Chapter V

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE SOCIETY ISLANDERS

§ 1. The Society Islands

The Society Islands are a large and scattered archipelago in the South Pacific, situated within 16° and 18° of South latitude, and between 148° and 155° of West longitude. They lie some three hundred miles from the Hervey or Cook Islands, from which they are separated by the open sea. The islands form a chain nearly two hundred miles in length, extending from north-west to south-east, and fall into two groups, an eastern and a western, which, on account of the prevailing wind, are known respectively as the Windward and Leeward Islands. The Windward or eastern group includes Eimeo or Moörea in the west, Maitea in the east, and Tahiti, the principal island of the whole archipelago, in the centre. In the Leeward or western group the chief islands are Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa, and Borabora. The islands appear to have been first discovered by the Spanish navigator Fernandez de Quiros in 1606 or 1607, but after him they were lost sight of till 1767, when they were rediscovered by Wallis. A few years later they were repeatedly visited by Captain Cook, who gave the first full and accurate description of the islands and their inhabitants.[1]

The islands, with the exception of a few flat lagoon islands, are of volcanic formation, high and mountainous, consisting for the most part of a central peak or peaks of bold and striking outline, which descend in steep ridges towards the sea, sometimes reaching the coast, but oftener leaving a broad stretch of flat and very fertile land between their last slopes and the beach. Between the ridges lie deep and beautiful valleys, watered by winding streams and teeming with luxuriant vegetation. The rocks of which the islands consist are all igneous, chiefly trachyte, dolerite, basalt, and lava. They are considered by geologists to present perhaps the most wonderful and instructive example of volcanic rocks to be seen on the globe. Yet, though the islands are judged to be of comparatively recent formation, there are no traces of volcanic action in them at the present time. The craters have disappeared: hot springs do not exist; and earthquakes are rare.[2]

The Society Islands, and Tahiti in particular, are famous for the beauty of their natural scenery; indeed, by general consent they appear to rank as the fairest islands in the Pacific. Travellers vie with each other in praise of their enchanting loveliness. Tahiti, the largest island of the group, may be taken as typical of them all. It consists of two almost circular islands united by a very low and narrow neck of land: the northern and larger island is known as Tahiti the Great (Tahiti nui), the southern and smaller island is known as Tahiti the Little (Tahiti iti). In the centre of each island the mountains rise in craggy peaks, sometimes in the shape of pyramids or sugar-loaves, their rocky sides clothed with every variety of verdure, and enlivened here and there by cataracts falling from lofty cliffs, while the shore is washed by the white-crested waves of the Pacific breaking in foam on the coral reefs or dashing in spray on the beach. The scene is especially striking when beheld for the first time from the sea at sunrise on a fine morning. Then the happy combination of land and water, of precipices and plains, of umbrageous trees drooping their pendent boughs over the sea, and distant mountains shown in sublime outline and richest hues, all blended in the harmony of nature, produces in the beholder sensations of admiration and delight. The inland scenery is of a different character, but not less impressive. There the prospect is occasionally extensive, but more frequently circumscribed. There is, however, a startling boldness in the towering piles of basalt, often heaped in picturesque confusion near the source or margin of some crystal stream that flows in silence at their base, or plashes purling over the rocks that obstruct its bed; and there is the wildness of romance about the deep and lonely glens, from which the mountains rise like the steep sides of a natural amphitheatre till they seem to support the clouds that rest upon their summits. In the character of the teeming vegetation, too, from the verdant moss that drapes the rocks to the rich foliage of the bread-fruit tree, the luxuriance of the pandanus, and the waving plumes of the coconut palm, all nurtured by a prolific soil and matured by the genial heat of a tropical climate, there is enough to arrest the attention and to strike the imagination of the wanderer, who, in the unbroken silence that reigns in these pleasing solitudes, may easily fancy himself astray in fairyland and treading enchanted ground.[3]

§ 2. The Islanders and their Mode of Life

The islanders are, or were at the date of their discovery by Europeans, fine specimens of the Polynesian race, being tall, well-proportioned, and robust. Captain Cook described them as of the largest size of Europeans. Their complexion varies from olive to bronze and reddish-brown, frequently presenting a hue intermediate between the yellow of the Malay and the copper-colour of the American Indians. The hair is shining black or dark brown, usually straight, but often soft and curly; never lank and wiry like that of the American Indians, and only in rare cases woolly or frizzly like that of the Papuans. The men have beards, which they used to wear in a variety of fashions, always, however, plucking out the greater part. The shape of the face is comely, and the facial angle is often as perpendicular as in Europeans. The cheek-bones are not high; the nose is either straight or aquiline, often accompanied by a fulness about the nostrils; it is seldom flat, though it was formerly the practice of mothers and nurses to press the nostrils of the female children, a broad flat nose being by many regarded as a beauty. The mouth in general is well formed, though the lips are sometimes large and protuberant, yet never so much as to resemble the lips of negroes; the chin is usually prominent. The general aspect of the face very seldom presents any likeness to the Tartar or Mongolian cast of countenance; while the profile frequently bears a most striking resemblance to that of Europeans. A roundness and fulness of figure, not usually extending to corpulency, is characteristic of the race, especially of the women. In general physique they resemble the Sandwich Islanders and Tonga Islanders; according to Ellis, they are more robust than the Marquesans, but inferior in size and strength to the Maoris.[4]

Their diet is chiefly vegetable; when Captain Cook visited the islands, the only tame animals were hogs, dogs, and poultry. Bread-fruit, taro, yams, bananas, and coconuts are their staple food; the bread-fruit in particular has been called their staff of life. Taro and yams are carefully cultivated by the natives, and they also grow the sweet potato as an article of food, though to a less extent than the other two roots; in quality the sweet potato of Tahiti is far inferior to that of the Sandwich Islands. The sea affords a great variety of fish and shell-fish, which the natives catch and eat; nothing that the sea produces is said to come amiss to them. Hogs and dogs were in olden times the only quadrupeds whose flesh was eaten by the Tahitians; but for the most part they rarely tasted meat, subsisting almost exclusively on a diet of fruit, vegetables, and fish.[5]

The common houses were of an oblong shape, usually from eighteen to twenty-four feet in length, by eleven feet in width, the long sides being parallel to each other, but the two ends commonly rounded, especially in the houses of chiefs. The thatched roofs were supported on three parallel rows of wooden posts, and there being no outer walls and no partitions, the wind blew freely through them. The floor was covered with mats, forming a single cushion, on which the people sat by day and slept at night. In some houses there was a single stool appropriated to the use of the master of the family; otherwise an ordinary dwelling contained little or no furniture except a few small blocks of wood, hollowed out on the upper surface so as to form head-rests or pillows. The houses served chiefly as dormitories and as shelters in rain: the people took their meals in the open air. Chiefs, however, often owned houses of much larger dimensions, which were built and maintained for them at the common expense of the district. Some of these chiefly dwellings were two hundred feet long, thirty feet broad, and twenty feet high under the ridge; one of them, belonging to the king, measured three hundred and seventy feet in length. We read of houses which could contain two or three thousand people;[6] and of one particular house in Tahiti we are informed that it was no less than three hundred and ninety-seven feet long by forty-eight feet broad, and that the roof was supported in the middle by twenty wooden pillars, each twenty-one feet high, while the sides or eaves of the roof rested on one hundred and twenty-four pillars, each ten feet high. A wooden wall or fence enclosed the whole. This great house was used for the celebration of feasts, which sometimes lasted for days together, and at which nearly all the hogs in the island were consumed.[7]

Like all the Polynesians down to the date of their discovery by Europeans, the inhabitants of the Society Islands were totally ignorant of the use and even of the existence of the metals, and they had to employ substitutes, chiefly stone and bone, for the manufacture of their tools and weapons. Of their tools Captain Cook gives the following account: "They have an adze of stone; a chisel, or gouge, of bone, generally that of a man's arm between the wrist and elbow; a rasp of coral; and the skin of a sting-ray, with coral sand, as a filer or polisher. This is a complete catalogue of their tools, and with these they build houses, construct canoes, hew stone, and fell, cleave, carve, and polish timber. The stone which makes the blade of their adzes is a kind of basaltes, of a blackish or grey colour, not very hard, but of considerable toughness: they are of different sizes; some, that are intended for felling, weigh from six to eight pounds; others, that are used for carving, not more than so many ounces; but it is necessary to sharpen both almost every minute; for which purpose, a stone and a cocoa-nut shell full of water are always at hand. Their greatest exploit, to which these tools are less equal than to any other, is felling a tree; this requires many hands, and the constant labour of several days."[8] The earliest missionaries expressed their astonishment that with such simple tools the natives could carve so neatly and finish so smoothly; our most ingenious workmen, they declared, could not excel them.[9]

