The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Volume Ii Part 14

One very remarkable peculiarity in the mourning for a Tooitonga was that, though he ranked above the king and all other chiefs, the mourners strictly abstained from manifesting their grief by wounding their heads and cutting their bodies in the manner that was customary at the funerals of all other great men. Mariner was never able to learn the reason for this abstention.[230]

[230] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, ii. 213.

Other peculiar features in the obsequies of a Tooitonga were the following. In the afternoon of the day of burial, when the body of the Tooitonga was already within the burial-ground, almost every man, woman, and child, all dressed in the usual mourning garb, and all provided with torches, used to sit down about eighty yards from the grave; in the course of an hour a mult.i.tude of several thousands would thus a.s.semble.

One of the female mourners would then come forth from the burial-ground and call out to the people, saying, "Arise ye, and approach"; whereupon the people would get up, and advancing about forty yards would again sit down. Two men behind the grave now began to blow conch-sh.e.l.ls, and six others, with large lighted torches, about six feet high, advanced from behind the burial-ground, descended the mound, and walked in single file several times between the burial-ground and the people, waving their flaming torches in the air. After that they began to ascend the mound, whereupon all the people rose up together and made a loud crashing noise by snapping their _bolatas_, which were pieces of the stem of a banana tree used to receive the ashes falling from lighted torches. Having done so, the people followed the torch-bearers in single file up the mound and walked in procession round about the tomb (_fytoca_). As they pa.s.sed at the back of the tomb, they all, torch-bearers and people, deposited their extinguished torches on the ground; while the female mourners within thanked them for providing these things. Having thus marched round, the people returned to their places and sat down. Thereupon the master of the ceremonies came forward and ordered them to divide themselves into parties according to their districts; which being done he a.s.signed to one party the duty of clearing away the bushes and gra.s.s from one side of the grave, and to another party a similar task in regard to another side of the grave, while a third party was charged to remove rubbish, and so forth. In this way the whole neighbourhood of the burial-ground was soon cleared, and when this was done, all the people returned to the temporary houses which, as mourners, they were bound to occupy.[231]

[231] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, ii. 215-217.

Soon after darkness had fallen, certain persons stationed at the grave began again to sound the conches, while others chanted a song, or rather recitative, partly in the Samoan dialect, partly in an unknown language, of which the natives could give no account. None of them understood the words, nor could they explain how their forefathers came to learn them.

All that they knew was that the words had been handed down from father to son among the cla.s.s of people whose business it was to direct burial ceremonies. According to Mariner, some of the words were Tongan, and he thought that the language was probably an old or corrupt form of Tongan, though he could make no sense out of it. Such traditional repet.i.tion of a litany in an unknown tongue is not uncommon among savages; it occurs, for instance, very frequently among some of the aboriginal tribes of Australia, where the chants or recitatives accompanying certain dances or ceremonies are often pa.s.sed on from one tribe to another, the members of which perform the borrowed dance or ceremony and repeat by rote the borrowed chants or recitatives without understanding a word of them.[232]

[232] W. E. Roth, _Ethnological Studies among the North-west-central Queensland Aborigines_ (Brisbane and London, 1897), pp. 117 _sq._; (Sir) Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_ (London, 1904), pp. 234, 235; _id._, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_ (London, 1899), p. 281 note; _id._, _Across Australia_ (London, 1912), i. 244.

