CHAPTER XIII

EXIT THE NOBLE SAVAGE

1

To the primitive or simple races of the world marriage, divorce, and supply of only the elemental wants are the most intense problems. Nourishment and reproduction make up the rounds of life. While the highly developed nations around the Pacific are concerned with the exploitation of the resources of the islands, and with political problems growing out of their reciprocal interests, the natives are struggling with matters that lie nearer the real foundations of life. For them the question of survival is an immediate and pressing one. Extinction is facing many of them, absorption by inflowing races is creating altogether new difficulties and relationships, such as marriage and divorce, while newer conceptions of exchange and trade, the buying and selling of meats and vegetables, are introducing social and moral factors they could not as yet be expected to understand. Nor can we who have thrust ourselves upon them or accepted responsibility for their well-being understand our obligations unless we think of them as human beings, or without visualizing their problems by human examples. Nor can we escape these responsibilities or shirk them. Out of the stuff their lives are made of grow the larger problems, those of the relationship of the great civilizations that touch each other on the Pacific--Asia, Australasia, America.

Threnodies and elegies a-plenty have mourned the passing of the Polynesians of the South Seas. The noble savage whose average height often measured six feet--plus thick callouses--has stalked among us, as a mythical figure, maidens unabashed in their naked loveliness have lured men to the tropics oblivious of home ties. Leisure and unlimited harems in prospect have afforded many a civilized man salacious joys the like of which the white race has not altogether abandoned, but which few have the courage to pursue in the open. The passing of these Pacific peoples has in some quarters been hailed as an indication of the viciousness of civilization; their yielding to virtue has been deplored by others. The sentimentalist has clothed them in romance; the cynic has stuck horns in their brows. But whether the romancer is wrong or the missionary devoid of appreciation of nature unadorned, the passing of the Polynesian is an admitted danger. Whether it was the vice of the drunken sailor or the clothes of the devout disciple that brought about this downfall shall not here be determined. It will be mine merely to depict in living examples the episodes that indicate their evanescence, and to point to the silent forces of regeneration that are at work,--forces that, having accomplished the virtual decease of some of the finest races in the world, and yet are bringing about their rebirth.

One cannot live in the tropics without romancing. The simplicity, the earnestness of life, devoid of many of the outer signs of avarice so consonant with the individualism of our civilization; the slovenliness unhampered by too many clothes,--these take one by a storm of pleasure. One forgets the natives once were cannibals; or rather, one delights in saying to oneself "they were," and forgets to thank the missionary and the trader for having altered these tastes before one arrived; one exalts every sprawling female into a symbol of naturalness, though Heaven knows the soft white skins and hidden bosoms of the North come as welcome reminders in face of native temptations. And with Professor Brown of New Zealand, one deplores that the selfsame missionaries and traders "in spite of their antipodal purposes and methods, alike force the race to decay." Their contract with the white race is demoralizing even where it aims to be most just and helpful. Their lands, made secure to them by legislation (as in New Zealand), often become the means of gratifying wild tastes for motor-cars and fineries which leave them bankrupt physically and morally.

2

It was a steaming day. I had been up from before dawn in order to make my pilgrimage to Vailima. Half the morning was not yet gone when I returned to the little hotel in Apia, situated beside the reefs, to hide myself away from the burning sun. Even within the shade of the upper veranda my flesh squirmed beneath my shirt and the shoes upon my feet became unbearable. So off went my shoes. Nothing merely romantic could have induced me to crawl from under the shadows. There I was content to listen to the lapping of the broken waves as they washed shoreward over the reefs. There I inhaled the scent of tropical vegetation as it reached me, tempered and sifted to the satisfaction of one who dreads the sun and its overweening brilliance.