The principal manufacture of the Society Islanders was the making of the cloth which they used for their garments. The material for the cloth was furnished by the bark of several trees, including the paper-mulberry, the bread-fruit tree, and a species of wild fig-tree. Having been stripped from the tree and soaked in water, the bark was spread out on a beam and beaten with heavy wooden mallets, till it was reduced to the proper degree of thinness and flexibility. The finest and most valuable kind of cloth was made chiefly, and sometimes entirely, from the bark of the paper-mulberry and was bleached pure white. But vegetable dyes were also commonly employed to stain the cloth with a variety of hues arranged in patterns. The favourite colours were a brilliant scarlet and a bright yellow; Captain Cook described the scarlet as exceedingly beautiful, brighter and more delicate than any we have in Europe; it was produced by a mixture of the juices of two vegetables, the fruit of a species of fig and the leaves of the Cordia sebastina or etou tree. The patterns were in this bright scarlet on a yellow ground; formerly they were altogether devoid of uniformity or regularity, yet exhibited a considerable degree of taste. The bales of bark-cloth were sometimes as much as two hundred yards long by four yards wide; the whole bale was in a single piece, being composed of narrow strips joined together by being beaten with grooved mallets. A chief's wealth was sometimes estimated by the number of bales which he possessed; the more valuable sort, covered with matting or cloth of an inferior sort, were generally hung from the roof of his house. The manufacture of cloth was chiefly in the hands of women; indeed it was one of their most usual employments. Even women of high rank did not disdain this form of industry; the wives and daughters of chiefs took a pride in manufacturing cloth of a superior quality, excelling that produced by common women in the elegance of the patterns or the brilliance of the dyes. Every family had a little house where the females laboured at the making of cloth; but in addition every district had a sort of public factory, consisting of a spacious house where immense quantities of cloth were produced on the occasion of festivals, the visits of great chiefs, or other solemnities. In such a factory the women would often assemble to the number of two or three hundred, and the monotonous din of their hammers falling on the bark was almost deafening; it began early in the morning, only to cease at night. Yet heard at a distance in some lonely valley the sound was not disagreeable, telling as it did of industry and peace.[10]

Among the other articles manufactured by the Society Islanders before the advent of Europeans were fine mats, baskets of many different patterns, ropes, lines, and fishing-tackle, including nets, hooks, and harpoons made of cane and pointed with hard wood. In every expedient for taking fish they are said to have been exceedingly ingenious.[11] They made bows and arrows, with which, as an amusement, they shot against each other, not at a mark, but to see who could shoot farthest. Like the rest of the Polynesians, they never used these weapons in war.[12]

Society among these islanders was divided into three ranks; first the royal family and nobility (hui arii); second, the landed proprietors, or gentry and farmers (bue raatira); and third, the common people (manahune). Of these, the landed gentry and farmers were the most numerous and influential class, constituting at all times the great body of the people and the strength of the nation, as well as of the army. The petty farmers owned from twenty to a hundred acres. Some of the great landowners possessed many hundreds of acres, and being surrounded by retainers they constituted the aristocracy of the country and imposed a restraint upon the king, who, without their co-operation, could carry but few of his measures. They also frequently acted as priests in their family temples. The common people comprised slaves and servants. The slaves were captives taken in war. Their treatment was in general mild, and if peace continued, they often regained their freedom and were allowed to return to their own country.[13]

The government of the Society Islands, like that of Hawaii, was at least in form an arbitrary monarchy. The supreme authority was vested in the king and was hereditary in his family. It partook of a sacred character, for in these islands government was closely interwoven with religion; the king sometimes personated the god and received the homage and prayers of the worshippers; at other times he officiated as high-priest and transmitted the vows and petitions of the people to the superior deities. The genealogy of the reigning family was usually traced back to the first ages of the world: in some of the islands the kings were believed to be descended from the gods: their persons were always sacred, and their families constituted the highest rank recognised by the people.[14]

Indeed, everything in the least degree connected with the king or queen—the cloth they wore, the houses in which they dwelt, the canoes in which they voyaged, the men who carried them when they journeyed by land—became sacred and could not be converted to common use. The very sounds in the language which composed their names could no longer be appropriated to ordinary significations. If on the accession of a king any words in the language were found to resemble his name, they were abolished and changed for others; and if any man were bold enough to continue to use them, not only he but all his relations were immediately put to death; and the same severity was exercised on any who should dare to apply the sacred name to an animal. Thus in process of time the original names of most common objects in the language underwent considerable alterations. No one might touch the body of the king or queen; nay, any person who should so much as stand over them, or pass his hand over their heads, was liable to pay for the sacrilege with the forfeiture of his life. The very ground on which the king or queen even accidentally trod became sacred; and any house belonging to a private person which they entered must for ever be vacated by the owner and either set apart for the use of the royal personages or burnt down with every part of its furniture. Hence it was a general rule that the king and queen never entered any dwellings except such as were specially dedicated to their use, and never trod on the ground in any part of the island but their own hereditary districts. In journeying they were always carried on men's shoulders.[15]

The inauguration of a king consisted in girding him with a sacred girdle (maro ura) of red, or red and yellow, feathers, which not only raised him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with the gods. The red feathers were taken from the images of the gods and interwoven with feathers of other colours. A human victim was sacrificed when they began to make the girdle, and another was sacrificed when it was finished; sometimes others were slaughtered at intermediate stages, one for each fresh piece added to the girdle. The blood of the victims was supposed to consecrate the belt.[16]

The deification of kings in their lifetime would seem not to have been confined to Tahiti, but to have prevailed in the other islands of the Society Archipelago. We hear particularly of the divinity of the kings of Raiatea. In that island a place called Opoa is said to have been the metropolis of idolatry for all the South Pacific Islands within a compass of five hundred miles. Hither, from every shore, human victims, already slain, were sent to be offered on the altar of the war-god Oro, whose principal image was there worshipped. There, too, was the residence of the kings of the island, "who, beside the prerogatives of royalty, enjoyed divine honours, and were in fact living idols among the dead ones, being deified at the time of their accession to political supremacy here. In the latter character, we presume, it was, that these sovereigns (who always took the name of Tamatoa) were wont to receive presents from the kings and chiefs of adjacent and distant islands, whose gods were all considered tributary to the Oro of Raiatea, and their princes owing homage to its monarch, who was Oro's hereditary high-priest, as well as an independent divinity himself."[17] Of one particular monarch of this line, Tamatoa by name, we read that he "had been enrolled among the gods," and that "as one of the divinities of his subjects, therefore, the king was worshipped, consulted as an oracle, and had sacrifices and prayers offered to him."[18]

In the succession to the throne the law of primogeniture prevailed, and in accordance with a singular usage, which was invariably observed, the king regularly abdicated on the birth of his first son and became a subject of his infant offspring. The child was at once proclaimed the sovereign of the people: the royal title was conferred on him; and his own father was the first to do him homage by saluting his feet and declaring him king. The public herald was despatched round the island with the flag of the infant monarch: in every district he unfurled the banner and proclaimed the accession of the youthful sovereign. The insignia of royalty and the homage of the people were at once transferred from the father to the child: the royal domains and other sources of revenue were appropriated to the maintenance of the household of the infant ruler; and the father paid him all the marks of reverence and submission which he had hitherto exacted from the people. However, during the minority of his son the former king appears to have filled the office of regent. This remarkable rule of succession was not limited to the royal house, but prevailed also in noble families: no sooner did a baron's wife give birth to a child than the baron was reduced to the rank of a private man, though he continued to administer the estate for the benefit of the infant, to whom all the outward marks of honour were now transferred.[19]

§ 3. The Religion of the Society Islanders

If religion consists essentially in a fear of gods, the natives of the Society Islands were a very religious people, for they believed in a multitude of gods and stood in constant dread of them. "Whatever attention," says Ellis, "the Tahitians paid to their occupations or amusements, and whatever energies have been devoted to the prosecution of their barbarous wars, the claims of all were regarded as inferior to those of their religion. On this every other was dependent, while each was alike made subservient to its support."[20] "No people in the world, in ancient or modern times, appear to have been more superstitious than the South Sea Islanders, or to have been more entirely under the influence of dread from imaginary demons, or supernatural beings. They had not only their major, but their minor demons, or spirits, and all the minute ramifications of idolatry."[21] "Religious rites were connected with almost every act of their lives. An ubu or prayer was offered before they ate their food, when they tilled their ground, planted their gardens, built their houses, launched their canoes, cast their nets, and commenced or concluded a journey. The first fish taken periodically on their shores, together with a number of kinds regarded as sacred, were conveyed to the altar. The first-fruits of their orchards and gardens were also taumaha, or offered, with a portion of their live-stock, which consisted of pigs, dogs, and fowls, as it was supposed death would be inflicted on the owner or the occupant of the land, from which the god should not receive such acknowledgment."[22]

Different gods were worshipped in different islands, and even in different parts of the same island,[23] and if a deity failed to answer the expectations of his worshippers, they did not scruple to change him for another. In Captain Cook's time the people of Tiaraboo (Tairaboo), the southern peninsula of Tahiti, discarded their two old divinities and adopted in their place Oraa, the god of the island of Bolabola (Borabora), apparently because the people of Bolabola had lately been victorious in war; and as, after this change of deity, they themselves proved very successful in their operations against their enemies, they imputed the success entirely to their new god, who, they literally said, fought their battles.[24] Again, when the prayers and offerings for the recovery of a sick chief were unavailing, the god was regarded as inexorable, and was usually banished from the temple, and his image destroyed.[25]

