Part 6

The Polynesians inhabiting the islands of the great Pacific Ocean constitute a distinct race of people, supposed at one time by certain writers to be of American origin, now almost universally admitted to have a close affinity with the Malays of the peninsula and Indian Archipelago, and hence classified by Dr. Latham under his subdivision _Oceanica Mongolidæ_. In physical structure and appearance the Polynesians in general more nearly resemble the Malays than they do any other race, although differing from them in some respects, as, indeed, the natives of several of the groups also do from each other. Centuries and environment have left their impress on the inhabitants of the different islands, as

Everything that is created is changed by the laws of man; the earth does not know itself in the revolution of years; even the races of man assume various forms in the course of years.

MANILIUS.

In stature the Tahitian compares well with any other race. The face is expressive of more than ordinary intelligence. The color of the skin varies from almost black to a light yellow. The aquiline nose is commonly seen among them, and there are many varieties of hair and complexion. In complexion they resemble more nearly the Japanese than the Chinese. The beard is thin, the prevailing hair jet black, straight, wavy or curly, profuse and long; eyes large and black; no drooping or obliquity of eyelids. The face is generally roundish; lower jaw well developed; no unusual malar prominences; forehead slightly receding; mouth large, lips thick and as a rule slightly everted; wide nostrils; ears large; chin prominent. The general resemblance of stature and physiognomy, however, is more with the Malays than any other race, and from which they are undoubtedly the descendants, changed by climatic influences, food, habits and methods of living. In physical appearance the Tahitians and Samoans are the handsomest and tallest of all the natives of the Pacific Islands, with the exception, perhaps, of the Maoris, or New Zealanders.

The superstition of the taboo, the use of kava as an intoxicating drink, cannibalism, infanticide, offering of human sacrifices, tattooing, and circumcision, which were formerly prevalent in Tahiti, have disappeared under the influence of Christianity.

Much has been said about the beauty of some of the women of the South Sea Islands, but I am sure I do them no injustice if I say that these descriptions are overdrawn by sentimental writers and do not correspond, when put to the test of comparison, with the reality. When young, there is something fascinating about the women, imparted by the luxurious jet-black hair, the large black eyes as they gaze at the strangers

With a smile that is childlike and bland.

FRANCIS BRET HARTE.

Beauty and youth among the Tahitian women are of short duration, and in most of them advanced age brings an undesirable degree of corpulence.

Cook visited these people when they were in their original physical and moral state. He praises their openness and generosity. "Neither does care ever seem to wrinkle their brow. On the contrary, even the approach of death does not appear to alter their usual vivacity. I have seen them, when brought to the brink of the grave by disease, and when preparing to go to battle; but in neither case, never observed their countenance overclouded with melancholy, or serious reflection. Such a disposition leads them to direct all their aims only to what can give them pleasure and ease."

The whole countenance is a certain silent language of the mind.

CICERO.

These mental traits have been preserved up to the present time. Melancholy and suicide are almost unknown in Tahiti. The people are happy, contented and free from care and anxiety and

Enjoy the pleasures of the passing hour, and bid adieu for a time to grave pursuits.

HORATIUS.

They seem to know that

Care and the desire for more

Attend the still increasing store.

HORATIUS.

Desire for great wealth does not exist among the natives. Nature has supplied them with nearly all they need, hence little remains for them to do to meet their modest desires.

Religion has not done away entirely with superstition, and has improved their morals little, if any. Old European residents of Papeete agree that the morality of the natives has not improved since they have been under the influence of civilization, forced on them by the European invaders. The greatest fault of the people is their incurable laziness, a vice for which they are not entirely responsible, as Nature has provided so bountifully for their needs. Robbery, stealing and murder are almost unknown; petty thefts, on the contrary, are quite common. The people, young and old, are affable, extremely courteous and hospitable to a fault; the family ties strong, and extending to the remotest relatives.

Man is a social animal, and born to live together so as to regard the world as one house.

SENECA.

Nowhere in the world are the people more sociable than in Tahiti. This sociability was perhaps more pronounced before the island was discovered than it is now, but it remains to this day as one of the prominent characteristics of the Polynesian race. Respect and love for parents, strong attachments to relatives and friends, are striking virtues of the Tahitians. They love social intercourse and have the highest regard for friendship. Poverty and misfortunes do not intercept friendships, on the contrary they cement them more firmly.

The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity; as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flames.

COLTON.