Suddenly a wail lanced the silence. It sounded for all the world like the melancholy "extra" which New York newsboys cry through the side streets when they wish to make a fire the concern of the world. I sprang up and, leaning over the veranda rail, strained my neck in the direction of the crier, who was still behind the bend in the road which is Apia's Main Street. It seemed to take him an unconscionable time to come into view, his voice approaching and receding, and being battologized as though by a hundred megaphones. Prancing, crouching, and shading his eyes in the manner of an Amerindian scout, he finally made his appearance,--a grotesque fiend, one to strike terror to the heart of a god. His oiled body glistened in the sun; his charcoal-blackened jaw resembled that of a gorilla; while a scarlet turban of cheese-cloth wound after the fashion of the Hindu gave flaming finish to this frightful impersonation of the devil. Nothing but the presence of the army of occupation and the _Encounter_ out in the harbor could have allayed my apprehension, not even the vanity of racial superiority or the oft-repeated prophecies about this vanishing race. For he seemed savagery come to life.

Presently four others, similar personifications of deviltry, came on behind him. In addition to make-up, each brandished a long knife used for cutting sugar-cane, or a clumsy ax. They squatted, they jumped, whirling their weapons in heavy blows at imagined enemies. Never was make-believe played with greater conviction, never was the wish father to the act with more pathetic earnestness. The pitcher of a chosen nine never hurled his ball across an empty field with greater determination to win the coming game than did these warless warriors wield their weapons.

Slowly from the rear came the army, four abreast, in stately procession. There were seventy-five Samoans, each over six feet tall, men of girth and bone and pride. Their glistening bodies reflected the sun like a heaving sea. Their loins were draped in leaves in place of the every-day sulu, with girdles of pink tissue paper round them. Their faces, too, were blackened with charcoal, and turbans of red cheese-cloth capped them. Those of them who could not secure knives or axes, wielded sticks with threatening realism.

In an instant I was in my shoes again and out upon the road, a bit of flotsam in the wake of a great pageant.

I fell in with a Samoan policeman, dressed like an English Bobby, trailing along in the rear. "What's the trouble?" I asked. "Is this a preliminary uprising?" There was much talk of the Germans stirring the natives to rebellion against British occupation, but evidently the natives had had enough of alien squabbles, and it seemed to matter little to them by which of the white invaders they were ruled. A strange expression came into the policeman's face, a mixture of awe and contempt. He could speak only a very scant amount of English, but enough to unlock this awe-inspiring secret. "Tamasese, the king he dead," he said. I fumbled about in my memory for coincidences. The policeman was old enough to have been an understanding boy at the time Stevenson took up the cause of Mataafa as opposed to the German interests and antagonistic even to the British and American attitude. It must have been strange to him, therefore, to find himself a British policeman in a uniform of blue, with a heavy helmet, timidly following a funeral procession in honor of the son of a king disfavored of Stevenson,--while all about were the soldiers of New Zealand. I got nothing from him of any political significance, but much in the way of the spirit of his race. For though an officer of "the" law, perhaps the only one of his kind in Samoa, he dared not go too close to the ranks of these stalwarts. They had come from every islet of the Samoan group, the pick of the race, representatives declaring before the whole world: Our race is not dead; long live our race!

So, all along the way for over a mile into the country behind Apia, continued the procession. Not for a moment did the antics cease; not for a moment did the wail of the warriors subside. Every time the advance scouts called out, "O-o-o-o-s-o-o-o" [The king is dead], the four behind him thundered their denial, "E sa" [Long live the king], and the entire regiment droned the confession "O so." For the king was truly no more. Not only the king but his kingdom. For not only was there now no struggle of aliens over its precincts, but the second conqueror, Britain, who once did not think Samoa worthy as spoils, had stepped in and taken possession.

The procession filled the native population with awe. No one ventured near. A dog ran across the road and was immediately cut down by the sugar-cane knife in a warrior's hand. A Chinese, with the contempt of the fanatic for the fanaticism of others, drove his cart indifferently into their line. Knives, axes, and other borrowed, stolen, or improvised weapons found their way into the chariot of the Celestial.

Half-way along, a limping old man whose leg was swollen with elephantiasis advanced against them. He challenged their approach. They cut the air with furious blows aimed in his direction. He pretended to fall, in the manner of a Russian dancer, picked himself up and started on a wild retreat. The army had routed an enemy.

Here the roadside spread in open land dotted everywhere with native huts. Presently the army arrived at the king's grounds, where a simple hut sat back about two hundred feet from the road, with a bit of green before it. The army broke "rank," and squatted in a double row just at the side of the road. For a few minutes there was silence.