The pantheon and mythology of the Society Islands were of the usual Polynesian type; some of their chief gods were recognised and worshipped under the same names, with dialectical differences, in other islands of the Pacific. In the beginning they say that all things were in a state of chaos or darkness, from which the principal deities, including Taaroa, Oro, and Tane, at last emerged. Hence these high gods were said to be born of Night or the primaeval darkness (Po). Among them all the first place in time and dignity was generally assigned to Taaroa, who appears in other parts of Polynesia as Tanaroa, Tangaroa, Tagaloa, and so on. By some he was spoken of as the progenitor of the other gods and as the creator of the heavens, the earth, and sea, as well as of men, beasts, birds, and fishes; but others were of opinion that the land or the world had existed before the gods. Oro, the great national god of Tahiti, Raiatea, and other islands, was believed to be a son of Taaroa.[26] To these three great gods, Oro, Tane, and Taaroa, the people sacrificed in great emergencies, when the deities were thought to be angry. At such times the wrath of the god was revealed to a priest, who, wrapt up like a ball in a bundle of cloth, spoke in a sharp, shrill, squeaky voice, saying, "I am angry; bring me hogs, kill a man, and my anger will be appeased."[27]

Oro is sometimes described as the war-god.[28] The great seat of his worship was at Opoa in the island of Raiatea: his principal image was worshipped there "with the most bloody and detestable rites"; and thither human victims, ready slain, were sent from every shore to be offered on his altar.[29] Sometimes, instead of the bodies of the slain, only their jaw-bones were sent to decorate the temple of Oro at Opoa; long strings of these relics might be seen hanging about the sacred edifice.[30] In the small island of Tahaa, off Raiatea, there was a temple (marae) dedicated to Oro and his two daughters. It belonged to the king and "was upheld for the convenience of finding a pretext to get rid, from time to time, of obnoxious persons, of both sexes; the men slain by assassination, or in war, being presented to the male idol, and the women to his female progeny, who were held to be as cruelly delighted with blood as their parent. But the human sacrifices brought hither were not allowed to remain and infect the atmosphere. When they had lain upon the altar till they became offensive, the carcases were transported to Oro's metropolitan temple at Opoa, in Raiatea, which was the common Golgotha of his victims."[31]

Oro was said to have instituted the notorious Society of the Areois, a licentious fraternity of strolling players and mountebanks, who roamed about in troupes from island to island, everywhere entertaining the populace by their shows, which comprised recitations, songs, dramatic performances, wrestling matches, and especially dances, which were often of a lascivious character.[32] These exhibitions, which were witnessed by crowds and appear to have been the most popular amusement of the islanders, were given in large, substantial, sometimes highly ornamented, houses, which were erected chiefly for the purpose of lodging these itinerant performers, and providing them with suitable places for their performances.[33] The first missionaries describe how, in a long native house where they lodged for the night, they saw the Areois men and women dancing and singing till near midnight: so great were their numbers that they made the house appear like a village.[34] Sometimes, apparently, the performances took place in front of the house, the musicians, singers, and reciters occupying a sort of stage, while the actors or dancers performed on a place marked out for them on the ground or on the floor.[35] The subject of their songs or recitations was often a legend of the gods, or of some distinguished member of the Society, which was chanted or recited by the performers in chorus seated in a circle on the ground, while the leader stood in the centre and introduced the recitation with a sort of prologue, accompanied by antic gestures and attitudes.[36] In these recitals the tales often turned on romantic and diverting episodes in the lives of ancestors or of deities. "Many of these were very long, and regularly composed, so as to be repeated verbatim, or with such illustrations only as the wit or fancy of the narrator might have the skill to introduce. Their captain on public occasions, was placed cross-legged on a stool seven feet high, with a fan in his hand, in the midst of the circle of laughing or admiring auditors, whom he delighted with his drollery, or transported with his grimaces, being, in fact, the merry-andrew of the corps, who, like a wise fool, well knew how to turn his folly to the best account."[37]

The Society of the Areois was wealthy and highly esteemed; members were drawn from all social ranks and greatly prided themselves on belonging to it.[38] Indeed, they were regarded as a sort of superhuman beings, closely allied to the gods, and were treated with a corresponding degree of veneration by many of the vulgar and ignorant.[39] They were divided into seven ranks or classes, the members of which were distinguished from each other by their tattoo marks; the greater the amount of the tattooing, the higher the rank of the person.[40] Admission to the Society was attended by a variety of ceremonies; a protracted noviciate followed, and it was only by progressive advancement that any were promoted to the higher dignities. It was imagined that those who became Areois were prompted or inspired by the gods to take this step. A candidate for admission, therefore, repaired to one of the public exhibitions in that apparent state of frenzy which is commonly supposed to indicate divine inspiration. His face was dyed scarlet; his hair was perfumed and adorned with flowers, and he wore a girdle of yellow plantain leaves. Thus arrayed, he rushed through the crowd assembled round the house in which the actors or dancers were performing, and, leaping into the circle, joined with seeming frantic wildness in the dance or pantomime. If the Society approved of him, they appointed him to wait as a servant on the principal Areois, and after a period of probation he might be inducted into the Society as a full-fledged member. At his induction, which took place in a great assembly of the body, the candidate received a new name, by which he was thenceforth known in the Society.[41] When a member was advanced from a lower to a higher grade, the ceremony was performed at a public festival which all the members of the Society in the island were expected to attend. The candidate was then taken to a temple, where he was solemnly anointed with fragrant oil on the forehead, and offered a pig to the god.[42]

When a member of the Society died his body was conveyed by the Areois to the grand temple, where the bones of the kings were deposited. There the priest of Oro, standing over the corpse, offered a long prayer to his god. This prayer, and the ceremonies accompanying it, were designed to divest the body of all the sacred and mysterious influence which the deceased was thought to have received from the god at the moment when, in the presence of the idol, the perfumed oil had been sprinkled on him, and he had been raised to the order or rank in which he died. By this act they supposed that the sacred influence was restored to Oro, by whom it had been imparted. The body was then buried, like that of a common man, within the precincts of the temple, in which the mortal remains of chiefs were interred.[43] But if for any reason the corpse were buried in unconsecrated ground, the ghost would appear to a survivor next day and remonstrate with him, saying, "You have buried me in common earth, and so long as I lie there, I cannot go to heaven. You must bury me with ceremonies, and in holy ground." After that the corpse was disinterred, and having been doubled up by tying the arms to the shoulders and the knees to the trunk, it was buried in a sitting posture in a hole so shallow that the earth barely covered the head. This was esteemed the most honourable form of sepulture, and was principally confined to personages of high rank.[44]

The Areoi Society comprised women as well as men,[45] but the accounts given of the proportion of the sexes and their relations to each other are conflicting. According to one account, the male members outnumbered the women as five to one.[46] The first missionaries reported that the Areois were said to have each two or three wives, whom they exchanged with each other.[47] According to Cook, every woman was common to every man[48]; and Turnbull affirmed that the community of women was the very principle of their union.[49] On the other hand, the naturalist George Forster, who accompanied Captain Cook, observes: "We have been told a wanton tale of promiscuous embraces, where every woman is common to every man: but when we enquired for a confirmation of this story from the natives, we were soon convinced that it must, like many others, be considered as the groundless invention of a traveller's gay fancy."[50] Again, Ellis observes that, "although addicted to every kind of licentiousness themselves, each Areoi had his own wife, who was also a member of the Society; and so jealous were they in this respect, that improper conduct towards the wife of one of their own number, was sometimes punished with death."[51] Yet the same writer speaks of "the mysteries of iniquity, and acts of more than bestial degradation" to which the Areois were at times addicted; and he says that "in some of their meetings, they appear to have placed their invention on the rack, to discover the worst pollutions of which it was possible for man to be guilty, and to have striven to outdo each other in the most revolting practices."[52]

It was a rule of the Society that no member should have any children; hence the first injunction given to a new member was to murder his offspring. Any infant that might afterwards be born to him was strangled at birth.[53] If a woman spared her child and could induce a man to father it, "both the man and the woman, being deemed by this act to have appropriated each other, are ejected from the community, and forfeit all claim to the privileges and pleasures of Arreoy for the future; the woman from that time being distinguished by the term whannow-now, 'bearer of children,' which is here a term of reproach."[54] The pretext alleged by the Areois for this cruel practice was that, on the institution of the Society by the god Oro, the first two members, Orotetefa and Urutetefa, brothers of the god, had been celibate and childless, and that therefore the members of the Society were bound to imitate them by being also without offspring.[55]

