CHAPTER XIV

GIVE US OUR VU GODS AGAIN!

1

Some of the gravest mistakes the white man has made in his efforts to regenerate the Pacific peoples have been indirect rather than direct. This fact is best illustrated by the method Australia and New Zealand resorted to in order to exterminate certain pests. To eliminate the rabbit they introduced the ferret. The ferret then began to reproduce so rapidly that it, too, soon became a pest. So the cat was let loose upon the ferret. Forthwith the cat ran wild and is now one of the most serious problems in Australia.

So has it been in the matter of many of the native races. Commercial greed, which was not satisfied to use what native labor was extant because it is never the manner of natives to be willing serfs to their conquerors, looked everywhere about for people who might be imported under crushing conditions and then cast out. It was that which created the Japanese and Chinese situation in Hawaii; and it is that which has created a similar situation in Fiji.

One would have to be an unadulterated sentimentalist to contend that the passing of the natives is not justified by the present development of the Antipodes. None of the native elements--the Australoids or the Tasmanians or the Maories--would, of their own accord, even with years of Caucasian example and precedent, have made of these dominions the healthful, productive lands they now are. As long as the problem remains one of the ascendancy of the fittest over the fit, it is simple, and the present solution justifiable. But the introduction of other races who have only their servility to recommend them is a poor practice and soon turns into a more serious problem still. In most cases, a little patience and foresight would have obviated such contingencies. Had the white folk who tried to exploit Hawaii contented themselves with a slower development, the Hawaiians would to-day be as secure as are the Samoans and the Maories. In all cases such as these and that of the Philippines, the native, when given a chance, soon justifies his existence and our faith in him.

In Fiji we have an example of the introduction of the Hindu to the extinction of the Fijian for the sake of the enrichment of the white man. The indentured Indian, small and wiry, who seems too delicate for any task and is stopped by none, acts as a reinforcement in the South Sea labor market. He glides along in purposeful indifference. As coolie, he may be seen at any time wending his way along Victoria Parade, bareheaded, a thin sulu of colored gauze wound about his loins. As freed man, he is the tailor, the jeweler, the grocer, and the gardener. As proprietor he is buying up the lands and becoming plantation-owner. Then he bewails the woes of his native land, India, far off in the distance. Here in Fiji, where the coolie has a chance to start life anew, the longing for rebirth in this world, still fresh, bursts into being. But no sooner does it see the sunlight than it turns to crush the Fijian, in whose lands the Hindu is as much of an invader as ever Briton was in India.

The introduction of the Indian into Fiji was not accomplished without considerable protest from small planters, who saw in it and the taxation scheme introduced over thirty years ago, great danger to the Fijian laborer. Aside from the burdens imposed upon the people by a law which compelled them to work for their chiefs without wages, for the same length of time that they worked for some plantation-owner with wages, there was the equally bad law being "experimented" with which compelled the people to pay in kind instead of in money. So serious had the situation become that the "Saturday Review" of June 19, 1886, declared: "As the Natives must eat something to live, it is perhaps not unnatural that many people who know Fiji entertain distinct fears that the combination of over-taxation and want of food will drive the Fijians to return to cannibalism." The charge of cannibalism was denied by the Rev. Mr. Calvert, though further evidence is not at hand, as I have seen only the Government's side of the case.

However, with the admission of some 3,800 Indians as indentured laborers in 1884 (or thereabouts) among a population of 115,000 natives, the vital statistics of the islands have changed so that there were only 87,096 Fijians against 40,286 Indians in 1911, and 91,013 Fijians against 61,153 Indians in 1917. This would seem to indicate a healthier state of affairs for the Fijians as well as for the Indians, were not the comparison of births with deaths for the last year named taken into consideration. This shows that to 3,267 births there were 2,583 deaths among the Fijians; while among the Indians the births were 2,196 as against only 588 deaths. This proportion obtained also in 1911. The struggle between the Fijians and the indentured Indians, even if the former were not to become extinct within the century, would place the Fijians in the minority in no time; and what were their lands would be theirs no more.