Then out of the group rose Maii, the leader. Silently he strode the full width of the space in front of the thirty seated men, leaning lightly upon the long rough stick in his hand. His giant-like figure was the personification of dignity; his roughened face the acme of sobriety; he seemed lost in thought. Facing about, he started to retrace his steps in front of the seated men, then, as though suddenly recollecting himself, turned his head in the direction of the king's hut and in a subdued tone no higher than that in ordinary conversation, addressed the house of Tamasese, which stood fully half a block away. Quietly, but not without emotion, he spoke and paused; and every time he paused the leading four men would shout "O-o-o-s-o-o," and the entire group would answer "O sa." Convincing and convinced, the leader proceeded with his oration. An hour later, to the minute, he finished.

At the king's house appeared an old man in a snow-white sulu, leaning heavily on a stick. I could see his lips moving, but could not hear a word. He was speaking to the leader, who could not hear any more than I. They kept up the pretense at conversation for a few minutes and all was agreed upon. A servant, who had followed the old man with a soft mat in his hand which to me looked like silk, advanced cautiously toward the warriors.

Two of them jumped instantly to their feet, brandishing their knife and ax furiously as though to protect the leader or to drive away evil spirits, I knew not which. But certain it was the cautious servant became still more cautious, timidly arriving with his offering and presenting it to the chief. The manner in which the gift was accepted, though solemn enough, was full of admonition, much as to say: "Now, don't you do that again." The mat-bearer's heart seemed relieved of a great terror, and he started back to the house of the king. On his way he passed a mango-tree, stopped, looked up as though he had spied an evil spirit, picked up a mango, stepped back, and dramatically hurled it at the tree as a boy would who was playing make-believe. At that the whole army of stalwarts rose and departed to the right.

As soon as they left the grounds, eleven girls, in single file, each with a mat of the loveliest texture imaginable flung to the breeze, came out upon the road from the other side of the grounds and followed round the front to the right after the way of the warriors. And the ceremony was over.

I had squatted on the ground, close to the warriors. They treated me as though I were an innocent child who did not know the dangers of evil things, nor enough to respect my superiors. Not so the natives. Even the policeman with whom I had arrived had retreated to the protection of a hut some three hundred feet away from the road. All the people in the neighborhood--men, women and children--kept within their own huts, their solemn faces full of awe and respect. Nor did the tension slacken until the last of the maidens had made her way out of sight.

Thus was the son of the last Samoan king escorted in safety along the other way,--a way which to the native mind seemed as vivid and real as heaven and hell were to Dante and Swedenborg.

3

Exit the Noble Savage. "Think," says Bancroft, spokesman of the arrogant "Blond Beast," "what it would mean to civilization if all these worthless primitives were to pass away before us." The beginning of this end was witnessed and told by Stevenson in 1892, but the natives' version of it has yet to be related. Against those who mourn his loss as the Hellenist the Greeks, are some of our most practical men.

The Samoans are not vanishing as rapidly as are the Hawaiians and the Maories, for two very simple reasons: their climate is not so suitable to the white man as is that of New Zealand and of Hawaii. Nor, like Fiji, has Samoa been hampered by indentured coolieism, though Chinese do come. Racially there seems no immediate prospect of Samoa being submerged, though politically it fell before Hawaii did. Socially, however, it is going, as are the native features of most of the more progressive and more assimilable peoples of the Pacific.

Simple naturalness is fast fading even from Samoa. I do not mean to say that because Samoans are drifting farther and farther from their primitive customs they are losing their "charm." With progress, one expects not oddity, but simplicity; not shiftlessness, but a certain tightening up of the finer fibers of the race. It is satisfying to see the contrast between the loosely built native hut and that whose pillars are set in concrete and roofed with durable materials. But it is disheartening when the change is only from thatch, which needs to be replaced every so often, to corrugated iron, without any other signs of durability. In other words, the corrugated iron roof is no proof that the race is becoming more thrifty, less lazy,--but the reverse. It indicates that indolence has found an easier way, a more permanent manner.

