Buch lesen: «The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume 2 (of 3)», Seite 25

§ 6. Social Ranks, Taboo

Socially the Marquesans were divided into chiefs or nobles and commoners; but the chiefs seem to have possessed very little authority, and to have received few outward marks of deference and respect. A monarchical government in any proper sense of the word was unknown.⁹³³ The power of the chiefs, such as it was, rested mainly on their superior wealth, particularly on their landed property; for the larger their estates, the greater the number of the tenants whose services they could command. Hence the government has been called aristocratic and compared to the feudal system.⁹³⁴ In a fruitful season the chiefs had a right to a fourth part of the produce, and in other seasons a share according to circumstances. Their dignity was hereditary.⁹³⁵ There was no general government of the archipelago as a whole. Each island was quite independent of all the rest; and in every island there were several independent tribes, which were generally at war with each other.⁹³⁶

A powerful instrument in the hands of the nobles was the taboo or tapu, which, though it seems to have been originally a religious institution,⁹³⁷ was turned to political and economic account by the chiefs and priests acting in conjunction. One of our best authorities on the Marquesans describes the institution as a tool of despotism for the gratification of the passions and caprices of such as could wield it.⁹³⁸ But this is a somewhat one-sided and imperfect view to take of its scope. There is no doubt, as other good authorities on the Marquesans have pointed out, that in the absence of a strong government which could maintain order and protect life and property, the taboo to a great extent served the purposes which in more civilised society are fulfilled by laws.⁹³⁹ The taboo was a sacred interdiction, a breach of which was believed of itself to entail disastrous consequences on the transgressor. The interdiction might be either public or private. To give examples of public interdictions, when the quantity of breadfruit, on which the people depended for their subsistence, was from any cause seriously diminished in a district, the chief had the right to impose a taboo on bread-fruit trees for twenty months, during which no one might gather the fruit. This close time allowed the trees to recover their strength and fertility. Similarly, if fish were scarce, the chief might pronounce a taboo on the neighbouring bay, or a part of it, in order to allow the fish to multiply undisturbed and replenish the sea in the neighbourhood of human habitations. Again, in the prospect of a great festival, a chief might lay an interdict on pigs for two or three years in advance, in order that, when the time came, there might be plenty of pork for the multitude at the banquet. Similarly, when the paper-mulberry, from which the Marquesans made their bark-cloth, threatened to give out, the chief might lay the trees under an interdict for five years, at the end of which the crop was sure to be magnificent.⁹⁴⁰ In these and similar cases the taboo was of public utility by ensuring a proper supply of the necessaries of life. However, its imposition was not always guided by rational considerations, and hence it sometimes failed of its purpose. For example, so long as the bread-fruit was unripe, almost all kinds of fish were taboo and therefore might not be eaten, and this interdiction, instead of alleviating, tended naturally to aggravate the scarcity of food. The reason for the taboo was a curious superstition that if any one were to eat fish while the bread-fruit was unripe, the fruit would fall from the trees.⁹⁴¹

But the taboo also served a useful purpose by ensuring respect for private property, which is a fundamental condition of social prosperity. "The priests only," we are told, "can impose a general taboo, but every individual has a right to pronounce one upon his own property: this is done by declaring, if his wish be to preserve a breadfruit, or a cocoa tree, a house or a plantation, from robbery and destruction, that the spirit of his father or of some king, or indeed of any other person, reposes in this tree, or house, which then bears the name of the person, and nobody ventures to attack it. If any one is so irreligious as to break through a taboo, and should be convicted of it, he is called kikino; and the kikinos are always the first to be devoured by the enemy, at least they believe it to be so, nor is it impossible that the priests should so arrange matters as that this really happens."⁹⁴² Again, if a man's pig had been stolen, and he suspected who had done the deed, he would lay a taboo on the swine or other property of the thief by giving his own name, or the name of somebody else, to the animals or the trees or whatever it might be. After that, in the opinion of the people, the property so named was bewitched or haunted by the spirit of the person, whether alive or dead, whose name it bore; and this belief sometimes sufficed to compel the thief to abandon his possessions and to settle elsewhere.⁹⁴³ A wreath of leaves or a strip of white cloth attached to a house, a canoe, a fruit-tree, or other piece of property, was the symbol of taboo, and in ordinary circumstances was enough to protect it.⁹⁴⁴