This, briefly, is the story of the submersion of the Fijians.

In itself, the situation is not very serious. What if the Fijian passes, or gives way to the Indian? The contribution of the Fijian to the culture or the romance of the Pacific is small compared with that of other races, such as the Samoans or the Marquesans. Of that more anon. But there are problems involved that are of more immediate import. Two races like these cannot live together without creating a situation of strength or of weakness that is very far-reaching. We are concerned with the attitude they assume toward each other, or in the substitution of a race like the Indians, with their fixed traditions and destructive castes, which will introduce Hindu problems into the very heart of the Pacific. India is no longer within bounds, and sooner or later we shall be face to face with new conditions. In eliminating the Fijian or the Hawaiian, or any other Pacific islander, by the Indian or the Japanese coolie process, we are only intensifying the difficulty, unless we are ready completely to overlook the questions of likes and dislikes.

2

In Fiji one is not yet compelled to ask, "Where are the Fijians?" As long as one's gaze is fixed slightly upward, the Fijian face with the bushy head of coarse, curly hair stands out against the green of the hills. But let the eye fall earthward and the resultant confusion of forms and manners forthwith raises the problem of the survival of the fittest. For among these towering negroids there now dwell over sixty thousand Telugus, Madrasis, Sardars, Hindustanis, and a host of other such strange-sounding peoples from India, and "Sahib" greets one's ears more frequently than the native salutation. In the smaller hotels the bushy head bows acknowledgment of your commands; in the one fashionable and Grand Hotel the turban does it. In the course of the day's demands for casual service, the assistant is the stalwart one; for the more permanent work--as, for instance, the making of a pongee silk suit--the artisan is the slender one. If your mood is for sight of sprawling indolence, you wander along the little pier and open places among the Fijians; if it is for the damp, cool, darkly kind to help you visualize the dreams of the Arabian Nights, you enter some little shop in an alley with an unexpected curve, in the district of transplanted India.

Feeling venturesome, I let fancy be my guide, though, to tell truth, I was escaping from the burning sun. Life on the highway was alluring, but, large as the Fijian is, his shadow is no protection. I hoped for some sight of him within-doors. The row of shops which walls in the highway, links without friction the various elements of Suva's humanity. In a dirty little shop I ran into an unusual medley of folk. A blind Indian woman in one corner; a Fijian chatting with an Indian in another; a boy whistling "Chin-chin"; boys and girls fooling with one another; while in the little balcony, like a studio bedroom hung in the deeper shadows of the rafters, slept one whose snoring did not lend distinction to his paternity. The place was evidently a saloon, but minus all the glitter so requisite in colder regions. Here the essential was dampness and coolness and improvised night. Hence the walls had no windows and the floors no boarding. Hence the brew had need of being cool and cutting, regardless of its name; and whether one called it _yagona_, _kava_, _buza_ or beer, it had the effect of making a dirty little dungeon in hiding not one whit worse than the Grand Hotel in the beach breezes. Better yet, where in all Fiji was fraternization more simple?

Still, too much love is not lost between the sleepy Fijian dog and his Indian flea. Does the Fijian not hear the white man--whom he respects, after a fashion--call his slim competitor "coolie?" And is not _kuli_ the word with which he calls his dog? Infuriated, conscious of his centuries of superiority, the Indian retorts with _jungli_, and feels satisfied. His indentured dignity shall not decay. At any rate, he knows and proves himself to be the cleverer. The future is his. While the Fijian, seeing that the importation the white man calls "dog" gets on in life none the less, seeks to steep himself in the Indian's immorality and trickery in the hope that he may thereby acquire some of that shrewdness, as when he devoured a valiant enemy he hoped to absorb that enemy's strength. Thus in that dark little underworld the Fijian Adonis vegetates in anticipation of the future Fiji some day to spring into being.

