THE ISLAND OF STONE MONEY
UAP OF THE CAROLINES
[Illustration: A RECORD, IN THE MAKING]
THE
ISLAND OF STONE MONEY
UAP
OF
THE CAROLINES
BY
WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS, 3RD, M.D., F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF
“HOME-LIFE OF THE BORNEO HEAD-HUNTERS”
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
BY THE AUTHOR_
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910
BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
Published September, 1910
_Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company_
_The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U. S. A._
IN MEMORIAM
23 JUNE, 1909
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I INTRODUCTORY 11
II NATIVE HOUSES 21
III BACHELORS’ HOUSES 36
IV COSTUME AND ADORNMENTS 56
V SONGS AND INCANTATIONS 69
VI DANCE AND POSTURE SONGS 82
VII MONEY AND CURRENCY 92
VIII UAP FRIENDSHIPS 107
IX RELIGION 142
X PERCEPTION OF COLOUR 155
XI TATTOOING 157
XII BURIAL RITES 162
UAP GRAMMAR 180
VOCABULARY 199
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
A Record, in the Making _Frontispiece_
A Native Residence 22
A Rich Man’s House 24
House of a Copra Trader 26
A Native-Made Path 30
A “Pabai,” or Men’s Club-House 36
Return From a Fishing Cruise on the Open Sea 40
A “Failu” 44
Man and Wife of “Pimlingai,” or Slave Class 48
Lemet, a Mispil 52
Waigong, a Boy of Sixteen or Seventeen 56
Full Dress of a High-Class Damsel 60
Inifel, a Turbulent Chief 64
A Phonographic Matinée 72
Four Damsels Who Sang into the Phonograph 74
Lian, Chief of Dulukan 76
The Largest “Fei” on the Island 92
Stone Money Belonging to the “Failu” 96
“Gagai,” or Cat’s Cradle 108
Kakofel, the Daughter of Lian 110
Coconut Grove 114
Migiul, a Mispil 124
Fatumak 126
Fatumak’s Account for Coconuts Rendered 138
The Mode of Carrying Babies 154
The Tattooing of the Men of Fashion 158
Tattooing 159
Usual Tattoo Marks of a Mispil 160
Funeral Gifts of Stone Money and Pearl Shells 166
Gyeiga Placing Two Pearl Shells on Her Father’s Corpse 168
Map 273
THE
ISLAND OF STONE MONEY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Although old-time Pacific whalers and missionaries, both of them,
let us hope, from kindly motives of rendering the islanders happy,
introduced two unfortunate attendants of western civilization--alcohol
and diversity of faiths--nevertheless the natives of The Caroline
Islands have retained the greater part of their original primitive
beliefs, and recently, under admirable German rule, have perforce
abandoned alcohol. Wherefore they are become an exceedingly pleasant
and gentle folk to visit; this is especially true of the natives of the
island of Uap or Yap, the most westerly of the group. Like all other
primitive people (it hurts one’s feelings to call them savages or even
uncivilized,--one is too broad and the other too narrow) they are
shy at first, either through mistrust or awe, but, let acquaintance
and confidence be once established, and they are good company and
benignantly ready to tolerate, even to foster condescendingly, the
incomprehensible peculiarities and demented foibles of the white-faced
visitor.
* * * * *
When I visited The Caroline Islands in 1903, there was but one small
steamer, of a German trading company, which, about five times a year,
links these little worlds with our great one, and the people which it
brings from the uttermost horizon must seem to the natives quite as
wonderful as beings from Mars might seem to us; we at least can discern
the little point of light from which our Martian visitors might come,
and can appreciate the size and distance of another world, but to the
man of Uap, whose whole world in length and breadth is but a day’s
walk, the little steamboat emerges from an invisible spot, out of the
very ocean.
After a whole month of tossing and rolling and endless pitching on the
tiny, 500-ton steamer, _Oceana_, plying between Sydney and The
Marshall and Caroline Islands and Hong-Kong, we were within one night’s
sail of the little island of Uap,--a mere dot on our school maps. Here
I intended to remain for nearly two months and await the return trip of
the steamer. The five short stops which the steamer had made at other
enchanting, alluring islands had been veritable _hors-d’œuvres_
to whet the appetite, and while drinking in the beauty of my last
sunset from the deck of the copra-laden little steamer, with the sea
the colour of liquid rose leaves and the sky shaded off in all tints
of yellow, orange, green, blue, mauve, and rose-color, I was thrilled
by the thought that I was soon to enjoy again the earthy perfume of
damp groves of palm, the pungent odor of rancid coconut oil, and the
scent of fires of sappy wood, whereof all combined compose the peculiar
atmosphere of the palm-thatched houses of Pacific Islanders. I expected
to be awakened on the following morning by the sudden change from
tossing on the open sea to the smooth gliding of the vessel through the
waters of the calm lagoon, and with that delicious smell of land and of
lush vegetation. Instead of this, however, in the gray of dawn, I was
instantly aroused by the clang of the captain’s signal to the engine
room, ringing first “stop” and then “full speed astern.” I jumped from
my berth to the deck and looked into a thick, impenetrable fog that
utterly hemmed us in. From every side an ominous roar of breakers rose
above the thump of the engines. The fog lifted; there were the reefs
and breakers distant not a hundred and fifty feet dead ahead of us;
then down came the fog and off we backed, only to find that the reefs
encircled us completely. Even before the glow on the light and fleecy
clouds which formed the ineffable beauty of the sunset had faded, heavy
clouds had arisen; by midnight the sky was inky black with no star
to guide our course. The captain thus fell a victim to the strong,
variable currents, characteristic of these waters, which are indeed
but one of the many varieties of thorns which hedge these Sleeping
Beauties of the ocean; these had been responsible for our being hurried
on much faster than the log could show, and here we were almost on top
of the reef, two hours ahead of time, with the land hidden behind an
impenetrable veil.
