CANNIBAL CHIEFS.
Big-Wind took a great fancy to me. He was always pleased to have me talk
to him as he lay on his mats, or accompany him in his walks abroad. Seen
standing erect, he was a magnificent savage. His head of hair, from
which a comb projected over his forehead, measured some forty inches
round. A long train of white masi trailed behind him like a comet’s
tail. A massive club rested on his shoulder, and he walked with a proud
and haughty step which proclaimed his chiefly rank.
Cannibal chiefs are mostly men of fine build with naturally intelligent
minds, not infrequently well-furnished with local knowledge of that
practical sort so much needed by the lower classes of their subjects.
They are the brains of the nation. All beneath them are the bones and
muscles of it. The governing work they have to do places them high up in
intellectual ability above the common people, just as the care and
attention they receive, when children, in matters of diet, exercise, and
rest, make them physically superior to their neglected serfs.
The heads of some of these men would be pronounced by phrenologists fine
specimens of cranial architecture; and here and there may be seen a
magnificent encasement of a more than commonly vigorous brain. But the
eye, though often large and beautiful, spoils the man. As with Big-Wind,
its ever-restless activity tells of an undisciplined and suspicious
mind; of the daily waste of mental power in constant thought about
everything, and effective concentration of thought on nothing. The true
chief is, notwithstanding, wonderfully calm and self-possessed. Ruffle
his temper if you can! If the test of good breeding is what Euripides
says it is, that “A well-bred man may feel angry, but never show it,”
the cannibal chief may be called the best bred man in the world. He will
sit and listen to news of the most dreadful and melancholy nature, just
brought, it may be, from various parts of his dominions; or he will
witness some sudden and startling occurrence; or submit to be addressed
by an impulsive foreigner in language the most offensive without
shedding a tear, blinking an eye, or twitching a single nerve of his
inexpressive countenance.
One day, while talking with Big-Wind, I observed that a messenger,
burdened, evidently with weighty intelligence, came up, and seating
himself on the ground, finished the respectful greeting due from him as
the manner of Fijians is, by clapping his hands in slow and solemn
style. Then, addressing his royal master, he said “Sir, I am come to
inform you that death has fallen upon us, and your sister is gone.” I
eyed the lordly savage scrutinizingly, but without discovering any
emotion in his face. He coolly clapped his leg with his right hand.
Then, turning to me, he continued the conversation he had previously
been engaged in. This is characteristic of the race, but particularly so
of the chiefs. To an Englishman their coolness is something distressing.
At times, however, it displays itself to great advantage.
Once we were assembled on the public court ground of Turtle Town, 2000
strong, the occasion being the reception of an ambassador from a
neighbouring tribe. We were all comfortably seated on the green sward,
and the duties of the day were proceeding in a regular and orderly way,
when suddenly, as if thrilled by an electric shock, a group of 200
persons sprang to their feet, uttering, as they did so, loud cries of
“ah! ah! ah!” in rapid _staccato_, and accompanied with looks and
gestures indicative of imminent danger. This was too much for the
majority, who were ignorant of the cause, and the whole crowd rose in
wild excitement to rush helter skelter into uncontrollable confusion,
and perhaps a needless fight. One glance, however, at a little knoll
which could not well be hid, turned aside this calamity. There sat a
body of chiefs, perfectly cool and self-possessed, though equally in
darkness with all but the 200 as to the cause of the stir. This act of
the chiefs was an instantaneous and mighty rebuke; for it is an almost
unpardonable offence in cannibal-land to stand in the presence of great
chiefs at any time without leave, but more especially so when those
chiefs themselves are seated. The calmness of the chiefs, therefore,
with a shout or two from a stentorian voice of “down! down! your chiefs
are sitting down,” brought the heaving mass of humanity to itself again.
Whereupon the cause of all the disturbance was found to be that the 200
people who were seated opposite a grove of banana trees, had observed a
man with a bow and arrows quietly trying to pass on his way under cover
of those trees. The crowd, as in duty bound by its characteristically
suspicious nature, rushed to the conclusion that what they saw must be
the first act of some tragic and savage plot.
A chief seldom laughs—never in the presence of strangers or in counsel
assembled. It would be unchiefly to do so. This virtue of not laughing
is both well illustrated and encouraged by a tale of one Keelai, a
spirit guarding one of the ways to the interior of the spirit-world. He
is in truth an armed constable, a kind of Cerberus, though not of the
canine species, whose duty it is to see that none but the spirits of
chiefs of great distinction pass along that sacred road. But how shall
he know a chief from a common man? for there are fine-looking men among
the lower orders of Cannibal-land as elsewhere. According to Fijian
reasoning, therefore, it would not be wrong to suppose that the spirits
of such men are at least as fine as their bodies were, and for this
reason not much inferior to the spirits of men of higher rank.