Though the Indians are said to despise the Fijians, I saw representatives of the two races sitting sociably together upon the launch up the Rewa River, smoking and chatting quite without any signs of friction. Indian women, all dressed in colored-gauze raiment and laden with trinkets, huddled behind their men. They seemed a bit of India sublimated, cured of the ills of overcrowding. One woman had twelve heavy silver bracelets on each wrist, a number on her ankles, several necklaces and chains around her neck, and many rings on each of her fingers and toes, with ornaments hanging from her nose and ears. But there was more than vanity in this, for, pretty as she was, she refused to permit me to photograph her. Not so the men. One Indian had his flutes with him and began to play. His eyes rolled as he forced out the monotonous tones, over and over again. His heart and his soul must have had a hard time trying to emerge simultaneously from these two tiny reeds. One bearded patriarch smiled and rose with a jerk when I asked if he would pose for me. A young Indian woman crouched on the floor, all covered with her brilliantly colored veil. She shared a cigarette with a Fijian boy in a most Oriental fashion. But those who know distrust this fraternization. It is the subtle demoralization of the Fijian.

For the type of Indian men and women who now accept the terms of indenture are even worse than those who did so formerly, and the conditions under which they are compelled to carry out their "contracts" are such as to develop only the worst traits of Indian nature. In consequence, the Fijian is being ground between the upper (white) and nether (Indian coolie) mill-stones. His primitive taboos which worked so well are taboos no longer. The missionary has destroyed them well-meaningly; the plantation-owner has preyed upon them knowingly, has turned the predatory native chiefs upon them; and now the riffraff of India is loose upon them, too. I am convinced, from what I saw in the missionary settlements, that had the missionaries alone been left to lead these people away from barbarism, they would have accomplished it,--as they partially have. But unfortunately, the one weakness in their civilizing process, the overestimation of minor conventions, such as the wearing of clothing, only left an opening for the intake of diseases and defects of our civilization. The insistence on monogamy is another weakness, for to that the steady decline of the native can be traced.

This dual process of degradation going on in Fiji is a great disappointment to the adventurous. Though the natives number 91,000, their ancient rites and festivities are without newer expression, without newer form. And though one hears much of Fiji as another India, because nearly half the population is Indian, still, as C. F. Andrews has pointed out, the utter absence of anything Indian in the architecture, the religious practices, or the other expressions of Indian ideals leaves one wondering what is wrong with that newer world. Everywhere one hears the appeal, "Give the man a chance," and democracy and the advocates of self-determination for nations repeat and repeat the plea. One believes that somehow if India were partially depopulated and the remaining Indians were given a chance, the soul which is India would blossom with renewed life and glory. One believes that here in Fiji such a miracle might occur. But no promise of regeneration greets the seeker, go where he may. Then, too, there is something lacking in the native. One is led to conclude that the inhibitions upon the mind and the soul of all the Fijians, through the preaching of doctrines strange to them, or through the practices of foreigners over them, has put the seal upon their lips. Trying to approximate the ruling religions and to live in their ways must create emotional complexes in the natives that are clogging the wells of their beings.

From Suva for forty miles up the Rewa River, the only manifestation of life is in labor. Aside from the crude ornaments on the limbs of the women of India there is virtually nothing of art or higher expression to be seen. Nothing but the tropical loveliness, which cannot be denied.

3

The regeneration of the Fijian seemed more possible after I had spent a few moments in the hut of the chief of the district. In the middle of the village stood one plain, unpainted wooden house, distinctive if not palatial. It was altogether wanting in decoration and with us might have passed as a respectable shed. But here, surrounded by thatched huts, picturesque when not too closely scrutinized, it assumed exceeding importance through contrast.