But the taboo was an instrument which could be used capriciously to thwart, as well as to further, the course of justice. Thus we read how, under the French government of the islands, a wife set out for the police-office to complain of the ill-treatment to which she had been subjected by her husband. But scarcely had she put her foot outside the door, when her husband, aware of her intention and determined to frustrate it, called out after her, "The road from here to the police-office is your father." On hearing that, the woman at once stopped short, for under no circumstances would she dare to trample on the author of her being. On the contrary, she immediately roasted two little pigs and carried them to the tomb of her father as an offering to appease his ghost, which might reasonably be supposed to fret at the mere thought of being trodden under foot by his own daughter.⁹⁴⁵ This instructive example shows how closely the taboo was associated with the fear and worship of the dead; by bestowing the name of a dead person on a thing you rendered the thing inviolate, since thereby you placed it under the immediate protection of the ghost.

Among the multitude of taboos which were religiously observed by the Marquesans it is perhaps possible to detect a trace of totemism. Thus the sting ray fish was taboo to the tribe of Houmis. Not only would they not eat the fish, but they fled in horror if it were even shown to them. Their horror was explained by a tradition that once on a time a great chief of the tribe had been out fishing with his people, when a gigantic sting ray upset their canoes and gobbled them all up.⁹⁴⁶ This aversion to eating and even looking at a certain species of animal, together with a traditionary explanation based on an incident in the past history of the tribe, is very characteristic of totemism.

§ 7. Religion and Mythology

The consideration of taboo introduces us to the subject of religion; for, on the one hand, the foregoing evidence tends to establish a connexion between the institution of taboo and the doctrine of the human soul, and on the other hand some of our best authorities on the Marquesans have stated that the taboo was believed to be an expression of the will of the gods conveyed to the people through the mouth of a priest.⁹⁴⁷ The definition may be accepted, if under gods we include the spirits of the dead, who were worshipped by the Marquesans and lent their sanction, as we have just seen, to the taboo.

The Marquesan term for a god was the usual Polynesian word atua or, as it is sometimes spelled, etua. But their notion of divinity, as commonly happens, was vague. One of the earliest writers on their religion, the Russian navigator Krusenstern, informs us that "a confused notion of a higher being, whom they call Etua, does indeed exist among them, but of these there are several kinds; the spirit of a priest, of a king, or of any of his relations, being an etua. They likewise consider all Europeans as such; for as their ideas do not extend beyond their own horizon, they are firmly convinced that their ships come from the clouds; and they imagine that thunder is occasioned by the cannonading of vessels which float in the atmosphere, on which account they entertain a great dread of artillery."⁹⁴⁸ The atuas or deities of the Marquesans, we are told by another writer, "are numerous and vary in their character and powers. Besides those having dominion respectively, as is supposed, over the different elements and their most striking phenomena, there are atuas of the mountain and of the forest, of the sea-side and of the interior, atuas of peace and of war, of the song and of the dance, and of all the occupations and amusements of life. It is supposed by them that many of the departed spirits of men also become atuas: and thus the multiplicity of their gods is such, that almost every sound in nature, from the roaring of the tempest in the mountains and the bursting of a thunderbolt in the clouds, to the sighing of a breeze through the cocoa-nut tops and the chirping of an insect in the grass or in the thatch of their huts, is interpreted into the movements of a god."⁹⁴⁹