In the constant repetition of their often obscene exhibitions the Areois passed their lives, sailing from island to island or strolling from one chief's house to that of another, where they renewed the same round of dances, wrestlings, and pantomimic performances.[56] But the labour and drudgery of dancing and performing for the amusement of the spectators devolved chiefly on the lowest members of the Society, who were the principal actors in all their shows, while the higher orders, though they plastered themselves with charcoal and stained themselves scarlet like their humbler brethren, were generally careful not to contribute to the public hilarity by any exhausting efforts of their own. Thus they led a life of dissipation and luxurious indolence.[57]

They seem to have moved about in great troupes. As many as seventy canoes, with more than seven hundred of these vagabonds on board, have been seen steering from island to island.[58] The approach of such a fleet to the shore with drums beating, flutes playing, and streamers floating on the wind, was a picturesque sight, and as the canoes neared the land the dancers might be seen jigging it on stages erected on board, while the voices of the singers mingled with the roll of the drums, the shrill music of the flutes, and the roar of the surf on the beach in a confused but not unmelodious babel of sound.[59]

On landing in an island their first business was to take a small sucking-pig to the temple and present it to the god as a thank-offering to him for having brought them safe to shore. This, we are told, was the only sacrifice ever offered in token of gratitude by any of the South Sea Islanders to their imaginary divinities.[60] While they were everywhere welcomed by the vulgar for the merriment they carried with them, and were everywhere countenanced and liberally entertained by the kings and chiefs, who found them convenient tools of fraud and oppression, they were not received with equal enthusiasm by the farmers, who had to furnish them with provisions, and who durst not refuse them anything, however unreasonable and extortionate their demands. For the Areois lived on the fat of the land. When they alighted, like a swarm of locusts, on a rich district, they would send out their henchmen to scour the neighbourhood and plunder the miserable inhabitants; and when they moved on to their next halting-place, the gardens which they left behind them often presented a scene of desolation and ruin.[61] Such havoc, indeed, did they spread by their feastings and carousings on even a short visit of a few days, that in some parts of Tahiti the natives were compelled to abandon the fertile lowlands and retreat up the mountains, submitting to the trouble of clambering up almost inaccessible slopes and cultivating a less fruitful soil rather than expose much of the produce of their labour to the ravages of these privileged robbers.[62]

Not the least of the privileges, real or imaginary, enjoyed by the Areois was that after death their spirits were believed to pass without difficulty to that paradise of delights to which otherwise none but the noble and wealthy could hope to attain.[63]

In spite of the profligate life which the Areoi led and their addiction to a round of frivolous amusements and entertainments, it seems likely that the Society was originally founded for some serious purpose, though the accounts which have come down to us hardly enable us to determine, or even to conjecture with a fair degree of probability, what that purpose was. That its aim was religious might be inferred on general grounds, and is confirmed by the close relation in which the Society stood to the national god Oro. Not only is Oro said to have founded the Society, but before a troop of Areois set out on their peregrinations they were obliged to kill many pigs in sacrifice to him and to offer large quantities of plantains, bananas, and other fruits on his altars. Moreover, temporary shrines were erected in their canoes for the worship of Oro's two divine brothers, Orotetefa and Urutetefa, who were traditionally said to have been the first members of the Society and were regarded as its tutelary deities. In these shrines the principal symbols were a stone for each of the brothers taken from Oro's temple, and a few red feathers from the inside of his sacred image. Into these symbols the gods were supposed to enter when the priest pronounced a short prayer immediately before the sailing of the fleet.[64]

We might be better able to understand the purpose and the functions of the Areoi Society if we were acquainted with the nature and meaning which the natives ascribed to the god Oro, the reputed founder of the Society; but on this subject our authorities shed little light. He is described as the war-god[65] and as "the great national idol of Raiatea, Tahiti, Eimeo, and some of the other islands," and he was said to be a son of the creator Taaroa, who at first dwelt alone up aloft, but who afterwards, with the help of his daughter Hina, created the heavens, the earth, and the sea.[66] By European writers Oro has been variously interpreted as a god of the dead or of the sun; and accordingly the Society of the Areois has been variously explained as devoted either to a cult of the Lord of the Dead for the sake of securing eternal happiness in a world beyond the grave, or to a worship of the sun-god; but the grounds alleged for either interpretation appear to be extremely slight.[67]

Perhaps a faint gleam of light may fall on the mystery of the Areois from an examination of their traditionary first members and guardian deities, the two divine brothers, Orotetefai and Urutetefai. The similarity of the names of the brothers suggests that they may have been twins; for it is a common custom to bestow either the same or a similar name on each of a pair of twins in order to indicate their close relationship to each other.[68] If they were twins, there are some grounds for thinking that they were Heavenly Twins; for their father or creator, Taaroa, seems certainly to have been a sky-god, and their mother, Hina, is by some authorities regarded as the moon; moreover, the two brothers are said to have first descended from the sky to the earth on a rainbow.[69] If the twinship of the divine brothers could be made out, it might perhaps explain some of the peculiar features of the Areoi Society. For example, their remarkable custom of not allowing any of their offspring to live; for it has been a common custom in many parts of the world to put twins to death.[70] Further, the superhuman rank accorded to the Areois becomes more intelligible on this hypothesis. For among many savage peoples twins are credited with the possession of powers superior to those of ordinary humanity; in particular, they are thought to be able to influence the weather for good or evil, as by causing rain or drought and the wind to blow or be still.[71] Among the Baronga of South-Eastern Africa the supposed relation of twins to the sky is very clearly marked. They call the mother of twins by a name which means "Heaven" (Tilo), and consistently they style the twins themselves "Children of Heaven" (Bana ba Tilo).[72] The mother is even said to have "made Heaven," to have "carried Heaven," and to have "ascended to Heaven."[73] The connexion which is believed to exist between her and the twins on the one side and the sky on the other is brought out plainly in the customs which the Baronga observe for the purpose of procuring rain in time of drought. Thus they will take a mother of twins, put her in a hole, and pour on her water which they have drawn from all the wells, till the hole is half full, and the water comes up to her breast. This is thought to make the rain fall.[74] Or again, in order to get rain, the women will strip themselves naked except for a girdle and head-dress of grass, and thus attired will go in procession, headed by a mother of twins, and pour water on the graves of twins. And if the body of a twin has been buried in dry ground, they will dig it up and bury it again near a river; for the grave of a twin, in their opinion, should always be wet. Thus they hope to draw down rain on the thirsty ground.[75] Again, when a thunderstorm is raging and lightning threatens to strike a village, the Baronga will say to a twin, "Help us! you are a Child of Heaven! You can therefore cope with Heaven; it will hear you when you speak." So the child goes out of the hut and prays to Heaven as follows: "Go away! Do not annoy us! We are afraid. Go and roar far away." When the thunderstorm is over, the child is thanked for its services. The mother of twins is also supposed to be able to help in the same way, for has she not, as the natives express it, ascended to Heaven? They say that she can speak with Heaven, and that she is at it or in it.[76] Among the Kpelle, a negro tribe of Liberia, twins are regarded as born magicians, and as such are treated with respect, and people sometimes make them presents in order to ensure their goodwill; in doing so they are careful never to make a present to the one twin without the other, and the twin who was born last gets his present first, for he is regarded as the first-born. Twins are thought by the Kpelle to do wonders; they even say that "a twin surpasses every medicine-man."[77] Among the Fan or Fang, a tribe of the Cameroons in West Africa, there is a curious superstition that a twin ought not to see a rainbow. Should he by accident have caught sight of one, he must shave his eyebrows and dye the place of the one black and the place of the other red.[78] This superstition seems to imply a special relation between twins and the sky, and it reminds us of the Tahitian tradition that the two divine brothers, the first members of the Areoi Society, descended to earth on a rainbow.[79]

Another notion about twins which may possibly help to throw light on some of the practices of the Areoi Society, is that they or their parents or both are endowed with a fertilising or prolific virtue, which enables them to multiply animals or plants and thereby to increase the food supply. Thus, for example, some tribes of Northern Rhodesia keep pigeons in their villages, and in erecting a pigeon-cote they take care that the first stakes "are driven in by a woman who has borne twins, in order, they say, that the pigeons may multiply."[80] Some Bantu tribes of this region ascribe a similar virtue to both the father and the mother of twins. They think that such parents exert a beneficial or prolific influence at laying the foundations of pigeon-cotes, chicken-houses, goat-pens, or any other building used for the purposes of breeding; a certain woman who had borne twins thrice was lately in great request at these functions.[81] The Zulus think that all goats belonging to a twin bring forth young in couples.[82]

