CHIEFS AND TAPUS
We used to admire exceedingly the bland and gallant manners of the chief
called Taipi-Kikino. An elegant guest at table, skilled in the use of
knife and fork, a brave figure when he shouldered a gun and started for
the woods after wild chickens, always serviceable, always ingratiating
and gay, I would sometimes wonder where he found his cheerfulness. He
had enough to sober him, I thought, in his official budget. His
expenses--for he was always seen attired in virgin white--must have by
far exceeded his income of six dollars in the year, or say two shillings
a month. And he was himself a man of no substance; his house the poorest
in the village. It was currently supposed that his elder brother,
Kauanui, must have helped him out. But how comes it that the elder
brother should succeed to the family estate, and be a wealthy commoner,
and the younger be a poor man, and yet rule as chief in Anaho? That the
one should be wealthy and the other almost indigent is probably to be
explained by some adoption; for comparatively few children are brought
up in the house or succeed to the estates of their natural begetters.
That the one should be chief instead of the other must be explained (in
a very Irish fashion) on the ground that neither of them is a chief at
all.
Since the return and the wars of the French, many chiefs have been
deposed, and many so-called chiefs appointed. We have seen, in the same
house, one such upstart drinking in the company of two such extruded
island Bourbons, men, whose word a few years ago was life and death,
now sunk to be peasants like their neighbours. So when the French
overthrew hereditary tyrants, dubbed the commons of the Marquesas
freeborn citizens of the republic, and endowed them with a vote for a
_conseiller-general_ at Tahiti, they probably conceived themselves upon
the path to popularity; and so far from that, they were revolting public
sentiment. The deposition of the chiefs was perhaps sometimes needful;
the appointment of others may have been needful also; it was at least a
delicate business. The Government of George II. exiled many Highland
magnates. It never occurred to them to manufacture substitutes; and if
the French have been more bold, we have yet to see with what success.
Our chief at Anaho was always called, he always called himself,
Taipi-Kikino; and yet that was not his name, but only the wand of his
false position. As soon as he was appointed chief, his name--which
signified, if I remember exactly, _Prince born among flowers_--fell in
abeyance, and he was dubbed instead by the expressive byword,
Taipi-Kikino--_Highwater man-of-no-account_--or, Englishing more boldly,
_Beggar on horseback_--a witty and a wicked cut. A nickname in Polynesia
destroys almost the memory of the original name. To-day, if we were
Polynesians, Gladstone would be no more heard of. We should speak of and
address our Nestor as the Grand Old Man, and it is so that himself would
sign his correspondence. Not the prevalence, then, but the significancy
of the nickname is to be noted here. The new authority began with small
prestige. Taipi has now been some time in office; from all I saw he
seemed a person very fit. He is not the least unpopular, and yet his
power is nothing. He is a chief to the French, and goes to breakfast
with the Resident; but for any practical end of chieftaincy a rag doll
were equally efficient.
We had been but three days in Anaho when we received the visit of the
chief of Hatiheu, a man of weight and fame, late leader of a war upon
the French, late prisoner in Tahiti, and the last eater of long-pig in
Nuka-hiva. Not many years have elapsed since he was seen striding on the
beach of Anaho, a dead man's arm across his shoulder. "So does Kooamua
to his enemies!" he roared to the passers-by, and took a bite from the
raw flesh. And now behold this gentleman, very wisely replaced in office
by the French, paying us a morning visit in European clothes. He was the
man of the most character we had yet seen: his manners genial and
decisive, his person tall, his face rugged, astute, formidable, and with
a certain similarity to Mr. Gladstone's only for the brownness of the
skin, and the high-chief's tattooing, all one side and much of the other
being of an even blue. Further acquaintance increased our opinion of his
sense. He viewed the _Casco_ in a manner then quite new to us, examining
her lines and the running of the gear; to a piece of knitting on which
one of the party was engaged, he must have devoted ten minutes' patient
study; nor did he desist before he had divined the principles; and he
was interested even to excitement by a type-writer, which he learned to
work. When he departed he carried away with him a list of his family,
with his own name printed by his own hand at the bottom. I should add
that he was plainly much of a humorist, and not a little of a humbug. He
told us, for instance, that he was a person of exact sobriety; such
being the obligation of his high estate: the commons might be sots, but
the chief could not stoop so low. And not many days after he was to be
observed in a state of smiling and lop-sided imbecility, the _Casco_
ribbon upside down on his dishonoured hat.