While the conches were sounding and the voices of the singers broke the silence of night, about sixty men a.s.sembled before the grave, where they awaited further orders. When the chanting was over, and the notes of the conches had ceased to sound, one of the women mourners came forward, and sitting down outside the graveyard addressed the men thus: "Men! ye are gathered here to perform the duty imposed on you; bear up, and let not your exertions be wanting to accomplish the work." With these words she retired into the burial-ground. The men now approached the mound in the dark, and, in the words of Mariner, or his editor, performed their devotions to Cloacina, after which they withdrew. As soon as it was daylight the next morning, the women of the first rank, wives and daughters of the greatest chiefs, a.s.sembled with their female attendants, bringing baskets and sh.e.l.ls wherewith to clear up the deposit of the preceding night; and in this ceremonious act of humility no lady of the highest rank refused to take her part. Some of the mourners in the burial-ground generally came out to a.s.sist, so that in a very little while the place was made perfectly clean. This deposit was repeated the fourteen following nights, and as punctually cleared away by sunrise every morning. No persons but the agents were allowed to be witnesses of these extraordinary ceremonies; at least it would have been considered highly indecorous and irreligious to pry upon them. On the sixteenth day, early in the morning, the same women again a.s.sembled, but now they were dressed in the finest bark-cloth and beautiful Samoan mats, decorated with ribbons and with wreaths of flowers round their necks; they also brought new baskets, ornamented with flowers, and little brooms very tastefully made. Thus equipped, they approached and acted as if they had the same task to perform as before, pretending to clear up the dirt, and to take it away in their baskets, though there was no dirt to remove. Then they returned to the capital and resumed their mourning dress of mats and leaves. Such were the rites performed during the fifteen days; every day the ceremony of the burning torches was also repeated.[233]

[233] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, ii. 217-219.

For one month from the day of burial, greater or less quant.i.ties of provisions were brought every day and shared out to the people. On the first day the quant.i.ty supplied was prodigious; but day by day the supply gradually diminished till on the last day it was reduced to very little.[234] Nevertheless the consumption or waste of food on such occasions was so great that to guard against a future dearth of provisions it was deemed necessary to lay a prohibition or taboo on the eating of hogs, fowls, and coco-nuts for a period of eight or ten months, though two or three plantations were exempted from this rigorous embargo, to the end that in the meantime hogs, fowls, and coco-nuts might be furnished for occasional religious rites, and that the higher order of chiefs might be able to partake of these victuals. At the end of the eight or ten months' fast the taboo was removed and permission to eat of the forbidden foods was granted by the king at a solemn ceremony.

Immense quant.i.ties of yams having been collected and piled up in columns, and some three or four hundred hogs having been killed, the people a.s.sembled from all quarters at the king's _malai_ or public place. Of the slaughtered hogs about twenty were deposited, along with a large quant.i.ty of yams, at the grave of the deceased Tooitonga. The rest of the provisions were shared out in definite proportions among the G.o.ds, the king, the divine chief (the living Tooitonga), the inferior chiefs, and the people, so that every man in the island of Tongataboo got at least a mouthful of pork and yam. The ceremony concluded with dancing, wrestling, and other sports, after which every person retired to his home with his portion of food to share it with his family. The hogs and yams deposited at the dead Tooitonga's grave were left lying till the pork stank and the yams were rotten, whereupon the living Tooitonga ordered that they should be distributed to all who chose to apply for a portion. In strict law they belonged to the princ.i.p.al chiefs, but as these persons were accustomed to feed on meat in a rather less advanced stage of decomposition they kindly waived their claims to the putrid pork and rotten yams in favour of the lower orders, who were less nice in their eating.[235]

[234] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, ii. 220.

[235] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, i. 112 _sq._, 120-126, ii.

220.

It was customary that the chief widow of the Tooitonga should be strangled and interred with his dead body.[236] But the practice of strangling a wife at her husband's funeral was not limited to the widows of the Tooitongas. A similar sacrifice seems to have been formerly offered at the obsequies of a king; for at the funeral of King Moomooe the first missionaries to Tonga saw two of the king's widows being led away to be strangled.[237]

[236] W. Mariner, _op. cit._ ii. 135, 209 _sq._, 214.

[237] Captain James Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean_, p. 240.