In the Central District of Busoga, Central Africa, when a woman has given birth to twins, the people of her clan do not sow any seed until the twins have been brought to the field. A pot of cooked grain is set before the children with a cake of sesame and all the seed that is to be sown. The food is eaten by the assembled people, and afterwards the field is sown in presence of the twins; the plot is then said to be the field of the twins. The mother of twins must sow her seed before any person of the clan will sow his or hers.[83] These customs seem clearly to imply a belief that twins and their mother possess a special power of fertilising the seed. Among the Baganda of Central Africa twins were supposed to be sent by Mukasa, the great god whose blessing on the crops and on the people was ensured at an annual festival. The twins were thought to be under the protection of the god, and they bore his name, the boys being called Mukasa and the girls Namukasa. And a series of customs observed by the parents of twins among the Baganda indicates in the plainest manner a belief that they were endowed with a fertilising virtue which extended, not only to the crops and the cattle, but also to human beings. Thus the parents of twins were supposed to make people fruitful by sprinkling them with a mixture of water and clay from pots, of which each of the parents had one. Again, some time after the birth the parents used to make a round of visits to relations and friends, taking the twins with them. At every house they danced, the father wearing a crown made from a certain creeper, and the mother wearing a girdle of the same material. At these dances offerings were made to the twins. These dances were most popular "because the people believed that thereby they obtained a special blessing from the god Mukasa, who favoured the parents of twins, and through them dispensed blessing wherever they went." The persons whom the twins and their parents honoured with a visit "thought that, not only they themselves would be blessed and given children, but that their herds and crops also would be multiplied." A ceremony performed by the father and mother of twins over a flower of the plantain indicated in the plainest, if the grossest, fashion the belief of the Baganda that parents of twins could magically fertilise the plantains which form the staple food of the people. No wonder, then, that among them a mother of twins is deemed a source of blessing to the whole community, and that for some time after the birth both she and the father were sacred and wore a distinctive dress to prevent any one from touching them. The father, in particular, "could do what he liked, because he was under the protection of the god"; for example, he was free to enter anybody's garden and to take the produce at will. Special drums, too, were made for the parents, one for the father and one for the mother; and for some time after the birth these were beaten continually both by day and by night.[84]

Among the Hos of Togo, in West Africa, in like manner, special drums are beaten for the parents of twins, and the parents dance publicly to the music in the main street of the village, after going nine times round it. Some days later the parents go the round of all the Ho towns, everywhere executing the same dance to the same music at noon; but should one of the twins have died in the meantime, the parents dance at night. It is believed that, if the customary rites were not performed at the birth of twins, the parents of the twins would be crippled. Curiously enough, the drums, to the music of which the parents dance, may not be beaten by any one without special reason; and no one else may dance to their music except such as have slain either a man or a leopard. Among these people the birth of twins is the occasion of very great rejoicing. They say that "the road which the mother of twins goes is better than the road which the rich man goes."[85] The saying suggests that the Hos, like the Baganda, regard a mother of twins as diffusing fertility wherever she goes; and, on the analogy of the dances of parents of twins among the Baganda, we may conjecture that in like manner among the Hos the parents of twins are supposed to confer the blessing of fruitfulness on all the towns where they dance.

Among the Barundi of East Africa the birth of twins is celebrated with rites, songs, and ritual dances, which last for days and even for weeks. As soon as the news spreads, the neighbours, friends, and relations flock to the house to sing, bringing with them presents for the parents or offerings to the spirits. The amount of provisions thus accumulated is enormous, but the parents of the twins benefit little by it; the great bulk disappears as by magic among the self-invited guests. Festivity, dancing, and singing are now the order of the day. Dancers, male and female, their faces painted red and white or yellow, dance like furies in a circle for hours together, singing ritual hymns at the top of their voices, while an old sorceress besprinkles the troop with lustral water. It is commonly believed that if these rites were omitted, the twins and their parents would die. At the birth of twins it is customary to buy two black sheep or lambs and to dedicate them to the twins, one to each. These sheep are then left at liberty to run about as they like by day and night, and to enter the fields and browse at will. If one of them dies it is replaced by another. The animals are described as the guardians of the children, the receptacle or symbol of their spirits, in short, as their fetish.[86] To some extent, they are analogous to the pig which an Areoi used to offer to the god at the ceremony of his consecration; for, though sometimes the animal was killed, at other times it was liberated, and, being regarded as sacred or belonging to the god to whom it had been offered, was allowed to range the district uncontrolled till it died.[87] Among the Baluba, a tribe of the Belgian Congo, there is great joy at the birth of twins, and special ceremonies are observed on the occasion. The twins are invariably named Kyunga and Kahya, after the spirits of two ancient kings, and to these spirits the twins are consecrated. After being washed and decorated they are placed side by side in a winnowing-basket and carried by the women of the family in procession through the village, headed by the proud father. Dancing and singing they go to the ash-heap of the village. There they all rub themselves with ashes and perform another dance. After that, still led by the father of the twins, they go to the houses of the chief people, and in front of each house the father dances, while the women beat time with their hands. Wherever the procession halts, the householder is expected to come and admire the twins, to compliment the father, and to deposit a small present in the winnowing-basket.[88] Among the Herero of South-West Africa the parents of twins are looked on as sacred, and for a time they may not speak to any one, and no one may speak to them. But after the lapse of some days the family goes the round of the village, visiting three or four huts every day. The father of the twins sits down on the right side of the hut, and the inmates make him offerings of beads, oxen, and so forth. When he has thus gone the round of the village, he repairs to the neighbouring villages, where the same ceremonies are repeated. It is often a year before he returns to his own village, and when he does so he brings back with him a great quantity of offerings. Henceforth the father of the twins enjoys all the privileges of a priestly chief; he may sacrifice at the holy fire, and he may represent and even succeed the chief in the office of priest for the village. The twins themselves are eligible for the same office. If a chief dies a natural death, he is succeeded in his priestly function by his twin son; whereas the chieftainship passes to the chief's legal heir, who is properly the son of his eldest sister, and who thenceforth assumes the name of the twin. A twin is bound by no taboo; he may eat of all flesh offered in sacrifice; he may drink of the milk of every holy cow, just like the chief and the priest themselves.[89]

In these cases we are not told that twins and their parents are supposed to be endowed with a power of multiplying the herds and generally of increasing the supply of food by the prolific influence which they diffuse about them; but the analogy of the customs and beliefs of the Baganda concerning the birth of twins renders the supposition probable. At least on this hypothesis we can readily understand the round of visits which the parents, or one of them, pay to the surrounding towns or villages, and the presents which are made to them. If they indeed possess a power of imparting fertility and abundance wherever they go, it is obviously in everybody's interest to be visited by them, and clearly, on the same supposition, it is everybody's duty to make some return to them for the wonderful benefits which they have conferred.

Similarly we may perhaps suppose that the rounds which the Areois went from island to island, dancing, singing, and playing their tricks wherever they stopped, were believed to quicken the fruits of the earth, and possibly also to multiply the pigs and the fish. On that assumption, the unlimited right which these vagabonds enjoyed of appropriating and consuming the produce of the gardens was probably accorded to them as a natural and proper remuneration for the inestimable services which their mere presence was believed to render to the crops. The sexual excesses, in which they appear to have indulged, would also be intelligible, if it was imagined that, on the principle of sympathetic magic, such indulgences actually promoted the multiplication and growth of plants and animals. But this explanation of the extravagant rites observed by the Areois, and of the quaint beliefs entertained concerning them, is offered only as an hypothesis for what it is worth. It may be worth while noting that among the Kpelle, a tribe of Liberia in West Africa, there is reported to exist a Secret Society of Twins,[90] but whether it bears any resemblance to the Society of the Areois I do not know.

A familiar figure of the Polynesian pantheon, who meets us in the mythology of the Society Islanders, was the famous god or hero Maui. Many stories of his exploits were told in the islands. It is said that originally the sky lay flat upon the face of the earth and ocean, being held down by the legs of a huge cuttle-fish. But Maui dived into the sea, and, grappling with the monster, utterly dismembered him; whereupon the sky flew up and expanded into the beautiful blue vault which we now see above us, with the noonday sun for the keystone of the arch.[91] Again, the natives told how, one day, sitting in his canoe, Maui let down his line with a hook at the end of it and fished up the earth, which had hitherto lain at the bottom of the sea.[92] Also he is said to have held the sun with ropes to prevent him from going too fast.[93] For it happened that Maui was hard at work, building a temple, when he perceived that the day was declining and that the night would overtake him before he had accomplished his task; so hastily twining some ropes of coco-nut fibre, he laid hold of the sun's rays and tethered them by the ropes to a tree, so that the sun could not stir till Maui had finished the task he was at.[94] Further, Maui is said to have invented the mode of kindling fire by rubbing the point of one stick in the groove of another,[95] which was the way in which the Society Islanders regularly made fire.[96] Maui was also supposed to be the cause of earthquakes.[97] In Tahiti a curious image of Maui was seen and described by Captain Cook. "It was the figure of a man, constructed of basket-work, rudely made, but not ill-designed; it was something more than seven feet high, and rather too bulky in proportion to its height. The wicker skeleton was completely covered with feathers, which were white where the skin was to appear, and black in the parts which it is their custom to paint or stain, and upon the head, where there was to be a representation of hair: upon the head also were four protuberances, three in front and one behind, which we should have called horns, but which the Indians dignified with the name of Tate Ete, little men. The image was called Manioe, and was said to be the only one in Otaheite. They attempted to give us an explanation of its use and design, but we had not then acquired enough of their language to understand them. We learnt, however, afterwards that it was a representation of Mauwe, one of their Eatuas, or gods of the second class."[98]

