days, eating wild yams, and seeking a place to flee to. And they
sent messengers down the river to the chiefs of Korokula asking for
protection, and leave to settle on their lands. And when the messengers
returned they removed thither and built houses at Lawai, a little below
Korokula, and their young men worked for Korokula, planting yams and
bananas, and taking food in return until their own should be ripe. But
the chiefs of Korokula oppressed them, saying, “These are fugitives.
Are they not our slaves to do as we will with?” And they killed their
pigs, and took their women as it pleased them. And the men of Rara
murmured, but endured, not knowing whither to flee. But at last, on a
certain day, a chief of Korokula was thirsty, and had no _yangona_,
and he said to his young men, “I have seen a great root growing on
the house foundation of Dongai of Rara. Go and tear it up, and chew
it here before me that we may drink.” And the men of Rara said among
themselves, “They have killed our pigs, and taken our women, and we
bore it. Now they tear up our _yangona_. How can this be endured? Yet
we are not strong enough to set upon them, for they are more numerous
than we. Let us now send an atonement to Valekau, and ask for peace to
rebuild our houses upon our own earth and upon the foundations of our
ancestors.” So they took whales’ teeth, and sent them by the hand of
a herald to Valekau. And when the elders of Valekau doubted whether
they should take them, the crafty Bonawai counselled them, saying,
“There is now peace, but we are few in number. What if the tribes above
descend upon us? How shall we alone resist them? Let Rara return, for
in war they will help us against our enemies, and in peace they will
fear us and do our bidding. Of this the whales’ teeth are a token.” So
they accepted the atonement, and the fugitives returned, and rebuilt
their houses upon their own earth and upon the foundations of their
ancestors. And Valekau made a great feast for them, and presented it
with all the proper ceremonies in token that the past was forgotten.
Now, after many months, when the yams were ripe again, the men of Rara
began to speak among themselves of how they might best repay the debt
they owed to Valekau; and the elder, Dongai, counselled them, saying,
“This Valekau is puffed up with pride, and all men hate them. It was
but yesterday that I heard Tabuanisoro of Tovutovu say that his people
were weary of their doings. Of ourselves we are too few to repay them,
but if Tovutovu were our allies---- Let us therefore make a feast for
them, and try them.” So they made a feast, and challenged Tovutovu to
play at _tinka_ with them. And the young men of Tovutovu brought their
_ulutoa_[3] to the _tinka_-ground and were victorious. And in the
evening, when the elders were drinking _yangona_ in the great _bure_,
Dongai spoke a parable to them. “The blue heron saw the rat eating fish
that the tide had left, and he asked for it; but the rat said, ‘The
gods sent this fish for me and mine, and they have given thee a long
beak wherewith to catch fish in the pools where I cannot go.’ Then the
blue heron was angry and spoke to the crab, saying, ‘This fellow is
become a fish-eater and takes our food. Come, let us drive him out, and
thy portion shall be the hole that he has made.’ So they came upon the
rat in the night-time, and the crab nipped his tail and he fled. But
the crab did not have his hole, for the blue heron took it. And he was
puffed up with pride, and flapped his wings, and said to the crab, ‘My
legs are longer than thine, therefore am I set a chief over thee. Bring
me thy fish.’ Is this a true story, chiefs of Tovutovu?”
And they said, “Yes, it is true.”
And he said, “Now hear what the crab did. The rat came back and spoke
to the crab, saying, ‘Why didst thou bite my tail? Did I refuse thee
fish? If thou hadst asked me I would have given thee all my fish. My
quarrel was with the blue heron, yet thou camest in the night and
nipped my tail; and now the blue heron oppresses us both. But he sleeps
at night. Now thou shalt go and seize him by the foot, and I will climb
upon his back, and bite his neck, and he shall not fly away because
thou shalt hold his foot between thy pincers. When he is dead we will
share the fish of all the coast between us, but thou shalt have the
greater share.’”
