UAP FRIENDSHIPS
A good method of learning a language, where there is neither
dictionary, textbook, nor grammar, is to begin, in the primary class,
with the children. Accordingly, to the children I devoted my earliest
attention; in the guise of a playmate, I let them unwittingly instruct
me. One game, with its marvellous amplifications, I found to be
exceedingly popular: our nursery game of cat’s-cradle. It is, indeed, a
game and pastime not only of the children, but also of youths, maidens,
matrons, and old men. All were familiar with figures which, at first
made my head swim by their intricacy and the lightning rapidity of the
wriggling brown fingers. I was already familiar with one or two figures
which I had learned from a delightful paper in _The Journal of the
Anthropological Institute_, by my friend, Dr. A. C. Haddon, and I
was keen for more.
My first lesson came from the hands of Kakofel, the young daughter of
Lian, Chief of Dulukan. Curly-headed, little Pooguroo was my earliest
and most faithful friend; and Kakofel came next. Her father brought her
with him, or rather she trudged after in his train, the first morning
after Friedlander and I arrived at his village. We were busy getting
our various “traps” ready for the day’s work; Friedlander with his
merchandise, and I with my photographic outfit, when Lian, a handsome
man with a somewhat negroid face, but light in colour, solemnly
ascended the ladder and silently squatted cross-legged on the floor a
short distance from the door. Directly behind him a closely cropped
little head arose; at first, just on a level with the threshold; next,
there cautiously peered forth a pair of wide open, wondering, snappy
black eyes, framed all round in long, jet-black lashes, making the
whites look larger and whiter; then uprose a little brown body girdled
with a straggly skirt of dried leaves hanging down to the knees; last
of all two little brown legs, and lo, there stood Kakofel! She
immediately seated herself cross-legged beside her father, conveniently
near the doorway, however, in readiness for an instant retreat down the
ladder at a second’s notice. Not a word did the dignified, impassive
Lian utter; Friedlander took no notice of him, and I, like “Br’er
Rabbit,” kept on saying nothing. Greetings are not “good form” in
Uap, and nowhere is it diplomatic to blurt out at once the object of
a visit. A row of little brown heads, following Kakofel’s example,
now appeared on the level of the threshold, but remained there,
motionless, like little tropical cherubim with the wings moulted. Of
course, Lian had his betel basket with him, and so did Kakofel, and the
embarrassing pause was bridged by the preparation of a bolus, which
they both performed mechanically, while their eyes narrowly examined us
and every corner of the room. The little maid was about twelve years
old, an exceedingly round and healthy little body for one brought up
on coconuts; according to the Uap standard of beauty, the little girl
gave promise of a highly attractive future belle.
[Illustration:
GURUNGEN. MATENAK. POOGUROO.
“GAGAI,” OR CAT’S CRADLE]
At length Lian spoke, and just as though he were of the highest
culture and fashion, began with the weather and the prospects of
rain, just then much needed for the coconut trees and the tanks, or
rather water holes, on the island; then, of course, the next subjects
broached were coconuts, copra, and trade; I could not understand what
was said, but Friedlander, always courteous and kind, included me
in the conversation by translating from time to time. The peculiar
appearance of the little damsel’s cheeks was, however, what I was most
anxious to have explained. She looked as if she were suffering from
an extraordinarily severe attack of mumps combined with jaundice. At
the earliest opportunity I begged my host to permit me to ask by what
mysterious malady she had been attacked; and I extended my hand to
touch the strange excrescences; she shrank back timidly with a little
cry and her feet darted for the first rung of the ladder; thereupon
all the cherubim instantly disappeared. I at once tried to make
amends by stepping back a few paces; her father then explained that
what I had mistaken for mumps were merely the halves of a coconut
shell worn to protect her poor, little ears, which had been recently
punched in conformity with the feminine fashions of Uap. These shell
protectors had been scraped smooth and powdered thickly with saffron,
or _reng-reng_, an ornamental cosmetic in universal use and the
stain had been so smeared over the little girl’s neck and cheeks that
the skin and shells were all the same colour.