Besides the high primaeval deities, born of the Night, the Society Islanders believed in a host of inferior divinities, many of whom were said to have been created by Taaroa, the supreme god. Thus, between the high gods and the deities of particular places or of particular professions, there was a class of intermediate deities, who were not supposed to have existed from the beginning or to have been born of Night. Their origin was veiled in obscurity, but they were often described as having been renowned men, who, after death, were deified by their descendants. They all received the homage of the people, and on all public occasions were acknowledged among the gods.[99] Again, there were many gods of the sea, among whom the principal seem to have been Tuaraatai and Ruahatu. These were generally called shark gods (atua mao), not that the shark was itself deemed a god, but that it was supposed to be employed by the marine gods as their minister of vengeance. It was only the large blue shark which was believed to act in this capacity; and it is said that these voracious creatures always spared a shipwrecked priest, even when they devoured his companions; nay, they would recognise a priest on board any canoe, come at his call, and retire at his bidding. A priest of one of these shark gods told Mr. Ellis that he or his father had been carried on the back of a shark from Raiatea to Huahine, a distance of twenty miles. Other gods were thought to preside over the fisheries, and to direct the shoals of fish to the coasts. Their aid was invoked by fishermen before they launched their canoes and while they were busy at sea. But these marine deities were not supposed by the people to be of equal antiquity with the great primordial gods, born of the Night (atua fauau po).[100] Again, there were gods of the air, who were sometimes worshipped under the figure of birds. The chief of these aerial deities were thought to be a brother and sister, who dwelt near the great rock, which is the foundation of the world. There they imprisoned the stormy winds, but sent them forth from time to time to punish such as neglected the worship of the gods. In tempests their compassion was besought by mariners tossed on the sea or by their friends on shore.[101] To the minds of the islanders there were also gods of hill and dale, of precipice and ravine. "By their rude mythology each lovely island was made a sort of fairy-land, and the spells of enchantment were thrown over its varied scenes.... The mountain's summit, and the fleecy mists that hang upon its brows—the rocky defile—the foaming cataract—and the lonely dell—were all regarded as the abode or resort of these invisible beings."[102]

The general name for "god" in the Society Islands, as throughout Polynesia, was atua.[103] The word was also applied, in the expression oramatuas or oromatuas, to the spirits of departed relatives, who were also worshipped and ranked among the deities.[104] To these we shall return presently; meantime it may not be out of place to give some notice of the worship of the other gods, since in the religion of the Society Islanders, as of other branches of the Polynesian race, it was closely interwoven with the worship of the dead.

§ 4. The Temples and Images of the Gods

The sacred place dedicated to religious worship was called a morai, or, as it is also spelled, a marai or marae, which may be translated "temple," though all such places were uncovered and open to the sky. The national temples, where the principal idols were deposited, consisted of large walled enclosures, some of which contained smaller inner courts. The form was frequently that of a square or a parallelogram, with sides forty or fifty feet long. The area was paved with flat stones, and two sides of it were enclosed by a high stone wall, while the front was protected by a low fence, and within rose in steps or terraces a solid pyramidical structure built of stone, which usually formed one of the narrow sides of the area, either at the western or at the eastern end. These pyramids, which were always truncated so as to form a narrow platform or ridge on their upper surface, were the most striking and characteristic feature of the morais; indeed the name morai or marae appears to have been sometimes confined, at least by European observers, to the pyramid. In front of the pyramid the images were kept and the altars fixed. The houses of the priests and of the keepers of the idols were erected within the enclosure.[105] Of these interesting monuments, which seemed destined to last for ages, only a few insignificant ruins survive; the rest have been destroyed, chiefly at the instigation of the missionaries.[106]

Some of the pyramids erected within these sacred enclosures were of great size. In Tahiti an enormous one was seen and described by Captain Cook as well as by later observers. It was of oblong shape and measured two hundred and sixty-seven feet in length by eighty-seven feet in width. It rose in a series of eleven steps or terraces, each four feet high, so that the total height of the structure was forty-four feet. Each step was formed of a single course of white coral stone, neatly squared and polished. The steps on the long sides were broader than those at the ends, so that at the top it terminated, not in an oblong of the same figure as the base, but in a ridge like the roof of a house. The interior of the pyramid was solid, being filled up with round pebbles which, from the regularity of their figure, seemed to have been wrought. Some of the coral stones were very large; one of them was three and a half feet long by two and a half feet wide. The foundation of the pyramid was built not of coral, but of what Captain Cook called rock, by which he probably meant a volcanic stone. These foundation stones were also squared; one of them measured four feet seven inches by two feet four inches. "Such a structure," says Captain Cook, "raised without the assistance of iron tools to shape the stones, or mortar to join them, struck us with astonishment: it seemed to be as compact and firm as it could have been made by any workman in Europe, except that the steps which range along its greatest length are not perfectly strait, but sink in a kind of hollow in the middle, so that the whole surface, from end to end, is not a right line, but a curve." All the stones, both rock and coral, must have been brought from a distance, for there was no quarry in the neighbourhood. The squaring of these blocks with stone tools must, as Captain Cook observes, have been a work of incredible labour; but the polishing of them could have been effected more easily by means of the sharp coral sand, which is found everywhere on the seashore in great abundance. On the top of the pyramid, and about the middle, stood the wooden image of a bird; and near it lay the image of a fish carved in stone. This great pyramid formed part of one side of a spacious area, nearly square, which measured three hundred and sixty feet by three hundred and fifty-four, and was walled in with stone as well as paved with flat stones in its whole extent. Notwithstanding the pavement, several trees were growing within the sacred enclosure. About a hundred yards to the west was another paved area or court, in which were several small stages raised on wooden pillars about seven feet high. These stages the natives called ewattas. Captain Cook judged them rightly to be altars, observing that they supported what appeared to be offerings in the shape of provisions of all sorts, as well as whole hogs and many skulls of hogs and dogs.[107]

The pyramids within the sacred enclosure were not usually so large or so lofty. In the island of Huahine the pyramid of the chief god Tani or Tane was a hundred and twenty-four feet long by sixteen feet broad, and it had only two steps or stories. The lower step or story was about ten feet high and faced with blocks of coral, set on their edges: some of these blocks were as high as the step itself. The upper step or story was similarly faced with coral, but was not more than three feet high. The interior of both stories was filled with earth. In the centre of the principal front stood the god's bed, a stone platform twenty-four feet long by thirteen feet wide, but only eighteen inches high. The style and masonry of this pyramid, as well as its dimensions, appear to have been very inferior to those of the great one in Tahiti. The blocks were apparently unhewn and unpolished, the angles ill formed, and the walls not straight. Venerable and magnificent trees overshadowed the sanctuary. One of them measured fifteen yards in girth above the roots. It is said that the god often wished to fly away, but that his long tail always caught in the boughs of this giant tree and dragged him down to earth again.[108]

These sacred pyramids "were erected in any place, and at any time, when the priests required, by the slavish people. On such occasions the former overlooked the latter at their work, and denounced the most terrible judgments upon those who were remiss at it. The poor wretches were thus compelled to finish their tasks (burthensome as they often were, in heaving blocks from the sea, dragging them ashore, and heaping them one upon another) without eating, which would have desecrated the intended sanctuary. To restrain the gnawings of hunger they bound girdles of bark round their bodies, tightening the ligatures from time to time, as their stomachs shrank with emptiness. And, when the drudgery was done, it was not uncommon for the remorseless priests to seize one of the miserable builders and sacrifice him to the idol of the place."[109]

Temples of this sort were found scattered over the islands in every situation—on hill-tops, on jutting headlands, and in the recesses of groves.[110] They varied greatly in size: some were small and built in the rudest manner, mere squares of ill-shapen and ill-piled stones. In the island of Borabora the missionaries found not less than two hundred and twenty of these structures crowded within an area only ten miles in circumference.[111] The trees that grew within the sacred enclosure were sacred. They comprised particularly the tall cypress-like casuarina and the broader-leaved and more exuberant callophyllum, thespesia, and cardia. Their interlacing boughs formed a thick umbrageous covert, which often excluded the rays of the sun; and the contrast between the bright glare of a tropical day outside and the sombre gloom in the depths of the grove, combined with the sight of the gnarled trunks and twisted boughs of the aged trees, and the sighing of the wind in the branches, to strike a religious horror into the mind of the beholder.[112] The ground which surrounded the temples (morais) was sacred and afforded a sanctuary for criminals. Thither they fled on any apprehension of danger, especially when many human sacrifices were expected, and thence they might not be torn by violence, though they were sometimes seduced from their asylum by guile.[113]

These remarkable sanctuaries were at once temples for the worship of the gods and burial-places for the human dead. On this combination of functions I have already adduced some evidence;[114] but as the point is important, I will cite further testimonies as to the custom of burying the dead in these enclosures.