The door, reached by a flight of four or five steps, stood wide open. The interior was not partitioned into rooms. Half of it was a raised platform-like divan or sleeping-section, spread with native mats. Upon this elevation sat a fine-looking man,--clean-shaven, with a head as bald as those of his brethren are bushy, dressed in clean and not inexpensive materials, and wearing a gold watch on his left wrist. On my being introduced, he greeted me in English so fluent and pure that I was considerably taken aback. He was as self-possessed as most Fijians are shy. This was Ratu Joni, Mandraiwiwi, chief of eighty thousand Fijians, one of the only two native members of the Legislative Council, highly respected, and the most powerful living chief of his race.

He remained seated in native fashion, legs crossed before him, and after a few general remarks indicated a desire to resume his confab with the half-dozen natives--all big, powerful men--facing him on the lower section of the chamber. His reception of me was cordial, yet his was the reserve of a prime minister. His bearing gave the impression of a man intelligent, calm, just, and not without vision. He knew his rank. Had I been a native and dared to cross his door-step--plebeian that I am--I should most likely have seen dignity in anger. But, though an insignificant white man, I still bore the mark of "rank" sufficient to gain admission unceremoniously and was given a place beside him on the divan. But he had an uncanny way of making me feel suddenly extremely shy. I was aware of intruding, of having been presumptuous,--an uninvited guest. So I withdrew.

The district over which he rules, though inferior to many another in productivity, has always had the reputation for being well kept up and in healthful condition and was pointed out as an example to the other chiefs as early as 1885. At Bau, five miles the other side of the river, Ratu Joni has a home European in every detail. It forms an interesting background for his European entertainments. His income is enough to make a white man envious. One son, an Oxford man, was wounded in Flanders at the outbreak of the war; another was at the time attending college in Australia. Ratu Joni is _Roko_ (native governor) of the province of Tailevu (Greater Fiji).

Mr. Waterhouse, the missionary who kindly went about with me and made it possible for me to meet this chief and to understand some of the native problems, gave me a brief story of this impressive man's life. Though his father had been hanged or strangled for plotting against the life of the chief who ruled then, Ratu Joni succeeded in making his way to the fore in Fijian politics. He set himself the task of cleaning up his country. Of him it could not be said that he ever had reason to be ashamed of his rule. Of him none could say as did a British governor in a speech say of another Fijian: "What! has this chief been indolent? Perhaps he limes his head, paints his face, and stalks about, thinking only of himself; or is it that he squabbles with his neighbors about some border town, and lets his people starve?"

One cannot judge a people by the conditions of its chiefs or rulers; but with regard to the natives of the Pacific, as in the case of other people accustomed to the rigorous life of battle, their safety lies in the uses to which they have been put by their conquerors. The British Government has utilized the Sikhs, its most difficult Indians, by making them the constabulary throughout the length and breadth of its Asiatic empire. This has been done in Fiji, too. But the most hopeful sign to me in these islands on the 180th meridian was the Fijian constabulary. A finer lot of men could not be found anywhere in the world. Not only their physique but their intelligent faces and their alacrity suggest great promise. One of them came on board our ship with his clean, tidy, sturdy wife--a public companionship rare for these people--and was received by the officers. His white sulu, serrated on the edge like some of the latest fashions on Broadway, hung only to his knees. His massive legs and broad shoulders were a delight to look upon. His wife was as handsome a woman as I have seen in the tropics. The two gladly posed for me, and asked me to send them a print.

4

Generally the thought and feeling of the natives in the South Seas come to the outer world through the works of white men,--missionaries and scientists. But rare indeed is the revelation of the mind of a strange people brought to us pure and clear without the white man's bias or reaction. Here and there I have run across snatches of native thinking that were revelations, but no others so full and vivid as the essay by a native Fijian on the decline of his race, which appeared in the "Hibbert Journal" (Volume XI). The translator opens the door to the Fijian mind as by magic. After reading that, I felt that personal contact with these natives akin to contact with any other human being, for I looked behind dark skin and bushy head, and saw the spirit of hope within. The translator says:

It shows exactly how an intelligent Fijian may conceive Christianity. That is a point we need to know badly, for most missionaries see the bare surface. It also contains hints how the best intentions of a government may be misconstrued, and suspicion engendered on one side, impatience and reproaches of ingratitude on the other, which a more intimate knowledge of native thought might remove.