[Illustration: KAKOFEL, THE DAUGHTER OF LIAN, WITH COCONUT SHELLS
TO PROTECT HER RECENTLY PERFORATED EARS]
When she saw, however, that my interest was friendly, she loosened
the strings that held the coconut shells in place and showed me, as
a special favour, her terribly swollen ears, whereof the lobes had
been punctured and a wad of oily green leaves, as thick as a dentist’s
thumb, inserted in the wound to keep it from closing up. Her spirits
were not, however, in the least depressed by her afflictions, and after
I had, as a fair exchange, displayed to her some elaborate Japanese
tattooing on my arms and she had contributed to it many smudges of
black and yellow from her inquisitive fingers, we became excellent
friends. To change the subject, I produced a string and inquiringly
showed her one of my cat’s-cradle figures. She watched my awkward
movements with open-mouthed wonder and then, taking the string, made a
figure, which she called _melāng_,--coral,--representing a stalk
of coral with two side branches; of course, I was eager to learn it,
and in my attempts I increased my vocabulary with several words or
phrases,--_dakafel_, meaning “not right,”--_kafel_, “all
right,” and _piri amith_, “very painful,” which I was told to say
when she nearly twisted my fingers out of joint in forcing them through
tight loops or in hooking them over each other at impossible angles.
_Manigil_, “excellent, very good” was the last word I learned.
By this time the cherubim had dispelled both their fears and the
illusion, by crawling up stealthily and sitting down on the floor near
us. Of course, little Pooguroo was there close beside me, and gave a
smile meaning “we’re old friends, aren’t we?” In a few minutes they
were all at cat’s-cradle, competing with each other in making the
figures rapidly and grunting at me for applause. Before this first
lesson was over, Lian, the chief, became so lost in watching us that
he stopped talking copra, and, taking the string from his daughter,
tried to show off his own skill in some wonderful pattern, but he was
so shaky with a palsy of his hands, that his efforts were vain and his
disrespectful daughter jeered at his failure, and in high glee shouted
“_dakafel! dakafel!_” until he gave it up and, with a provoked
smile, flung the string at her merry little face and resumed his talk
about trade.
Kakofel was the tomboy of Dulukan; there was no mischief afoot that
she was not in it, and where the boys were making the most noise and
playing the roughest games, there was Kakofel, always in the midst,
and her rippling laughter, ending in a prolonged high note, was always
distinguishable above the others. But I grieve to say our friendship
did not last long; it was my inadvertent rudeness that caused the
breach. One resplendent moonlight night, the shouting of boys and the
shrill screams of little girls playing in the coconut grove seemed to
be more boisterous than usual, and Kakofel’s voice frequently rose high
above the rest. Friedlander and I strolled forth to see what was going
on, and were astonished to see firebrands flying in all directions,
scattering trails of sparks, like comets. “Hang the little imps,”
shouted Friedlander, “they’re at their fiendish fire-game again!” They
had built a fire of dried coconut husks which smoulder slowly, and,
armed with these glowing embers, were hiding behind coconut trees,
awaiting a chance to launch the fiery missile at some unwary playmate.
Friedlander was not concerned for the blisters on tough little hides,
but he was justly fearful lest a misdirected brand might lodge on the
thatch of his storehouses. Off he dashed into the darkness, hurling
broadcast some awful Uap words; the pyrotechnic display fell at once
to earth, and the shouts and laughter died away in the patter of little
bare feet and the rustle of grass skirts. Like wild animals they knew
how to run to cover, and in a trice the grove was still and dark and
silent, as at midnight, and deserted; merely the persistent embers,
that kept on glowing where they had been dropped, were left to tell of
the escapade.