My presence at the ceremony in honor of the royal demise gave me an opportunity to see at once some of the best specimens of Samoan manhood. It left me with the impression that no race capable of mustering so many men of such build was on the decline. There was nothing in their manner to indicate servility or despair. And some day Setu, with his knowledge of Western civilization gained at first hand, may be the means of arousing his fellow-Samoans to great things.

4

The process of assimilation and decline is taking place with far more rapidity in Hawaii. Hawaii crashed like a meteor into America and was comminuted and absorbed. The finer dust of its primitive civilization is giving more color to our atmosphere than any other American possession. But the real Hawaii is rapidly receding into the past. On the beach at Waikiki there is a thatch-roofed hut, but like most of the Hawaiians themselves, it bears too obviously the ear-marks of the West, the imprint of invasion.

What there is left of the Hawaiians still possesses a measure of strength and calmness. Big, burly, self-satisfied, they wend their way unashamed of having been conquered. Only a few thousand can now claim any racial purity. The mixture of Hawaiians with the various peoples now in occupation of their lands is growing greater every year; those of pure Hawaiian blood, fewer. And after all, is it any reflection upon any race that it has been assimilated by its conquerors?

And assimilated to the point of extinction Hawaii has been. It has become an integral part of a continental nation of whose existence it had hardly known a hundred years ago. When Captain Cook discovered Hawaii he estimated its population at 400,000. Fifty years later there were only 130,000. To-day there may not be more than 30,000. The white race has had its revenge on these natives for the death of this intrepid captain. And the last of the great Hawaiian rulers, Queen Liliuokalani, shorn of her power, passed away on November 11, 1917. She, the descendant of great warriors and remarkable political leaders, had turned to the only thing left her--expressing the sentiments of her people in music.

The submersion is nearly complete. Politically, there isn't a son among them who would feel any happier for a revival. So little fear is there of such a hope ever rising even for a moment in the Hawaiian breast that the key to the former throne-room hangs indifferently on a nail in the outer office of the present government. I believe that that is the only throne-room under the American flag. It is a small room, modern and finished in every detail. On its walls hang paintings of kings and queens and ministers of state. There is a musty odor about it, which could easily be removed. All one need do is open the windows and an inrush of sensuous air would sweeten every corner of it. This would be doing only what the race is doing with every intake of alien blood.

A broad-shouldered, broad-nosed, broad-faced--and seemingly broad-hearted--Hawaiian clerk took me into the room. As we wandered about he told who the worthies were, enframed in gilt and under glass. Interspersed with some facts was inherited fancy. His enthusiasm rose appreciably when he recited the deeds of Kamehameha I, their most renowned king.

"Once he saw an enemy spy approach," said my guide. "He threw his spear with such force that it penetrated the trunk of the cocoa-palm behind which the traitor was hiding, and pierced the man's heart." A merry twinkle lit up the cicerone's eyes. That twinkle was something almost foreign to the man: it must have been the white blood in him that was mocking the tales of his native ancestry.

Aside from these few portraits there was nothing in the throne-room which gave evidence of Hawaii's former prestige. Here that king's descendants planned to lead his race to glory among nations. And here they were outwitted. The guide had recounted among the king's exploits his ability to break the back of his strongest enemy with his naked hands. Yet the white man came along and broke the Hawaiian back. And to-day he who wishes to learn the habits, the arts, and the exploits of these people has to go to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.

A primer got up for children, to be learned parrot-like, and distributed to tourists, tells us "the Hawaiians never were savages." We are also assured they "never were cannibals," and "speedily embraced religion." The first is an obvious misstatement; the second is an apology of uncertain value; as to the third, the son of one of Hawaii's best missionaries, who just died in his eighty-fifth year, said: "Not until the world shall learn how to limit the quantity and how to improve the quality of races will future ages see any renewal of such idyllic life and charm as that of the ancient Polynesians." Dr. Titus Munson Coan, whose father converted some fifteen thousand Hawaiians to Christianity, deplored the effect on the native of the high-handed suppression of native taboos and attributes their extinction--which seems inevitable--to the imposition of clothes which they put on and off according to whim, and to customs unsuited to their natures. Dr. Coan said that though his father had a powerful voice he remembered that often he could not hear him preach because of the coughing and sneezing of the natives.