And for a space all looked upon the ground and picked at the mats with
their fingers. Then Tambuanisoro said, “It is a good story, and also
true!”
And on the morrow Rara and Tovutovu took the first-fruits of the yams
to Valekau as men take the first-fruits to a great chief. And they
said, “You are now our fortress and our head. These are the wretched
first-fruits of our barren gardens, for you know that we are a poor
people not meet to offer food to chiefs.” And then they piled the great
yams high in the square, and bound live pigs beside the pile, and the
men of Valekau accepted them, and their senses were dulled by the
flattery. And they made a feast for their guests, and the ovens were
opened about sunset, so they feasted until late in the night.
Then Dongai said, “It is yet day. Have you no dance? The dance is
fitting when the men are filled with pig.”
And the elders of Valekau called to their young men to make ready, and
Dongai said, “I will send our young men to the forest to get torches.”
And he sent them, saying, “Go and make torches of reeds, and bring in
secretly whatever the women have brought you from Rara.” And they went
out into the road and called softly, and the women came out of the
reeds and gave them clubs hidden in bunches of dry reeds like torches;
and the men cut reeds and made torches there and returned to the town,
having in the right hands a lighted torch, and in the left the torch
that hid their clubs. Then the men of Valekau danced before the chiefs
a war-dance with spears and clubs, the elders beating the ground with
the bamboo drums, and the chiefs of Rara and Tovutovu applauded, crying
“_Vinaka!_” many times; but Dongai said, “This is well done, but my men
know a stranger dance than this--a war-dance taught by the gods of the
old time, but now forgotten.” And Bonawai laughed and said, “_Veka._
Do your young men know things that are forgotten, and can they surpass
ours in the dance?” And Dongai said, “Who knows? Let them be tried.
Only they have left their dresses and their weapons in Rara.”
So Bonawai called to the youths of Valekau, who stood panting and
sweating behind the torches: “Take ye the torches, and give your clubs
to these gods of Rara who can dance better than ye.” And the men of
Rara took the clubs, and squatted four deep with the weapons poised,
while the elders beat the drums and chanted. And the men of Valekau
derided them, for their faces were not blacked for dancing.
Now the men of Ram had given their spare torches to the men of
Tovutovu, and as they stood in the shadows behind the torches they
stripped the reeds from the clubs and held them behind their backs. And
suddenly the dancers rose with a great shout, and rushed forward with
brandished clubs, making the earth tremble. Then they retreated, and
again rushed forward, spreading in a line facing the elders of Valekau
as they sat under the cocoa-nut palms, and as they whirled their clubs
in the dance the leader cried “_Ravu!_” (strike), and they struck, but
not in the air, for every man struck the head of the man before him.
And the men of Tovutovu struck at the torchbearers from behind, and the
rest fled, crying, “Treachery!” But when they reached the upper gate
the men of Rara stood there, and cried, “Payment!” and when they would
escape by the lower gate they found the men of Tovutovu there also,
and in their madness they tore down the war-fence and leaped into the
ditch, where many were impaled on the sharp stakes they themselves had
set up. And the victors fired the houses, and ran hither and thither
clubbing all they met; and had it not been for the darkness surely
none would have escaped, for the men of Rara pitied none save a few
women they took alive for slaves, but ran about crying “Bring torches!”
and slaying. So that night was called _Mai-na-cina_ (bring torches),
because of the cry of Rara as they were slaying. Thus was Valekau wiped
out, and Rara and Tovutovu divided the spoil.
Now the men of Valekau fled to the forest, and they counted those who
were missing, and mourned over them. And Bonawai said, “This has been a
grievous night, and there must be payment for it, but not now, for many
brave warriors are fallen, and many of our _katikati_,[4] therefore are
we become as helpless as the straws whirled onward by a swift current.
Let us flee to the caves, and dwell there until our way be plain.” So
they dwelt many months in the caves, eating wild yams and bush-pigs.