[Illustration: COCONUT GROVE]
But Friedlander was rendered so anxious over the risk to his
“go-downs,” stored full with several months’ accumulation of copra,
that when he became convinced that it was impossible to run to earth
the will-o’-the-wisps, he strode over to the _failu_, where
several men and boys were still sitting around a fire, and there
vented his wrath upon them, assuring them that if they didn’t restrict
those little devils, and especially that little “Kakofel Kan” (that
is: “_that little demon of a Kakofel_”), whom he suspected by
her tell-tale laughter to be the ring-leader, he would hold them all
responsible for any damage by fire, and would confiscate their largest
and whitest _fei_ till the loss was made good.
Their eyes and mouths opened wide in astonishment and, when his
harangue was concluded, several of them jumped up and started out in
the darkness to catch and chastise the culprits; as well might they
have attempted to catch the frigate bird that soared over the house the
day before.
By the next morning Friedlander’s rage and anxiety had subsided and the
night’s adventure had apparently faded from his memory, as all other
annoyances of his life always vanished whenever his lighter with a full
load of coconuts pulled up to the jetty. While I was tinkering at my
cinematograph or my camera, I glanced up and happened to see Kakofel
sauntering toward me, swinging in one hand her inseparable betel
basket, and in the other holding the white spongy heart of a sprouted
coconut, known as “_būl_, which is about the size of an apple and
of the consistency of pith, but with a very pleasant, sweet taste,
and a favourite delicacy with children. The process of munching this
_būl_, from time to time, eclipsed and disarranged the sweet and
innocent smile with which she saluted me as she approached. There was,
of course, her usual accompaniment of small boy and girl-satellites
and when she stood at my side, I shook my finger at her and said in
the merest joke, “Hullo, Kakofel Kan!” Her expression changed in a
flash! She stopped short, the smile vanished, her eyes opened wide, as
she stared at me, with an expression of almost horror on her face; the
half eaten _būl_ dropped from her hand, she turned quickly, and
with one backward glance at me over her shoulder, ran swiftly out of
the enclosure and up the path toward her home, her little brown legs
swinging out sideways from the knees, as, in native, girlish fashion
she turned her toes in to get a better grip upon the loose sand. That
was almost the last I ever saw of Kakofel; nothing would induce her to
come near me again; when the phonograph was played to large audiences,
she was present, but always in the furthest row of listeners, and often
sitting solemnly alone outside the light bamboo fence; when I caught
her eye and smiled, she responded with a stony stare, and turned away;
if I called to her, she paid not the slightest attention, except to
quicken her pace to a run. Indeed, she was a mournful loss in my circle
of small friends; she was always a merry little thing; a wonderful
adept at cat’s-cradle, and a patient, although derisive, teacher.
However deeply I may have wounded Kakofel’s feelings, her mother by
no means shared the affront; for she was always the first to arrive
and the last to leave whenever a phonograph “recital” was on hand;
moreover, she invariably managed to secure a seat as near as possible
to the instrument, whence she could command the best singers to come
forward to sing or speak into the brass horn; I usually dropped three
or four imported cigarettes in her lap by way of thanks. She was not
what even an ecstatic imagination could describe as beautiful, but she
had a gentle, plaintive expression, and this rueful look was emphasised
by a droop at the left corner of her mouth caused by the loss of all
her teeth on that side. She was extremely thin, every bone of her chest
stood out almost in alto-relievo, but she seemed, withal, to be very
cheerful and, whenever the phonograph showed off well its power of
mimicry to some surprised new-comer, she emitted “the loud laugh that
speaks the vacant mind.” The dim blue tattoo marks on the back of her
hands and on her legs bore witness that in her youth she had been the
fêted belle of some _failu_, before Lian took her to himself as
wife. I once paid her a visit when she happened to be busy boiling some
_dal_ (yams), and _lak_ (taro), for the midday meal, and she
showed me all over her kitchen by allowing me to thrust my head within
the doorway. It was merely a little outhouse of palm leaf close beside
their large house and only about six feet long, by three or four wide;
the floor was really neatly swept up, although the thatching of the
sides and rafters was well coated with soot. The fireplace was a large
iron bowl,--purchased of course, from Friedlander,--banked up in a
mound of sand; in this the fire was built, without any draught, and
over it an iron tripod, whereon was hung another iron bowl in which
the food was cooking. She had to sit by and watch the fire constantly
because, as she explained, it was exceedingly ill-omened for a spark
to fly out and lie burning on the floor, so while the fire burned
brightly, she must be close at hand to push back embers that might
fall, and to catch flying sparks.
