THE NOBLE SAVAGE
The morning after our motion-picture show on the beach at Malekula found
us anchored off Vao. We got our luggage ashore as quickly as possible
and then turned in to make up for lost sleep. We had slept little during
our eight days in the village of Nagapate. We had been in such constant
fear of treachery that the thud of a falling coconut or the sound of a
branch crackling in the jungle would set our nerves atingle and keep us
awake for hours. Now we felt safe. We knew that the four hundred savages
of Vao, though at heart as fierce and as cruel as any of the Malekula
tribes, lived in wholesome fear of the British gunboat; so we slept well
and long.
The next morning we said good-bye to Paul Mazouyer and he chugged away
to Santo in the little schooner that for two weeks had been our home.
Osa and I were alone on Vao. We turned back to our bungalow to make
things comfortable, for we did not know how many days it would be before
Mr. King, who had promised to call for us, would appear.
As we walked slowly up from the beach, we heard a shout. We turned and
saw a savage running toward us. He was a man of about forty; yet he was
little larger than a child and as naked as when he was born. From his
almost unintelligible _bêche-de-mer_, we gathered that he wanted to be
our servant. We could scarcely believe our ears. Here was a man who
wanted to work! We wondered how he came to have a desire so contrary to
Vao nature, until we discovered, after a little further conversation in
_bêche-de-mer_, that he was half-witted! Since we were in need of native
help, we decided not to let his mental deficiencies stand in his way and
we hired him on the spot. Then came the first hitch. We could not find
out his name. Over and over, we asked him, “What name belong you?” but
with no result. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. Finally, Osa
pointed to the tracks he had left in the sand. They led down to the
shore and vanished at the water’s edge. “His name is Friday,” she said
triumphantly. And so we called him.
From that moment, Friday was a member of our household. We gave him a
singlet and a _lava-lava_, or loin-cloth, of red calico, and from
somewhere he dug up an ancient derby hat. Some mornings he presented
himself dressed in nothing but the hat. He was always on hand bright and
early, begging for work, but, unfortunately, there was nothing that he
could do. We tried him at washing clothes, and they appeared on the line
dirtier than they had been before he touched them. We tried him at
carrying water, but he brought us liquid mud, with sticks and leaves
floating on the top. The only thing he was good for was digging bait and
paddling the canoe gently to keep it from drifting while Osa fished.
That was, indeed, a service of some value; for Osa was an indefatigable
fisherwoman. Every day, she went out and brought back from ten to thirty
one- and two-pound fish, and one day she caught two great fish that must
have weighed ten pounds each. It took the combined efforts of Friday and
herself to land them.
I am convinced that, for bright color and strange markings, there are no
fish in the world like those of Vao. Osa called them Impossible Fish.
There were seldom two of the same color or shape in her day’s catch.
They were orange and red and green and silver, and sometimes
varicolored. But the most noticeable were little blue fish about the
size of sardines which went in schools of thousands through the still
sea, coloring it with streaks of the most brilliant shimmering blue you
can imagine. In addition to the Impossible Fish, there were many octopi,
which measured about three feet from tentacle to tentacle, and there
were shellfish by the thousand. On the opposite side of the island from
that on which we lived, oysters grew on the roots of mangrove trees at
the water’s edge, and at low tide we used to walk along and pick them
off as if they had been fruit.
We worked hard for the first week or so after our return to Vao, for we
had about a hundred and fifty plates and nearly two hundred kodak films
to develop. Previous to this trip, I had been forced to develop
motion-picture films, as well as kodak films and plates, as I went
along. Like most photographers, I had depended upon a formalin solution
to harden the gelatin films and keep them from melting in the heat.
Though such a solution aids in the preservation of the film, it
interferes considerably with the quality of the picture, which often is
harsh in outline as a result of the thickening of the film, and it is
not a guarantee against mildew or against the “fogging” of negatives.
Before starting for the New Hebrides, however, I had worked out a method
of treating films that did not affect the quality of the picture, and
yet made it possible to develop films successfully at a temperature much
higher than 65°. Still better, it permitted me to seal my film after
exposure and await a favorable opportunity for developing. Only lately I
have developed in a New York workshop films that were exposed nineteen
months ago in the New Hebrides and that were carried about for several
months under the blaze of a tropical sun. They are among the best
pictures I have ever taken.
Any one who has tried motion-picture photography in the tropics will
realize what it means to be freed from the burden of developing all
films on the spot. To work from three o’clock until sunrise, after a day
of hard work in enervating heat, is usually sheer agony. Many a time I
have gone through with the experience only to see the entire result of
my work ruined by an accident. I have hung up a film to dry (in the
humid atmosphere of the tropics drying often requires forty-eight hours
instead of half as many minutes) and found it covered with tiny insects
or bits of sand or pollen blown against it by the wind and embedded deep
in the gelatin. I have covered it with mosquito-net in an effort to
avoid a repetition of the tragedy and the mosquito-net has shut off the
air and caused the gelatin to melt. I have had films mildew and thicken
and cloud and spot, in spite of every effort to care for them. On this
trip, though even so simple an operation as the changing of
motion-picture film and the sealing of negatives was an arduous task
when it had to be performed in cramped quarters, it was a great relief
to be able to seal up my film and forget it after exposure. The plates
that I used in my small camera had to be promptly attended to, however,
for to have treated them as I treated the motion-picture film would have
meant adding considerably to the bulk and weight of the equipment we
were forced to carry about with us.
