Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (811 page)

It chances that the only rivals of Monseigneur and his mission in the Marquesas were certain of these brown-skinned evangelists, natives from Hawaii.  I know not what they thought of Father Dordillon: they are the only class I did not question; but I suspect the prelate to have regarded them askance, for he was eminently human.  During my stay at Tai-o-hae, the time of the yearly holiday came round at the girls’ school; and a whole fleet of whale-boats came from Ua-pu to take the daughters of that island home.  On board of these was Kauwealoha, one of the pastors, a fine, rugged old gentleman, of that leonine type so common in Hawaii.  He paid me a visit in the
Casco
, and there entertained me with a tale of one of his colleagues, Kekela, a missionary in the great cannibal isle of Hiva-oa.  It appears that shortly after a kidnapping visit from a Peruvian slaver, the boats of an American whaler put into a bay upon that island, were attacked, and made their escape with difficulty, leaving their mate, a Mr. Whalon, in the hands of the natives.  The captive, with his arms bound behind his back, was cast into a house; and the chief announced the capture to Kekela.  And here I begin to follow the version of Kauwealoha; it is a good specimen of Kanaka English; and the reader is to conceive it delivered with violent emphasis and speaking pantomime.

‘“I got ‘Melican mate,” the chief he say.  “What you go do ‘Melican mate?” Kekela he say.  “I go make fire, I go kill, I go eat him,” he say; “you come to-mollow eat piece.”  “I no
want
eat ‘Melican mate!” Kekela he say; “why you want?”  “This bad shippee, this slave shippee,” the chief he say.  “One time a shippee he come from Pelu, he take away plenty Kanaka, he take away my son.  ‘Melican mate he bad man.  I go eat him; you eat piece.”  “I no
want
eat ‘Melican mate!” Kekela he say; and he
cly
- all night he cly!  To-mollow Kekela he get up, he put on blackee coat, he go see chief; he see Missa Whela, him hand tie’ like this.  (
Pantomime
.)  Kekela he cly.  He say chief:- “Chief, you like things of mine? you like whale-boat?”  “Yes,” he say.  “You like file-a’m?” (fire-arms).  “Yes,” he say.  “You like blackee coat?”  “Yes,” he say.  Kekela he take Missa Whela by he shoul’a’ (shoulder), he take him light out house; he give chief he whale-boat, he file-a’m, he blackee coat.  He take Missa Whela he house, make him sit down with he wife and chil’en.  Missa Whela all-the-same pelison (prison); he wife, he chil’en in Amelica; he cly - O, he cly.  Kekela he solly.  One day Kekela he see ship.  (
Pantomime
.)  He say Missa Whela, “Ma’ Whala?”  Missa Whela he say, “Yes.”  Kanaka they begin go down beach.  Kekela he get eleven Kanaka, get oa’ (oars), get evely thing.  He say Missa Whela, “Now you go quick.”  They jump in whale-boat.  “Now you low!”  Kekela he say: “you low quick, quick!”  (
Violent pantomime
,
and a change indicating that the narrator has left the boat
and returned to the beach
.)  All the Kanaka they say, “How!  ‘Melican mate he go away?” - jump in boat; low afta.  (
Violent pantomime, and change again to boat
.)  Kekela he say, “Low quick!”‘

Here I think Kauwealoha’s pantomime had confused me; I have no more of his
ipsissima verba
; and can but add, in my own less spirited manner, that the ship was reached, Mr. Whalon taken aboard, and Kekela returned to his charge among the cannibals.  But how unjust it is to repeat the stumblings of a foreigner in a language only partly acquired!  A thoughtless reader might conceive Kauwealoha and his colleague to be a species of amicable baboon; but I have here the anti-dote.  In return for his act of gallant charity, Kekela was presented by the American Government with a sum of money, and by President Lincoln personally with a gold watch.  From his letter of thanks, written in his own tongue, I give the following extract.  I do not envy the man who can read it without emotion.

‘When I saw one of your countrymen, a citizen of your great nation, ill-treated, and about to be baked and eaten, as a pig is eaten, I ran to save him, full of pity and grief at the evil deed of these benighted people.  I gave my boat for the stranger’s life.  This boat came from James Hunnewell, a gift of friendship.  It became the ransom of this countryman of yours, that he might not be eaten by the savages who knew not Jehovah.  This was Mr. Whalon, and the date, Jan. 14, 1864.

As to this friendly deed of mine in saving Mr. Whalon, its seed came from your great land, and was brought by certain of your countrymen, who had received the love of God.  It was planted in Hawaii, and I brought it to plant in this land and in these dark regions, that they might receive the root of all that is good and true, which is
love.

‘1. Love to Jehovah.

‘2. Love to self.

‘3. Love to our neighbour.

