Chapter III · (continued 2)

Spirit-houses (fale-aitu) or temples were erected for some, but not all, of the class of deities (aitu) which we are now considering. It was chiefly the war gods who were thus honoured. Such temples were built with the same materials and in the same style as the houses of men, with nothing to distinguish them from ordinary dwellings, except that they almost always stood on platforms of stones, which varied in height and size with the respect felt for the particular deity. They were usually situated on the principal public place or green (malae) of the village and surrounded by a low fence. Sometimes they were mere huts; yet being viewed as the abode of gods they were held sacred and regarded with great veneration by the Samoans in the olden time. Whatever emblems of deity were in possession of the village were always placed in these houses under the watchful care of keepers.[124] In one temple, for instance, might be seen a conch shell hung from the roof in a basket. This shell the god was supposed to blow when he wished the people to go to war. In another a cup made of the shell of a coco-nut was suspended from the roof, and before it prayers were uttered and offerings presented. The cup was also used in an ordeal for the detection of theft. In a trial before chiefs the cup would be sent for, and each of the suspected culprits would lay his hand on it and say, "With my hand on this cup, may the god look upon me, and send swift destruction, if I took the thing which has been stolen." They firmly believed that it would be death to touch the cup and tell a lie.[125]

The temples were always built by the united exertions of a whole family, village, or district.[126] For example, when the inhabitants of a village whose god was the cuttle-fish erected a new temple to that deity, every man, woman, and child in the village contributed something to it, if it was only a stick or a reed of thatch. While some of the villagers were drafted off to put up the house, the rest engaged in a free fight, which appears to have been considered as a necessary part of the proceedings. On this occasion many old scores were settled, and he who got most wounds was believed to have earned the special favour of the deity. With the completion of the temple the fighting ended, and ought not to be renewed for a year, till the anniversary of the building of the temple came round, when the worshippers were again at liberty to break each other's heads in honour of the divine cuttle-fish.[127]

At one place in Savaii there was a temple in which a priest constantly resided. The sick used to be carried to him in the temple and there laid down with offerings of fine mats. Thereupon the priest stroked the diseased part, and the patient was supposed to recover.[128] We hear of another temple in which fine mats were brought as offerings to the priests and stored up in large numbers among the temple treasures. Thus in time the temples might have amassed a considerable degree of wealth and might even, if economic progress had not been arrested by European intervention, have developed into banks. However, when the people were converted to Christianity, they destroyed this particular temple and dissipated the accumulated treasures in a single feast by way of celebrating their adhesion to the new faith.[129] Where the bat was the local deity, many bats used to flock about the temple in time of war.[130] Where the kingfisher received the homage of the people as the god of war, the old men of the village were wont to enter his temple in times of public emergency and address the kingfisher; and people outside could hear the bird replying, though, singularly enough, his voice was that of a man, and not that of a bird. But as usual the god was invisible.[131] In one place a temple of the great god Tangaloa was called "the House of the Gods," and it was carefully shut up all round, the people thinking that, if this precaution were not taken, the gods would get out and in too easily and be all the more destructive.[132] Such a temple might be considered rather as a prison than a house of the gods.

To the rule that Samoan temples were built of the same perishable materials as ordinary houses a single exception is known. About ten miles inland from the harbour of Apia, in the island of Upolu, are the ruins of a temple, of which the central and side posts and the rafters were all constructed of stone. The ground plan seems to have resembled that of an ordinary Samoan house of the best style, forming an ellipse which measured fifty feet in one direction by forty feet in the other. Two central pillars appear to have supported the roof, each fashioned of a single block of stone some thirteen feet high, twelve inches thick one way and nine inches the other. The rafters were in lengths of twelve feet and six feet, by four inches square. Of the outside pillars, which upheld the lower edge of the sloping roof, eighteen were seen standing by Pritchard, who has described the ruins. Each pillar stood three feet high and measured nine inches thick in one way by six inches in the other. Each had a notch or shoulder on the inner side for supporting the roof. Pillars and rafters were quarried from an adjoining bluff, distant only some fifty yards from the ruins. Some squared stones lying at the foot of the bluff seem to show that the temple was never completed. The site of the ruins is a flat about three acres in area. The natives call the ruins Fale-o-le-Fe‛e, that is, the House of the Fe‛e. This Fe‛e was a famous war god of A‛ana and Faleata, two native towns of Upolu; he was commonly incarnated in the cuttle-fish. As the Samoans were unacquainted with the art of cutting stones, and had no tools suitable for the work, they thought that this temple, with its columns and rafters of squared stone, must have been built by the gods, and they explained its unfinished state by alleging that the divine builders had quarrelled among themselves before they had brought the work to completion.[133]