The argument of the essay is that "The decline of native population is due to our abandoning the native deities, who are God's deputies in earthly matters. God is concerned only with matters spiritual and will not harken to our prayers for earthly benefits. A return to our native deities is our only salvation."

The native reflects:

Concerning this great matter, to wit the continual decline of us natives at this time, it is a great and weighty matter. For my part I am ill at ease on that account; I eat ill and sleep ill through my continual pondering of this matter day after day. Three full months has my soul been tossed about as I pondered this great matter, and in those three months there were three nights when pondering of this matter in my bed lasted even till day, and something then emerged in my mind, and these my reflections touch upon religion and touch upon the law, and the things that my mind saw stand here written below.

He then takes up the points that have disturbed him:

Well, if the very first thing that lived in the world is Adam, whence did he come, he who came to tell Eve to eat the fruit? From this fact it is plain that there is a Prince whom God created first to be Prince of the World, perchance it is he who is called the Vu God [Noble Vu].... Consider this: It is written in the Bible that there were only two children of Adam, to wit Cain and Abel. But whence did the woman come who was Cain's wife?...

It seems to me as though the introducers of Christianity were slightly wrong in so far as they have turned into devils the Vu Gods of the various parts of Fiji; and since the Vu Gods have suddenly been abandoned in Fiji, it is as though we changed the decision of the Great God, Jehovah, since that very Vu God is a great leader of the Fijians. That is why it seems to me a possible cause for the Decline of Population lies in the rule of the Church henceforth to treat altogether as devil work the ghosts and the manner of worshiping the Vu Gods of the Fijians, who are their leaders in the life in the flesh, whom the Great God gave, and chose, and sent hither to be man's leader. But now that the Vu Gods whom Jehovah gave us have been to a certain extent rudely set aside, and we go to pray directly to the God of Spirit for things concerning the flesh [life in the flesh], it appears as if the leader of men resents it and he sets himself to crush our little children and women with child. Consider this:

If you have a daughter, and she loves a youth and is loved of him, and you dislike this match, but in the end they none the less follow their mutual love and elope forthwith and go to be married, how is it generally with the first and the second child of such a union, does it live or does it die? The children of Fijians so married are as a rule already smitten from their mother's womb. Wherefore? Does the woman's father make witchcraft? No. Why then does the child die thus?

Simply that your Vu sees your anger and carries out his crushing even in its mother's womb; that is the only reason of the child's death. Or what do you think in the matter? Is it by the power of the devil that such wonders are wrought? No, that is only the power that originates from the God of Spirit, who has granted to the Prince of men, Vu God, that his will and his power should come to pass in the earthly life.

He develops this theme with ever-increasing emotion, until his poor mind can think no more.

Alas! Fiji! Alas! Fiji is gone astray, and the road to the salvation of its people is obstructed by the laws of the Church and the State. Alas! you, our countrymen, if perchance you know, or have found the path which my thoughts have explored and join exertions to attain it, then will Fiji increase.

But Fijians have prayed to God, yet they have not increased, he exclaims, faced with the unalterable facts. Why not? Christianity has been with them many years. Does God hear their prayer! He proceeds to give his own observations of life, and asks: "Is this true, reverend sirs? Yes, it is most true." After making some comparisons between his land and others, neglected of God in that they have no Vu Gods, he expostulates:

And if the Vu were placed at our head ... there would be no still births and Fiji would then be indeed a people increasing rapidly, since our conforming to our native customs would combine with progress in cleanly living at the present time. Now, in the past when the ancients only worshiped Vu Gods and there was no commandment about cleanly living, yet they kept increasing. Then if ... this were also combined with the precept of cleanly living, I think the villages would then be full of men. Or what, sir, is your conclusion?

