The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead Volume Ii Part 19

Spirit-houses (_fale-aitu_) or temples were erected for some, but not all, of the cla.s.s of deities (_aitu_) which we are now considering. It was chiefly the war G.o.ds who were thus honoured. Such temples were built with the same materials and in the same style as the houses of men, with nothing to distinguish them from ordinary dwellings, except that they almost always stood on platforms of stones, which varied in height and size with the respect felt for the particular deity. They were usually situated on the princ.i.p.al public place or green (_malae_) of the village and surrounded by a low fence. Sometimes they were mere huts; yet being viewed as the abode of G.o.ds they were held sacred and regarded with great veneration by the Samoans in the olden time. Whatever emblems of deity were in possession of the village were always placed in these houses under the watchful care of keepers.[124] In one temple, for instance, might be seen a conch sh.e.l.l hung from the roof in a basket.

This sh.e.l.l the G.o.d was supposed to blow when he wished the people to go to war. In another a cup made of the sh.e.l.l of a coco-nut was suspended from the roof, and before it prayers were uttered and offerings presented. The cup was also used in an ordeal for the detection of theft. In a trial before chiefs the cup would be sent for, and each of the suspected culprits would lay his hand on it and say, "With my hand on this cup, may the G.o.d look upon me, and send swift destruction, if I took the thing which has been stolen." They firmly believed that it would be death to touch the cup and tell a lie.[125]

[124] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 226-228.

[125] G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 19.

The temples were always built by the united exertions of a whole family, village, or district.[126] For example, when the inhabitants of a village whose G.o.d was the cuttle-fish erected a new temple to that deity, every man, woman, and child in the village contributed something to it, if it was only a stick or a reed of thatch. While some of the villagers were drafted off to put up the house, the rest engaged in a free fight, which appears to have been considered as a necessary part of the proceedings. On this occasion many old scores were settled, and he who got most wounds was believed to have earned the special favour of the deity. With the completion of the temple the fighting ended, and ought not to be renewed for a year, till the anniversary of the building of the temple came round, when the worshippers were again at liberty to break each other's heads in honour of the divine cuttle-fish.[127]

[126] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 227 _sq._

[127] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 29 _sq._

At one place in Savaii there was a temple in which a priest constantly resided. The sick used to be carried to him in the temple and there laid down with offerings of fine mats. Thereupon the priest stroked the diseased part, and the patient was supposed to recover.[128] We hear of another temple in which fine mats were brought as offerings to the priests and stored up in large numbers among the temple treasures. Thus in time the temples might have ama.s.sed a considerable degree of wealth and might even, if economic progress had not been arrested by European intervention, have developed into banks. However, when the people were converted to Christianity, they destroyed this particular temple and dissipated the acc.u.mulated treasures in a single feast by way of celebrating their adhesion to the new faith.[129] Where the bat was the local deity, many bats used to flock about the temple in time of war.[130] Where the kingfisher received the homage of the people as the G.o.d of war, the old men of the village were wont to enter his temple in times of public emergency and address the kingfisher; and people outside could hear the bird replying, though, singularly enough, his voice was that of a man, and not that of a bird. But as usual the G.o.d was invisible.[131] In one place a temple of the great G.o.d Tangaloa was called "the House of the G.o.ds," and it was carefully shut up all round, the people thinking that, if this precaution were not taken, the G.o.ds would get out and in too easily and be all the more destructive.[132]

Such a temple might be considered rather as a prison than a house of the G.o.ds.

[128] G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 49.

[129] G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 55.

[130] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 56 _sq._

[131] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 54 _sq._

[132] G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 53.

To the rule that Samoan temples were built of the same perishable materials as ordinary houses a single exception is known. About ten miles inland from the harbour of Apia, in the island of Upolu, are the ruins of a temple, of which the central and side posts and the rafters were all constructed of stone. The ground plan seems to have resembled that of an ordinary Samoan house of the best style, forming an ellipse which measured fifty feet in one direction by forty feet in the other.