For the sake of completeness I will mention another stone monument, of more imposing dimensions, which has been discovered in Samoa, though its origin and meaning are unknown. It stands on a tableland in the high mountainous interior of Upolu and appears to be not altogether easy of access. The discoverer, Mr. H. B. Sterndale, reached it by clambering up from what he describes as a broad and dangerous ravine. In making his way to the tableland he passed through a gap which from a distance he had supposed to be a natural fissure in the rocks; but on arriving at it he discovered, to his surprise, that the gap was in fact a great fosse formed by the hand of man, being excavated in some places and built up at others, while on one side, next to the rise of the hill, it was further heightened by a parapet wall. When, passing through the fosse, he issued upon the tableland, which is a level space of some twenty acres in extent, he perceived the monument, "a truncated conical structure or Heidenmauer of such huge dimensions as must have required the labour of a great multitude to construct. So little did I expect," he says, "in this neighbourhood to meet with any example of human architecture, and so rudely monstrous was the appearance of this cyclopean building, that from its peculiar form, and from the vegetation with which it was overgrown, I might have passed it by, supposing it to have been a volcanic hillock, had not my attention been attracted by the stonework of the fosse. I hastened to ascend it. It was about twenty feet high by one hundred in diameter. It was circular with straight [perpendicular?] sides; the lower tiers of stone were very large, they were lava blocks, some of which would weigh at least a ton, which must have been rolled or moved on skids to their present places. They were laid in courses; and in two places near the top seemed to have been entrances to the inside, as in one appeared a low cave choked with rocks and tree roots. If there had been chambers within, they were probably narrow and still existing, as there was no sign of depression on the crown of the work, which was flat and covered with flat stones, among which grew both trees and shrubs. It is likely that it was not in itself intended as a place of defence, but rather as a base or platform upon which some building of importance, perhaps of timber, had been erected, no doubt in the centre of a village, as many foundations of a few feet high were near it. The fosse, when unbroken, and its inner wall entire, was probably crossed by a foot-bridge, to be withdrawn on the approach of an enemy; and the little gap, by which I had entered, closed, so that this must have been a place of great security. The Samoan natives, as far as I have been able to learn, have no tradition of what people inhabited this mountain fastness."[134]

On an adjoining tableland, approached by a steep and narrow ridge, Mr. Sterndale saw a great number of cairns of stone, apparently graves, disposed in rows among huge trees, the roots of which had overturned and destroyed very many of the cairns. Here, within the numerous trunks of a great spreading banyan tree, Mr. Sterndale found what he calls an inner chamber, or cell, about ten feet square, the floor being paved with flat stones and the walls built of enormous blocks of the same material, while the roof was composed of the twisted trunks of the banyan tree, which had grown into a solid arch and, festooned by creepers, excluded even the faint glimmer of twilight that dimly illuminated the surrounding forest. Disturbed by a light which the traveller struck to explore the gloomy interior, bats fluttered about his head. In the centre of the chamber he discovered a cairn, or rather cromlech, about four feet high, which was formed of several stones arranged in a triangle, with a great flat slab on the top. On the flat slab lay a large conch shell, white with age, and encrusted with moss and dead animalculae. The chamber or cell, enclosed by the trunks of the banyan-tree, might have been inaccessible, if it were not that, under the pressure of the tree-trunks, several of the great slabs composing the wall had been displaced, leaving a passage.[135]

What were these remarkable monuments? Mr. Sterndale believed the stone chamber to be the tomb of some man of authority in ancient days, the antiquity of the structure being vouched for by the great banyan-tree which had so completely overgrown it. This view is likely enough, and is confirmed by the large number of cairns about it, which appear to be sepulchral. But what was the massive circular monument or platform, built of huge blocks of lava laid in tiers? From Mr. Sterndale's description it would seem that the structure closely resembled the tombs of the sacred kings of Tonga, though these tombs are oblong instead of circular. But they often supported a house or hut of wood and thatch; and Mr. Sterndale may well be right in supposing that the circular Samoan monument in like manner served as a platform to support a wooden building. In this connexion we must not forget that the typical Samoan house was circular or oval in contrast to the typical Tongan house, which was oblong. The openings, which seemed to lead into the interior of the monument, may have given access to the sepulchral chamber where the bodies of the dead were deposited.