Keelai, however, is at no loss for an easy and eminently successful
test. He is armed with a club, which, to the cannibal soldier, is of the
most laughable shape imaginable. Who, that is acquainted with the arms
of war, can look on that club and not split his sides with laughter?
Thus armed, the boneless watcher is ever ready for duty.
Nor has he long to wait for the sound of a fresh footfall. It is the
tramp of a spirit just freed from fleshy bonds. As the stranger draws
near, Keelai steps out into the middle of the path to give the
challenge. The paths in Fiji’s spirit-land are like those in Fiji
itself, very narrow, and fit only for marching in single file, so that
when two travellers meet, one must stand aside to let the other pass.
Holding up in warlike attitude his ridiculous club, Keelai utters a wild
laugh like the neighing of a spirited horse, and fixes his steady but
fire-flashing eye on that of the new arrival. Should this candidate for
immortality laugh, Keelai smites him down with a blow
“That leaveth him
A corse most vilely shatter’d.”
But, if he presses boldly on, with a straight, stern face, and princely
bearing, the officer steps out of his way and subsides.
The high-born chief is a perfect study. Whether you see him stretched on
his cool, scarlet-fringed mat in dreamy and tropical laziness, smoking
his cigarette, or out working in his garden planting taro and trimming
banana trees, like one of his serfs; or strolling through the village or
along the beach; or sailing in his favourite clipper canoe, often with
the outrigger dangerously balanced just above the water, and scudding
along like a flying-fish on nothing, to show you how cleverly he can
sail without capsizing her; or in the presence of his subjects on some
state occasion—in comparison with most of his countrymen you are bound
to declare him every inch a chief. In national gatherings particularly
it is impossible to mistake him, and almost equally impossible to
counterfeit him. Good-looking, when out of their coating of red and
black paint, good-tempered and chief-like as were many of these
first-rank men, they nevertheless had in an exaggerated degree all the
vices of feudal lords in general.
One of the most curious social customs of the country is that of the
Vasu, or Nephew, who has the right of “requisitioning” the property of
all to whom he is related. His influence is in proportion to the height
of his position, which is fixedly his mother’s rank. If she were a lady
of high station in her husband’s tribe, her children would be vasus of
the highest order, but their power would be limited to that tribe.
Whereas, if the mother were a lady of another tribe or kingdom, her
children, though a shade lower as vasus, would yet have far more
influence there than in their father’s tribe. According to the Fijian
idea, the Prince Royal of Prussia, having taken to wife the Princess
Royal of England, the children of the marriage are vasus to England; and
the Prince of Wales, having married the Princess Alexandria of Denmark,
the young princes and princesses are vasus to Denmark. This custom was a
terrible tax on the people, as the following illustration will show.
Suppose a young lord of London marries a daughter of an old lord of
Manchester, the children being vasus to Manchester, the eldest son takes
the train one fine morning for the great northern city, and, after
spending a few pleasant days there, goes back laden with any amount of
wealth obtained from the rich manufacturers. How did he get it? _Ex
officio_, by the simple exercise of his rights and privileges as their
vasu. He went in and out boldly among his mother’s kinsfolk and
townsfolk, putting his hands on this, that, and the other, taking the
trouble to say as he did so, “mine, and mine, and mine.” When he
reappeared at the West End, he was looked upon as not much inferior to
Sindbad, the rich and lucky sailor. This state of things naturally ended
in Manchester insisting on having vasus to London. Marriages were
arranged with that view, and the evil was intensified.
A faint idea of how banefully this system worked in Fiji, may be got
from the fact, that, of two great tribes, which, to avoid the use of
savage names, may still be called London and Manchester, who tested this
plan as completely as they were able, consistently with their absolutely
selfish political economy, London, by hook or by crook, by diplomatic
intrigue and quiet scheming, in which Fijian politicians are masters,
succeeded in getting ten vasus to Manchester’s one.
It will thus be seen that this must have been one of the most
destructive and savage instruments ever wielded in a savage land. There
was not a man in the country who was the _bona-fide_ owner of anything
he presumed to call his own. This institution threw its meshes over
every kingdom, tribe, family, and individual, and was often the fruitful
source of deep-laid plots, dark assassinations, wholesale massacres, and
prolonged wars, together with all their concomitants and
consequences—fresh roots of bitterness, new wounds to carry the
corruption forward, and wrath treasured up for other days of wrath.
It happened, however, that the institution of the vasu proved of signal
service to me in time of need.