A few more excerpts, taken here and there, will reveal the interesting mind of this Fijian:

If this is right, then it is plain how far removed we are from certain big countries. How wretched they are and weak, whose medicines are constantly being imported and brought here in bottles.[1] As for me, I simply do my duty in saying what appears in my mind when I think of my country and my friends who are its inhabitants; for since it wants only a few years to the extinction of the people it is right that I reveal what has appeared in my soul, for it may be God's will to reveal in my soul this matter. Now it is not expedient for me to suppress what has been revealed to me, and if I do not declare what has appeared from forth my soul, I have sinned thereby in the eyes of the Spirit God: I shall be questioned regarding it on the day of judgment of souls; nor is it fitting that one of the missionaries should be angry with me by reason of my words; it is right that they should consider everything that I have here said, and judge accordingly. It is no use being ashamed to change the rules of the Church, if the country and its inhabitants will thereby be saved.

[1] The translator says in a footnote: "Whites pity Fijians, but they find reasons to pity us. That is what white men generally fail to realize; they put down to laziness or stupidity their reluctance to assimilate our civilization, whereas it arises from a different point of view; and that point of view is not always wrong or devoid of common sense. Is Fijian medicine more absurd than our patent medicines, or as expensive?"

There is great hope for a people with such thinkers among them. And if there are such hopes for the Fijians, there are still greater possibilities for the Maories, Samoans, Tahitians, and Hawaiians.

5

Politically, as separate island races, they are no more. The little Kingdom of Rarotonga is one of the last to remain independent. The European war, oddly enough, in which Maories and Fijians fought for "the rights of little nations," has sold them out completely, just as it did Shantung in China. No one thought that a war in a continent fifteen thousand miles away would play such havoc with the destinies of these people. The "mandates," yielded with such cynical generosity, put the seal upon their fate, and opened new international sores.

Pessimistic as this may sound, there are evidences of resuscitation in the working out of these mandates, as will appear in the chapter on Australasia. The Polynesians are becoming conscious of unity, and talk of leadership under the New Zealand mandate is rife in Parliament. "Nothing would hasten the depletion of the race more than the loss of hope and confidence in themselves," says the Hawaiian "Friend." That hope seems to be flickering into new life.

No people have suffered more, directly, from contact with the "civilized" white races than the Polynesians. Morally undermined, politically deprived of powers, physically subjected to scourge after scourge of epidemic introduced by white men, their own standards of living brushed aside as vulgar and infantile,--these heliolithic people with their neolithic culture approached the very verge of extinction. Then the white race began to sentimentalize over them, and sincere scientific people to deplore their evanescence. Some of these latter have earned the eternal gratitude not only of the natives but of the whole world. Some of them I have mentioned in other connections. Two others decidedly deserve recognition. Mr. Elsdon Best, the curator of the Wellington Museum, is a tall, thin individual who has roamed all over the Pacific. He has worked his way for years in the interests of the Amerindians, Hawaiians, and Maories. Now he has one of the finest museums in the South Seas--excepting that, of course, in Honolulu--in which he treasures anything and everything that will help throw light on the history of these interesting people. The other is Mrs. Bernice Bishop, a part-Hawaiian woman, who established the museum in Honolulu which bears her name. These are the centers round which we white folk shall be able to gather for the preservation of this other type of the human species. In the summer of 1921 a Scientific Congress under the auspices of the Pan-Pacific Union and the immediate directorship of Professor Gregory of Yale was held to devise ways and means of furthering the study of these races, and its work is proceeding apace.

Museums and "models" of native architecture are the modern white man's diaries, recalling the acts of ravishment and destruction which his development and expansion entailed. Let us hope that out of the efforts of scientists will spring a new consciousness of worth, which early missionaries and scheming traders did everything to destroy. Yet it must not be forgotten that much of our knowledge of these races comes from those missionaries who were broad-minded enough to recognize the value of recording customs and beliefs, even if their purpose was the more effectively to counteract them.