The funeral and mourning customs which we have pa.s.sed in review serve to ill.u.s.trate the Tongan conceptions of the soul and of its survival after death. The strangling of widows was probably intended here as elsewhere to despatch their spirits to attend their dead husbands in the spirit land;[238] and the deposition of valuable property in the grave can hardly have had, at least in origin, any other object than to ensure the comfort of the departed in the other world, and incidentally, perhaps, to remove from him any temptation to return to his sorrowing friends in this world for the purpose of recovering the missing articles. The self-inflicted wounds and bruises of the mourners were clearly intended to impress the ghost with the sincerity of their regret at his departure from this sublunary scene; if any doubt could linger in our minds as to the intention of these extravagant proceedings, it would be set at rest by the words with which, as we have seen, the mourners accompanied them, calling on the dead man to witness their voluntary tortures and to judge for himself of the genuineness of their sorrow. In this connexion it is to be borne in mind that all dead n.o.blemen, in the opinion of the Tongans, were at once promoted to the rank of deities; so that it was in their power to visit any disrespect to their memory and any defalcation of their dues with the double terror of ghosts and of G.o.ds. No wonder that the Tongans sought to keep on good terms with such mighty beings by simulating, when they did not feel, a sense of the irreparable loss which the world had sustained by their dissolution.

[238] This was the reason a.s.signed for the strangling of widows at their husband's funeral in Fiji. See John Williams, _Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands_, pp. 478 _sq._

-- 12. _The Ethical Influence of Tongan Religion_

Surveyed as a whole, the Tongan religion presents a singular instance of a creed which restricted the hope of immortality to the n.o.bly born and denied it to commoners. According to the doctrine which it inculcated, the aristocratic pre-eminence accorded to chiefs in this world was more than maintained by them in the next, where they enjoyed a monopoly of immortality. And not content with sojourning in the blissful regions of Bolotoo, their departed spirits often returned to earth to warn, to direct, to threaten their people, either in dreams and visions of the night, or by the mouth of the priests whom they inspired. Such beliefs involved in theory and to some extent in practice a subjection of the living to the dead, of the seen and temporal to the unseen and eternal.

In favour of the creed it may at least be alleged that, while it looked to spiritual powers, whether ghosts or G.o.ds, for the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice, it did not appeal to another life to redress the balance of justice which had been disturbed in this one. The Tongan religion inculcated a belief that the good and the bad alike receive a recompense here on earth, thus implicitly repudiating the unworthy notion that men can only be lured or driven into the narrow way of righteousness by the hope of heaven or the fear of h.e.l.l. So far the creed based morality on surer foundations than any faith which would rest the ultimate sanctions of conduct on the slippery ground of posthumous rewards and punishments. In this respect, if in no other, we may compare the Tongan religion to that of the Hebrew prophets. It has been rightly observed by Renan that whereas European races in general have found in the a.s.surance of a life to come ample compensation for the iniquities of this present life, the Hebrew prophets never appeal to rewards and punishments reserved for a future state of existence. They were not content with the conception of a lame and laggard justice that limps far behind the sinner in this world and only overtakes him in the next. According to them, G.o.d's justice is swift and sure here on earth; an unjust world was in their eyes a simple monstrosity.[239] So too, apparently, thought the Tongans, and some Europeans may be inclined to agree with them.

[239] E. Renan, _Histoire du peuple d'Israel_, ii. 505.

CHAPTER III

THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE SAMOANS

-- 1. _The Samoan Islands_

About three hundred and fifty or four hundred miles nearly due north of Tonga lies Samoa, a group of islands situated between 13 30' and 14 30' South lat.i.tude and between 168 and 173 West longitude. The native name of the group is Samoa, which has this singularity, that it is apparently the only name that designates a group of islands in the Pacific; native names for all the other groups are wanting, though each particular island has its own individual name. Samoa is also known to Europeans as the Navigators' Islands, a name bestowed on them by the French explorer De Bougainville, who visited the group in 1768. The three most easterly islands were discovered in 1722 by Jacob Roggewein, a Dutch navigator, but he appears not to have sighted the princ.i.p.al islands of the group, which lie a good deal farther to the westward.