The little house wherein the women cook their own food is called
_pinfi_, meaning “woman’s fire,” and is always for their exclusive
use; no man can eat food cooked in utensils that have been used in
preparing food for a woman, and I doubt if a man would use even the
same fire; I know that they will not light a cigarette from the same
ember or match that a woman uses; this is true even of husband and
wife. Once, at Friedlander’s instigation, to make a test, I picked
some areca nuts out of a woman’s betel basket as if to examine them,
and then in an absent-minded manner, dropped them into the basket of a
man who had seen me take them from the woman; instantly he snatched
them out of his basket and flung them from him as if they had been
live coals. I questioned Lian about this custom; he admitted that
nothing would induce him to eat food prepared in a woman’s bowl or
chew a betel nut that had been in a woman’s basket. He assured me
solemnly that it would inevitably bring ill luck or sickness. When
I visited Lian’s wife, all utensils used in the preparation of her
husband’s food were in a small vestibule or antechamber near the door
of the house, and there also was the fireplace used exclusively for
him. This taboo, as I suppose it may be termed, does not, however,
prevent a husband from eating voraciously of the food which his poor
wife, slaving over the fire (in the tropics too!), has cooked for her
high and mighty lord;--here is just where the charming flexibility of
the taboo is in evidence. The ill omen attached to the flying sparks
is devised to frighten poor women into taking care lest they set the
house on fire; and, by the way, it is, indeed, almost miraculous that
they do escape daily, nay hourly conflagrations, even with this dread
omen hanging over them. In the first place, their skirts are composed
of four or five layers of dried leaves and strips of bast, and are
so voluminous and distended that they stand out all round the body,
outrivalling the old-fashioned hoopskirts; even when sitting down, the
women are surrounded by a mound of veritable tinder. In the second
place, they are for ever striking matches to light their cigarettes,
nay, worse even, they carry about with them for the sake of economy
the glowing husk of a coconut, and neither to matches nor husk do
they give the slightest heed, striking the one recklessly over their
own skirts or absent-mindedly resting the other against the skirts of
their neighbour. Yet in spite of this utter recklessness never did I
see a skirt catch fire, although I confidently awaited it every time
they assembled to hear the phonograph. When the female audiences had
dispersed after these exhibitions, Friedlander’s neatly swept little
compound was wont to look like a threshing-floor, so covered was it
with fragments of pandanus leaves, the relics of female attire. One
month at longest is the life of a woman’s dress; then the old skirt is
burned and a brand-new one plaited, with no tedious fittings at the
dressmaker’s, nor depressing bills to pay.
When dressed in their best for visits or feast days, the women don
skirts prettily decorated with wide strips of pandanus leaves bleached
for the purpose and stained a bright yellow with _reng_, and about
the waist-band are inserted brightly variegated leaves of croton.
The effect is, indeed, extremely pretty on the background of their
smooth, brown skin. The women do not, as a rule, adorn themselves
with necklaces or other ornaments; some, who do not work very hard in
the taro patches, wear bracelets of coconut shell or tortoise-shell,
and sometimes finger rings of the same material. The long strips of
hibiscus bast, stained black, which they all wear knotted about their
necks after they have come to maturity, seems to take the place of all
other finery. This cord, known as _marafá_, must be always worn
by a woman, young or old, when she is away from her home; to be seen
in the open air without it would be as immodest and disgraceful as to
appear without any clothes at all. Within the dwelling house, however,
it may be discarded with perfect propriety.