Our situation was like a fever-dream, wherein vague but fatal dangers
threaten, and, strain as we may, we are unable to open our eyes. The
fog had been like a great eyelid, raised and lowered just long enough
to give us one fleeting glimpse, and no more, of fatal peril, while the
thunder and hissing swish of the breakers were like the deadly warnings
of a rattlesnake before it strikes. Then, of a sudden, again the dense
fog lifted completely, and the land seemed verily to rise out of the
sea, and we found ourselves directly in front of the very entrance to
the harbour with the channel of deep-blue water almost running out to
meet us. Five minutes more of fog and we should have been pounding
helplessly on the reefs with the garden gates impenetrably closed.
I mention this only to give the hint that were the gates wider open
and less dangerously ajar, “trade’s unfeeling train” would have long
ago wholly overrun these imprisoned little lands and dispossessed the
aboriginal “swain.”
Yap, or rather Uāāp, with a prolonged broad ā, the pronunciation
invariably used by the natives, means, in their old language, I was
told, “_the_ Land,” which, I suppose, exactly meant to the
aborigines--the whole world. Uap is, as I have said before, the
westernmost of The Caroline group, and lies about nine degrees north of
the equator. It is not an atoll, but the result of volcanic upheaval;
it is encircled, nevertheless, by coral reefs from three to five miles
wide, and has, at about the middle of the southwestern coast, a good
harbour in Tomil Bay.
To recall very briefly the general history of this group of islands:
They have been known to the civilized world since 1527, when they were
discovered by the Portuguese; a hundred and fifty years later they
were annexed by Spain and named in honour of Carolus II. At the close
of the Spanish-American war the whole group was purchased from Spain by
Germany for the sum of $3,300,000, and since then under judicious and
enlightened government has steadily improved in productiveness.
The natives of Uap, in number from five to six thousand, are of
that perplexing type known generally as Micronesian, which covers a
multitude of conjectures. The natives of each island have certain
characteristics of form and features which make relationship to natives
of other islands or groups of islands a possibility; but, on the other
hand, there are such differences in language, in customs, in manner
of living, that it is well-nigh impossible to state, with any degree
of certainty, what or whence is the parent stock or predominant race.
By way of generalization merely, and not as deciding the question,
let me say that the people of Uap are of the Malayan type,--a light
coffee-coloured skin; hair black and inclined to wave or curl, not
crinkly, like the Melanesian and African; eyes very dark brown, almost
black; cheek bones rather high and noses inclined to be hooked, but
not prominent. In this last feature they resemble other Polynesians
and the Melanesians of New Guinea and The Solomon Islands. They are
not as tall nor, on an average, as strongly built as the natives of
Samoa, Fiji, or Tahiti. Since the sale of intoxicants and gunpowder has
been prohibited, except to the trustworthy chiefs, they are gentle,
docile, and lazy; formerly, under the very lax rule of Spain they were
exceedingly troublesome and frequently made raids upon the Spanish and
German traders, and were continuously at internecine war.
* * * * *
Personal details are generally uninteresting; it therefore suffices
to say that I was received most kindly by the little colony of white
people who live upon the island, consisting of the resident doctor,
then acting as Governor; the postmaster; the manager--an American--of
The Jaluit Trading Company; and four Spanish and German copra traders.
I was most hospitably entertained by Herr Friedlander, one of these
copra traders, and, in point of residence, the oldest white trader on
the island. With a courteous friendliness for which I shall be always
grateful, he invited me to lodge with him at his little copra station
in Dulukan, where I could be all the time in close touch with the
natives; not only was he always ready to act as my interpreter, but
was also at every turn unwearied in his kindness and devotion. I had
expected and hoped to share the home life in the houses of the natives,
as I had done in Borneo, but the village life and the home life of the
people of Uap differ so widely from those of the Borneans that I found
it would be better by far to stay in Herr Friedlander’s comfortable
little pile-built house and visit the natives, or get them to visit me.
As soon as the _Oceana_ had discharged her cargo and departed on
her way to Hong-Kong, we set our sail of matting in Friedlander’s
native-built copra barge, which was fairly loaded to the gunwales with
my luggage and photographic outfit, and glided through green aisles of
mangrove and over the glassy blue and green water of the lagoon to the
southern end of the island where lies the delightful, scattered little
village of Dulukan.