But the Marquesans, not content with deifying some men after death, deified others in their lifetime. Amongst them there is, or rather used to be, a class of living men "who claim the title and attributes of the Deity; not through a professed inspiration or possession by a supernatural influence or power, but in their own right of godship as those who control the elements, impart fruitfulness to the productions of the earth or smite them with blasting and sterility, and who exercise the prerogatives of the Deity in scattering disease and wielding the shafts of death. They are few in number, not more than one or two at farthest on an island, and live in a seclusion and mysticism somewhat in unison with their blasphemous pretensions. There is none at present in the near vicinity of Taiohae,⁹⁵⁰ though the former abode of such an individual is pointed out at the foot of a bold cliff, high in the mountains. The Rev. Mr. Crook gives the following account of an Atua, at the island of Tahuata, in the Windward or Marquesan group, while he resided there temporarily in 1797, as a missionary from the London Missionary Society: 'He is now of great age, and has lived from early life at Hanateiteina, in a large house surrounded by an enclosure called the A. In the house is an altar, and from the beams within and upon the trees around it are human carcasses, suspended with their heads downward and scalped. No one enters the premises but his servant, except when human sacrifices are offered. Of these, more are offered to him than to any other of their gods, and he frequently seats himself on an elevated scaffold in front of his house and calls for two or three at a time. He is invoked in all parts of the island, and offerings everywhere are made to him and sent to Hanateiteina.'"⁹⁵¹ Similarly a Catholic missionary tells us that in the island of Nukahiva he was personally acquainted with two living human deities, a priest and a priestess, both of whom, it was said, had the right to demand the sacrifice of human victims to themselves. He adds, however, that they did not abuse the right, and that nobody in the world appeared more affable and polite than these divinities; he even entertained hopes of one day baptizing the priest.⁹⁵² Of the reverence in which the priestly class in general was held by the people, Captain Porter remarks that "their priests are their oracles; they are considered but little inferior to their gods; to some they are greatly superior, and after their death they rank with the chief divinity."⁹⁵³

Little seems to be recorded of the theology and mythology of the Marquesans; but among their myths was the widespread Polynesian story of the origin of fire. Of old, it was said, fire used to be jealously guarded by Mahoike in the infernal regions. Hearing of its utility, Maui descended into the nether world to steal some of the element; but he failed to elude the vigilance of its guardian and was obliged to resort to force to extort the boon from him. In the struggle which ensued Mahoike lost an arm and a leg, and to save his remaining limbs he consented to give fire to the victorious Maui. At the same time he offered to rub it on Maui's leg; but Maui was too cunning to agree to that, for he knew that in that case the fire which he took to earth would not be sacred. Finally, Mahoike rubbed the fire on Maui's head, and said to him, "Go back to the place you came from and touch with your forehead all the trees except the keïka: all the trees will yield you fire."⁹⁵⁴

In the Marquesas there was a class of men called tauas, who were supposed to possess an hereditary gift of inspiration and to become deities after their death. They could cause a god to dwell within them. Often at night they might be heard conversing with the divinity in their bodies, the deity crying out in a shrill voice, while the man answered him in his own ordinary voice. Sometimes they would make a rustling noise with their fingers in the leaves, and say that they had been miraculously taken through the thatch of the house and brought back again by the door. In their fits of inspiration they became convulsed and glared fiercely with their eyes; then, with their hands quivering violently, they would run about, while they prophesied death to their enemies in squeaky tones, or demanded human victims for the god by whom they were possessed. With the function of prophecy they combined the office of physician or rather of exorciser. For every internal disorder was believed to be inflicted by some god, who had taken possession of the sufferer's person; and the tauas, or high priests, as we may call them, were called in to heal the patient by ridding him of the divinity who had entered into him. This they commonly did by feeling for the mischievous deity till they found him, when they smothered him between the palms of their hands.⁹⁵⁵ Sometimes the good physician would converse with the spirit whom he had thus caught between his hands, and would elicit from him in conversation the cause of the sickness, which usually consisted in some breach of taboo, such as a theft of bread-fruit or coco-nuts from a sacred tree. At the same time the affable spirit would reveal to the physician the penalty which the sick man must pay in order to expiate his crime and thereby ensure his recovery. A sacrifice of pigs would appear to have been usually deemed indispensable for the patient's complete convalescence; the animals were conveyed to a temple and there consumed by the priests for the benefit of the sufferer.⁹⁵⁶ The tauas or high priests were supposed to become gods after death; when one of them departed this life, it was essential for his deification that human victims should be sacrificed. The number of victims varied with the rank of the new deity; it was never less than seven, but oftener ten. Each victim was sacrificed for the sake of a particular part of the deity's body, as for his head, or his eyes, or his hair. To procure the necessary tale of victims, predatory expeditions were undertaken against the tribes in neighbouring valleys.⁹⁵⁷