Two central pillars appear to have supported the roof, each fashioned of a single block of stone some thirteen feet high, twelve inches thick one way and nine inches the other. The rafters were in lengths of twelve feet and six feet, by four inches square. Of the outside pillars, which upheld the lower edge of the sloping roof, eighteen were seen standing by Pritchard, who has described the ruins. Each pillar stood three feet high and measured nine inches thick in one way by six inches in the other. Each had a notch or shoulder on the inner side for supporting the roof. Pillars and rafters were quarried from an adjoining bluff, distant only some fifty yards from the ruins. Some squared stones lying at the foot of the bluff seem to show that the temple was never completed. The site of the ruins is a flat about three acres in area. The natives call the ruins _Fale-o-le-Fe'e_, that is, the House of the Fe'e. This Fe'e was a famous war G.o.d of A'ana and Faleata, two native towns of Upolu; he was commonly incarnated in the cuttle-fish. As the Samoans were unacquainted with the art of cutting stones, and had no tools suitable for the work, they thought that this temple, with its columns and rafters of squared stone, must have been built by the G.o.ds, and they explained its unfinished state by alleging that the divine builders had quarrelled among themselves before they had brought the work to completion.[133]

[133] W. T. Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, pp.

119-121; Violette, "Notes d'un Missionnaire sur l'archipel de Samoa," _Les Missions Catholiques_, iii. (1870) p. 112; G.

Turner, _Samoa_, p. 31; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, p. 228; G.

Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 220.

For the sake of completeness I will mention another stone monument, of more imposing dimensions, which has been discovered in Samoa, though its origin and meaning are unknown. It stands on a tableland in the high mountainous interior of Upolu and appears to be not altogether easy of access. The discoverer, Mr. H. B. Sterndale, reached it by clambering up from what he describes as a broad and dangerous ravine. In making his way to the tableland he pa.s.sed through a gap which from a distance he had supposed to be a natural fissure in the rocks; but on arriving at it he discovered, to his surprise, that the gap was in fact a great fosse formed by the hand of man, being excavated in some places and built up at others, while on one side, next to the rise of the hill, it was further heightened by a parapet wall. When, pa.s.sing through the fosse, he issued upon the tableland, which is a level s.p.a.ce of some twenty acres in extent, he perceived the monument, "a truncated conical structure or _Heidenmauer_ of such huge dimensions as must have required the labour of a great mult.i.tude to construct. So little did I expect,"

he says, "in this neighbourhood to meet with any example of human architecture, and so rudely monstrous was the appearance of this cyclopean building, that from its peculiar form, and from the vegetation with which it was overgrown, I might have pa.s.sed it by, supposing it to have been a volcanic hillock, had not my attention been attracted by the stonework of the fosse. I hastened to ascend it. It was about twenty feet high by one hundred in diameter. It was circular with straight [perpendicular?] sides; the lower tiers of stone were very large, they were lava blocks, some of which would weigh at least a ton, which must have been rolled or moved on skids to their present places. They were laid in courses; and in two places near the top seemed to have been entrances to the inside, as in one appeared a low cave choked with rocks and tree roots. If there had been chambers within, they were probably narrow and still existing, as there was no sign of depression on the crown of the work, which was flat and covered with flat stones, among which grew both trees and shrubs. It is likely that it was not in itself intended as a place of defence, but rather as a base or platform upon which some building of importance, perhaps of timber, had been erected, no doubt in the centre of a village, as many foundations of a few feet high were near it. The fosse, when unbroken, and its inner wall entire, was probably crossed by a foot-bridge, to be withdrawn on the approach of an enemy; and the little gap, by which I had entered, closed, so that this must have been a place of great security. The Samoan natives, as far as I have been able to learn, have no tradition of what people inhabited this mountain fastness."[134]

[134] H. B. Sterndale, quoted by R. A. Sterndale, "Asiatic Architecture in Polynesia," _The Asiatic Quarterly Review_, x. (July-October 1890) pp. 347-350. The writer of this article reports the discoveries of his brother, Mr. Handley Bathurst Sterndale.