Be that as it may, a visit to the Bishop Museum would quickly contradict the primer. There the array of weapons shows that the natives were not only barbarous but savage. This is no serious condemnation, for none of Europe's races can show any cleaner record. Arts, indeed, the Hawaiians had, and sense of form and color. An apron of feathers worn by the king required a tax of a feather apiece on hundreds of birds. After this feather was extracted, the bird was set free, an indication of thrift if not kindliness. Yet they did not hesitate to strip the flesh off every bone of Captain Cook and distribute portions among the native chiefs. No one has proved that they ate it; but cannibalism is, after all, a relative vice and was not unknown in northwestern Europe.

5

The passing of the Hawaiians, like that of many other races in the Pacific, is due to a cannibalism and a barbarism which are less emphasized in the ordinary discussions of the problem. There are more ways than one of eating your neighbor. However harrowing that savage diet was, it did not work for the destruction of any of these South Sea islanders as ruthlessly as did the practice among the Hawaiians of infanticide. Mothers were in the habit of disposing of their impetuous children by the simple method of burying them alive, frequently under the very shelter of their roofs, lying down upon the selfsame floor and sleeping the sleep of the just with the tiny infant squirming in its grave beside them. Parents were not allowed to have more than a given number of children because of the strain on the available food supply. This more than anything else depleted the number of natives most disastrously. But in addition came the white man with his diseases, contagious and infectious,--a form of destruction that, from the native point of view, is quite as dastardly as eating the flesh of the vanquished.

Certainly, whatever the viciousness of the occasional or annual outbursts of passion among these primitive folk, there was no example of regulated, insistent pandering to vice such as has been set them by the Europeans, especially in Hawaii. There one evening I wandered through the very depths of degradation; there I witnessed a process of fusion of races which had only one possible end,--extinction. Its Hawaiian name had a strange similarity to the word evil: it is _Iwilei_. McDuffie, Chief of Detectives of Honolulu, was making his inspection of medical certificates, which was part of the work of "restriction," and took me with him.

Mr. McDuffie had been standing near the window of the outer office, with one foot upon a chair, talking to another detective, when I called out his name. Tall, massive, with hair almost gray, a rather kindly face, he looked me up and down without moving. I explained my mission.

"Who are you?" he asked bluntly.

A mean question, always asked by the white man in the tropics. Well, now, who in thunder was I, anyway? I murmured that I was a "writer." "Be round at seven-thirty, and you can come along," he said dryly.

On his office walls hung hatchets, daggers, pistols, sabers, and many other such toys of a barbarous world hacking away against or toward perfection. On the floor were dozens of opium pipes, taken in a raid upon Chinese dens,--toys of another kind of world trying to forget its progress away from barbarism. One Japanese continued his game of cards nonchalantly. Flash-lights were in evidence, fearlessly protruding from hip pockets.

At half-past seven I was there again. As we were about to enter the motor-car, I ventured some remark, thinking to make conversation. "Get in there," said the chief, abruptly. For an instant he must have thought he was taking a criminal to confinement.

Zigzagging our way through the streets and across the river, we entered an unlighted thoroughfare, hardly to be called a street. A steady stream of straggling shadows moved along like spirits upon the banks of the river Styx. Our way opened out upon a lighted section, crowded with negro soldiers and civilians of all nationalities. Here, then, and not only beyond the grave, class and distinction and race dissolve. A perfect hubbub of conversation, soda fountains and plain noise, and reeling of drunkies. A futurist conception of confusion would do it justice. We were at the gates of Babylon.

A closely boarded fence surrounded this city of dreadful night. Hundreds of men crowded the passageway. Within were rows and rows of shacks and cottages. Men stood gazing in at open doors and windows. Outside one shack a negro soldier remained fixed with his foot upon the door-step, but ventured no farther. Within, on a bed in full view, sat a Portuguese female, smoking, an Hawaiian woman companion lounging beside her. Both ignored the male at the door. But he remained, silent. Hope fading from his mind, and some interest elsewhere creeping in, he moved away. The Hawaiian woman smiled contemptuously.