Slight as are these indications, they apparently point to the use of the monument as a tomb. There is nothing, except perhaps its circular shape, to suggest that it was a temple of the sun. As no such stone buildings have been erected by the Samoans during the time they have been under European observation, it may be, as Mr. Sterndale supposed, that all the ruins described by him were the work of a people who inhabited the islands before the arrival of the existing race.[136]

§ 8. Origin of the Samoan Gods of Families, Villages, and Districts: Relation to Totemism

If we ask, What was the origin of the peculiar Samoan worship of animals and other natural objects? the most probable answer seems to be that it has been developed out of totemism. The system is not simple totemism, for in totemism the animals, plants, and other natural objects are not worshipped, that is, they do not receive offerings nor are approached with prayers; in short, they are not gods, but are regarded as the kinsfolk of the men and women who have them for totems. Further, the local distribution of the revered objects in Samoa, according to villages and districts, differs from the characteristic distribution of totems, which is not by place but by social groups or clans, the members of which are usually more or less intermixed with each other in every district. It is true that in Samoa we hear of family or household gods as well as of gods of villages and districts, and these family gods, in so far as they consist of species of animals and plants which the worshippers are forbidden to kill or eat, present a close analogy to totems. But it is to be observed that these family gods were, so to say, in a state of unstable equilibrium, it being always uncertain whether a man would inherit his father's or his mother's god or would be assigned a god differing from both of them. This uncertainty arose from the manner of determining a man's god at birth. When a woman was in travail, the help of several gods was invoked, one after the other, to assist the birth; and the god who happened to be invoked at the moment when the child saw the light, was his god for life. As a rule, the god of the father's family was prayed to first; so that generally, perhaps, a man inherited the god of his father. But if the birth was tedious and difficult, the god of the mother's family was next invoked. When the child was born, the mother would call out, "To whom were you praying?" and the god prayed to just before was carefully remembered, and his incarnation duly acknowledged throughout the future life of the child.[137] Such a mode of selecting a divine patron is totally different from the mode whereby, under pure totemism, a person obtains his totem; for his totem is automatically determined for him at birth, being, in the vast majority of cases, inherited either from his father or from his mother, without any possibility of variation or selection. Lastly, the Samoan system differs from most, though not all, systems of totemism, in that it is quite independent of exogamy; in other words, there is no rule forbidding people who revere the same god to marry each other.

Thus, while the Samoan worship of certain classes of natural objects, especially species of animals, is certainly not pure totemism, it presents points of analogy to that system, and might easily, we may suppose, have been developed out of it, the feeling of kinship for totemic animals and plants having been slowly transformed and sublimated into a religious reverence for the creatures and a belief in their divinity; while at the same time the clans, which were originally intermixed, gradually sorted out from each other and settled down in separate villages and districts. This gradual segregation of the clans may have been facilitated by a change from maternal to paternal descent of the totem; for when a man transmits his totem to his offspring, his descendants in the male line tend naturally to expand into a local group in which the totem remains constant from generation to generation instead of alternating with each successive generation, as necessarily happens when a man's children take their totem not from him but from their mother. That the Samoan worship of aitu was developed in some such way out of simple totemism appears to have been the view of Dr. George Brown, one of our best authorities on Samoan society and religion; for he speaks without reserve of the revered objects as totems.[138] A similar derivation of the Samoan aitu was favoured by Dr. Rivers, who, during a visit to Samoa, found some evidence confirmatory of this conclusion.[139]

§ 9. The High Gods of Samoa

But besides these totemic gods of Samoa, as we may term them, which were restricted in the circle of their worshippers to particular families, villages, or districts, there were certain superior deities who were worshipped by all the people in common and might accordingly be called the national divinities of Samoa; indeed the worship of some of them was not confined to Samoa, but was shared by the inhabitants of other groups of islands in Polynesia. These high gods were considered the progenitors of the inferior deities, and were believed to have formed the earth and its inhabitants. They themselves dwelt in heaven, in the sea, on the earth, or under the earth; but they were invisible and did not appear to their worshippers in the form of animals or plants. They had no temples and no priests, and were not invoked like their descendants.[140]

Among these high gods the chief was Tangaloa, or, as he was sometimes called, Tangaloa-langi, that is, Tangaloa of the Skies. He was always spoken of as the principal god, the creator of the world and progenitor of the other gods and of mankind.[141] It is said that after existing somewhere in space he made the heavens as an abode for himself, and that wishing to have also a place under the heavens he created this lower world (Lalolangi, that is, "Under the heavens"). According to one account, he formed the islands of Savaii and Upolu by rolling down two stones from the sky; but according to another story he fished them up from the depths of the sea on a fishing-hook. Next he made the Fee or cuttle-fish, and told it to go down under the earth; hence the lower regions of sea or land are called Sa he fee or "sacred to the cuttle-fish." In its turn the cuttle-fish brought forth all kinds of rocks, including the great one on which we live.[142] Another myth relates how Tangaloa sent down his son or daughter in the likeness of a bird called turi, a species of plover or snipe (Charadrius fulvus). She flew about, but could find no resting-place, for as yet there was nothing but ocean; the earth had not been created or raised above the sea. So she returned to her father in heaven and reported her fruitless search; and at last he gave her some earth and a creeping plant. These she took down with her on her next visit to earth; and after a time the leaves of the plant withered and produced swarms of worms or maggots, which gradually developed into men and women. The plant which thus by its corruption gave birth to the human species was the convolvulus. According to another version of the myth, it was in reply to the complaint of his daughter or son that the sky-god Tangaloa fished up the first islands from the bottom of the sea.[143]