On an adjoining tableland, approached by a steep and narrow ridge, Mr.

Sterndale saw a great number of cairns of stone, apparently graves, disposed in rows among huge trees, the roots of which had overturned and destroyed very many of the cairns. Here, within the numerous trunks of a great spreading banyan tree, Mr. Sterndale found what he calls an inner chamber, or cell, about ten feet square, the floor being paved with flat stones and the walls built of enormous blocks of the same material, while the roof was composed of the twisted trunks of the banyan tree, which had grown into a solid arch and, festooned by creepers, excluded even the faint glimmer of twilight that dimly illuminated the surrounding forest. Disturbed by a light which the traveller struck to explore the gloomy interior, bats fluttered about his head. In the centre of the chamber he discovered a cairn, or rather cromlech, about four feet high, which was formed of several stones arranged in a triangle, with a great flat slab on the top. On the flat slab lay a large conch sh.e.l.l, white with age, and encrusted with moss and dead animalculae. The chamber or cell, enclosed by the trunks of the banyan-tree, might have been inaccessible, if it were not that, under the pressure of the tree-trunks, several of the great slabs composing the wall had been displaced, leaving a pa.s.sage.[135]

[135] H. B. Sterndale, _op. cit._ pp. 351 _sq._

What were these remarkable monuments? Mr. Sterndale believed the stone chamber to be the tomb of some man of authority in ancient days, the antiquity of the structure being vouched for by the great banyan-tree which had so completely overgrown it. This view is likely enough, and is confirmed by the large number of cairns about it, which appear to be sepulchral. But what was the ma.s.sive circular monument or platform, built of huge blocks of lava laid in tiers? From Mr. Sterndale's description it would seem that the structure closely resembled the tombs of the sacred kings of Tonga, though these tombs are oblong instead of circular. But they often supported a house or hut of wood and thatch; and Mr. Sterndale may well be right in supposing that the circular Samoan monument in like manner served as a platform to support a wooden building. In this connexion we must not forget that the typical Samoan house was circular or oval in contrast to the typical Tongan house, which was oblong. The openings, which seemed to lead into the interior of the monument, may have given access to the sepulchral chamber where the bodies of the dead were deposited.

Slight as are these indications, they apparently point to the use of the monument as a tomb. There is nothing, except perhaps its circular shape, to suggest that it was a temple of the sun. As no such stone buildings have been erected by the Samoans during the time they have been under European observation, it may be, as Mr. Sterndale supposed, that all the ruins described by him were the work of a people who inhabited the islands before the arrival of the existing race.[136]

[136] H. B. Sterndale, _op. cit._ p. 352.

-- 8. _Origin of the Samoan G.o.ds of Families, Villages, and Districts: Relation to Totemism_

If we ask, What was the origin of the peculiar Samoan worship of animals and other natural objects? the most probable answer seems to be that it has been developed out of totemism. The system is not simple totemism, for in totemism the animals, plants, and other natural objects are not worshipped, that is, they do not receive offerings nor are approached with prayers; in short, they are not G.o.ds, but are regarded as the kinsfolk of the men and women who have them for totems. Further, the local distribution of the revered objects in Samoa, according to villages and districts, differs from the characteristic distribution of totems, which is not by place but by social groups or clans, the members of which are usually more or less intermixed with each other in every district. It is true that in Samoa we hear of family or household G.o.ds as well as of G.o.ds of villages and districts, and these family G.o.ds, in so far as they consist of species of animals and plants which the worshippers are forbidden to kill or eat, present a close a.n.a.logy to totems. But it is to be observed that these family G.o.ds were, so to say, in a state of unstable equilibrium, it being always uncertain whether a man would inherit his father's or his mother's G.o.d or would be a.s.signed a G.o.d differing from both of them. This uncertainty arose from the manner of determining a man's G.o.d at birth. When a woman was in travail, the help of several G.o.ds was invoked, one after the other, to a.s.sist the birth; and the G.o.d who happened to be invoked at the moment when the child saw the light, was his G.o.d for life. As a rule, the G.o.d of the father's family was prayed to first; so that generally, perhaps, a man inherited the G.o.d of his father. But if the birth was tedious and difficult, the G.o.d of the mother's family was next invoked. When the child was born, the mother would call out, "To whom were you praying?"

