The Fijians Part 14

[Pageheader: SOOTHSAYERS]

In this respect Fijian witchcraft was immeasurably superior to that of other primitive races who employ similar methods. The Gold Coast tribes slay men by spells of roots tied together with a curse;[65] the priest-king Laibou of the Wa-Nandi tried to annihilate the Uganda force sent against him by leaving a snake tied to a dog near their camp.[66]

The Swahili bury medicine at the door of the hut by which the doomed person must pa.s.s.[67] But in none of these cases are the excreta of the victim necessary, nor does the superst.i.tion react in the interest of public health.

Kinda and Yalovaki

Not less important in the native polity were the wizard's services in the detection of crime. This was a special branch of the black art, and the _ndaukinda_ seldom engaged in the deadly business of _ndraunikau_.

When property was stolen the owner took a present to the seer, and told the story of his loss. The seer, bidding the man p.r.o.nounce the names of those whom he suspected, fell into deep abstraction, and presently checked the man at a certain name, announcing that an itching in his side or this finger or toe proved the person named to be the thief. If the seer was a member of the tribe he would dispense with the names, and would begin to twitch convulsively and himself p.r.o.nounce the thief's name. If he was lucky enough to hit upon the right man--and an intimate knowledge of the characters and relations of his fellow-tribesmen often enabled him to do so--the offender would confess at once, for to brazen out a theft against the evidence of a seer's little finger demanded an effrontery that no Fijian could boast. The proper course for a person wrongfully accused by a seer was shown in the case of Mbuli Yasawa, who in 1885 was charged with embezzling the district funds. It appeared that the funds in question were intact, but that, through an error in book-keeping, the scribe had led the people to believe that a considerable sum had been abstracted. Persons were deputed to consult a noted seer, called Ndrau-ni-ivi, whose finger tingled at the mention of the Mbuli's name. The poor Mbuli, knowing for the best of reasons that he was innocent, instead of taking the obvious course of submitting his books to be audited by the magistrate, presented a larger fee to a rival seer to "press down" (_mbika_) that given to Ndrau-ni-ivi, and triumphantly vindicated his character by the verdict of his pract.i.tioner's great toe. Upon this evidence he prosecuted his slanderers for defamation before the Provincial Court. The cunning and knack of clever guessing necessary for the lucrative calling of the seer formerly made the business a monopoly of the priests.

The _yalovaki_ (soul-stealing) was an even surer method of detecting crime. It was the mildest form of trial by ordeal ever devised, but no boiling water or hot ploughshare could have been more effective. If the evidence was strong, but the suspect obstinately refused to confess, complaint was made to the chief, who summoned the accused, and called for a scarf. Usually the man confessed at the bare mention of the instrument, but if he did not, the cloth was waved over his head until his spirit (_yalo_) was entangled in it, and it was then folded together and nailed to the prow of the chief's canoe. Then the man went mad, for the mad are they whose soul have been stolen away.

Charms

There is no unusual feature in the Fijians' belief in charms. They were carried to avert calamities of all kinds, but princ.i.p.ally shipwreck and wounds in battle. A mountain girl, who had never before seen the sea, was once a fellow-pa.s.senger with me in a stormy pa.s.sage to Suva. A heavy lurch of the little vessel threw her sprawling on the deck, and I noticed that, while the other natives were bantering her, she was crying bitterly. Her fall had disengaged a pebble from her hand which had been given her as a talisman against death by drowning. Charms have their uses in litigation I had once before me a little old man who enjoyed some reputation for skill in witchcraft. Being sentenced for some petty offence, he solemnly removed his loin-cloth, and took from between his thighs a little bag, containing dried root, and flung it away with a gesture of contempt, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the enlightened native police, who explained that it was an amulet against conviction.

[Pageheader: TRAPPING THE LITTLE G.o.dS]

The Kalou-rere

The _kalou-rere_ differed from other religious observances in that, though it was practised in most parts of the group, either under its prevailing name or that of _ndomindomi_, the form was universal. The votaries were youths of the male s.e.x only: there was no recognized priesthood; the cult was rather one of the effervescences of youth which in England find their vent in the football field and the amateur stage.

The object of the rites was to allure the "Little G.o.ds"--the _Luve-ni-wai_ (Children of the Water)--a timid race of Immortals, to leave the sea, and take up their temporary abode among their votaries on land. Beyond the gift of immunity from wounds in battle, and such pleasure as may be drawn from the excitement of the secret rites, it is not clear that the Little People conferred any boon upon their worshippers commensurate with the labour and privations that worship entailed, but more than this has been urged against Freemasonry by its critics.