Standards of beauty vary so widely among different races, from the fat,
round-faced beauties alleged to predominate in Turkish harems, to the
thin oval-faced belles of Japan, and to the long-eared, black-toothed
maidens of Borneo, that I was anxious to learn what in masculine eyes
of Uap constituted feminine beauty. One day, after a phonograph recital
for the men, fifteen or twenty from different parts of the island
lingered behind to watch the putting of the _tom-tom_ in its box;
I then took the opportunity of asking them who, in their opinion, was
the prettiest girl of all they knew on the island. They seemed to take
a great interest in the discussion which followed, and several girls
were named and their charms discussed and compared, but finally a
unanimous voice was given to Migiul the _mispil_ of Magachagil,
in the south of Uap. Their good taste may be verified by turning to her
photograph on the opposite page.
[Illustration: MIGIUL, A “MISPIL”]
Migiul was a frequent visitor at Friedlander’s house, being an intimate
friend of his wife, and whenever she came to visit her parents, who
lived close by in Dulukan, she spent the greater part of the day
gossiping in Mrs. Friedlander’s cosy little home and learning to speak
the Marianne Island language. She was an exceptionally bright girl,
about seventeen or eighteen years old, with a sad, plaintive expression
and a soft, gentle voice,--a universal favourite with the women, and
the admiration of all the men. Nor was this all. Her reputation as
a ballad singer was widespread, hence she was pushed forward on all
occasions when a new song “record” was to be made, and seemed modestly
conscious of her proficiency; I cannot honestly affirm, however, that
I sympathised with her admirers in their ecstasy over her high or low
notes, which to my dull, untrained ears too closely resembled, in all
seriousness, the cry of a cat in agony. Notwithstanding her peculiar
position in that small community, there was no trace of boldness in
her demeanour; her voice in speaking was always low, “an excellent
thing in woman;” she never obtruded herself, but retreated quickly to
the background when she had finished her song; in fact, she was the
personification of unstudied, innate femininity. This may be surely
accepted, whether among primitive people or amid the conventionalities
of modern society, as a high standard of refinement and an essential
element of a thorough lady. Poor little Migiul, according to the
exactest code of propriety is in her own eyes and in those of all her
Uap world, a thoroughly blameless, moral girl.
[Illustration: FATUMAK]
* * * * *
Of all my friends among the men, old Fatumak, the _mach-mach_
or soothsayer, was the most faithful, the most intelligent, and,
consequently, to me, invaluable. In his youth he had fallen from a
coconut tree and so injured his spine, that he was permanently deformed
and had a dwarf-like figure with a pronounced distortion. One
evening, when he had been rehearsing to Friedlander and myself some of
the legends of Uap, I asked him how it was that he knew so much; he
said he had heard these stories from the old people when he was a boy,
and then he added, pointing to a long row of notches on the handle of a
little adze that he always carried:--“Those marks, each one,--one moon;
twenty-eight moons after I fell, I lay in my house; no one to talk to;
I think and think over everything; I talk to myself; I remember these
stories. Some I think true; some I think foolish.” This had been his
school,--two years of solitary self-communion, and during this time he
had pondered on the problems of nature and the human mind, and solved
them in his simple primitive way, to his own satisfaction. He emerged
a wise man among his own people and endowed, as they believed, with
prophetic foresight. He was ready with an answer to every question
and made his living by interpreting omens and telling fortunes by
mysterious combinations of knots in Bei leaves.
His house, wherein he lived quite alone, never having taken to himself
a wife, was a veritable magpie’s nest, so full was it of odds and ends
of every description, piled in corners or suspended from rafters,
mostly discarded rubbish from the houses of Spanish or German traders.