and the G.o.d prayed to just before was carefully remembered, and his incarnation duly acknowledged throughout the future life of the child.[137] Such a mode of selecting a divine patron is totally different from the mode whereby, under pure totemism, a person obtains his totem; for his totem is automatically determined for him at birth, being, in the vast majority of cases, inherited either from his father or from his mother, without any possibility of variation or selection.

Lastly, the Samoan system differs from most, though not all, systems of totemism, in that it is quite independent of exogamy; in other words, there is no rule forbidding people who revere the same G.o.d to marry each other.

[137] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 17, 78 _sq._

Thus, while the Samoan worship of certain cla.s.ses of natural objects, especially species of animals, is certainly not pure totemism, it presents points of a.n.a.logy to that system, and might easily, we may suppose, have been developed out of it, the feeling of kinship for totemic animals and plants having been slowly transformed and sublimated into a religious reverence for the creatures and a belief in their divinity; while at the same time the clans, which were originally intermixed, gradually sorted out from each other and settled down in separate villages and districts. This gradual segregation of the clans may have been facilitated by a change from maternal to paternal descent of the totem; for when a man transmits his totem to his offspring, his descendants in the male line tend naturally to expand into a local group in which the totem remains constant from generation to generation instead of alternating with each successive generation, as necessarily happens when a man's children take their totem not from him but from their mother. That the Samoan worship of _aitu_ was developed in some such way out of simple totemism appears to have been the view of Dr.

George Brown, one of our best authorities on Samoan society and religion; for he speaks without reserve of the revered objects as totems.[138] A similar derivation of the Samoan _aitu_ was favoured by Dr. Rivers, who, during a visit to Samoa, found some evidence confirmatory of this conclusion.[139]

[138] G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, pp. 137, 218, 334.

[139] W. H. R. Rivers, "Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia," _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, x.x.xix. (1909) pp. 159 _sq._

-- 9. _The High G.o.ds of Samoa_

But besides these totemic G.o.ds of Samoa, as we may term them, which were restricted in the circle of their worshippers to particular families, villages, or districts, there were certain superior deities who were worshipped by all the people in common and might accordingly be called the national divinities of Samoa; indeed the worship of some of them was not confined to Samoa, but was shared by the inhabitants of other groups of islands in Polynesia. These high G.o.ds were considered the progenitors of the inferior deities, and were believed to have formed the earth and its inhabitants. They themselves dwelt in heaven, in the sea, on the earth, or under the earth; but they were invisible and did not appear to their worshippers in the form of animals or plants. They had no temples and no priests, and were not invoked like their descendants.[140]

[140] W. T. Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, pp.

111 _sq._; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 211 _sq._

Among these high G.o.ds the chief was Tangaloa, or, as he was sometimes called, Tangaloa-langi, that is, Tangaloa of the Skies. He was always spoken of as the princ.i.p.al G.o.d, the creator of the world and progenitor of the other G.o.ds and of mankind.[141] It is said that after existing somewhere in s.p.a.ce he made the heavens as an abode for himself, and that wishing to have also a place under the heavens he created this lower world (_Lalolangi_, that is, "Under the heavens"). According to one account, he formed the islands of Savaii and Upolu by rolling down two stones from the sky; but according to another story he fished them up from the depths of the sea on a fishing-hook. Next he made the _Fee_ or cuttle-fish, and told it to go down under the earth; hence the lower regions of sea or land are called _Sa he fee_ or "sacred to the cuttle-fish." In its turn the cuttle-fish brought forth all kinds of rocks, including the great one on which we live.[142] Another myth relates how Tangaloa sent down his son or daughter in the likeness of a bird called _turi_, a species of plover or snipe (_Charadrius fulvus_).