Before European influence had made itself felt in the island, each tribe constituted a large family, and property lines were not sharply defined. As long as there was anything to eat, no one was left hungry. The Tahitians are extremely fond of mingling with their relatives, friends, members of the same and other tribes. They appreciate to the fullest extent that "we have been born to unite with fellow-men, and to join in community with the human race" (Cicero). They treat old age with reverence and respect, and take the very best care of the sick and poor.

Unity of feelings and affections is the strongest relationship.

PUBLIUS SYRUS.

Under the teachings of the missionaries, Protestant and Catholic, paganism has disappeared from the island. All are church-members and attend service regularly. The denominations represented are the Episcopalians, Catholics and Latter-day Saints in above numerical order. Most of the priests and preachers are natives. Christianity, has, however, failed to suppress immorality and do away entirely with the inborn superstition of the natives. The former evil is firmly rooted, the latter difficult of complete eradication.

Nothing has more power over the multitude than superstition: in other respects powerless, ferocious, fickle, when it is once captivated by superstitious notions, it obeys its priests better than its leaders.

QUINTUS CURTIUS RUFUS.

Wicked habits are productive of vice, and vice follows long-standing habits. The Tahitians are by nature kind, affectionate, and their opinions are easily moulded for good or bad, but many of their customs and habits cling to them in spite of civilization and Christianization, for "how many unjust and wicked things are done from mere habit!" (Terentius); and "so much power has custom over tender minds" (Virgilius).

The children of Tahiti are given excellent opportunities for obtaining a good elementary education. In all of the larger villages there is a government school, usually two churches. Catholic and Protestant, and their respective parochial schools. The natives love their language and are averse to the French, hence, as a rule, the parochial are better patronized than the government schools. The literature in the Tahitian language is limited to translations of the Bible, catechisms, religious song books and a few school books. Children of the better classes who seek a higher education, go abroad, in preference to the United States. Few show any ambition to enter any of the professions with the exception of the clerical. The mass of the people are content in leading an easy, dreamy life, showing no disposition either to acquire wealth or fame. Agriculture, manufacture and commerce have no attraction for them. They are children from the cradle to the grave, have the desires of children, and are pleased with what pleases children. Their tastes are simple, their desires few, and instead of in care and worry, they live through their span of life in peace of mind and contentment.

But if men would live according to reason's rules, they would find the greatest riches to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.

LUCRETIUS.

In contrast to the Westerner, the favored Tahitian can say:

I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want.

TERRENCE.

The natives are temperate in drinking, and frugal in eating. Fish and fruit are their principal articles of diet. Their habits in this direction have not undergone much change since Captain Cook wrote:

Their common diet is made up of at least nine-tenths vegetable food; and, I believe, more particularly, the _mahee_, or fermented breadfruit, which enters almost every meal, has a remarkable effect upon them, preventing a costive habit, and producing a very sensible coolness about them, which could not be perceived in us who fed on animal food. And it is, perhaps, owing to this temperate course of life that they have so few diseases among them.

Smoking is indulged in only to a moderate extent, cigarettes and pipe being the favorite methods of consuming the weed.

Art has never had a place in the minds of the Tahitians. All attempts in this direction in design, carving and sculpture, are rude. Like all primitive peoples, they are fond of music. Their voices are sweet, but the airs of their music are monotonous. The primitive drum, and a little crude instrument made of bamboo, something like a flute, placed in one of the nostrils when played, are the instruments in most common use. The national dance, formerly the principal amusement of the people, is discouraged by the government, but is allowed once a year as a special favor to the natives.

FOREIGNERS IN TAHITI

Most of the foreigners who remain permanently in Tahiti become attached to the island by marriage, the strongest possible incentive to make it their permanent home. Many of these men are adventurers. Some of them have honest intentions to make this beautiful island their permanent home. Far away from their place of birth and relatives, charmed by the beauties of the island, they conclude:

I will take some savage woman; she shall rear my dusky race.

TENNYSON.

In many instances such unions have resulted very happily. On the voyage from San Francisco to Tahiti, I met Mr. George R. Richardson, a native of Springfield, Mass., who had lived for the last thirty years, with his native wife on the little atoll island, Kaukuaia of the Tuamotu group, one hundred and sixty-eight miles from Tahiti. He was suffering from carcinoma of the esophagus, and was returning from San Francisco, whither he had gone for medical advice. His parents were still living, but he had no desire to visit the place of his birth, so fully had he become acclimated to the climatic and native conditions of the Society Islands. He was then fifty-five years of age. He left the United States March 4, 1874, on a sailing vessel, and six months later landed at Tahxa. In six months he had obtained a fair knowledge of the native language, and married in Kaukuaia a woman who could not speak a word of English. This union resulted in sixteen children, three of whom died, six girls and seven boys living at the present time, and of these, three girls and two boys are married. Through his wife he inherited from her mother five acres of land with three thousand cocoanut-palms. To this land he obtained a legal ownership eight years ago by virtue of a law of legal registration passed by the government. The island on which he lives contains only one hundred and fifty inhabitants and the only income is obtained from copra and mother-of-pearl.