We worked at the developing several hours a day, and between times we
explored the island, learning what we could of native life. Arree, the
boy who acted as our maid-of-all-work, supplied me with native words
until I had a fairly respectable vocabulary, but, when I tried to use
it, I made the interesting discovery that the old men and the young men
spoke different tongues. Language changes rapidly among savage tribes.
No one troubles to get the correct pronunciation of a word. The younger
generation adopt abbreviations or new words at will and incorporate into
their speech strange corruptions of English or French words learned from
the whites. Some of the words I learned from Arree were absolutely
unintelligible to many of the older men. I found, too, that the language
varied considerably from village to village, and though many of the Vao
men were refugees from Malekula, it was very different from that of any
of the tribes on the big island. I once estimated the number of
languages spoken in the South Seas at four hundred. I am now convinced
that as many as that are used by the black races alone.
As we poked about Vao, we decided that the island would be a good place
in which to maroon the people who have the romantic illusion that
savages lead a beautiful life. We had long ago lost that illusion, but
even for us Vao had some surprises. One day, I made a picture of an old,
blind man, so feeble that he could scarcely walk. He was one of the few
really old savages about, and I gathered that he must have been a
powerful chief in his day, or otherwise he would not have escaped the
ordinary penalty of age—being buried alive. But on the day after I had
taken his picture, when I went to his hut to speak to him, I was
informed that “he stop along ground” and I was shown a small hut, in
which was a freshly dug grave. My notice of the old man had drawn him
into the limelight. The chiefs had held a conference and decided that he
was a nuisance. A grave was dug for him, he was put into it, a flat
stone was placed over his face so that he could breathe (!), and the
hole was filled with earth. Now a devil-devil man was squatting near the
grave to be on hand in case the old man asked for something. There was
no conscious cruelty in the act, simply a relentless logic. The old man
had outlived his usefulness. He was no good to himself or to the
community. Therefore, he might as well “stop along ground.”
Only a few days later, as we approached a village, we heard, at
intervals, the long-drawn-out wail of a woman in pain. In the clearing
we discovered a group of men laughing and jeering at something that was
lying on the ground. That something was a writhing, screaming young
girl. The cause of her agony was apparent. In the flesh back of her
knee, two great holes had been burned. I could have put both hands in
either of them.
“One fellow man, him name belong Nowdi, he ketchem plenty coconuts, he
ketchem plenty pigs, he ketchem plenty Mary,” said Arree, and he went on
to explain that the “Mary” on the ground was the newest wife of Nowdi,
whom he pointed out to us among the amused spectators. The savage had
paid twenty pigs for her—a good price for a wife in the New Hebrides—but
he had made a bad bargain; for the girl did not like him. Four times she
ran away from him and was caught and brought back. The last time, nearly
six months had elapsed before she was found, hiding in the jungle of the
mainland. The day before we saw the girl, the men of the village had
gathered in judgment. A stone was heated white-hot. Then four men held
the girl while a fifth placed the stone in the hollow of her knee, drew
her leg back until the heel touched the thigh, and bound it there. For
an hour they watched her anguish as the stone slowly burned into her
flesh. Then they turned her loose. Thenceforth she would always have to
hobble, like an old woman, with the aid of a stick. She would never run
away again.
We turned aside, half sick. It was hard for me to keep my hands off the
brutes that stood laughing around the girl. Only the knowledge that to
touch them would be suicide for me and death or worse for Osa held me
back. But as we returned to the bungalow, I gradually cooled down. I
realized that it was not quite fair to judge these savages—still in the
stage of development passed by our own ancestors hundreds of thousands
of years ago—according to the standards of civilized society. And I
remembered how beastly even men of my own kind sometimes are when they
are released from the restraints of civilization.
The next morning, after our morning swim, Osa and I sat on the beach and
watched the commuters set off for Malekula. In some fifty canoes,
“manned” by women, the entire female population went to the big island
every day to gather firewood and fruit and vegetables. For the small
island of Vao could not support its four hundred inhabitants, and the
native women had accordingly made their gardens on the big island. This
morning, as usual, the women were accompanied by an armed guard; for
although the bush natives of Malekula were supposed to be friendly, the
Vao men did not take any chances when it came to a question of losing
their women. Late in the evening the canoes came back again. The women
had worked all day, many of them with children strapped to their backs;
the men had lounged on the beach, doing nothing. But it was the women
who paddled the canoes home. There was a stiff sea and it took nearly
three hours to paddle across the mile-wide channel. But the men never
lifted a finger to help. When the boats were safely beached, the women
shouldered their big bundles of vegetables and firewood and trudged
wearily toward their villages, the men bringing up the rear, with
nothing to carry except their precious guns. Among the poor female
slaves—they were little more—we saw five who hobbled along with the aid
of sticks. They were women who had tried to run away.