She flew about, but could find no resting-place, for as yet there was nothing but ocean; the earth had not been created or raised above the sea. So she returned to her father in heaven and reported her fruitless search; and at last he gave her some earth and a creeping plant. These she took down with her on her next visit to earth; and after a time the leaves of the plant withered and produced swarms of worms or maggots, which gradually developed into men and women. The plant which thus by its corruption gave birth to the human species was the convolvulus.

According to another version of the myth, it was in reply to the complaint of his daughter or son that the sky-G.o.d Tangaloa fished up the first islands from the bottom of the sea.[143]

[141] J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, p. 212.

[142] G. Turner, _Samoa_, p. 7.

[143] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 7 _sq._; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 212-214. The bird _turi_ or _tuli_ is spoken of by Turner as the daughter, but by Stair as the son, of Tangaloa.

According to Turner, the bird is a species of snipe; according to Stair, a species of plover. As to Tangaloa and the stories told about him, compare John Williams, _Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands_, pp. 469 _sq._; H. Hale, _Ethnography and Philology of the United States Exploring Expedition_, p. 22; Violette, "Notes d'un Missionnaire sur l'archipel de Samoa," _Les Missions Catholiques_, iii. (1870) pp. 111 _sq._; E. Tregear, _Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary_, p. 463, _s.v._ "Tangaroa."

Another of the national G.o.ds of Samoa was Mafuie, who was supposed to dwell in the subterranean regions and to cause earthquakes by shaking the pillar on which the earth reposes. In a tussle with the hero Ti'iti'i, who descended to the lower world to rob Mafuie of his fire, the earthquake G.o.d lost one of his arms, and the Samoans considered this as a very fortunate circ.u.mstance; for otherwise they said that, if Mafuie had had two arms, he would have shaken the world to pieces.[144]

It is said that during a shock of earthquake the natives used to rush from their houses, throw themselves upon the ground, gnaw the gra.s.s, and shriek in the most frantic manner to Mafuie to desist, lest he should shake the earth to bits.[145]

[144] Ch. Wilkes, _Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition_, ii. 131; W. T. Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, pp. 112, 114 _sqq._; G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp.

209-211; J. B. Stair, _Old Samoa_, pp. 238 _sq._

[145] J. Williams, _op. cit._ p. 379.

It seems to be doubtful whether among the Samoan G.o.ds are to be numbered the souls of deceased ancestors. Certainly the evidence for the practice of a worship of the dead is far less full and clear in Samoa than in Tonga. On this subject Dr. George Brown writes as follows: "Traces of ancestor worship are few and indistinct. The word _tupua_ is supposed by some to mean the deified spirits of chiefs, and to mean that they const.i.tuted a separate order from the _atua_, who were the original G.o.ds. The word itself is the name of a stone, supposed to be a petrified man, and is also generally used as the name of any image having some sacred significance, and as representing the body into which the deified spirit was changed. What appears certain is that ancestor worship had amongst the Samoans gradually given place to the worship of a superior order of supernatural beings not immediately connected with men, but having many human pa.s.sions and modes of action and life. There are, however, some cases which seem to point to ancestor worship in olden days, as in the case of the town of Matautu, which is said to have been settled by a colony from Fiji. Their princ.i.p.al deity was called Tuifiti, the King of Fiji. He was considered to be the head of that family, and a grove of trees, _ifilele_ (the green-heart of India), was sacred to him and could not be cut or injured in any way."[146] This G.o.d was supposed to be incarnate in a man who walked about, but he was never visible to the people of the place, though curiously enough he could be seen by strangers.[147]

[146] G. Brown, _Melanesians and Polynesians_, p. 223.

See also above, p. 192.

[147] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 62 _sq._ The town or village of Matautu is in the island of Savaii. According to G.

Turner, the sacred tree of Tuifiti was the _Afzelia bijuga_.