Then for three-quarters of an hour we made strange calls. Our card was a club which the assistant to the detective--a massive Hawaiian--rapped on every porch step, announcing the expected visitor. He was not unwelcome. From every door emerged a woman, covered with a light kimono, and neatly shod. At cottage after cottage, door after door, they appeared, showed their "health" certificates, and retreated. Japanese, Hawaiian, white, brown, and yellow. Some extremely pretty and not altogether unrefined in manner; some ugly and coarse. The inspection was done hastily. Where appearance of the inmate was delayed, a stamp of the foot brought the tardy one scurrying out. Some greeted the detective familiarly; others showed their certificates and retreated. One Japanese woman called after us when we had passed her door without stopping.

Wherever there was any transgression against the proprieties, the inspector commanded the guilty to desist, and went on. One woman complained that a negro had just attacked her with a knife. She whistled and called, she said, "But I might have been killed for all the assistance I got." The inspector spoke kindly to her, assured her he would order the guard to come round. But nothing was done.

Two or three doors farther on a fat and playful woman entertained a number of men who stood outside her porch. The inspector told her to keep still. "Just such remarks as that cause trouble. You get inside and stay there." She shrugged her shoulders, made faces at him, and danced playfully within-doors.

We came upon two groups of negroes, gambling. The inspector slapped one of them upon the shoulder in a kindly way and told them to get out of sight. "You know it's not allowed here." They moved away.

It was a network of streets. Not an underworld but a hinterland, a dark swamp-land, full of scum and squirming creatures. A dreadful city, full of "joy" and abandon. A city in which women are the monarchs, the business factors, the independent, fearless beings, needing no protection. Protection from what could they need? Surely not from poverty, for wealth seemed to favor these. From loss of reputation? They had no reputations to lose. Protection they needed, but rather from themselves than from outside dangers.

For this was a restricted district which harbored no restrictions. This was the crater of human passion, of animal passion. The well-ordered universe without; within, the toils of voluptuousness. In this pit the lava of lust kept stirring, the weight of unbalanced emotion overturned within itself. The crater was thought to be deep and secure against overflow. But if it did boil over, was it far from the city?

In the city the sound of pianos playing, people reading, swimming-pools full, streets crowded with racing automobiles, soda fountains crowded, theaters agog, gathering of folks in homes and cafés,--a great world with allotted places to keep men and women and children happy; that is, away from themselves. A heavy curtain of order protects one section. The most disgusting polyandry shrieks from out the other. Yet no savage community needed such an outlet for its emotions.

From various sources I learn that that little crater has overflowed. The Chamber of Commerce, backed by the missionaries and others, secured legislation against the "regulation" of the district in 1917. From another source I got it that it was not the forces for good that banished it, but that two contending and competing forces for evil had mutually eliminated themselves. But still another source gives it out that certain "slum" sections where housing facilities are inadequate are now the center of evil, and that Filipino panderers are the most guilty. And a year after _Iwilei_ was "done away with"--in April, 1918--the Chief of Detectives asked for "thirty days" in which to show what he could do to clean up the place so as to make it fit for the soldiers to come to Honolulu.

Little wonder that, with such examples of "self-respect" and shamefulness, lovers of the Hawaiians are throwing themselves into the work of saving the few remaining natives from demoralization. Before Cook's time these people did not know what prostitution was. Now they have lost hope and confidence in themselves. The less pessimistic say that another hundred years will see the last of the Hawaiians, as we have seen the last of the Tasmanians. Others fear it will come sooner. The Hawaiian Protective Association is stimulating racial pride in them so that they may take courage anew, and, with what sturdy men and women there still are, rejuvenate the race. But the odds are against them, for besides disease and demoralization we have introduced Japanese, Chinese, and all sorts of other coolies who have completely undermined the Hawaiian status in the islands, and are rapidly outnumbering them in the birth-rate and survival rate. What factors are at work for possible regeneration will be discussed in a later chapter.