The inhabitants of this island are Catholics and Mormons. A Catholic priest comes once a month to minister to the spiritual needs of the adherents to the faith of his church. The services of both denominations are conducted in the native language. He and a Frenchman are the only white inhabitants of the island.

On February 16, 1878, a great storm overflooded the island and our American, who spent a whole night in the crown of a cocoanut tree, lost everything. Only five thousand cocoanut trees were left on the whole island. A man-of-war came from Tahiti three days later and ministered to the urgent needs of the survivors.

The inhabitants of this little island suffer frequently from malaria and grippe. The latter disease returns regularly almost every year. Of the remaining diseases, diarrhea and dysentery are the most common. Tuberculosis is prevalent and claims many victims. This island has now a population of one hundred and fifty, and during his residence he has never seen a physician, although the inhabitants were frequently in need of medical services. He was obliged to render his wife assistance at the birth of all of his children, and strangely, each time without any mishap, either to mother or child. What happened on that island must have happened on the many other distant islands under similar circumstances. Here, like elsewhere, in the South Sea Islands, are medicine-men who attend to tooth-pulling, and, when any cutting is to be done, a scalpel is made of a piece of glass. In case of sickness they make use of roots and herbs of their own gathering.

BUSINESS IN TAHITI

The Tahitian is not a business man. What little business is transacted in the island is done by foreigners. The larger stores in Papeete are owned and managed by French, Germans and Americans. The smaller stores in the city, and nearly all small shops in the villages, are in the hands of Chinamen.

The fertile soil of Tahiti is not made use of to any considerable extent. The sugar industry has been tried but has been entirely abandoned, owing to high wages for labor and exorbitant freight rates. The principal articles of export are copra, cocoanuts, vanilla-beans and mother-of-pearl shells. Copra (dried meat of cocoanut), brings three cents a kilo and cocoanuts are sold at a cent apiece. The raising of vanilla-beans was a paying industry five years ago, when they commanded a price of seventeen dollars a pound, and were then eagerly sought for in the market, as they were considered superior in flavor to those of any other country. The Chinamen have ruined this source of income as well as the reputation of the product. These shrewd business men control the local market completely and go from place to place long before harvest-time, buy the whole crop for the year for cash, and have the beans picked before they are ripe and mature them artificially. The result of such dishonest transactions has been that, owing to the poor quality of the beans thus treated, the price of the article has been reduced to three or four dollars per pound.

The vanilla-bean grows best in the shady forests, and requires but little attention except artificial fertilization of the flowers and picking of the beans. In the West Indies the numerous insects fertilize the monogamous flowers; in this island, this has to be done largely by artificial fecundation. Women and children do this work. With a sharp little stick, the pollen is taken from the anthers and rubbed over the stigma of the pistil. A child who is active can fertilize fifteen hundred flowers a day. It is a great pity that this industry has been cheapened by the avaricious Chinamen, as it is an industry that requires very little labor and should be remunerative, as the soil and climate are peculiarly well adapted for the cultivation of this valuable aromatic.

Most of the fruit which grows in Tahiti is too perishable for transportation and is consequently very cheap. The largest and most luscious pineapples can be bought for three cents apiece, oranges one-fourth of a cent. Alligator pears, the finest fruit grown anywhere, are sold at the market for two and three cents apiece. At the time of my visit, eggs were sold at forty cents a dozen. Meat, with the exception of pork, is imported from New Zealand and the United States. Most of the native families raise hogs, and this animal is found also in a wild state in the jungles of the forests.

The wages, for this island, are rather high. An ordinary laborer is paid seventy-five cents a day, and the women who are willing to work can earn fifty cents a day. The average Tahitian works only long enough to procure the necessities of life, and, as these are few, it is difficult to find men and women for ordinary labor and housework.

The fact that there is no bank in the whole island shows that the amount of money which circulates among the people is very small. Some enterprising American attempted to establish a telephone line encircling the island, but lack of patronage soon paralyzed the undertaking. The island is a place for a dreamy, easy existence, and not for business.