A few days later, Arree asked us if we should like to attend a feast
that was being held to celebrate the completion of a devil-devil, one of
the crude, carved logs that are the only visible signs of religion among
the savages. We did not see why that should be an event worth
celebrating, for there were already some hundreds of devil-devils on the
island, but we were glad to have the opportunity of witnessing one of
the feasts of which Arree had so often told us.
[Illustration: NAGAPATE AMONG THE DEVIL-DEVILS]
Feasting was about the only amusement of the natives of Vao. A birth or
a death, the building of a house or a canoe, or the installation of a
chief—any event in the least out of the ordinary furnished an excuse for
an orgy of pig meat—usually “long.” The one we attended was typical.
First the new devil-devil was carried into the clearing and, with scant
ceremony, set up among the others. Then some of the men brought out
about a hundred pigs and tied them to posts. Others piled hundreds of
yams in the center of the clearing, and still others threw chickens,
their legs tied together, in a squawking heap. When all was ready, the
yams were divided among the older men, each of whom then untied a pig
from a post and presented it solemnly to his neighbor, receiving in
return another pig of about the same size. The savages broke one front
and one hind leg of their pigs and threw the squealing little beasts on
the ground beside the yams. Then they exchanged chickens and promptly
broke the legs and wings of their fowls. I shall never forget the
terrible crunching of bones and the screaming of the tortured pigs and
chickens. When the exchange was completed, the men took their pigs to
the center of the clearing, beat them over the head with sticks until
they were nearly dead and threw them down to squeal and jerk their lives
away.
When the exchange of food was completed, the men built little fires all
around the clearing to cook the feast. Most of them were chiefs. It is a
general rule throughout the region that no chief may eat food prepared
by an inferior, or cooked over a fire built by an inferior. The rather
doubtful honor of being his own cook is, indeed, practically the only
mark that distinguishes a chief. As a rule a chief has no real
authority. He cannot command the least important boy in his village.
Only his wives are at his beck and call—and they are forbidden by custom
to cook for him!
Chieftainship is an empty honor on Vao. If the biggest chief on the
island should start off on a hunting trip and forget his knife, he would
know better than to ask the poorest boy in the party to go back for it,
for he would know in advance that the answer would be most emphatic Vao
equivalent for “go chase yourself!” Yet a chieftaincy is sufficiently
flattering to the vanity of the incumbent to be worth many pigs. The pig
is more important in the New Hebrides than anywhere else in the world. A
man’s wealth is reckoned in pigs, and a woman’s beauty is rated
according to the number of pigs she will bring. The greatest chiefs on
Vao are those who have killed the most pigs. Even in that remote region
there is political corruption, for some men are not above buying pigs in
secret to add to their “bag” and their prestige. Tethlong, who, during
our stay on the island, was the most important chief on Vao, bought five
hundred porkers to be slaughtered for the feast that made him chief. All
the natives knew he had bought the pigs; but they hailed him solemnly,
nevertheless, as the great pig-killer.
Tethlong had as fine a collection of pigs’ tusks as I have ever seen.
These fierce-looking bits of ivory did not come off the wild pigs,
however, but were carefully cultivated on the snouts of domesticated
pigs. It is the custom throughout the New Hebrides to take young pigs
and gouge out two upper teeth, so as to make room for the lower canine
teeth to develop into tusks. The most valuable tusks are those that have
grown up and curled around so as to form two complete circles. These,
however, are very rare. The New Hebridean native considers himself well
off if he has a single circlet to wear as a bracelet or nose ring and he
takes pride in a collection of ordinary, crescent-shaped tusks.
Pigs’ tusks are the New Hebridean equivalent of money. For even among
savages, there are rich and poor. The man of wealth is the one who has
the largest number of pigs and wives and coconut trees and canoes,
acquired by judicious swapping or by purchase, with pigs’ tusks, rare,
orange-colored cowries, and stones of strange shape or coloring as
currency. Most natives keep such treasures in “bokkus belong bell”—a
Western-made box with a bell that rings whenever the lid is lifted. But
this burglar-alarm is utterly superfluous, for natives uncontaminated by
civilization never steal.
Osa refused to watch the process of preparing the pigs and fowls for
broiling. It was not a pretty sight. But it was speedily over. While the
cooking was in progress, the dancing began. A group of men in the center
of the clearing went through the motions of killing pigs and birds and
men. Each tried to get across the footlights the idea that he was a
great, strong man. And though the pantomime was crude, it was effective.
The barbaric swing of the dancers, in time to the strange rhythm beaten
out on the boo-boos—the hollowed logs that serve as drums—got into my
blood, and I understood how the dances sometimes ended in an almost
drunken frenzy.
When the first group of dancers were tired, the older men gathered in
the center of the clearing and palavered excitedly. Then they retired to
their fires and waited. So did we. But nothing happened save another
dance. This was different in detail from the first. I never saw a native
do exactly the same dance twice, though in essentials each is
monotonously similar to the last. When the second dance was over, there
was more palavering and then more dancing—and so on interminably. Osa
and I grew sleepy and went back to the bungalow. But the tom-toms
sounded until dawn.