The madman Great Moth of the Night; story of the famine and the one
family that ate pig.
Le Brunnec, the trader, was opening a roll of Tahiti tobacco five
feet long, five inches in diameter at the center, and tapering
toward the ends. It was bound, as is all Tahiti tobacco, in a
_purau_ rope, which had to be unwound and which weighed two pounds.
The eleven pounds of tobacco were hard as wood, the leaves cemented
by moisture. Le Brunnec hacked it with an axe into suitable portions
to sell for three francs a pound, the profit on which is a franc.
The immediate customer was Tavatini (Many Pieces of Tattooing), a
rich man of Taaoa, in his fifties. His face was grilled with _ama_
ink. One streak of the natural skin alone remained. Beside him on
the counter sat a commanding-looking man, whose eyes, shining from a
blue background of tattooing, were signals to make one step aside
did one meet him on the trail. They had madness in them, but they
were a revelation of wickedness.
Some men, without a word or gesture, make you think intently. There
is that in their appearance which starts a train of ideas, of wonder,
of guesses at their past, of horror at what is written upon their
faces. This man's visage was seamed and wrinkled in a network of
lines that said more plainly than words that he was a monster whose
villainies would chill imagination. The brain was a spoiled machine,
but it had been all for evil.
"That man," said Le Brunnec, "is the worst devil in the Marquesas."
Between blows of the axe, the trader told me something of his history:
The madman was Mohuho, whose name means Great Moth of the Night. He
is the chief whom Lying Bill saw shoot three men in Tahuata for
sheer wantonness. He was then chief of Tahuata, and the power in that
island, in Hiva-oa and Fatu-hiva. He slew every one who opposed him.
He was the scourge of the islands. He harried valley after valley
for lust of blood and the terrible pride of the destroyer. It was
his boast that he had killed sixty people by his own hand, otherwise
than in battle.
He was a man of ceaseless energy, a builder of roads, of houses, and
canoes. At Hapatone he had constructed several miles of excellent
road with the enforced labor of every man in the valley for a year.
It is all lined with _temanu_ trees, is almost solid stone, and
endures. Its blocks are cemented with blood, for Great Moth of the
Night drove men to the work with bullets.
His arsenal was stocked by the French, whose ally he was, and to
whom he was very useful in furnishing men for work and in upholding
French supremacy. In Hapatone he was virtually a king, and the fear
of him extended throughout the southern Marquesas.
One day he came as a guest to a feast in Taaoa. There was a blind man,
a poor, harmless fellow, who was eating the pig and _popoi_ and
saying nothing. Great Night Moth had a new gun, which he laid beside
him while he drank plentifully of the _namu enata_, until he became
quite drunk.
At last the blind man, scared by his threats, started to walk away
in the slow, halting way of the sightless, and attracted Great Night
Moth's attention. He picked up his new gun and while all were
petrified with fear of being the target, he shot the blind man so
that his body fell into the oven in which the pig had been baked. The
people could only laugh loudly, if not heartily, as if pleased by
the joke.
In Hana-teio a man in a cocoanut-tree gathering nuts was ordered to
come down by Great Night Moth who was passing on a boar hunt. The
man became confused. His limbs did not cling to the tree as usual.
He was fearful and could make no motion.
"_Poponohoo! Ve mai! A haa tata!_ Come down quickly!" yelled the
chief.
The poor wretch could not obey. He saw the gun and knew the chief.
Great Night Moth brought him down a corpse.
There was no punishment for him. The French held him accountable
only for deeds against their sovereignty. A superstition that he was
protected by the gods, combined with his strength and desperate
courage, made him immune from vengeance by the islanders.
These were incidents Le Brunnec knew from witnesses, but it was Many
Pieces of Tattooing who told the ancestry of Great Night Moth.
"Pohue-toa (Male Package) uncle of Earth Worm, was prince of Taaoa
and father of this man," said Many Pieces. "He was one of the
biggest men of these islands, and the strongest in Taaoa. He lived
for a while in Hana-menu.
"There was no war then between the valley of Atuona and that of
Hana-menu; the people of both crossed the mountains and visited one
another. But it was discovered in Atuona that a number of the people
were missing. Some had gone to Hana-menu and never reached there,
others had disappeared on their way home. The chief of Atuona sent a
messenger who was _tapu_ in all valleys, to count the people of this
valley who were in Hana-menu and to warn them to return in a band,
armed with spears. Meanwhile the priest went to the High Place and
spoke to the gods, and after two days and nights he returned and
said that the danger was at the pass between the valleys; that a
demon had seized the people there.