Thus Captain Cook writes: "I must more explicitly observe that there are two places in which the dead are deposited: one a kind of shed, where the flesh is suffered to putrefy; the other an enclosure, with erections of stones, where the bones are afterwards buried. The sheds are called tupapow, and the enclosures morai. The morais are also places of worship".[115] Again, after describing how a dead body used to be placed in the temporary house or shed (tupapow) and left there to decay for five moons, Captain Cook tells us that "what remains of the body is taken down from the bier, and the bones, having been scraped and washed very clean, are buried, according to the rank of the person, either within or without a morai: if the deceased was an earee or chief, his skull is not buried with the rest of the bones, but is wrapped up in fine cloth, and put in a kind of box made for that purpose, which is also placed in the morai. This coffer is called ewharre no te orometua, the house of a teacher or master".[116]

Again, after describing the human sacrifice which he witnessed at the great morai at Attahooroo, in Tahiti, Captain Cook proceeds as follows: "The morai (which, undoubtedly, is a place of worship, sacrifice, and burial at the same time), where the sacrifice was now offered, is that where the supreme chief of the whole island is always buried, and is appropriated to his family, and some of the principal people. It differs little from the common ones, except in extent. Its principal part is a large oblong pile of stones, lying loosely upon each other, about twelve or fourteen feet high, contracted toward the top, with a square area on each side, loosely paved with pebble stones, under which the bones of the chiefs are buried.... The human sacrifices are buried under different parts of the pavement."[117]

Again, Captain Cook tells us that after a battle the victors used to collect all the dead that had fallen into their hands and bring them to the morai, where, with much ceremony, they dug a hole and buried all the bodies in it as so many offerings to the gods; but the skulls of the slain were never afterwards taken up. Their own great chiefs who fell in battle were treated in a different manner. Captain Cook was informed that the bodies of the late king and two chiefs, who were slain in battle, were brought to the morai at Attahooroo. There the priests cut out the bowels of the corpses before the great altar, and the bodies were afterwards buried at three different spots in the great pile of stones which formed the most conspicuous feature of the morai. Common men who perished in the same battle were all buried in a single hole at the foot of the pile. The spots where the bodies of the king and chiefs reposed were pointed out to Captain Cook and his companions.[118]

Again, in the island of Tahiti, the naturalist George Forster, who accompanied Captain Cook, saw a stone building, "in form of the frustum of a pyramid," constructed in terraces or steps, and measuring about twenty yards in length at the base. "This the native said was a burying-place and place of worship, marài, and distinguished it by the name of marai no-Aheatua, the burying-place of Aheatua, the present king of Tiarroboo."[119]

Again, in the island of Huahine, the missionaries Tyerman and Bennet saw "a pagan marae hard by, where the sovereigns of Huahine were buried—and where, indeed, they lay in more than oriental state, each one resting in his bed, at the foot of the Sacred Mountain, beneath the umbrage of the magnificent aoa [tree], and near the beach for ever washed by waters that roll round the world.... The great marae itself was dedicated to Tani, the father of the gods here; but the whole ground adjacent was marked with the vestiges of smaller maraes—private places for worship and family interment—while this was the capital of the island and the headquarters of royalty and idolatry."[120] A little later, speaking of the same sacred place, the missionaries observe, "The first marae that we visited was the sepulchral one of the kings of Huahine, for many generations. It was an oblong inclosure, forty-five feet long by twenty broad, fenced with a strong stone wall. Here the bodies of the deceased, according to the manner of the country, being bound up, with the arms doubled to their shoulders, the legs bent under their thighs and both forced upwards against the abdomen, were let down, without coffins, into a hole prepared for their reception, and just deep enough to allow the earth to cover their heads."[121]

One of our best authorities on these islands, William Ellis, speaks of the maraes (morais), whether they belonged to private families, to districts, or to the kings, as being "the general depositories of the bones of the departed, whose bodies had been embalmed"; and as a motive for the practice he alleges the sanctity which attached to these places, and which might naturally be supposed to guard the graves against impious and malicious violation.[122] However, the first missionaries say of the islanders that "they bury none in the morai, but those offered in sacrifice, or slain in battle, or the children of chiefs which have been strangled at the birth—an act of atrocious inhumanity too common."[123] According to Moerenhout, the marais (morais) belonging to private families were often used as cemeteries; but in the public marais none but the human victims, and sometimes the priests, were interred.[124] Thus there is to some extent a conflict of testimony between our authorities on the subject of burial in the temples. But the evidence which I have adduced seems to render it probable that many at least of the morais served as burial-grounds for kings and chiefs of high degree, and even for common men who had fallen fighting in the service of their country.

In more recent years the German traveller, Arthur Baessler, who examined and described the existing ruins of these sacred edifices, denied that the maraes (morais) were places of burial, while he allowed that they were places of worship.[125] He distinguished a marae from an ahu, admitting at the same time that they closely resembled each other, both in their structure and in the ritual celebrated at them.[126] According to him, a marae was a sort of domestic chapel, the possession of which constituted the most distinctive mark of a noble family. Every chief, high or low, had one of them and took rank according to its antiquity.[127] It was an oblong area, open to the sky and enclosed by walls on three sides and by a pyramid on the fourth: walls and pyramid alike were built of blocks of stone or coral.[128] The ahu, on the other hand, was a monument erected to the memory of a distinguished chief, whose mortal remains were deposited in it. But apart from the grave which it contained, the ahu, according to Baessler, hardly differed from a marae, though it was mostly larger: it was a great walled enclosure with a pyramid, altars, and houses of the priests. And the ritual celebrated in the ahu resembled the ritual performed in the marae: there, too, the faithful assembled to pray, and there the priests recited the same liturgy.[129] Thus both the form and, to some extent at least, the function of the two types of sanctuary presented a close similarity. The islanders themselves, it appears, do not always clearly distinguish them at the present day.[130] And the single distinction on which Baessler insisted, that the dead were buried in the ahu but not in the marae, seems not to hold good universally, even on Baessler's own showing. For he admits that, "if ever a chief was buried in his own marae, it must have been in most exceptional cases, but probably statements to that effect rest only on a confusion of the marae with the ahu; such a practice would also run counter to the habits of the natives, who sought the most secret places for their dead, and certainly concealed the heads in caves difficult of access and unknown to others. On the other hand, the maraes of humbler families may more frequently, if not as a rule, have served as places of burial."[131] And even in regard to the holiest marae, dedicated to the great god Oro, in the island of Raiatea,[132] Baessler himself cites a tradition, apparently well authenticated, that a great number of warriors slain in battle were buried in it.[133] The argument that the people buried their dead, or at all events their skulls, only in remote caves among the mountains seems untenable; for according to the evidence of earlier writers the practice of concealing the bones or the skulls of the dead in caves was generally, if not always, a precaution adopted in time of war, to prevent these sacred relics from falling into the hands of invaders; the regular custom seems to have been to bury the bones in or near the marae and to keep the skulls either there or in the house.[134] On the whole, then, it is perhaps safer to follow earlier and, from the nature of the case, better-informed writers in neglecting the distinction which Baessler drew between a marae (morai) and an ahu. In any case we have Baessler's testimony that an ahu was at once a place of burial and a place of worship. There seems to be no evidence that any of these sacred edifices, whether maraes or ahus, were associated with a worship of the sun. On the other hand, it is certain that some at least of them were dedicated, partly or chiefly, to a cult of the dead, which formed a very important element in the religion of the Society Islanders, whereas there is little or nothing to show that they adored either the sun, or any other of the heavenly bodies, with the possible exception of the moon.[135] This did not, however, prevent them from entertaining absurd notions concerning these great luminaries. At an eclipse they imagined that the moon or the sun was being swallowed by some god whom they had offended; and on such occasions they repaired to the temple and offered prayers and liberal presents to the deity for the purpose of inducing him to disgorge the luminary.[136]

Temples such as have been described were erected on all important occasions, such as a war, a decisive victory, or the installation of a great chief or king of a whole island. In these latter cases the natives boasted that the number of persons present was so great that, if each of them only brought a single stone, the amount of stones thus collected would have sufficed to build their largest temples and pyramids.[137] One of the occasions when it became necessary to build new temples was when the old ones had been overthrown by enemies in war. After such a desecration it was customary to perform a ceremony for the purpose of purifying the land from the defilement which it had incurred through the devastations of the foe, who had, perhaps, demolished the temples, destroyed or mutilated the idols, and burned with fire the curiously carved pieces of wood which marked the sacred places of interment and represented the spirits of the dead (tiis). Before the rite of purification was performed the temples were rebuilt, new altars reared, new images placed within the sacred precincts, and new wooden effigies set up near the graves. At the close of the rites in the new temples, the worshippers repaired to the seashore, where the chief priest offered a short prayer and the people dragged a net of coco-nut leaves through a shallow part of the sea, usually detaching small pieces of coral, which they brought ashore. These were called fish and were delivered to the priest, who conveyed them to the temple and deposited them on the altar, offering at the same time a prayer to induce the gods to cleanse the land from pollution, that it might be as pure as the coral fresh from the sea. It was now thought safe to abide on the soil and to eat of its produce, whereas if the ceremony had not been performed, death would have been, in the opinion of the people, the consequence of partaking of fruits grown on the defiled land.[138]