‘If a man have a sufficiency of these three, he is good and holy, like his God, Jehovah, in his triune character (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), one-three, three-one.  If he have two and wants one, it is not well; and if he have one and wants two, indeed, is not well; but if he cherishes all three, then is he holy, indeed, after the manner of the Bible.

‘This is a great thing for your great nation to boast of, before all the nations of the earth.  From your great land a most precious seed was brought to the land of darkness.  It was planted here, not by means of guns and men-of-war and threatening.  It was planted by means of the ignorant, the neglected, the despised.  Such was the introduction of the word of the Almighty God into this group of Nuuhiwa.  Great is my debt to Americans, who have taught me all things pertaining to this life and to that which is to come.

‘How shall I repay your great kindness to me?  Thus David asked of Jehovah, and thus I ask of you, the President of the United States.  This is my only payment - that which I have received of the Lord, love - (aloha).’

CHAPTER XI - LONG-PIG - A CANNIBAL HIGH PLACE

Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, nothing so surely unmortars a society; nothing, we might plausibly argue, will so harden and degrade the minds of those that practise it.  And yet we ourselves make much the same appearance in the eyes of the Buddhist and the vegetarian.  We consume the carcasses of creatures of like appetites, passions, and organs with ourselves; we feed on babes, though not our own; and the slaughter-house resounds daily with screams of pain and fear.  We distinguish, indeed; but the unwillingness of many nations to eat the dog, an animal with whom we live on terms of the next intimacy, shows how precariously the distinction is grounded.  The pig is the main element of animal food among the islands; and I had many occasions, my mind being quickened by my cannibal surroundings, to observe his character and the manner of his death.  Many islanders live with their pigs as we do with our dogs; both crowd around the hearth with equal freedom; and the island pig is a fellow of activity, enterprise, and sense.  He husks his own cocoa-nuts, and (I am told) rolls them into the sun to burst; he is the terror of the shepherd.  Mrs. Stevenson, senior, has seen one fleeing to the woods with a lamb in his mouth; and I saw another come rapidly (and erroneously) to the conclusion that the
Casco
was going down, and swim through the flush water to the rail in search of an escape.  It was told us in childhood that pigs cannot swim; I have known one to leap overboard, swim five hundred yards to shore, and return to the house of his original owner.  I was once, at Tautira, a pig-master on a considerable scale; at first, in my pen, the utmost good feeling prevailed; a little sow with a belly-ache came and appealed to us for help in the manner of a child; and there was one shapely black boar, whom we called Catholicus, for he was a particular present from the Catholics of the village, and who early displayed the marks of courage and friendliness; no other animal, whether dog or pig, was suffered to approach him at his food, and for human beings he showed a full measure of that toadying fondness so common in the lower animals, and possibly their chief title to the name.  One day, on visiting my piggery, I was amazed to see Catholicus draw back from my approach with cries of terror; and if I was amazed at the change, I was truly embarrassed when I learnt its reason.  One of the pigs had been that morning killed; Catholicus had seen the murder, he had discovered he was dwelling in the shambles, and from that time his confidence and his delight in life were ended.  We still reserved him a long while, but he could not endure the sight of any two-legged creature, nor could we, under the circumstances, encounter his eye without confusion.  I have assisted besides, by the ear, at the act of butchery itself; the victim’s cries of pain I think I could have borne, but the execution was mismanaged, and his expression of terror was contagious: that small heart moved to the same tune with ours.  Upon such ‘dread foundations’ the life of the European reposes, and yet the European is among the less cruel of races.  The paraphernalia of murder, the preparatory brutalities of his existence, are all hid away; an extreme sensibility reigns upon the surface; and ladies will faint at the recital of one tithe of what they daily expect of their butchers.  Some will be even crying out upon me in their hearts for the coarseness of this paragraph.  And so with the island cannibals.  They were not cruel; apart from this custom, they are a race of the most kindly; rightly speaking, to cut a man’s flesh after he is dead is far less hateful than to oppress him whilst he lives; and even the victims of their appetite were gently used in life and suddenly and painlessly despatched at last.  In island circles of refinement it was doubtless thought bad taste to expatiate on what was ugly in the practice.