§ 8. The Soul, Death, and Funeral Customs

Like most savages, the Marquesans thought that they possessed souls which could quit their bodies and wander far away in dreams. Thus a young girl once related how, the night before, she had sailed in a splendid canoe to Tiburones, a mythical paradise to the west of Nukahiva; there she had seen beautiful things such as do not exist here on earth. "There," said she, "the trees are very tall, and the people very handsome; there they sing songs to music sweeter than ours. Ah! when shall I be able to return to Tiburones?" On another occasion a woman's soul appeared to a priest to inform him that she had committed the heinous crime of eating a fowl, but that she would expiate the sacrilege by an early death. The French authorities summoned both the priest and the woman to the bar of justice. There the priest stuck to it that he had received the revelation, and the woman expressed her regret for the escapade of which her soul had been guilty without her knowledge. It was necessary to reassure her on the subject of her soul's rash act and melancholy prediction, otherwise she might have fulfilled the prophecy by refusing food and dying outright.⁹⁵⁸

At death the soul was supposed to depart from the body by the mouth or the nose; hence in order to delay its departure and so to prolong the life of its owner, affectionate relatives used to stop his mouth and nostrils, thus accelerating the event which they wished to retard.⁹⁵⁹

The Marquesans have, or used to have, a sovereign contempt for death, and do not fear its approach. When a native felt that he must die, he took it calmly and ordered his coffin, which he caused to be brought to the house while he was still in life. The coffin is hollowed out of a single log and resembles a canoe. If the sick man after all recovered, the coffin was kept in a corner of the house till it was wanted. No attempt was made to hide it or to disguise its purpose. Should a stranger ask, "What is that?" he would be told, "It is So-and-so's coffin"; though So-and-so might be present and within hearing.⁹⁶⁰ Nevertheless, when it was clear that a serious illness was about to terminate fatally, and that all the efforts of the priestly physician or sorcerer to avert the inevitable end were fruitless, the house would be filled by wailing women, who danced naked round the mat of the dying man, cutting themselves with sharp stones or shark's teeth as in a frenzy, and uttering the most piercing lamentations. This lasted till the moment of death, when all united in a terrific and prolonged howl.⁹⁶¹ Similar demonstrations of sorrow were continued or renewed after the decease. If the departed was a married man and his widow survived him, she would bruise her flesh with a stone, scratch it with her nails, and cut her forehead, cheeks, and breast with shark's teeth or splinters of bamboo till the blood trickled down.⁹⁶² Captain Porter saw a woman with deep wounds still unhealed, which she had inflicted on her neck, breast, and arms for the loss of her husband, who had been devoured by a shark.⁹⁶³ After the death, too, the widow would place herself in front of the corpse, and three or four girls would surround her; whereupon they would all engage in a lascivious dance, with outstretched arms, tripping in cadence to the accompaniment of a funeral hymn or lamentation, which was chanted by a choir in honour of the dead. After executing the dance, which would seem to have been intended to attract the attention of the deceased and recall his wandering spirit, they would stoop over the corpse, and cry, "He has not stirred! He stirs not. Alas! alas! he is no more." It was only after they had thus practised their seductions in vain on the dead man that the widow gave way to her frantic outburst of sorrow by mauling herself with a sort of saw.⁹⁶⁴ This funeral dance a widow was apparently expected to renew in public at every festival for months after the death. At a festival, which he called the Feast of Calabashes, Melville saw four or five old women, stark naked, holding themselves erect and leaping stiffly into the air, with their arms pressed close to their sides, like sticks bobbing up and down in water. They preserved the utmost gravity of countenance, and continued their strange movements without a single moment's cessation, though they did not appear to attract the observation of the crowd around them. The American was told that these dancing or leaping figures "were bereaved widows, whose partners had been slain in battle many moons previously; and who, at every festival, gave public evidence in this manner of their calamities."⁹⁶⁵ When the deceased was a chief, the lamentations and the dances went on day and night for some time. A priestess or sorceress, in festal costume, led the choir of female mourners and vaunted the exploits of the dead warrior, recalling his mighty deeds and the incidents of his life. The dances were accompanied by the music of drums. The crowd of spectators, in their best array, ate and drank to repletion, and, flushed with liquor, abandoned themselves to excesses which transformed the mortuary chamber, lit up at night by smoky torches, into a scene of low debauchery. From time to time remarks of a gross nature were addressed to the dead man on the helpless condition to which he was reduced; and now and then the women would slash their faces and breasts with splinters of bamboo in the usual fashion. The orgy went on till the provisions were completely exhausted, which might not be for a considerable time, since hecatombs of pigs were sometimes slaughtered for the purpose of celebrating the obsequies of a chief in a manner worthy of his rank.⁹⁶⁶