Another of the national gods of Samoa was Mafuie, who was supposed to dwell in the subterranean regions and to cause earthquakes by shaking the pillar on which the earth reposes. In a tussle with the hero Ti'iti'i, who descended to the lower world to rob Mafuie of his fire, the earthquake god lost one of his arms, and the Samoans considered this as a very fortunate circumstance; for otherwise they said that, if Mafuie had had two arms, he would have shaken the world to pieces.[144] It is said that during a shock of earthquake the natives used to rush from their houses, throw themselves upon the ground, gnaw the grass, and shriek in the most frantic manner to Mafuie to desist, lest he should shake the earth to bits.[145]

It seems to be doubtful whether among the Samoan gods are to be numbered the souls of deceased ancestors. Certainly the evidence for the practice of a worship of the dead is far less full and clear in Samoa than in Tonga. On this subject Dr. George Brown writes as follows: "Traces of ancestor worship are few and indistinct. The word tupua is supposed by some to mean the deified spirits of chiefs, and to mean that they constituted a separate order from the atua, who were the original gods. The word itself is the name of a stone, supposed to be a petrified man, and is also generally used as the name of any image having some sacred significance, and as representing the body into which the deified spirit was changed. What appears certain is that ancestor worship had amongst the Samoans gradually given place to the worship of a superior order of supernatural beings not immediately connected with men, but having many human passions and modes of action and life. There are, however, some cases which seem to point to ancestor worship in olden days, as in the case of the town of Matautu, which is said to have been settled by a colony from Fiji. Their principal deity was called Tuifiti, the King of Fiji. He was considered to be the head of that family, and a grove of trees, ifilele (the green-heart of India), was sacred to him and could not be cut or injured in any way."[146] This god was supposed to be incarnate in a man who walked about, but he was never visible to the people of the place, though curiously enough he could be seen by strangers.[147]

However, another experienced missionary, J. B. Stair, who knew Samoa a good many years before Dr. Brown arrived in it, speaks apparently without hesitation of the tupua as being "the deified spirits of chiefs, who were also supposed to dwell in Pulotu," where they became posts in the house or temple of the gods. Many beautiful emblems, he says, were chosen to represent the immortality of these deified spirits; among them were some of the heavenly bodies, including the Pleiades and the planet Jupiter, also the rainbow, the marine rainbow, and many more. He adds that the embalmed bodies of some chiefs were worshipped under the significant title of "sun-dried gods"; and that people prayed and poured libations of kava at the graves of deceased relatives.[148]

§ 10. The Samoan Belief concerning the Human Soul: Funeral Customs

Whether the Samoans practised the worship of the dead in a developed form or not, they certainly possessed the elements out of which the worship might under favourable circumstances be evolved. These elements are a belief in the survival of the human soul after death, and a fear of disembodied spirits or ghosts.

The Samoans believed that every man is animated by a soul, which departs from the body temporarily in faints and dreams and permanently at death. The soul of the dreamer, they thought, really visited the places which he saw in his dream. At death it departed to the subterranean world of the dead which the Samoans called Pulotu, a name which clearly differs only dialectically from the Tongan Bolotoo or Bulotu. Some people professed to see the parting soul when it had quitted its mortal body and was about to take flight to the nether region. It was always of the same shape as the body. Such apparitions at the moment of death were much dreaded, and people tried to drive them away by shouting and firing guns. The word for soul is anganga, which is a reduplicated form of anga, a verb meaning "to go" or "to come." Thus apparently the Samoans did not, like many people, identify the soul with the shadow; for in Samoan the word for shadow is ata.[149]

However, they seem to have in a dim way associated a man's soul with his shadow. This appears from a remarkable custom which they observed in the case of the unburied dead. The Samoans were much concerned for the lot of these unfortunates and stood in great dread of their ghosts. They believed that the spirits of those who had not received the rites of burial wandered about wretched and forlorn and haunted their relatives everywhere by day and night, crying in doleful tones, "Oh, how cold! oh, how cold!" Hence when the body of a dead kinsman was lost because he had been drowned at sea or slain on a battlefield, some of his relatives would go down to the seashore or away to the battlefield where their friend had perished; and there spreading out a cloth on the ground they would pray to some god of the family, saying, "Oh, be kind to us; let us obtain without difficulty the spirit of the young man!" After that the first thing that lighted on the cloth was supposed to be the spirit of the dead. It might be a butterfly, a grasshopper, an ant, a spider, or a lizard; whatever it might be, it was carefully wrapt up and taken to the family, who buried the bundle with all due ceremony, as if it contained the body of their departed friend. Thus the unquiet spirit was believed to find rest. Now the insect, or whatever it happened to be, which thus acted as proxy at the burial was supposed to be the ata or shadow of the deceased. The same word ata served to express likeness; a photographer, for example, is called pue-ata, "shadow-catcher." The Samoans do not appear to have associated the soul with the breath.[150]