There is no record of any visit paid by a European vessel to the islands in the interval between the visits of Roggewein and De Bougainville. The whole archipelago was not explored till 1787, when the French navigator La Perouse determined the position of all the islands.[1]

[1] Ch. Wilkes, _Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition_, New Edition (New York, 1851), ii. 117; J.

B. Stair, _Old Samoa_ (London, 1897), pp. 21 _sq._; F. H. H.

Guillemard, _Australasia_, ii. (London, 1894) p. 500; G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_ (London, 1910), pp. 1, 360.

The islands are disposed in a line running from west to east. The most westerly, Savaii, is also the largest, measuring about forty miles in length. Next follow two small, but important islands, Apolima and Manona. Then about three miles to the east of Manona comes Upolu, the second of the islands in size, but the first in importance, whether we regard population, harbours, or the extent of soil available for cultivation. The channel which divides Upolu from Savaii is from fifteen to twenty miles broad. About forty miles to the east, or rather south-east, of Upolu lies the island of Tutuila, with the fine and almost landlocked harbour of Pangopango. It was in this island that the French navigator La Perouse lost his second in command and twelve men in a fierce encounter with the natives. The place where the fight took place is now known as Ma.s.sacre Cove.[2] Some fifty miles to the east of Tutuila is situated a group of three small islands, Tau, Ofu, and Olosenga, which are collectively known as Manua.

[2] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 27 _sq._; F. H. H.

Guillemard, _op. cit._ pp. 500, 504.

The islands are of volcanic formation and for the most part surrounded by coral reefs, but the intervening seas are quite free from danger, and the possession of good harbours renders Samoa politically important.

Viewed from the sea the islands are mountainous and for the most part wooded to the water's edge, except where a stretch of fertile plain is interposed between the foot of the mountains and the sea. The whole group presents to the voyager a succession of enchanting views as he sails along the coast. The eye is delighted by the prospect of lofty and rugged mountains, their tops sometimes lost in clouds, their slopes mantled in the verdure of evergreen forests, varied here and there by rich valleys, by grey and lofty cliffs, or by foaming waterfalls tumbling from heights of hundreds of feet and showing like silvery threads against the sombre green of the woods. Along the sh.o.r.e rocks of black lava alternate with white sands dazzling in the sunlight and fringed by groves of coco-nut palms, their feathery tops waving and dancing in the breeze, while the brilliant cobalt blue of the calm lagoon contrasts with the olive-green of the deep sea, which breaks in a long line of seething foam on the barrier reef. The scenery as a whole combines romantic grandeur with wild and rank luxuriance, thus winning for Samoa the reputation of being among the loveliest of the islands which stud like gems the bosom of the Pacific.[3]

[3] J. E. Erskine, _Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific_ (London, 1853), p. 110; T. H.

Hood, _Notes of a Cruise in H.M.S. "Fawn" in the Western Pacific_ (Edinburgh, 1863), p. 40; J. L. Brenchley, _Jottings during the Cruise of H.M.S. "Curacoa" among the South Sea Islands in 1865_ (London, 1873), pp. 37-39, 61 _sq._; F. H. H.

Guillemard, _Australasia_, ii. 502 _sq._; John B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 26 _sqq._

The island of Upolu in particular is wooded from its summit to the water's edge, where in some places the roots of the trees are washed by the surf, while in many places clumps of mangrove trees spread out into the lagoon. The forests are dense and more sombre even than those of Brazil. The lofty trees shoot up to a great height before sending out branches. At their feet grow ferns of many sorts, while climbing vines and other creepers mantle their trunks and sometimes even their tops.

But the gloom of the tropical forest is seldom or never relieved by flowers of brilliant tints; the few flowers that bloom in them are of a white or greyish hue, as if bleached for want of the sunbeams, which are shut out by the thick umbrageous foliage overhead.[4]

[4] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 31 _sq._, 52 _sq._

Very different from the aspect presented by this luxuriant vegetation is a great part of the interior of Savaii, the largest island of the group.