And after many months the chiefs of Rara, whose mothers were Valekau
women, said, “Let our vasu return, for it is a shame to us that our
mothers’ folk should be rooting in the forest like wild boars. Also
they are few, and cannot harm us.” And the chiefs of Tovutovu agreed.
So messengers were sent to the caves, saying, “Your _vasu_ bid you
return and fear not.”
So they returned and built houses upon their own earth and upon
the foundations of their ancestors, only they did not repair their
war-fences. And they planted yams, and dug them, and planted them
again, and still there was peace; but Bonawai pondered deeply in those
days how the payment might be accomplished.
Now they took their first-fruits to Rara in token of submission, and
Bonawai presented them and said, “We are poor. All our chiefs are gone,
and only we, the low-born, remain to bring this poor offering to you,
our elder brothers. Payment has been made as is right; for between
brothers ill-will is buried when payment has been made, and alliances
are renewed for war against the stranger. But my words are too long
already--_Mana-e-dina!_”
And the men of Rara answered, “_Va-arewa-ia-ē_,” and clapped their
hands.
And that night Vasualevu of Rara, whose mother was a Valekau woman,
spoke to his _vasu_, and asked whether Bonawai’s words were double.
And they said, “Yes. We had a quarrel with you about a certain stick
with which fish are taken--a magic contrivance of the foreigners--and
we burned your fortress, and you in turn burned ours. Thus there was
payment as is fitting between brothers. But with these low-born of
Tovutovu we had no quarrel, neither had ye, yet they burned both your
town and ours, and baked the bodies of your relations, and even now
they feed the pigs they took from Rara and Valekau. All this they did
though they are not our brothers, but strangers. Shall not payment be
taken for all these things?”
And Vasualevu told the elders of Rara that night as they lay in the
great _bure_, and Dongai said, “Are the words true or false? Surely
they are true! What root of quarrel had we with this Tovutovu that
they clubbed our women and burned our fortress? But for them we should
not have been fugitives, oppressed of Korokula, for Valekau dared not
to fight us alone. Even now, perhaps, they laugh at us in Tovutovu,
and grow fat upon our pigs. Shall not payment be taken for all these
things?”
And the elders said, “It is true. Let us send to Bonawai, the crafty,
to devise a plan.”
So they sent a messenger to Valekau, and he said, “Go, tell the chiefs
of Rara that I have seen their great _bure_. It is ruinous, for the
king-post is rotten. Let Tovutovu cut them a new post.” Now this was
true, for when the _bure_ was burned the king-post was not consumed,
and they rebuilt the house, using the old post.
So the chiefs of Rara sent to Tovutovu, saying, “Help us to rebuild our
great _bure_, for the post is rotten. We have seen a _vesi_-tree seven
fathoms long, and of great girth, which two men with outstretched arms
cannot encompass. Let this be your work, for you are more numerous than
we.”
And they said, “It is well.”
And every day the young men cut reeds and bamboos for the house in the
plain across the river by Tovutovu, and cried to the people weeding
their yams, “Our task is near finished; only the king-post is wanting.”
So the Tovutovu chiefs took the young men up the river to the great
_vesi_-tree, and lit a fire about it to burn up the sap, and cut it
down with their adzes. Then they lopped off the branches, and cut a
hole in the butt of the tree, and took vines as thick as a man’s thigh
and passed them through the hole, and dragged the tree inch by inch
on rollers till they got it into the river. And they made rafts of
bamboo, and bound them to the sides of the tree to make it lighter.
And when night came on they camped on the river-bank, where they could
hear the water swishing past the tree. And they sent a messenger to
Rara, saying, “The tree is fallen!” This was for a sign to them to make
ready for the feast, according to custom. And the messenger returned
and said, “Drag the post to Vatuloaloa, where the river widens, and no
farther; there we will make a feast, and bring the post to Rara on the
morrow.”