They attributed disease and death to the anger of a god, to the agency of an evil spirit, or to the ghost of a dead relative who had entered into the body of the sufferer. Epilepsy, delirium, and mania were always thus explained by the entrance into the patient of a god or demon. The Samoan remedy for all such ailments was not medicine but exorcism. Sometimes a near relative of the sick person would go round the house brandishing a spear and striking the walls to drive away the spirit that was causing the sickness.[151] Hence when a member of a family fell seriously ill, his friends did not send for a doctor, but repaired to the high priest of the village to enquire of him the cause of the sickness, to learn why the family god (aitu) was angry with them, and to implore his mercy and forgiveness. Often the priest took advantage of their anxiety to demand a valuable piece of property, such as a canoe or a parcel of ground, as the best means of propitiating the angry deity and so ensuring the recovery of the patient. With all these demands the anxious and unsuspecting relatives readily complied. But if the priest happened not to want anything in particular at the time, he would probably tell the messengers to gather the family about the bed of the sufferer and there confess their sins. The command was implicitly obeyed, and every member of the family assembled and made a clean breast of his or her misdeeds, especially of any curse which he or she might have called down either on the family generally or on the invalid in particular. Curiously enough, the curse of a sister was peculiarly dreaded; hence in such cases the sister of the sick man was closely questioned as to whether she had cursed him and thus caused his illness; if so, she was entreated to remove the curse, that he might recover. Moved by these pleadings, she might take some coco-nut water in her mouth and spurt it out towards or upon the body of the sufferer. By this action she either removed the curse or declared her innocence; a similar ceremony might be performed by any other member of the family who was suspected of having cursed the sick man.[152]

When an illness seemed likely to prove fatal, messengers were despatched to friends at a distance that they might come and bid farewell to the dying man. Every one who came to visit the sufferer in his last moments brought a present of a fine mat or other valuable piece of property as a token of regard, and to defray the cost of the illness and funeral. The best of the mats would be laid on the body of the dying man that he might have the comfort of seeing them before he closed his eyes for ever. Dr. George Brown thought that the spirits of the mats thus laid on the body of the dying chief were supposed to accompany his soul to the other world. It is possible that their spirits did so, but it is certain that their material substance did not; for after the funeral all the mats and other valuables so presented were distributed among the mourners and friends assembled on the occasion, so that every one who had brought a gift took away something in return on his departure.[153]

If the dying man happened to be a chief, numbers crowded round him to receive a parting look or word, while in front of the house might be seen men and women wildly beating their heads and bodies with great stones, thus inflicting on themselves ghastly wounds, from which the blood poured as an offering of affection and sympathy to their departing friend or lord. It was hoped that, pleased and propitiated by the sight of their devotion, the angry god might yet stay his hand and spare the chief to his people. Above all the tumult and uproar would rise the voice of one who prayed aloud for the life then trembling in the balance. But if the prayer seemed likely to prove ineffectual, it was exchanged for threats and upbraiding. "O thou shameless spirit," the voice would now be heard exclaiming, "could I but grasp you, I would smash your skull to pieces! Come here and let us fight together. Don't conceal yourself, but show yourself like a man, and let us fight, if you are angry."[154]

Immediately after death, all the mats on the floor of the house were thrown outside, and the thatched sides of the house were either torn down or knocked in with clubs; while the relatives and assembled crowds wrought themselves up to frenzy, uttering loud shrieks, rending their garments, tearing out their hair by handfuls, burning their bodies with firebrands, beating their faces and heads with clubs and stones, or gashing themselves with shells and shark's teeth, till the blood ran freely down. This they called an offering of blood for the dead. In their fury some of the mourners fell on the canoes and houses, breaking them up and tearing them down, felling the bread-fruit trees, and devastating the plantations of yams and taro.[155]

As decomposition is rapid in the hot moist climate of Samoa, it was customary to bury commoners a few hours after death. The body was laid out on a mat, anointed with scented oil, and the face tinged with turmeric, to soften the cadaverous look. It was then wound up in several folds of native cloth and the chin propped up, the head and face being left uncovered, while for some hours longer the body was surrounded by weeping relatives, who kept constant watch over it, so long as it remained in the house. These watchers were always women, and none of them might quit her post under any pretext till she was relieved by another. A fire was kept burning brightly in the house all the time. If the deceased had died of a complaint which had previously carried off other members of the family, they would probably open the body to "search for the disease." Any inflamed substance which they happened to find they would take away and burn, thinking thus to prevent any other member of the family from being similarly afflicted. Such a custom betrays an incipient sense of death from natural, instead of supernatural, causes, and must have contributed to diffuse a knowledge of human anatomy.[156]