In a retired place near the sea a small house was built, and enclosed with a rustic trellis fence, tied at the crossings with a small-leafed vine, and interrupted by long poles decorated with streamers. Within the enclosure a miniature temple was erected to contain a consecrated cocoanut, or some other trifle. No effort was spared to make the place attractive to the shy little G.o.ds; the roof of the house was draped with _masi_; the wall studded with crab-claws, and span-long yams and painted cocoanuts were disposed about the foundations that they might eat and drink.

A party of twenty or thirty youths spent several weeks in this enclosure, drumming every morning and evening on the ground with hollow bamboos to attract the sea-G.o.ds. During this long period they observed certain tabus, and spent the days in complete idleness. Williams heard of a party who, to facilitate the landing of the _Luve-ni-wai_, built a jetty of loose stones for some distance into the sea. When they were believed to be ascending, flags were set up in some of the inland pa.s.ses to turn back any of them that might try to make for the forests inland.

On the great day a Nanga-like enclosure was made with long poles piled to a height of twelve inches and covered with green boughs, spears bearing streamers being set up at the four angles. Within this the lads sat gaily draped, with their votive offerings of clubs and sh.e.l.ls before them, thumping their bamboo drums on the earth. Presently the officers of the lodge were seen approaching headed by the _Vuninduvu_, a sort of past-master, armed with an axe, and capering wildly; the _Lingu-viu_ (Fan-holder) circling madly round the drummers, waving a great fan; the _Mbovoro_, dancing and carrying in his hand the cocoanut which he is about to break on his bent knee; the _Lingu-vatu_, pounding his nut with a stone. Amid a terrific din of shrieks and cat-calls the G.o.ds entered into the _Raisevu_, who thereafter was regarded as a peculiarly favoured person. Then all went mad; the _Vakathambe_ shouted his challenge; the _Matavutha_ shot at him, or at a nut which he held under his arm, and all became possessed with the same frenzy as the inspired priests. One after another they ran to the _Vuninduvu_ to be struck on the belly, believing themselves invulnerable, and if the _Vuninduvu_ was over-simple or over-zealous he sometimes did them mortal injury.

Williams, who gives the above description of the rites, says that in the old days the orgy was free from licentiousness: we shall see how they have deteriorated since the conversion of the people to Christianity.

[Pageheader: THE CAREER OF A _RAISEVU_]

On the western coast of Vitilevu the favourite ascending place of the _Luve-ni-wai_ is marked with a large cairn of little stones, which has grown year by year with the stones flung upon it by each worshipper and by every pa.s.ser-by. The more republican inst.i.tutions of the western tribes permit a commoner to rise to considerable influence, and not a few of these great commoners can trace their eminent career to the youthful distinction of having been the _Raisevu_. The combination of hysteria and cunning and impudence necessary to that distinction raised Nemani Ndreu from the lowly position of a commoner of a Nandi village to be the official _Roko Tui_ of Mba. At the date of annexation in 1874 he was _Tui Rara_ (Town-crier); in the heathen outbreak two years later, he was naturally found upon the winning side, and his services as guide and spy were so useful that he rapidly rose in Government favour. I was present at the council when his appointment to the highest office open to Fijians was announced. In an impa.s.sioned speech to a cold and hostile audience he suddenly burst into tears that coursed down his cheeks and impeded his utterance, and his most inveterate enemies seemed to be affected. As we left the council-house he turned to me, with the tears still wet upon his cheeks, and said, "How then? Didn't I do that well?"

It is unnecessary to add that he was an eminent local preacher.

The _kalou-rere_ was one of the few offences which, under British law, was punished with flogging, a harsh provision if the rites were as innocent as Williams represents. The truth is that they have changed sadly for the worse. The rites are still occasionally practised in secret, but though the ritual is much the same, it may be doubted whether any of the votaries believe that they are alluring the "Little G.o.ds" from the sea. A few lawless young chiefs get a band of roysterers together in a secluded place, and there go through a travesty of the rites as an excuse for nocturnal raids upon the hen-roosts of the neighbouring trader. Usually an equal number of girls are induced to visit them by night under the pretence of practising heathen dances, which are, in reality, mere orgies of debauchery. In one of these cases, reported in detail by the late Mr. Heffernan, stipendiary magistrate of Ba, the frenzy of the votaries was quite genuine, but it found vent in sensuality, the dancers having access to their partners in a set measure controlled by words of command.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 45: Buro-tu, or Bulo-tu as the Samoans and Tongans call it, is Buro, or Bouro or Bauro with the suffix _tu_, signifying high rank, which is found in the words _tu-i_ (king) and _tu-ranga_ (chief). There are two places of that name in the West, namely, Bauro (S. Christoval) in the Solomon Islands, and Bouro in the Malay Archipelago. Quiros heard of an Indian, "a great pilot," who had come from Bouro when he visited Taumaco in the Duff Group in 1606, and Mr. Hale, the philologist in Wilkes Expedition, tried to establish the ident.i.ty of the Malay Bouro with the sacred island, by a.s.suming that the "arrows tipped with silver," which Quiros says were in possession of this native, showed that there was communication between Taumaco and the Malay Islands. But, as Dr. Guppy points out (_The Solomon Islands_, p. 277), the Bouro there alluded to must have been S. Christoval, which was only 300 miles distant, and the silver arrows a relic of the Spanish expedition to that island forty years before. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that S.