So they toiled all the next day, dragging the post down the river, for
there had been no rain, and the water was very shallow. And when they
drew near Vatuloaloa they put on leaf girdles and blue conch-shells and
chanted--
“E-mbia wanga é-mbi,
E-dua thombo, ié!”
and each time they cried _ié!_ they hauled on the vine-rope with all
their strength, and the great tree moved on a step. And now they had
come to a place where the river was hemmed in with high cliffs, and
the bed was obstructed by great boulders that had fallen from above.
They could see the black rocks of Vatuloaloa below them. And there was
a shout from the cliffs above, and when they looked up they saw the
men of Rara standing on the edge, but instead of food-baskets they
had spears and war-fans in their hands, and their faces were painted.
And there came a shout from the cliff toward Tovutovu, and they looked
and saw the men of Valekau standing prepared for battle. And one said,
“What does Valekau here prepared for battle? Surely this is treachery!”
So they threw down the Vine-rope and shouted, “How is it?” And the
men of Valekau answered, “You shall be repaid to-day!” And they threw
great stones down on them as they stood waist-deep in the angry water,
and the men of Tovutovu fled, some up-stream and some down, splashing
the water high above them; but when they reached the low bank there
were armed men guarding them. Thus were they like a wild boar at bay
encircled by barking dogs. And in their madness they took stones from
the river-bed, and ran at the men of Valekau; but many were slain, and
those who escaped lay all day in the thick rushes, and saw a great
smoke rising from the plain where Tovutovu was, and knew that the doom
of their wives and children was accomplished. And when night was come
they crept from their hiding-places, and fled into the forest until the
remnant of them was gathered together there. Thus was Tovutovu wiped
out, and Rara and Valekau divided the spoil.
And the remnant of them went up the river to Uthadamu, and dwelt there
many months. But their hearts yearned after their own land. So when
the yams were ripe they sent an embassy to Rara saying, “We are few
in number and in pitiable plight. We pray you, let us return again
to our own earth and the foundations of our ancestors, that we may
breathe again.” And the messenger returned, and said, “They accepted
the whales’ teeth and said, ‘It is well. Return.’” So they went back,
and built houses on their old foundations, and sent to Rara saying,
“Appoint a day when we shall bring you offerings of atonement.”
And the elders of Rara spoke to the chiefs of Valekau, “Are we not
weary of war? Our young men thirst only for battle, and neglect the
food-plantations, so there is scarcity. It was not so when we were
young. Now therefore let us lay war aside, and make peace.”
So they appointed a day when they should all meet together and take
counsel. And on the appointed day the men of Tovutovu brought whales’
teeth and rolls of bark-cloth, and presented them to the chiefs of
Rara and Valekau as an offering of atonement. And Dongai said, “We
are met to-day to make peace, for we are all weary of war. Many brave
warriors are dead, and the land is empty. As for us of Rara, the war
did not come from us. We only repaid that which was done to us. To what
end has it been, this fighting between brothers?”
Then Bonawai of Valekau spoke. “It is true, O chiefs of Rara, that the
war has been an evil one, for all our fortresses have been burned, and
the land is empty. But neither did the war begin with us. True it is
that the tree grows from the root, but there would be no root unless a
seed had first been sown. Chiefly do I blame you, chiefs of Rara, for
you were the cause of these wars. Have you forgotten that stick with
which fish are taken--a magic contrivance of the foreigners--by which
a man could stand and take fish until his arms fell to his sides from
weariness? This we sent to beg of you, and you churlishly refused.”
The men of Rara bowed their heads, and picked at the ground. Then
Dongai spoke: “O chiefs of Valekau, it is true that ye sent to beg this
stick, but we hungered for fish, and--how could we give it, not having
yet seen its magic?--and--and----”
“And ye knew not how to use it,” said Vasualevu.
“Then,” said Nkio, the herald, “if it be peace show us now this magic
stick, for we know that ye have it hidden.”
“We cannot show it to you.”
“Why?”