The communication with the outside world is carried on by two regular steamer lines, one from San Francisco, the other from Auckland, but both of these lines are supported by liberal government subsidies to make them remunerative, as the passenger traffic and the exports and imports of the island would not suffice to make them independent of government aid.

OLD TAHITI

What will not length of time be able to change?

CLAUDIANUS.

Tahiti is exceedingly interesting to-day, but how much more so must it have been to Captain Wallis and his crew, who first set their eyes on this gem of the Pacific! When the _Dolphin_ came in sight of this beautiful island that never before had been seen by a white man, we can readily imagine officers and crew straining their eyes to see first its rugged outlines, and later the details of the wonderful landscapes. Under the blue sky and lighted up by the vigorous rays of the tropic sun, they could see the mountain-peaks clothed in the verdure of a tropic forest, the little island set like a gem in the ocean, and, as they beheld these mountains and turned their eyes upward they could also see

They were canopied by the blue sky, so cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful that God alone was to be seen in heaven.

BYRON.

As they approached nearer and saw the natural wealth of the island and its happy inhabitants basking in the sunshine, eating what Nature had provided for them without care or toil on their part, they must have come to the unavoidable conclusion that they at last had found a land where

There was a never-ending spring, and flowers unsown were kissed by the warm western breeze. Then the unploughed land gave forth corn, and the ground, year after year, was white with full ears of grain. Rivers of milk, rivers of nectar ran, and the yellow honey continued to pour from the ever-green oak.

OVIDIUS.

On landing, having overcome the animosity of the natives and ascertained the boundless resources of the island, they could not escape the conviction that they in their wanderings over the limitless sea, had at last found "a heaven on earth" (Milton).

What wonderful stories those men must have brought to Europe on their return after the long and hazardous voyage, when they related what they had seen in Tahiti, then in its primitive native state! Captain Cook made a longer stay in the island on his first visit and had therefore a better opportunity to study the island, its resources and its interesting inhabitants. It is on his descriptions we will rely in giving an account of some of the traits, customs and habits of the people as they existed at that time.

RELIGION OF THE NATIVES

Every one is, in a small degree, the image of God.

MANLIUS.

The most primitive of all races have some conception of a divinity and a life hereafter, for

A god has his abode within our breast; when he rouses us, the glow of inspiration warms us; this holy rapture springs from the seeds of the divine mind sown in man.

OVIDIUS.

Let us listen to Captain Cook concerning the religion of the Tahitians before they knew the name of God and the story of the Saviour while on earth:

The common people have only a very vague idea of the religious sentiments of the race, but the priests, who are quite numerous, have established quite an extensive and somewhat complicated system. They do not worship one God, as possessing preeminence; but believe in a plurality of divinities, who are all supposed to be very powerful, and, as different parts of the island, and the other islands in the neighborhood, have different ones, the inhabitants of such, no doubt, think that they have chosen the most potent and considerate one. Their devotion in serving their gods is remarkably conspicuous. Not only the whattas or offering-places of the morals are commonly loaded with fruits and animals, but there are few houses lacking a small place of the same sort. Many of them are so impressed with their obligations to their divinity that they will not begin a meal without first laying aside a morsel for their Eatooa (their god).

Their prayers are also very frequent, which they chant, much after the manner of songs, in their festive entertainments. They also believe in an evil spirit, they call Etee, who sometimes does them mischief, and to whom, as well as to their god, they make offerings.

But the mischiefs they fear from any superior invisible beings are confined only to temporal things. They believe the soul to be both immaterial and immortal. They say that it keeps fluttering about the lips during the pangs of death, and that then it ascends and mixes with, or, as they express it, is eaten by the deity. In this state it remains for some time; after which it departs to a certain place destined for the reception of the souls of men, where it exists in eternal night, or, as they sometimes say, in twilight or dawn. They have no idea of any permanent punishment after death for crimes that they have committed on earth. They believe in the recognition of relatives and friends after death and in resuming the same relations as on earth. If the husband dies first, the soul of his wife is known to him on its arrival in the land of spirits. They resume their former acquaintance, in a spacious house, where the souls of the deceased assemble to recreate themselves with the gods. From here man and wife retire to their own habitation, where they remain forever.

The most singular part of their faith consists in claiming that not only man, but all other animals, trees, fruit and even stones are endowed with a soul, which at death, or upon being consumed or broken, ascends to the divinity, with whom they first mix, and afterward pass into the mansion allotted to each.