But his business that morning in Anaho is what concerns us here. The
devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged
fit to interpose what we should call a close season; for that end, in
Polynesia, a tapu (vulgarly spelt "taboo") has to be declared, and who
was to declare it? Taipi might; he ought; it was a chief part of his
duty; but would any one regard the inhibition of a Beggar on Horseback?
He might plant palm branches: it did not in the least follow that the
spot was sacred. He might recite the spell: it was shrewdly supposed the
spirits would not hearken. And so the old, legitimate cannibal must ride
over the mountains to do it for him; and the respectable official in
white clothes could but look on and envy. At about the same time, though
in a different manner, Kooamua established a forest law. It was observed
the coco-palms were suffering, for the plucking of green nuts
impoverishes and at last endangers the tree. Now Kooamua could tapu the
reef, which was public property, but he could not tapu other people's
palms; and the expedient adopted was interesting. He tapu'd his own
trees, and his example was imitated over all Hatiueu and Anaho. I fear
Taipi might have tapu'd all that he possessed and found none to follow
him. So much for the esteem in which the dignity of an appointed chief
is held by others; a single circumstance will show what he thinks of it
himself. I never met one, but he took an early opportunity to explain
his situation. True, he was only an appointed chief when I beheld him;
but somewhere else, perhaps upon some other isle, he was a chieftain by
descent: upon which ground, he asked me (so to say it) to excuse his
mushroom honours.
It will be observed with surprise that both these tapus are for
thoroughly sensible ends. With surprise, I say, because the nature of
that institution is much misunderstood in Europe. It is taken usually in
the sense of a meaningless or wanton prohibition, such as that which
to-day prevents women in some countries from smoking, or yesterday
prevented any one in Scotland from taking a walk on Sunday. The error is
no less natural than it is unjust. The Polynesians have not been trained
in the bracing, practical thought of ancient Rome; with them the idea of
law has not been disengaged from that of morals or propriety; so that
tapu has to cover the whole field, and implies indifferently that an act
is criminal, immoral, against sound public policy, unbecoming or (as we
say) "not in good form." Many tapus were in consequence absurd enough,
such as those which deleted words out of the language, and particularly
those which related to women, Tapu encircled women upon all hands. Many
things were forbidden to men; to women we may say that few were
permitted. They must not sit on the paepae; they must not go up to it by
the stair; they must not eat pork; they must not approach a boat; they
must not cook at a fire which any male had kindled. The other day, after
the roads were made, it was observed the women plunged along the margin
through the bush, and when they came to a bridge waded through the
water: roads and bridges were the work of men's hands, and tapu for the
foot of women. Even a man's saddle, if the man be native, is a thing no
self-respecting lady dares to use. Thus on the Anaho side of the island,
only two white men, Mr. Regler and the gendarme, M. Aussel, possess
saddles: and when a woman has a journey to make she must borrow from one
or other. It will be noticed that these prohibitions tend, most of them,
to an increased reserve between the sexes. Regard for female chastity is
the usual excuse for these disabilities that men delight to lay upon
their wives and mothers. Here the regard is absent; and behold the women
still bound hand and foot with meaningless proprieties! The women
themselves, who are survivors of the old regimen, admit that in those
days life was not worth living. And yet even then there were exceptions.
There were female chiefs and (I am assured) priestesses besides; nice
customs curtseyed to great dames, and in the most sacred enclosure of a
High Place, Father Simeon Delmar was shown a stone, and told it was the
throne of some well-descended lady. How exactly parallel is this with
European practice, when princesses were suffered to penetrate the
strictest cloister, and women could rule over a land in which they were
denied the control of their own children.
But the tapu is more often the instrument of wise and needful
restrictions. We have seen it as the organ of paternal government. It
serves besides to enforce, in the rare case of some one wishing to
enforce them, rights of private property. Thus a man, weary of the
coming and going of Marquesan visitors, tapu's his door; and to this day
you may see the palm-branch signal, even as our great-grandfathers saw
the peeled wand before a Highland inn. Or take another case. Anaho is
known as "the country without popoi." The word popoi serves in different
islands to indicate the main food of the people; thus, in Hawaii, it
implies a preparation of taro; in the Marquesas, of breadfruit. And a
Marquesan does not readily conceive life possible without his favourite
diet. A few years ago a drought killed the breadfruit trees and the
bananas in the district of Anaho; and from this calamity, and the
open-handed customs of the island, a singular state of things arose.
