed and eaten.
"Two more of our tribe Honi snared with this devilish spear, and it
was not so much death as being pulled over to them and roasted that
galled us. All day the battle raged, except when both sides stopped
by agreement to eat _popoi_ and rest, but late in the afternoon a
strange thing happened.
"Honi had thrown his harpoon, and by bad aim it entered a tree. The
end of the line he had about his left arm, and as he tried to pull
out the spear-head from the wood, his legs became entangled in the
rope, and my grandfather, who was very strong, seized the rope near
the tree, dragged the white man over the line, and killed him with a
rock.
"The enemy ran away then, and that night our people ate Honi.
Grandfather said his flesh was so tough they had to boil it. There
were no _tipoti_ (Standard-oil cans) in those days, but our people
took banana leaves and formed a big cup that would hold a couple of
quarts of water, and into these they put red-hot stones, and the
water boiled. Grandfather said they cut Honi into small pieces and
boiled him in many of these cups. Still he was tough, but
nevertheless they ate him.
"Honi was tattooed. Not like Marquesans, but like some white sailors,
he had certain marks on him. Grandfather saved these marks, and wore
them as a _tiki_, or amulet, until he died, when he gave it to me. He
had preserved the skin so that it did not spoil."
Haabunai yawned and said his mouth was parched from much talking,
but when a shell of rum was set before him and he had drunk, he
fetched from his house the _tiki_. It was as large as my hand, dark
and withered, but with a magnifying glass I could see a rude cross
and three letters, I H S in blue.
"Grandfather became a Christian and was no longer an _enata Ttaikaia_,
an eater of men, but he kept the _tiki_ always about his neck,
because he thought it gave him strength," said my guest.
I handed him back the gruesome relic, though he began advances to
make it my property. For the full demijohn he would have parted with
the _tiki_ that had been his grandfather's, but I had no fancy for it.
One can buy in Paris purses of human skin for not much more than one
of alligator hide.
"Honi must have been very tough," I said.
"He must have been," Haabunai said regretfully. "Grandfather had his
teeth to the last. He would never eat a child. Like all warriors he
preferred for vengeance's sake the meat of another fighter."
He had not yet sprung the grim jest of almost all cannibalistic
narratives. I did not ask if Honi's wife had eaten of him, as had
Tahia of her white man. It is probable that she did, and that they
deceived her. It was the practical joke of those days.
I had seen Apporo, my landlady, staggering homeward a few days
earlier in a pitiful state of intoxication. Some one had given her a
glass of mixed absinthe, vermuth, and rum, and with confidence in
the giver she had tossed it down. That is the kind of joke that in
other days would have been the deluding of some one into partaking
of the flesh of a lover or friend.
Reasoning from our standpoint, it is easy to assume that cannibalism
is a form of depravity practised by few peoples, but this error is
dispelled by the researches of ethnologists, who inform us that it
was one of the most ancient customs of man and began when he was
close brother to the ape. Livingstone, when he came upon it on the
Dark continent, concluded that the negroes came to that horrible
desire from their liking for the meat of gorillas, which so nearly
approach man in appearance. Herodatus, writing twenty-five hundred
years ago, mentions the Massagetae who boiled the flesh of their
old folks with that of cattle, both killed for the occasion.
Cannibalism marked the life of all peoples in days of savagery.
Plutarch says that Cataline's associates gave proof of their loyalty
to that agitator and to one another by sacrificing and eating a man.
Achilles expressed his wish that he might devour Hector. The Kafirs
ate their own children in the famine of 1857, and the Germans ate
one another when starvation maddened them, long after Maryland and
Massachusetts had become thriving settlements in the New World.
There is a historic instance of a party of American pioneers lost in
the mountains of California in the nineteenth century, who in their
last extremity of hunger ate several of the party.
To devour dead relatives, to kill and eat the elders, to feast upon
slaves and captives, even for mothers to eat their children, were
religious and tribal rites for many tens of thousands of years. We
have records of these customs spread over the widest areas of the
world.