"The demon was Male Package. You know the precipice there is near
the sky, and at the very height is a _puta faiti_, a narrow place.
There Male Package lay in wait, armed with his spear and club, and
hidden in the grass. He was hungry for meat, for Long Pig, and when
he saw some one he fancied, he threw his spear or struck them down
with the _u'u_. He took the corpse on his back and carried it to his
hut in the upper valley of Hana-menu as I would carry a sack of copra.
There he ate what he would, alone.
"Oh, there were those who knew, but they were afraid to tell. After
it became known to the people of Atuona, to the kin of those who had
been eaten, they did nothing. Male Package was like Great Night Moth
later--a man whom the gods fought for."
Great Night Moth sat smoking, listening to what was said in the
listless way that lunatics listen, unable to focus his attention,
but gathering in his addled brain that he was being discussed. I
watched him as one does a caged tiger, guessing at the beast's
thoughts and thankful that it can prey no more.
Many Pieces of Tattooing had no tone of horror or regret in his
voice while he recounted the bloody deeds of Mohuho and Pohue-toa,
but smiled, as if he would say that they had occurred under a
different dispensation and were not blameful.
"Was Great Night Moth the real son of Male Package?" I asked.
"Ah, that is to be told," said Many Pieces. "He was his son, yes.
Shall I tell you the tale of how he escaped death at the hands of
his father? _Ea!_ I remember the time well. Menike, you have seen
the rivers big and the cocoanut-trees felled by the flood, but you
have not seen the _ave one_, the time of no food, when the ground is
as dry as the center of a dead tree, and hunger is in the valleys
like the ghost-women that move as mist. There have been many such
periods for the island peoples.
"That two years it did not rain. The breadfruit would not yield. The
grass and plants died. There were no nuts on the palms. The pigs had
no food, and fell in the forest. The banana-trees withered. The
people ate the _popoi_ from the deepest pits, and day and night they
fished. Soon the pits were empty and the people ate roots, bark,
anything. There were fish, but it is hard to live on fish alone.
"Some lay in their canoes and ate the _eva_ and died. The stomachs
of some became empty of thought, and they threw themselves into the
sea. The father of Great Night Moth sent all his children to the
hills. There is always more rain there, and there was some food to be
found. His wife he kept at the fishing, day and night, till she
slept at the paddle, and he himself went to the high plateaus to
hunt for pig.
"For many days he came down weak, having found none. But at last she
came to find baked meat ready for her, and she wept and ate and
thanked him. He had found a certain green spot, he said, where there
were more.
"Many times he brought the meat to her, and she said that the
children should come back to share the food, but he said, 'No. Eat!
They have plenty.'
"She came from the fishing one day with empty baskets. The sea had
been rough, and there were no fish. Her husband had become a surly
man, and cruel; he beat her. She said, 'Is there no pig?'
"'Pig, you fool!' said her husband. 'You have eaten no pig. You have
eaten your children. They are all dead.'
"Great Night Moth had escaped because he had been adopted by the
chief of Taaoa, while his father was hunting the children in the
forest."
"That is horrible, horrible!" said Le Brunnec. "Maybe this Great
Night Moth could not but be bad with such a father. All these chiefs,
the hereditary ones, are rotten. Their children are often insane.
They have degenerated. After the whalers came and gave them whiskey,
and the traders absinthe and drugs, they learned the vices of the
white man, which are worse for them than for us."
"Do you think the eating of men began by the _ave one_, the famine?"
I put the question to Many Pieces of Tattooing, who was about to
leave the store with Great Night Moth.
"_Ae, tiatohu!_ It is so," he answered. "Our legends say that often
in the many centuries we have remembered there have been years when
food failed. It was in those times that they began to eat one another,
and when food was plenty, they continued for revenge. They learned
to like it. Human meat is good."
"Ask the gentleman if he has himself enjoyed such feasts," I urged
Le Brunnec.
"I will not!" said the Frenchman, hastily. "Tavatini is a good
customer. He has money on deposit with me. He eats biscuits and beef.
He might be offended and buy of the Germans."
Many Pieces of Tattooing nudged Great Night Moth, and they advanced
to their horses, which were tied to the store building. The madman
mounted with the ease of a cowboy, and they rode off at speed.