Well-watered Hatiheu had escaped the drought; every householder of Anaho
accordingly crossed the pass, chose some one in Hatiheu, "gave him his
name"--an onerous gift, but one not to be rejected--and from this
improvised relative proceeded to draw his supplies, for all the world as
though he had paid for them. Hence a continued traffic on the road. Some
stalwart fellow, in a loin-cloth, and glistening with sweat, may be seen
at all hours of the day, a stick across his bare shoulders, tripping
nervously under a double burthen of green fruits. And on the far side of
the gap a dozen stone posts on the wayside in the shadow of a grove mark
the breathing-place of the popoi-carriers. A little back from the
breach, and not half a mile from Anaho, I was the more amazed to find a
cluster of well-doing breadfruits heavy with their harvest. "Why do you
not take these?" I asked. "Tapu," said Hoka; and I thought to myself
(after the manner of dull travellers) what children and fools these
people were to toil over the mountain and despoil innocent neighbours
when the staff of life was thus growing at their door. I was the more in
error. In the general destruction these surviving trees were enough only
for the family of the proprietor, and by the simple expedient of
declaring a tapu he enforced his right.
The sanction of the tapu is superstitious; and the punishment of
infraction either a wasting or a deadly sickness. A slow disease follows
on the eating of tapu fish, and can only be cured with the bones of the
same fish burned with the due mysteries. The cocoa-nut and breadfruit
tapu works more swiftly. Suppose you have eaten tapu fruit at the
evening meal, at night your sleep will be uneasy; in the morning,
swelling and a dark discoloration will have attacked your neck, whence
they spread upward to the face; and in two days, unless the cure be
interjected, you must die. This cure is prepared from the rubbed leaves
of the tree from which the patient stole; so that he cannot be saved
without confessing to the Tahuku the person whom he wronged. In the
experience of my informant, almost no tapu had been put in use, except
the two described: he had thus no opportunity to learn the nature and
operation of the others; and, as the art of making them was jealously
guarded amongst the old men, he believed the mystery would soon die out.
I should add that he was no Marquesan, but a Chinaman, a resident in the
group from boyhood, and a reverent believer in the spells which he
described. White men, amongst whom Ah Fu included himself, were exempt;
but he had a tale of a Tahitian woman, who had come to the Marquesas,
eaten tapu fish, and, although uninformed of her offence and danger, had
been afflicted and cured exactly like a native.
Doubtless the belief is strong; doubtless, with this weakly and fanciful
race, it is in many cases strong enough to kill; it should be strong
indeed in those who tapu their trees secretly, so that they may detect a
depredator by his sickness. Or, perhaps, we should understand the idea
of the hidden tapu otherwise, as a politic device to spread uneasiness
and extort confessions: so that, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack
his brain for any possible offence, and send at once for any proprietor
whose rights he has invaded. "Had you hidden a tapu?" we may conceive
him asking: and I cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it; and that
is perhaps the strangest feature of the system--that it should be
regarded from without with such a mental and implicit awe, and, when
examined from within, should present so many apparent evidences of
design.
We read in Dr. Campbell's "Poenamo" of a New Zealand girl, who was
foolishly told that she had eaten a tapu yam, and who instantly
sickened, and died in the two days of simple terror. The period is the
same as in the Marquesas; doubtless the symptoms were so too. How
singular to consider that a superstition of such sway is possibly a
manufactured article; and that, even if it were not originally invented,
its details have plainly been arranged by the authorities of some
Polynesian Scotland Yard. Fitly enough, the belief is to-day--and was
probably always--far from universal. Hell at home is a strong deterrent
with some; a passing thought with others; with others, again, a theme of
public mockery, not always well assured; and so in the Marquesas with
the tapu. Mr. Regler has seen the two extremes of scepticism and
implicit fear. In the tapu grove he found one fellow stealing
breadfruit, cheerful and impudent as a street arab; and it was only on a
menace of exposure that he showed himself the least discountenanced. The
other case was opposed in every point. Mr. Regler asked a native to
accompany him upon a voyage; the man went gladly enough, but suddenly
perceiving a dead tapu fish in the bottom of the boat, leaped back with
a scream; nor could the promise of a dollar prevail upon him to advance.
The Marquesan, it will be observed, adheres to the old idea of the local
circumscription of beliefs and duties. Not only are the whites exempt
from consequences; but their transgressions seem to be viewed without
horror. It was Mr. Regler who had killed the fish; yet the devout native
was not shocked at Mr. Regler--only refused to join him in his boat. A
white is a white: the servant (so to speak) of other and more liberal
gods; and not to be blamed if he profit by his liberty. The Jews were
perhaps the first to interrupt this ancient comity of faiths; and the
Jewish virus is still strong in Christianity. All the world must respect
our tapus, or we gnash our teeth.