Here the desolate and forbidding character of the landscape constantly reminds the traveller of the dreadful forces which slumber beneath his feet. Extinct volcanoes tower above him to heights of four and five thousand feet, their steep and almost perpendicular sides formed of volcanic ashes and denuded of vegetation. For miles around these gloomy peaks the ground presents nothing to the eye but black rocks, scoriae, and ashes; the forlorn wayfarer seems to be traversing a furnace barely extinguished, so visible are the traces of fire on the sharp-pointed stones among which he picks his painful way, and which in their twisted and tormented forms seem still to preserve something of the movement of the once boiling flood of molten lava. The whole country is a barren and waterless wilderness, a solitude dest.i.tute alike of animal and of vegetable life, alternately parched by the fierce rays of the tropical sun and deluged by hurricanes of torrential rain. Even the natives cannot traverse these dreary deserts; a European who strayed into them was found, after five or six days, prostrate and almost dead on the ground.[5]

[5] Violette, "Notes d'un Missionnaire sur l'archipel de Samoa," _Les Missions Catholiques_, iii. (1870) pp. 71 _sq._; F. H. H. Guillemard, _Australasia_, ii. 502 _sq._; J. B. Stair, Old Samoa, p. 34; G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, pp. 1 _sqq._

In Samoa, as in Tonga, volcanic activity has ominously increased within less than a hundred years. Near the island of Olosenga, in 1866 or 1867, a submarine volcano suddenly burst out in eruption, vomiting forth rocks and mud to a height, as it was estimated, of two thousand feet, killing the fish and discolouring the sea for miles round.[6] Still later, towards the end of 1905, another volcano broke out in the bottom of a deep valley in the island of Savaii, and rose till it attained a height of about four thousand feet. Down at least to the year 1910 this immense volcano was still in full action, and had covered many miles of country under a bed of lava some ten or twelve feet thick, while with the same river of molten matter it completely filled up the neighbouring lagoon and replaced the level sh.o.r.e by an iron-bound coast of volcanic cliffs.[7]

[6] F. H. H. Guillemard, _op. cit._ ii. 504; J. B.

Stair, _Old Samoa_, p. 43.

[7] G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 3.

A remarkable instance of these volcanic cliffs is furnished by the little island of Apolima between Savaii and Upolu. The islet, which is in fact the crater of an extinct volcano, is only about a mile long by half to three-quarters of a mile in width. On every side but one it presents to the sea a precipitous wall of basaltic rock some thousand feet high, while the interior is scooped out in the likeness of a great cauldron. Only at one place is there a break in the cliffs where a landing can be effected, and there the operation is difficult and dangerous even in fine weather. In bad weather the island is completely isolated. Thus it forms a strong natural fortress, which under the conditions of native warfare was almost impregnable.[8]

[8] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 33 _sq._; G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 171.

As might be expected from their volcanic formation, the islands are subject to frequent and sometimes severe shocks of earthquake. The veteran missionary, J. B. Stair, has recorded that the shocks increased in number and violence during the last years of his residence in Samoa.

The last of them was preceded by loud subterranean noises, which lasted for hours, to the great alarm of the natives. At the north-west of Upolu also, Mr. Stair used often to hear a m.u.f.fled sound, like the rumble of distant thunder, proceeding apparently from the sea under the reef. This curious noise always occurred on hot, sultry days, and seemed to strike a note of warning, which filled natives and Europeans alike with a sense of awe and insecurity.[9] Thus if, beheld from some points of view, the Samoan islands appear an earthly paradise, from others they present the aspect, and emit the sounds, of an inferno.

[9] T. H. Hood, _Notes of a Cruise in H.M.S. "Fawn" in the Western Pacific_ (Edinburgh, 1863), p. 145; J. B. Stair, _op. cit._ pp. 41 _sq._

And with all their natural beauty and charm the islands cannot be said to enjoy a healthy climate. There is much bad weather, particularly during the winter months, when long and heavy rains, attended at times with high winds and gales, are frequent. The air is more moist than in Tahiti, and the vegetation in consequence is more rank and luxuriant.