The soul of the dead was believed not to abandon the corpse definitely for two days after the death. In the interval it was thought to haunt the house, watching the conduct of the survivors, and ready to act as a friend or a foe according as the mourners behaved towards the deceased and his remains. Hence, to keep the ghost in good humour it was customary to offer him food, in the shape of breadfruit paste and other dainties, which were wrapped up in leaves, hung on the edge of the coffin, and frequently renewed.⁹⁶⁷ On the third night after the death a priest, stepping out on the terrace in front of the house, implored the wandering soul of the deceased to depart; and by way of enforcing the request a band of men, armed with spears and other lethal weapons, went about in the outer darkness, beating the bushes and stabbing the thatched roofs of the houses in order to drive the lingering ghost away. If, roused by the clamour, the dogs began to bark, the priest would say, "The soul is departing."⁹⁶⁸

From the moment of death till the priests had completed the litany or songs chanted on such occasions, all the assembled people fasted, no one touched the provisions collected for the funeral feast, and no fire might be kindled within sight of the house.⁹⁶⁹ The litany consisted in the mumbling of a long speech in an unintelligible language accompanied by the constant beating of drums.⁹⁷⁰ Among the victuals provided for the funeral feast special importance appears to have been attached to the head of a pig, which was cut off and attached to the bier.⁹⁷¹ We are told that the professed intention was thereby "to propitiate the gods, and obtain for the deceased a safe and peaceable passage through the lower regions." But, in point of fact the priest took possession of the pig's head and devoured it secretly, leaving only a small piece of it under a stone.⁹⁷²

When death had taken place, the body was washed, neatly dressed in garments of new cloth, and laid on a bier constructed of bamboos or of spears and other warlike weapons, fastened together with wicker-work and spread with mats.⁹⁷³ If the deceased was a chief and a warrior, his body would be arrayed in his finest ornaments, and his club, plumed helmet, necklaces of whale's teeth, and skulls of the enemies he had killed, would be laid beside him. Thus exposed, the corpse might be kept for weeks in the house, where, in spite of the stench, the family continued to eat, drink, and sleep beside it. Sometimes, however, and perhaps more usually, the body was transferred to a small house or shed adjoining the dwelling of the deceased, where it received the necessary attentions. Finally, it was removed to a little hut or shed, where the bier was supported on posts under a thatched roof. To be buried in the earth was a mark of ignominy reserved at most for a young girl of the lowest rank who had died childless. Beside the corpse food was hung for the use of the ghost, it might be fish, roast pork, or coco-nuts, and there it was allowed to remain till it rotted and fell to the ground; none but children would be greedy or impious enough to partake of the sacred victuals, and that only in the greatest secrecy. Often the house in which the death had taken place was tabooed and abandoned after the remains had been deposited in their last home.⁹⁷⁴

The bodies of the dead were regularly subjected to a kind of embalmment, which had the effect of preserving them for a longer or shorter time. As soon as decomposition appeared imminent, the corpse was stripped of its ornaments and placed in the usual canoe-shaped coffin, the trunk being propped up so as to facilitate the work of the embalmers. The task of embalming was entrusted to women, relations of the deceased, who rubbed the body daily with coco-nut oil and perfumes. They had no intercourse with the rest of the family, and took their meals apart without ever washing their hands. According to one account, the anointment was performed by night, while during the day the body was exposed to the sun on the stone platform of the house. The products of decomposition were carefully received in vessels and carried away to the place of sepulture; and the corpse was gradually eviscerated through the rectum. The friction was continued until the desiccated body was reduced to the state of a mummy, though sometimes, in spite of all precautions, it crumbled into dust. If the operation was successful, the mummy, wrapt in many bandages, was covered by a second canoe attached to the first, and was then placed on a scaffold in a morai or sanctuary specially consecrated to it. But sometimes the mummy was fastened up to the roof or wall of the house wherein the person had died; and it might be kept there even for years. When it was deposited in a morai, no woman was allowed to approach it under pain of death.⁹⁷⁵ Sometimes the head was detached from the body and kept in the house, where it was treated with respect. Sometimes it was carried away and hidden in some almost inaccessible cave in the mountains or beside the sea. This was done as a precaution to save the skulls from falling into the hands of enemies, who were eager to bear them off as trophies.⁹⁷⁶