It was enclosed by an open fence of bamboo, fairly well built but
naturally flimsy; in this fence there stood a gate which at night
and invariably in the absence of the owner, was kept closed with a
ponderous, rusty padlock, although a single, slight push would have
been enough to throw the whole fence flat; indeed, I doubt that anyone
hurrying along on a dark night and happening to stumble into Fatumak’s
fence, would have been aware of it, or recognized any difference
between it and other obstructive patches of thick undergrowth; but
it was a great comfort to the old fellow to feel that “fast bind”
ought to mean “fast find.” In the house his most valued possessions,
such as bits of brass wire, nails, beads, extra blades for his adze,
empty baking-powder boxes, the key-board of an ancient accordion, and
innumerable other articles calculated to set a Uap’s “pugging tooth on
edge,” were kept secure in a large tin biscuit-box, whereof the top
had been cut on three sides, and the third side served as a hinge. He
had contrived to punch holes through this lid and the side of the box,
and through them he had inserted the hasp of another padlock almost
as unwieldy as the one on his front gate. I think that after locking
it he had lost the key,--the corners of the lid looked as if they had
been bent upward to extract what he wanted without disturbing the lock;
in fact, it was through these openings that I was able to examine the
treasures of this safe.
The old man,--I call him old, but I doubt that he was over fifty,
yet seemed older because of his deformed body and his quiet, sedate,
and thoughtful bearing,--had a pleasant, pensive face, with somewhat
negroid features, a broad flat nose and thick re-curving lips; his
hair, just beginning to show grey, was, however, wavy and curly, with
no trace of the wool of African negroes or of Papuans. He smiled
easily and took good humouredly the chaff which we constantly poked at
him for his thrifty devices, which closely verged on miserliness, and,
occasionally, for the prices he charged poor unfortunates who invoked
his skill in foretelling the future. He was not able, on account of
his misshapen back, to paddle his own canoe, but he had constructed
a raft of palm stems and bamboos, which he called his “barco,” after
the Spanish, and many a time I saw him start off in the early morning
to make his rounds of fortune-telling, poling his “barco” up the
coast in the shallow lagoon, and return again in the evening with his
decks almost awash with ripe coconuts,--his fees for consultation
collected on the spot. His method of foretelling the future by means of
_bei_ leaves, he himself believed in implicitly, and invariably
became serious and reserved if we alluded to it lightly. Many a time
when he was squatting beside us as we ate our lunch or dinner at a
little table in the yard under the palms, he would be called aside by
an anxious client to interpret some mysterious combinations of knots
which had been tied at random in strips of palm leaf. There are only
a favoured few who know the hidden significance of marriages of the
_kan_ or demons, indicated by these knots, and this knowledge
is kept sacredly secret and never revealed until the father, at the
approach of death, discloses it to his son; thus it is handed down from
generation to generation.
On several occasions I noticed these consultations with Fatumak, but
had no idea of their meaning; I supposed that the tying of knots in a
strip of leaf was mere frivolity to fill up the time. One day, however,
a seeker for truth happened to sit close beside me and I heard him
earnestly talking to himself, or to the knots, as each one was tied;
when the four strips were finished, he adjusted them carefully in
his hand and showed them to Fatumak, who merely glanced at them and
murmured a reply. This was repeated several times; then the man arose
and went away contented. Of course, I asked Fatumak what it all meant
and he informed me that the man wished to find out whether or not a
friend of his, in the northern end of Uap, who was very sick, was going
to get well; the answers had been favourable.