So long as a corpse remained in the house no food might be eaten under the roof; the family had their meals outside or in another house. Those who had attended to the deceased or handled the corpse were taboo: they might not feed themselves or touch food with their hands. For days they were fed by others as if they were helpless infants. Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be the punishment inflicted by the household god for a breach of the rule. Many people fasted at such times, eating nothing during the day, but taking a meal in the evening. The fifth day was a day of purification. The tabooed persons then washed their faces and hands with hot water and were clean; after that they were free to eat at the usual time and in the usual manner.[157]

The ordinary mode of disposing of the dead was by interment either in a stone vault or in a shallow grave. But occasionally other modes were adopted, such as embalming, putting the corpse in a canoe and setting it adrift on the sea, or exposing it on a stage erected in the forest, where it was left to decay, the bones being afterwards collected and buried. Upon the death of a chief his body was generally deposited in a family vault, the sides and bottom of which were lined with large slabs of sandstone or basalt, while another large slab of the same material formed the roof. Such vaults were sometimes large and massive. The stones used in their construction were found in various parts of the islands. Commoners were buried in shallow graves.[158]

Ordinary people were usually buried the day after they died. As many friends as could be present attended the funeral. Every one brought a present, but on the day after the funeral all these presents, like those which had previously been made to the dying man, were distributed again, so that none went empty-handed away. The corpse was generally buried without a coffin; but chiefs were laid in hollow logs or canoes. However, even the bodies of common people were sometimes interred in rude coffins similarly constructed. There were no common burying-grounds; all preferred to bury their dead on their own land. Often the grave was dug close to the house. The body was laid in it with the head to the east and the feet to the west. When it had been thus committed to its last resting-place, a near relative of the deceased, a sister, if one survived, seated herself at the grave, and waving a white cloth over the corpse, began an address to the dead. "Compassion to you," she said, "go with goodwill, and without bearing malice towards us. Take with you all our diseases, and leave us life." Then pointing to the west, she exclaimed, "Misery there!" Next pointing to the east, she cried, "Prosperity there!" Lastly, pointing to the grave, she said, "Misery there; but leave happiness with us!" With the body they deposited in the grave several things which had been used by the deceased during his illness, such as his clothing, his drinking-cup, and his bamboo pillow. The wooden pickaxes and coco-nut shells employed as shovels in digging the grave were also carefully buried with the corpse. It was not, we are told, because the people believed these things to be of use to the dead; but because it was supposed that, if they were left and handled by others, further disease and death would be the consequence. Valuable mats and other articles of property were sometimes buried with the corpse, and the grave of a warrior was surrounded with spears stuck upright in the ground. Graves were sometimes enclosed with stones and strewn with sand or crumbled coral.[159]

The obsequies of a chief of high rank were more elaborate. The body was kept unburied for days until his clansfolk had assembled from various parts of the islands and paraded the body, shoulder high, through the village, chanting a melancholy dirge.[160] The mourning and ceremonies lasted from ten to fifteen days. All that time the house of death was watched night and day by men appointed for the purpose. After the burial, and until the days of mourning were ended, the daytime was generally spent in boxing and wrestling matches, and sham-fights, while the nights were occupied with dancing and practising a kind of buffoonery, which was customary at these seasons of mourning for the dead. The performance was called O le tau-pinga. The performers amused themselves by making a variety of ludicrous faces and grimaces at each other, to see who could excite the other to laugh first. Thus they whiled away the hours of night till the days of mourning were expired.[161] So long as the funeral ceremonies and feasts lasted no work might be done in the village, and no strangers might approach it. The neighbouring lagoon and reefs were taboo: no canoe might pass over the lagoon anywhere near the village, and no man might fish in it or on the reef.[162] For a chief or man of distinction fires were kept burning day and night in a line from the house to the grave; these fires were maintained for ten days after the funeral. The reason assigned for this custom, according to Ella, was to keep away evil spirits. Even common people observed a similar custom. After burial they kept a fire blazing in the house all night, and they were careful to clear the intervening ground so that a stream of light went forth from the house to the grave. The account which the Samoans gave of the custom, according to Turner, was that it was merely a light burning in honour of the departed, and a mark of their tender regard for him. Dr. George Brown believed that the original motive for the custom was to warm the ghost, and probably at the same time to protect the mourners against dangerous spirits.[163]

The head was deemed a very sacred part, and in olden days the bodies of chiefs were often buried near their houses until decomposition had set in, when the head was cut off and interred in some family burying-place inland, to save it from insult in time of war. This interment of the head was accompanied with feasts, dances, and sham-fights. The skull was borne to the appointed place on a kind of stage, attended by a troop of armed men. With these sham-fights Dr. George Brown, who records the custom, compares the sham-fights which used to take place among the Melanesians of the Duke of York Island when the body of a chief was laid on a high platform in front of his house, one company of warriors striving to deposit the corpse on the platform, while their adversaries attempted to prevent them from doing so.[164] The meaning of these curious sham-fights is obscure. Perhaps the attacking party represented a band of evil spirits, who endeavoured to snatch away the chief's body, but were defeated in the nefarious attempt.