Each family had its own morai or burial-place, where the mouldering bones or mummies were finally deposited and left to decay.⁹⁷⁷ Such family cemeteries were scattered about the valleys; the choice of a site seems to have been determined by no special rule.⁹⁷⁸ The morai or burial-place of ordinary people was near their houses, and not far from it was a taboo-house, where the men feasted on the flesh of pigs.⁹⁷⁹ But the cemeteries of chiefs were situated in the interior of the valleys, often so deeply imbedded in dense foliage that it was not easy to find them without the guidance of a native.⁹⁸⁰ Similarly we are told that the cemeteries (morais) of priests lay quite apart from all dwellings.⁹⁸¹

The ordinary form of a Marquesan morai or burial-place seems to have been a thatched shed erected on a square or oblong platform of stones, exactly resembling the stone platforms on which the Marquesan houses were regularly built. Thus Vincendon-Dumoulin and Desgraz say that "the morais, funeral monuments where the bodies are deposited, are erected on a stone platform, the base of all Nukahivan edifices."⁹⁸² Again, describing what he calls "a picturesque morai," Radiguet observes, "Four posts, erected on a platform, supported a small plank covered with a roof of leaves. Under this roof could be seen the remains of a skeleton, perhaps that of the daughter-in-law of the neighbouring house… At the two ends of the platform two upright stones, about ten feet high, and resembling the Breton menhirs, formed an exceptional ornament to this morai, which the bushes were in course of invading and the storms of demolishing."⁹⁸³ Again, Stewart describes as follows what he calls "a depository of the dead": "It stands in the midst of a beautiful clump of trees, and consists of a platform of heavy stone work, twenty feet or more square and four or five high, surmounted in the centre by eight or ten posts arranged in the shape of a grave, and supporting at a height of six or seven feet a long and narrow roof of thatch. Close beneath this was the body enclosed in a coffin."⁹⁸⁴ Again, in the island of Tahuata (Santa Christina), Bennett describes a chief's burial-place as follows: "A low but extensive stone platform, beneath the shade of a venerable fau-tree, marks the more consecrated ground; and on this is erected a wooden hut, containing an elevated trough, shaped as a canoe, and holding the perfect skeleton of the late chief. In front of the sepulchre are two hideous wooden idols, and several bundles of coco-nut leaves."⁹⁸⁵ The shed, which was erected on the stone platform, and under which the body rested on a bier, seems to have consisted for the most part simply of a thatched roof supported on wooden posts.⁹⁸⁶ Sometimes, however, instead of a simple shed, open on all sides, a small house resembling the ordinary houses of the natives appears to have been erected for the reception of the corpse or mummy. Thus in the island of Tahuata (Santa Christina) Bennett describes a burial-place as follows: "The most picturesque mausoleum we noticed was that which contained the corpse of one of Eutiti's children. It was placed on the summit of an isolated hill, rising from the bosom of a well-wooded savannah, and was covered entirely with the leaves of the fan-palm. The posterior, or tallest wall, was twelve feet high, the anterior was low, closed by a mat, and decorated with six wooden pillars, covered with stained cinnet and white cloth. Strips of tapa [bark-cloth], fixed to a wand, fluttered on the roof, to denote that the spot was tabooed; and for the same purpose, a row of globular stones, each the size of a football, and whitened with coral lime, occupied the top of a low but broad stone wall which encircled the building. The interior contained nothing but the bier on which the corpse was laid."⁹⁸⁷ From the sketch which Bennett gives of this particular mausoleum, as he calls it, we gather that the sepulchral hut containing the body was not raised on a stone platform, but built on the flat.