Whoever wishes to consult the omens in this manner provides himself
with eight or ten strips of green palm leaf, preferably the narrow
leaves of the coconut, and in the presence of the soothsayer, proceeds
to tie at random in each strip a series of single knots about a half
inch apart, not counting the knots as he ties them, but all the time
murmuring to himself the question which he wishes answered. When
four strips bear many knots thus tied, he takes the first strip and,
counting off the knots by fours, beginning at the broad end of the
leaf, catches the strip between his thumb and the base of the index
finger of the right hand in such a way that all the knots which are
over an even division by four, stick up above the back of the hand. On
the second, third and fourth strips he counts off the knots in the same
way, and catches them in turn between the index and middle finger,
the middle finger and ring finger, and the ring finger and little
finger, thus leaving the uneven number of knots sticking up close to
the knuckles. If there happens to be, on any strip, an even number
of fours, then four knots are left projecting. The seer then reads
the omen from the combinations of knots in the two pairs of strips,
composed of the thumb and index strip, and the index and middle finger
strip for one pair; and the middle and ring finger strip, and the ring
and little finger strip for the other. Each pair signifies a different
_kan_, or demon, and it is in accordance with the union of these
_kan_, that the omens are good or bad. As may be seen, there are
sixteen combinations of the number of knots possible in each pair;
consequently, there are sixteen valuable _kan_ which assist at
this form of _mach-mach_. For instance, the thumb strip may have
four knots left over and the index strip have two, this is the sign
that the female _kan_, Vengek, is present for one; the middle
finger strip may have one and the ring finger strip have three knots
left projecting above the knuckles, this is the sign that Nebul, a male
_kan_, is associating with Vengek, and this indicates a certain
answer according to the drift of the question; which would be also
affected by the appearance of Vengek or Nebul in the first or second
pair of knots, the time of day, conditions of the weather and many
other influences, which Fatumak declared it would be useless to tell
me, as I could not possibly understand them all. I had made the grave
error of showing too rapid a comprehension of one of the mysteries of
the art when he was giving me the signs of the various _kan_,
their sex, and to whom they were married. This is the list, as he gave
it to me, before explaining anything about sex or marriage among the
_kan_:
3 and 3--Thugalup
3 and 1--Languperran
1 and 4--Wunumerr
4 and 4--Sayuk
1 and 1--Thilibil
2 and 2--Nagaman
3 and 4--Trunuwil
1 and 2--Saupis
2 and 1--Navai
3 and 2--Fawgomon
1 and 3--Nebul
2 and 3--Musauk
2 and 4--Namen
4 and 2--Nafau
4 and 3--Vengek
4 and 1--Liverr
Of course, he had to give a practical demonstration of each
combination, he could not carry the numbers in his head; and when
he had finished the last one, Liverr, he vouchsafed the additional
information, while the knots were still between his fingers, that this
_kan_ was a woman and was married to Wunumerr. This led me to ask
about the next to the last, Vengek; this also proved to be a woman,
married to Trunuwil; the next, Nafau (four-and-two) also a woman and
married to Namen (two-and-four),--this gave me the key,--the descending
numerical combinations were women and they were married to their
ascending reverse combinations.
Three-and-two would be a woman and married to two-and-three;
three-and-one the wife of one-and-three, etc., etc. Foolishly exultant
over my guessing these combinations, I forestalled Fatumak in telling
off the remaining combinations and named the husbands and wives; he
first eyed me with astonishment, and then became unmistakably provoked
and sullen. But my pride had its fall; I could not determine the
even combinations of four-and-four, three-and-three, two-and-two,
and one-and-one, so I had to appeal to his superior knowledge again;
whereupon he told me rather gruffly that four-and-four was the chief
Sayuk, and his lesser half was Nagaman (two-and-two), and one-and-one
was their son Thilibik, and three-and-three was the bachelor youth
Thugalup; and then he added that I might be very clever and guess just
as shrewdly about the Bei, but that I would never know any more than
what he had just told me, and that no white man could ever understand
it; we had our glasses that looked beyond the sight of man into the
distance, but the men of Uap had Bei wherewith they could see things
that had not yet happened that were beyond the thoughts of man. With
that he gathered up his betel basket and solemnly walked away. I had
lost for ever a golden opportunity by my vanity,--but I incline to
think it was somewhat pardonable.