Cannibalism is traced from end to end of the Pacific, from the Marquesas to New Guinea, from New Zealand to Hawaii, here in the lively haunt of its exercise, there by scanty but significant survivals.  Hawaii is the most doubtful.  We find cannibalism chronicled in Hawaii, only in the history of a single war, where it seems to have been thought exception, as in the case of mountain outlaws, such as fell by the hand of Theseus.  In Tahiti, a single circumstance survived, but that appears conclusive.  In historic times, when human oblation was made in the marae, the eyes of the victim were formally offered to the chief: a delicacy to the leading guest.  All Melanesia appears tainted.  In Micronesia, in the Marshalls, with which my acquaintance is no more than that of a tourist, I could find no trace at all; and even in the Gilbert zone I long looked and asked in vain.  I was told tales indeed of men who had been eaten in a famine; but these were nothing to my purpose, for the same thing is done under the same stress by all kindreds and generations of men.  At last, in some manuscript notes of Dr. Turner’s, which I was allowed to consult at Malua, I came on one damning evidence: on the island of Onoatoa the punishment for theft was to be killed and eaten.  How shall we account for the universality of the practice over so vast an area, among people of such varying civilisation, and, with whatever intermixture, of such different blood?  What circumstance is common to them all, but that they lived on islands destitute, or very nearly so, of animal food?  I can never find it in my appetite that man was meant to live on vegetables only.  When our stores ran low among the islands, I grew to weary for the recurrent day when economy allowed us to open another tin of miserable mutton.  And in at least one ocean language, a particular word denotes that a man is ‘hungry for fish,’ having reached that stage when vegetables can no longer satisfy, and his soul, like those of the Hebrews in the desert, begins to lust after flesh-pots.  Add to this the evidences of over-population and imminent famine already adduced, and I think we see some ground of indulgence for the island cannibal.

It is right to look at both sides of any question; but I am far from making the apology of this worse than bestial vice.  The higher Polynesian races, such as the Tahitians, Hawaiians, and Samoans, had one and all outgrown, and some of them had in part forgot, the practice, before Cook or Bougainville had shown a top-sail in their waters.  It lingered only in some low islands where life was difficult to maintain, and among inveterate savages like the New-Zealanders or the Marquesans.  The Marquesans intertwined man-eating with the whole texture of their lives; long-pig was in a sense their currency and sacrament; it formed the hire of the artist, illustrated public events, and was the occasion and attraction of a feast.  To-day they are paying the penalty of this bloody commixture.  The civil power, in its crusade against man-eating, has had to examine one after another all Marquesan arts and pleasures, has found them one after another tainted with a cannibal element, and one after another has placed them on the proscript list.  Their art of tattooing stood by itself, the execution exquisite, the designs most beautiful and intricate; nothing more handsomely sets off a handsome man; it may cost some pain in the beginning, but I doubt if it be near so painful in the long-run, and I am sure it is far more becoming than the ignoble European practice of tight-lacing among women.  And now it has been found needful to forbid the art.  Their songs and dances were numerous (and the law has had to abolish them by the dozen).  They now face empty-handed the tedium of their uneventful days; and who shall pity them?  The least rigorous will say that they were justly served.

Death alone could not satisfy Marquesan vengeance: the flesh must be eaten.  The chief who seized Mr. Whalon preferred to eat him; and he thought he had justified the wish when he explained it was a vengeance.  Two or three years ago, the people of a valley seized and slew a wretch who had offended them.  His offence, it is to be supposed, was dire; they could not bear to leave their vengeance incomplete, and, under the eyes of the French, they did not dare to hold a public festival.  The body was accordingly divided; and every man retired to his own house to consummate the rite in secret, carrying his proportion of the dreadful meat in a Swedish match-box.  The barbarous substance of the drama and the European properties employed offer a seizing contrast to the imagination.  Yet more striking is another incident of the very year when I was there myself, 1888.  In the spring, a man and woman skulked about the school-house in Hiva-oa till they found a particular child alone.  Him they approached with honeyed words and carneying manners - ‘You are So-and-so, son of So-and-so?’ they asked; and caressed and beguiled him deeper in the woods.  Some instinct woke in the child’s bosom, or some look betrayed the horrid purpose of his deceivers.  He sought to break from them; he screamed; and they, casting off the mask, seized him the more strongly and began to run.  His cries were heard; his schoolmates, playing not far off, came running to the rescue; and the sinister couple fled and vanished in the woods.  They were never identified; no prosecution followed; but it was currently supposed they had some grudge against the boy’s father, and designed to eat him in revenge.  All over the islands, as at home among our own ancestors, it will be observed that the avenger takes no particular heed to strike an individual.  A family, a class, a village, a whole valley or island, a whole race of mankind, share equally the guilt of any member.  So, in the above story, the son was to pay the penalty for his father; so Mr. Whalon, the mate of an American whaler, was to bleed and be eaten for the misdeeds of a Peruvian slaver.  I am reminded of an incident in Jaluit in the Marshall group, which was told me by an eye-witness, and which I tell here again for the strangeness of the scene.  Two men had awakened the animosity of the Jaluit chiefs; and it was their wives who were selected to be punished.  A single native served as executioner.  Early in the morning, in the face of a large concourse of spectators, he waded out upon the reef between his victims.  These neither complained nor resisted; accompanied their destroyer patiently; stooped down, when they had waded deep enough, at his command; and he (laying one hand upon the shoulders of each) held them under water till they drowned.  Doubtless, although my informant did not tell me so, their families would be lamenting aloud upon the beach.