The temples were sacred. When a man approached one of them to worship or to bring his offering to the altar, he bared his body to the waist in sign of reverence and humility.[139] Women in general might not enter a temple, but when their presence was indispensable for certain ceremonies, the ground was covered with cloth, on which they walked, lest they should defile the holy place with their feet.[140] For example, some six weeks or two months after the birth of a child the father and mother took the child to a temple, where they both offered their blood to the gods by cutting their heads with shark's teeth and allowing the blood to drip on leaves, which they laid on the altar. On this occasion the husband spread a cloth on the floor of the temple for his wife to tread upon, for she might not step on the ground or the pavement.[141] Similarly at marriage bride and bridegroom visited the family temple (marae, morai), where the skulls of their ancestors were brought out and placed before them; but a large white cloth had to be spread out on the pavement for the bride to walk upon. Sometimes at these marriage rites the female relatives cut their faces and brows with shark's teeth, caught the flowing blood on cloth, and deposited the cloth, sprinkled with the mingled blood of the mothers of the married pair, at the feet of the bride.[142] At other times the mother of the bride gashed her own person cruelly with a shark's tooth, and having filled a coco-nut basin with the blood which flowed from her wounds, she presented it to the bridegroom, who immediately threw it from him.[143] While certain festivals were being celebrated at the temples the exclusion of women from them was still more rigid. Thus in the island of Huahine, during the celebration of the great annual festival, at which all the idols of the island were brought from their various shrines to the principal temple to be clothed with new dresses and ornaments, no woman was allowed to approach any of the sacred edifices under pain of death, which was instantly inflicted by whoever witnessed the sacrilege. Even if the wives and children of the priests themselves came within a certain distance, while some particular services were going on, they were murdered on the spot by their husbands and fathers with the utmost ferocity.[144]

Some of these sacred edifices are still impressive in their ruins and deserve the name of megalithic monuments. Thus the temple (marae, morai) of Oro at Opoa, which was the holiest temple in the island of Raiatea and perhaps in the Society Islands generally,[145] is about a hundred and thirty-eight feet long by twenty-six feet broad. It is enclosed by a wall of gigantic coral blocks standing side by side to a height of about six feet seven inches. The blocks have been hewn from the inner reef; the outer surfaces were smoothed, the inner left rough. One of the blocks stands over eleven feet high, without reckoning the part concealed by the soil; it is twelve feet wide, by two and a half feet thick. Another block is about ten feet long by eight feet broad and one foot thick.[146] In the ruined temple of Tainuu, situated in the district of Tevaitoa, one block is about eleven and a half feet high by eleven feet wide, with a thickness varying from twenty inches to two and a half feet.[147]

The idols or images of the gods were usually made of wood, but sometimes of stone. Some were rudely carved in human shape; others were rough unpolished logs, wrapped in many folds of cloth or covered with a matting of coco-nut fibre.[148] The image of the god Oro was a straight log of casuarina wood, six feet long, uncarved, but decorated with feathers. On the other hand Taaroa, the supreme deity of Polynesia, was represented by a rudely carved human figure about four feet high, with a number of little images studding his body to indicate the multitude of gods that had proceeded from him as creator. The body of the god was hollow, and when it was taken from the temple, where it had been worshipped for many generations, it was found to contain a number of small idols in the cavity. It is supposed that these petty gods had been placed there by their worshippers and owners that they might absorb some of the supernatural powers of the greater divinity before being removed to the places where they were to commence deities on their own account.[149] With a similar intention it was customary to fill the inside of the hollow images with red feathers in order that the plumes might be impregnated with the divine influence and might afterwards diffuse it for the benefit of the owner of the feathers, who had placed them in the image for that purpose. The red feathers, plucked from a small bird which is found in many of the islands, thus became an ordinary medium for communicating and extending supernatural powers, not only in the Society Islands, but throughout Polynesia. The beautiful long tail-feathers of the tropic or man-of-war bird were used for the same purpose. The gods were supposed to be very fond of these feathers and ready to impart their blessed essence to them. Hence people brought the feathers to the priest and received from him in exchange two or three which had been sanctified in the stomach of the deity; on extracting them from that receptacle, the priest prayed to the god that he would continue to inhabit the red feathers even when they were detached from his divine person.[150] The feathers thus consecrated were themselves regarded as in some sense divine and were called gods (atuas, oromatuas); the people had great confidence in their sovereign virtue, and on occasions of danger they sought them out, believing that the mere presence of the feathers would afford them adequate protection. For example, when they were threatened by a storm at sea, they would hold out the feathers to the menacing clouds and command them to depart.[151]

§ 5. The Sacrifices, Priests, and Sacred Recorders

The offerings presented to the gods included every kind of valuable property, such as birds, fish, beasts, the fruits of the earth and the choicest native manufactures. The fruits and other eatables were generally, but not always, dressed. Portions of the fowls, pigs, or fish, cooked with sacred fire in the temple, were presented to the deity; the remainder furnished a banquet for the priests and other sacred persons, who were privileged to eat of the sacrifices. The portions appropriated to the gods were placed on the altar and left there till they decayed. In the public temples the great altars were wooden stages, some eight or ten feet high, supported on a number of wooden posts, which were sometimes curiously carved and polished. But there were also smaller altars in the temples; some of them were like round tables, resting on a single post. Domestic altars and such as were erected near the bodies of dead friends were small square structures of wicker-work. In sacrificing pigs they were very anxious not to break a bone or disfigure the animal. Hence they used to strangle the animal or bleed it to death.[152]

Human victims were sacrificed on many occasions, as in time of war, at great national festivals, during the illness of their rulers, and at the building of a temple. William Ellis was told that the foundations of some of their sacred edifices were laid in human sacrifices, and that at least the central pillar, which supported the roof of one of the sacred houses at Maeva, had been planted on the body of a man. The victims were either captives taken in war or persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the chiefs or the priests. In the technical language of the priests they were called "fish." When once a man had been chosen for sacrifice, the family to which he belonged was regarded as taboo or devoted to the altar, and when another victim was wanted, he was more frequently taken from that family than from any other. Similarly, a district which had once furnished victims was thenceforth devoted. Hence, at the approach of ceremonies which were usually accompanied by human sacrifices, the members of certain families and the inhabitants of certain districts used to flee to the mountains and hide in caves till the ceremony was over. But the doomed man was seldom apprised of his fate beforehand. A sudden blow with a club or a stone on the nape of the neck was the usual way of despatching him, lest the body should be mangled or a bone broken. If the blow had only stunned him, he was soon killed, and the corpse, placed in a long basket of coco-nut leaves, was carried to the temple and offered to the god by being set before the idol. In dedicating it the priest took out one of the eyes and handed it on a leaf to the king, who made as if he would swallow it, but passed it on to a priest or attendant. After the ceremony the body, still wrapt in coco-nut leaves, was often deposited on the branches of a neighbouring tree, where it remained some time. Finally, the bones were taken down and buried under the pavement of the temple (marae).[153]

In the family, according to patriarchal usage, the father was the priest, but the priests of the national temples formed a distinct class; their office was hereditary. The high priesthood was often held by a member of the royal family, and sometimes the king himself acted as the national priest. The duties of the priests were to recite prayers, to present offerings, and to sacrifice victims. Their prayers, usually uttered in shrill, chanting tones, were often exceedingly long and full of repetitions.[154] They had plenty of employment, being called in to officiate on all occasions, whether at birth or at death, at feasts or in sickness; for they were the physicians as well as the clergy of the country. They professed to possess extraordinary powers, such as to promote conception or to effect abortion, to cause or to heal disease, to pray the evil spirit into food, and even to kill men outright. Hence they were greatly feared.[155] Of the little knowledge that existed in the islands the priests are reported to have possessed the largest share, but it consisted chiefly in an acquaintance with the names and ranks of the various subordinate deities (atuas); however, according to Captain Cook, they excelled the rest of the people in their knowledge of navigation and astronomy: indeed, the very name for priest (tahowa) signified nothing more than a man of knowledge.[156] In the island of Huahine the priest whose duty it was to carry the image of the god Tani (Tane) "was a personage of such superhuman sanctity that everything which he touched became sacred; he was, therefore, not suffered to marry, as the honour of being his wife was too much for any mortal woman. But this was not all; he would himself be so defiled by such a connection that he would be disqualified for his office, and must immediately resign it; nay, if he did not repent, and return with a great peace-offering to Tani's house, he might expect to be first struck blind, and afterwards strangled in his sleep. He was not allowed to climb a cocoa tree, because, if he did, it would be so hallowed that nobody else durst afterwards ascend it."[157]