Undoubtedly cannibalism began as a question of food supply. In early
times when man, emerging from the purely animal stage, was without
agricultural skill, and lived in caves or trees, his fellow was his
easiest prey. The great beasts were too fierce and powerful for his
feeble weapons except when luck favored him, and the clan or family,
or even the single brave hunter, sought the man-meat by stealth or
combat, or in tunes of stress ate those nearest and dearest.
Specially among peoples whose principal diet is heavy, starchy food,
such as the breadfruit, the demand for meat is keen. I saw Marquesan
women eating insects, worms, and other repellant bits of flesh out of
sheer instinct and stomachic need. When salt is not to be had, the
desire for meat is most intense. In these valleys the upper tribes,
whose enemies shut them off from the sea with its salt and fish,
were the most persistent cannibals, and the same condition exists in
Africa to-day, where the interior tribes eat any corpse, while none
of the coast tribes are guilty.
As the passion for cannibalistic feasts grew,--and it became a
passion akin to the opium habit in some,--the supply of other meat
had little to do with its continuance. In New Britain human bodies
were sold in the shops; in the Solomon Islands victims were fattened
like cattle, and on the upper Congo an organized traffic is carried
on in these empty tenements of the human soul.
Although cannibalism originated in a bodily need, man soon gave it
an emotional and spiritual meaning, as he has given them to all
customs that have their root in his physical being. Two forms of
cannibalism seem to have existed among the first historic peoples.
One was concerned with the eating of relatives and intimates, for
friendship's sake or to gain some good quality they possessed. Thus
when babies died, the Chavante mothers, on the Uruguay, ate them to
regain their souls. Russians ate their fathers, and the Irish, if
Strabo is to be credited, thought it good to eat both deceased
parents. The Lhopa of Sikkim, in Tibet, eat the bride's mother at
the wedding feast.
But Maori cannibalism, with its best exposition in the Marquesas,
was due to a desire for revenge, cooking and eating being the
greatest of insults. It was an expression of jingoism, a hatred for
all outside the tribe or valley, and it made the feud between
valleys almost incessant.
It was in no way immoral, for morals are the best traditions and
ways of each race, and here the eating of enemies was authorized by
every teaching of priest and leader, by time-honored custom and the
strongest dictates of nature.
White men and Chinese, in fact, all foreigners, were seldom eaten
here. There were exceptions when vengeance impelled, such at that of
Honi or Jones, whom Haabunai's grandfather ate, but as a rule they
were spared and indeed cherished, as strange visitors who might
teach the people useful things. Only their own depravity brought
them to the oven.
At such times, the feast was even a disagreeable rite. It is a fact
that the Marquesan disliked the flesh of a white man. They said he
was too salty. Hundreds of years ago the Aztecs, according to Bernal
Diaz, who was there, complained that "the flesh of the Spaniards
failed to afford even nourishment, since it was intolerably bitter."
This, though the Indians were dying of starvation by hundreds of
thousands in the merciless siege of Mexico City.
Standards of barbarity vary. Horrible and revolting as the very
mention of cannibalism is to us, it should be remembered that it
rested upon an attitude toward the foreigner and the slave that in
some degree still persists everywhere in the world. Outside the tribe,
the savage recognized no kindred humanity. Members of every clan
save his own were regarded as strange and contemptible beings,
outlandish and barbarous in manners and customs, not to be regarded
as sharers of a common birthright. This attitude toward the stranger
did not at all prevent the cannibal from being, within his own tribe,
a gentle, merry, and kindly individual.
Even toward the stranger the Marquesan was never guilty of torture
of any kind. Though they slew and ate, they had none of the
refinements of cruelty of the Romans, not even scalping enemies as
did the Scythians, Visigoths, Franks, and Anglo-Saxons. In their most
bloody wars they often paused in battle to give the enemy time to
eat and to rest, and there is no record of their ever ringing a
valley about with armed warriors and starving to death the women and
children within. Victims for the gods were struck down without
warning, so that they might not suffer even the pangs of anticipation.
The thumb-screw and rack of Christendom struck with horror those of
my cannibal friends to whom I mentioned them.