“We dare not, lest the gods of the foreigners be angry.”
“This is foolishness,” muttered the elders of Valekau. “What peace is
this when we ask and are refused? We pray you, show us the stick.”
“Be not angry, O chiefs of Valekau, but in truth we know not where it
is.”
Then the anger of Valekau was roused, and they said, “Ye are befooling
us! Have ye forgotten how ye refused us before?” And they began to go
out from the house.
Then Koronumbu of Rara spoke. “Why do ye hide the truth in doubtful
sayings? Know then, chiefs of Valekau, that we never had this stick ye
speak of, but when ye sent to beg it of us shame came upon us that we
had it not, and we could not tell you, fearing that ye would despise
us.”
There was silence for a space, and the elders of Rara sat with bowed
heads. Then Bonawai, the crafty, spoke, “See that ye tell no one, for
if the coast people hear this tale how shall we endure their ridicule
when they ask us, ‘Why went ye up against Rara? Did ye hunger for
fish?’ Therefore hide this thing, and let no one know it.”
FOOTNOTES:
[3] A reed-lance tipped with ironwood (_toa_) with which the game of
_tinka_ is played.
[4] Women and children--non-combatants.
THE FIRST COLONIST.
This is a true story, or at least it is as true as any other that
depends for its details upon tradition. It is the story of a man who
had an opportunity and used it; who, being but a shipwrecked sailor,
knew how to make himself feared and respected by the arrogant chiefs
who had him at their mercy; who tasted the sweets of conquest and
political power; and who brought about, albeit indirectly, the cession
of Fiji to England. Many have the dry bones of the story--how the
Swede, Charles Savage, a shipwrecked sailor or runaway convict, armed
with the only musket in the islands, raised Bau from the position of
a second-rate native tribe to be mistress of the greater part of the
group; and how after a few years of violence and bloodshed he was
killed and eaten by the people of Wailea who thus avenged hundreds
of their countrymen whom Savage had helped to bring to the ovens of
Bau. To clothe these dry bones with living flesh we must turn to
native tradition,--those curious records, often silent as to great
events, while preserving the most trivial details--often indifferent to
sequence, always disdainful of chronology.
Fiji is linked to the rest of the Pacific by that romantic history,
stranger and more absorbing than any fiction, which ended in the
tragedy and the pastoral comedy of Pitcairn Island; for Lieutenant
Hayward, who was despatched from Tonga in a native canoe by Captain
Edwardes of the Pandora to search for the missing mutineers of the
Bounty, was the first white man of whose landing in Fiji we have any
authentic record. His visit was forgotten by the natives in the horror
of the great pestilence, the _Lila balavu_, or wasting sickness, the
first-fruits of their intercourse with the superior race. “From that
time,” says an epic of the day, “our villages began to be empty of
men, but in the time before the coming of the sickness every village
was so crowded that there was no space to see the ground between the
men, so crowded were they.” From this pestilence dated the custom
of strangling those sick of a lingering illness lest they should, in
the malignity of misery, spit upon the food and lie upon the mats of
the healthy, and thus make them companions in their suffering. No
wasting sickness was like the great _Lila_, for men and women lay till
the bark-clothes rotted from their bodies, and their heads seemed in
comparison to be larger than food-baskets; and they were so feeble that
they lacked the strength to pull down a sugar-cane to moisten their
parched throats unless four crawled out to lend their strength to the
task.