One or two families of chiefs in the island of Upolu used to practise a rude kind of embalming. The work was done exclusively by women. The viscera having been removed and buried, the women anointed the body daily with a mixture of oil and aromatic juices. To let the fluids escape, they punctured the body all over with fine needles. Finally, wads of native cloth, saturated with oil or resinous gums, were inserted in the abdomen, the apertures were closed up, and the body wrapt in native cloth. The face, hands, and feet were left exposed, and were repeatedly anointed with oil, mixed with turmeric powder, to give a fresh and life-like appearance to the mummy. The whole process lasted about two months. On its completion the mummy was placed in a house built specially for the purpose, where, loosely covered with a sheet of native cloth, it rested on a raised platform. Strangers were freely admitted to see it. Four of these mummies, laid out in a house, were to be seen down to about the year 1864. They were the bodies of a chief, his wife, and two sons. Dr. George Turner judged that they must have been embalmed upwards of thirty years, and although they had been exposed all that time, they were in a remarkably good state of preservation. The people assigned no particular reason for the practice, further than that it sprang from an affectionate desire to keep the bodies of their departed friends with them, as if they were still alive.[165]

§ 11. The Fate of the Human Soul after Death

With regard to the fate of human souls after death the Samoans appear to have believed in their immortality, or at all events in their indefinite survival. On this subject Dr. Brown observes: "All souls survived after death, and so far as I know they had no idea of their dying a second death or being destroyed. I do not think that a Samoan could give any reason for his belief that the soul does not perish with the body, but he certainly does believe this, and I never heard any one question the fact."[166] Thus, according to Dr. Brown the Samoans, unlike the Tongans, drew no invidious distinction between the souls of noblemen and the souls of commoners, but liberally opened the doors of immortality to gentle and simple alike. So far, they carried their republican or democratic spirit into the world beyond the grave.

However, according to the American ethnologist, Horatio Hale, some of the Samoans agreed with the Tongans in taking an aristocratic view of the destiny of souls after death; and as he had good opportunities for acquainting himself with the Samoan religion during the prolonged stay of the American Exploring Expedition at Samoa in 1839, when the islands were as yet but little affected by European influence, I will quote his account. He says: "All believe in the existence of a large island, situated far to the north-west called Pulótu, which is the residence of the gods. Some suppose that while the souls of the common people perish with their bodies, those of the chiefs are received into this island, which is described as a terrestrial elysium, and become there inferior divinities. Others hold (according to Mr. Heath) that the spirits of the departed live and work in a dark subterraneous abode, and are eaten by the gods. A third, and very common opinion is, that the souls of all who die on an island, make their way to the western extremity, where they plunge into the sea; but what then becomes of them is not stated. The rock from which they leap, in the island of Upolu, was pointed out to us; the natives term it 'Fatu-asofia,' which was rendered the 'jumping-off stone.'"[167]

Of these various opinions described by Hale the third would seem to have been by far the most prevalent. It was commonly believed that the disembodied spirit retained the exact resemblance of its former self, by which we are probably to understand the exact resemblance of its former body. Immediately on quitting its earthly tabernacle it began its solitary journey to Fafa, which was the subterranean abode of the dead, lying somewhere to the west of Savaii, the most westerly island of the group. Thus, if a man died in Manua, the most easterly of the islands, his soul would journey to the western end of that island, then dive into the sea and swim across to Tutuila. There it would walk along the beach to the extreme westerly point of the island, when it would again plunge into the sea and swim across to the next island, and so on to the most westerly cape of Savaii, where it finally dived into the ocean and pursued its way to the mysterious Fafa.[168]