I did learn, however, a little more about the _mach-mach_, or
_momok_ men, from the chief, Ronoboi, also a noted seer and
dealer in charms. Those who practice the art must be aged widowers, or
widows, from whose lives all thoughts of love for the opposite sex have
vanished; they may never eat food that has been prepared the previous
day; they must always be scrupulously careful that the “quids” of betel
nut, which they have finished chewing, are destroyed either by fire or
by throwing them into the sea, where no profane hands can find them and
thereby work charms (consequently their betel basket is provided with
an extra compartment wherein the exhausted “quids” are deposited to
await their destruction); the parings of their nails and the hair cut
from their head must likewise be burned or thrown into the sea; if they
spit upon the ground, they must always wipe it out with the foot. All
this is done so that no counter spells may be worked against them. The
aim of the regulation in regard to warmed-over food is, we may surmise,
that no stale food shall be proffered as a compensation for their
fortune-telling or, possibly, it may be to avoid the risk of poisons.
Whoever takes counsel of the Bei, must himself make the knots in the
strips of palm leaf and hold them in his right hand. He cannot force
his fortune by pre-arranging the combinations of _kan_; there are
so many controlling circumstances, of which only the soothsayer has
knowledge, that it would be futile for any one to try to deceive the
Fates.
[Illustration:
Fatumak’s Account
For Trade in Coconuts
----------
1. Bag of Flour 800
2. Tins of Beef 200
3. Tobacco 400
4. Matches 200
5. Rice 200
6. Two Iron Pots 200
7. A Lamp 200
8. Sardines 200
9. Sugar 100
10 Tea 100
11 An Axe 200
12 Knives 200
13 An iron Pot 100
14 Tobacco 300]
Fatumak bore me no grudge for trying to pry too curiously into his art;
he came to visit us again the next day; all was forgiven and he was as
genial as ever. It happened that on this particular occasion he had
come to settle his accounts with Friedlander for goods to be received
in return for coconuts rendered. He was always most accurate in his
dealings and seemed to remember so exactly the number of coconuts
representing the value of each article which he had been promised, that
Friedlander fairly marvelled at his memory, until one day he discovered
that the old man had invented a cipher for all the articles of
trade and for the quantities of coconuts. In this cipher he drew up
his accounts with a lead pencil on any old scrap of paper that he
could find, and then proudly read them off to Friedlander. The signs
were always the same and were perfectly intelligible to the writer, no
matter how long a time had elapsed since they had been written. On the
opposite page is a photograph of one of his accounts, which I preserved
after it had been settled; the various entries have been numbered and
translated. Some of them are merely pictographs, such as the axe, and
the iron pots, but others need explanation. I asked him the meaning of
the mark indicating a package of tea, and he explained that when tea
was given to him it was always in a little piece of paper, and that the
little round object represented the bundle, and the crooked line at the
top was the twist he gave to the ends of the paper to keep it secure.
The sign which he used for boxes of sardines is puzzling; Fatumak did
not explain it, but it looks as if the wavy twist on the right side of
the figure is meant to represent the strip of tin which is twisted off
with a key when these cans are opened; whence he got the sign also for
a hundred coconuts he could not explain, but it was always the same and
perfectly legible to him.
* * * * *
The people of Uap use a decimal system having separate words for
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, but sixty is six-tens, seventy,
seven-tens, etc.; and again, uncompounded words for one hundred and one
thousand. This may seem trivial to note, but I found a decimal system
among the Miri Nagas of Upper Assam, in India; they counted, however,
only to ten, and then repeated; they had no terms for eleven, twelve,
thirteen, etc., nor for twenty. When they reached ten, a stick or
pebble was placed beside them on the ground as a record of the tens.
Fatumak’s cipher or system of sign writing elevates him at once
head and shoulders above the most advanced and intelligent of his
fellow-countrymen, who, for the greater part, have barely emerged from
the stone age; in fact, adzes of sharpened shell are still to be found
in almost all the houses of the old families, and the old men can
distinctly remember these primitive implements in daily use by their
parents and grand-parents.
In sooth Fatumak was a most lovable old character, uncomplaining under
the discomforts of his deformity, always ready to impart and anxious to
receive information, and never obtrusive or presuming, as is so often
the failing of natives of these islands when they find that a stranger
is interested in them.