Twelve years passed. The places of the dead were filled. The crops and
animals wasted in the funeral feasts were again abundant, when the men
of the eastern isles saw white men for the second time. On a night
in the year 1803 there was a great storm from the east. When morning
broke and the men of Oneata looked towards the dawn, they saw a strange
sight. On the islet Loa, that marks the great reef Bukatatanoa, red
streamers were waving in the wind. Strange beings, too, were moving on
the islet--spirits without doubt. There were visitors in Oneata, men of
Levuka in the island of Lakeba, offshoots in past time from distant
Bau, holding special privileges as ambassadors who linked the eastern
with the western islands. Two of these, bolder and more sophisticated
than the natives of the place, launched a light canoe and paddled
cautiously towards Loa. They gazed from afar, resting on their paddles,
and returned with this report: “Though they resemble men, yet they
are spirits, for their ears are bound up with scarlet, and they bite
burning wood.” Then the elders of Oneata took much counsel together,
wishing yet fearing to approach the spirits that were on Loa; but at
last they bade the young men launch the twin canoe Taiwalata, and
sailed for Loa. And as they drew near, the strange spirits beckoned
to them, until at last they drifted to the shore and took them into
the canoe to carry them to Oneata. But one of them they proved to be
mortal as themselves, for he was buried on Loa, being dead, whether of
violence or disease will never now be known. Here the traditions become
confused. There were muskets and ammunition in the wrecked ship, but
the men of Oneata knew nothing of their uses, else had the history of
Fiji perhaps been different. They hid the casks of powder to be used as
pigment for the face, and the ramrods to be ornaments for the hair.
And one of them, says the tradition, smeared the wet pigment over
hair and all, and when it would not dry as charcoal did, but lay cold
and heavy in the hair, he made a great fire in the house and stooped
his head to the blaze to dry the matted locks! None knew what befell.
There was a sudden flash, very bright and hot, and a tongue of flame
leaped from the head and licked the wall, and the chief sprang into the
rara with a great cry, for his hair was gone, and the skull was more
naked than on the day when he was born. It was, they said, the work of
spirits; and they used the black powder no more.
The strangers had scarce landed when a second great pestilence broke
out. There is pathos in the fragmentary saga of the time which has been
handed down to us--
“The great sickness sits aloft,
Their voices sound hoarsely,
They fall and lie helpless and pitiable,
Our god Dengei is put to shame,
Our own sicknesses have been thrust aside,
The strangling-cord is a noble thing,
They fall prone; they fall with the sap still in them.
* * * * * * *
A lethargy has seized upon the chiefs,
How terrible is the sickness!
We do not live; we do not die,
Our bodies ache; our heads ache,
Many die, a few live on,
The strangling-cord brings death to many,
The _malo_ round their bellies rots away,
Our women groan in their despair,
The _liku_ knotted round them they do not loose,
Hark to the creak of the strangling-cords,
The spirits flow away like running water, _ra tau e_.”
Many of the foreigners never left Oneata alive. A doubtful tradition
ascribes their death to the pestilence; a more detailed says that they
were slain by the men of Levuka. As the natives believed them to be the
cause of the sickness, we may accept the more tragic of the two.
It was a year of terror. Here is a fragment of another poem of the same
time:--
“Sleeping in the night I suddenly awake,
The voice of the pestilence is borne to me, _uetau_,
I go out and wander abroad, _uetau_,
It is near the breaking of the dawn, _uetau_,
Behold a forked star, _uetau_,
We whistle with astonishment as we gaze at it, _uetau_,
What can it portend? _uetau_,
Does it presage the doom of the chiefs? _e e_.”
From contemporary traditions we gather that the comet had three tails,
the centre tail being coloured and the two outer white; that it rose
just before daybreak, and that it was visible for thirty-seven nights
in succession. Was this the comet of 1803, or Donati’s? Here, as in
all ages and countries, the comet was believed to be an omen of coming
evil--not the ravages of the unknown plague, but the death of some
great chief. In like manner the comet of 1843 presaged the fall of
Suva, and that of 1881 the death of King Cakobau.
Bau was now rising into fame. Her people, like their neighbours of the
Rewa delta, had swept down from the sources of the Rewa, the cradle
of the race, had for a time held a precarious footing among the older
tribes by dint of constant fighting, and had at last fought and schemed
their way to independence. Opposite to their stronghold Kubuna lay
the tiny island of Bau, protected from a land attack by two miles of
shallow sea.