At the western end of Savaii, near the village of Falealupo, there are two circular openings among the rocks, not far from the beach. Down these two openings the souls of the dead were supposed to go on their passage to the spirit-world. The souls of chiefs went down the larger of the openings, and the souls of common people went down the smaller. Near the spot stood a coco-nut tree, and if a passing soul chanced to collide with it, the soul could not proceed farther, but returned to its body. When a man recovered from a deep swoon, his friends supposed that his soul had been arrested in its progress to the other world by knocking against the coco-nut tree, and they rejoiced, saying, "He has come back from the tree of the Watcher," for that was the name by which the coco-nut tree was known. So firmly did the people of the neighbourhood believe in the passage of the souls near their houses, that at night they kept down the blinds to exclude the ghosts.[169] The "jumping-off stone" at the west end of Upolu was also dreaded on account of the passing ghosts. The place is a narrow rocky cape. The Samoans were much astonished when a Christian native boldly built himself a house on the haunted spot.[170] According to one account, the souls of the dead had not to make their way through the chain of islands by the slow process of walking and swimming, but were at once transported to the western end of Savaii by a band of spirits, who hovered over the house of the dying man, and catching up his parting spirit conveyed it in a straight course westward.[171]

The place down which the spirits of the dead were supposed to descend to the nether world was called by a native name (Luaō), which means "hollow pit." "May you go rumbling down the hollow pit" was a common form of cursing. At the bottom of the pit was a running stream which floated the spirits away to Pulotu. All alike, the handsome and the ugly, old and young, chiefs and commoners, drifted pell-mell on the current in a dazed, semi-conscious state, till they came to Pulotu. There they bathed in "the Water of Life" and recovered all their old life and vigour. Infirmity of every kind fled away; even the aged became young again. The underworld of Pulotu was conceived on the model of our upper world. There, as here, were heavens and earth and sea, fruits and flowers; there the souls of the dead planted and fished and cooked; there they married and were given in marriage, all after the manner of life on earth.[172]

However, it appears that according to a widespread belief the world of the dead was sharply discriminated into two regions, to wit, an Elysium or place of bliss called Pulotu, and a Tartarus or place of woe named Sā-le-Fe'e. The title for admission to one or other of these places was not moral worth but social rank, chiefs going to Elysium and commoners to Tartarus. The idea of the superiority of the chiefs to the common people was thus perpetuated in the land of the dead.[173] The king of the lower regions was a certain Saveasiuleo, that is, Savea of the Echo. He reclined in a house in the company of the chiefs who gathered round him: the upper part of his body was human, the lower part was like that of a fish and stretched away into the sea. This royal house of assembly was supported by the erect bodies of chiefs, who had been of high rank on earth, and who, before they died, anticipated with pride the honour they were to enjoy by serving as pillars in the temple of the King of Pulotu.[174]

But the souls of the dead were not permanently confined to the lower world. They could return to the land of the living by night to hold converse with members of their families, to warn and instruct them in dreams, and to foretell the future. They could cause disease and death by entering into the bodies of their enemies and even of their friends, and they produced nightmare by sitting on the chests of sleepers. They haunted some houses and especially burying-grounds. Their apparitions were visible to the living and were greatly dreaded; people tried to drive them away by shouts, noises, and the firing of guns. But the ghosts had to return to the nether world at daybreak. It was because they feared the spirits of the dead that the Samoans took such great pains to propitiate dying people with presents; this they did above all to persons whom they had injured, because they had most reason to dread the anger of their ghosts.[175] However, the souls of the departed were also thought of in a more amiable light; they could help as well as harm mankind. Hence prayers were commonly offered at the grave of a parent, a brother, or a chief. The suppliant, for example, might pray for health in sickness; or, if he were of a malignant turn, he might implore the ghost to compass the death of some person at whom he bore a grudge. Thus we are told that a woman prayed for the death of her brother, and he died accordingly.[176] In such beliefs and practices we have, as I have already observed, the essential elements of a regular worship of the dead. Whether the Samoans were on the way to evolve such a religion or, as Dr. George Brown preferred to suppose,[177] had left it behind them and made some progress towards a higher faith, we hardly possess the means of determining.

But while the Samoans thought that the dead return to earth to make or mar the living, they did not believe that the spirits come back to be born again in the form of men or animals or to occupy inanimate bodies; in other words they had no belief in the transmigration of souls.[178] The absence of such a belief is significant in view of Dr. Rivers's suggestion that Melanesian totemism may have been evolved out of a doctrine of metempsychosis, human souls being supposed to pass at death into their totem animals or plants.[179] We have seen that the Samoan system of family, village, and district gods bears strong marks of having been developed out of totemism; and if their totemism had in turn been developed out of a doctrine of transmigration, we should expect to find among them a belief that the souls of the dead appeared in the shape of the animals, plants, or other natural objects which were regarded as the embodiments of their family, village, or district gods. But of such a belief there is seemingly no trace. It appears, therefore, unlikely that Samoan totemism was based on a doctrine of transmigration. Similarly we have seen reason to think that the Tongan worship of animals may have sprung from totemism, though according to the best authorities that worship was not connected with a theory of metempsychosis.[180] Taken together, the Samoan and the Tongan systems seem to show that, if totemism ever flourished among the Polynesians, it had not its roots in a worship of the dead.

FOOTNOTES