Christoval was named Bouro by emigrants from the Malay Island after their old home, and that S. Christoval was a halting-place of the race on their journey eastward.]

[Footnote 46: The disgrace of dying a natural death is so keenly felt that the bodies of the Tui Thakau of Somosomo, and the Rokovaka of Kandavu, who die naturally, are struck with a stone on the forehead or clubbed, to avert the contempt of the G.o.ds [Waterhouse].]

[Footnote 47: Thus the Fijians explain recovery from trance.]

[Footnote 48: An edible root related to the yam.]

[Footnote 49: There are many poems relating to the G.o.ds at Ndelakurukuru. They are all well known at Namata, where they are performed on great occasions, such as the feast made on the departure of the Thakaundrove chiefs.]

[Footnote 50: The Chief of Lakemba used to a.s.sure the missionaries that they could do him no greater favour than to give him a wooden coffin, that his body might not be trampled on [Williams].]

[Footnote 51: The indigenous fly is nearly extinct. He is larger than the European species that has supplanted him, and his buzz is louder.]

[Footnote 52: Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 21.]

[Footnote 53: _The Polynesian Race_, pp. 44, 167, 168.]

[Footnote 54: This was the Fijian deluge. There are traditions of great floods within historical times. One of them, about 1793, purged the land of the great Lila epidemic. The waters rose over the housetops; hundreds were swept away, and the silt left by the receding waters raised the alluvial flats of the Rewa river several feet, a statement that is borne out by the fact that a network of mangrove roots underlies the alluvial soil at a depth of four or five feet. This flood was preceded by a great cyclone. Traditions of great floods are preserved by almost every primitive people.]

[Footnote 55: Dengei was supposed to inhabit a cavern in Nakauvandra.]

[Footnote 56: _Oliva_ is the name of Captain Olive, formerly Commandant of the Armed Constabulary; _virimbaita_ is "to hedge in." The other words mean nothing.]

[Footnote 57: The alignments at Carnac in Brittany and Merivale on Dartmoor are suggestive of the rites of the Mbaki.]

[Footnote 58: _Journal Anthrop. Inst.i.t._, Vol. xiv, p. 29.]

[Footnote 59: _Internationales Archiv. fur Ethnographie_, Bd. II, 1889.]

[Footnote 60: Probably Nemani Ndreu, whose career I have described.]

[Footnote 61: Williams's _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 224.]

[Footnote 62: Williams's _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 224.]

[Footnote 63: Such a one was Kaikai of Singatoka, whose exploits as a prison-breaker were set forth in my _Indiscretions of Lady Asenath_.]

[Footnote 64: In 1902, under the flooring stones of a prehistoric kistvaen near the Sepulchral Circle on Pousson's Common, Dartmoor, two tresses of human hair were discovered, neatly coiled up. They were doubtless the record of witchcraft practised within the nineteenth century, on the same plan as that of the Fijians.]

[Footnote 65: _Nine Years at the Gold Coast_, by Rev. D. Kemp.]

[Footnote 66: _Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger_, by Lieut.

Vandeleur.]

[Footnote 67: _East Africa_, by W. W. Fitzgerald.]

CHAPTER VIII

POLYGAMY

From the writings of early travellers it might be inferred that the Fijians practised polygamy to the same extent as the Arabs and other Mahommedan nations, but a moment's reflection will show that this was impossible. The high chiefs, it is true, were accustomed to cement alliances by taking a daughter of every new ally into their households, and these women with their handmaids, who were also the chief's potential concubines, swelled their harems inordinately; and as travellers were always the guests of the chiefs, and described things as they found them, these exceptional households were taken as fair samples of Fijian family life. But inasmuch as the Fijians could not draw upon other races for women, and the s.e.xes of the children born throughout the group numbered about the same, to say nothing of the practice of female infanticide, it is obvious that for every addition to the chief's harem, some commoner had to go without a wife.

This view is borne out by the missionary, James Calvert, who, in defending the abolition of polygamy by the missionaries, says: "Polygamy is actually confined to comparatively few. It is only the wealthy and powerful who can afford to maintain such an expensive indulgence."