CHAPTER XXXVI
THE FIJIS AND THE TONGAS
THE ports of Australia and New Zealand swarm with sea captains, traders, and others, who know the South Seas as you know the palm of your hand. The Canadian Pacific steamers plying between Vancouver and Sydney by way of Hawaii call at the Fijis, and the Tongas are easily reached from Auckland, New Zealand. During my stay in these waters I have had the many talks about these far-away islands that form the basis of what follows.
I have spoken of the Tongas as being easily reached from New Zealand. This seems a strange statement when I tell you they are about as far from Auckland as New York is from Cuba. Distances mean little in the South Seas, however. The Fijis are eleven hundred miles from Auckland and the Tongas are only a few hundred miles nearer, yet New Zealand once wanted them put under its government. The idea was to establish here a British Island Empire which should be two thousand miles in length, or longer than the distance from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The project fell through, and the two archipelagoes are still crown colonies, the Tongas being under the British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, who is also Governor of the Fijis.
There are men still living who can tell stories of the days when the Fijians were the most bloodthirsty cannibals on earth. They made human sacrifices, and widows were burned on the funeral pyres of their husbands. When a chief built a home he planted a living victim under each post, and when his canoes were launched he used men as rollers upon which the craft slid down into the sea. When he died his wives were strangled to line his grave; such a thing as killing a baby was too common for notice.
The last king of the Fijis, Thakombau, was the son of Tanoa, a notorious man eater. Thakombau himself was something of a cannibal, but his father craved human flesh as a matinée maiden craves candy. He sent his war canoes about the South Sea Islands for victims, and they often brought back cargoes of dead men, women, and even babies. Upon their return everyone joined in a feast of human flesh.
One can still see on the islands the ovens in which the cooking was done. They were filled with red-hot stones, and it is related by the missionaries that victims were often roasted alive. At one time fifty bodies were cooked, and at another eighty women were strangled for a single feast. Whenever the stock of dead enemies ran low, the king used to send his men to the watering places to lie in ambush for fishermen or for women who had gone down to bathe.
King Thakombau killed his first victim when he was six years old, and he was famous as a cannibal until the time of his conversion by the missionaries. It was after he reformed that he made the treaty which gave these islands to England. The story of this treaty is interesting. The home of a white trader named Williams, who was acting as United States consul to Fiji, was burned, and the natives stole some of the furniture and stores while the house was ablaze. Williams demanded three thousand dollars damages. The Fijian king refused. Then Williams got the backing of the United States government, and finally the sum of forty-five thousand dollars was demanded. It was out of the question for the savage king and his subjects to raise this sum, so when certain money-lenders of Australia offered to settle the claim in return for two hundred thousand acres of his best land, Thakombau joyfully accepted. But the British government would not permit this transaction. Thereupon Thakombau agreed to cede the Fijis to Great Britain if she would pay the debt. A commission visited the islands and reported adversely on the proposal, but in 1874, convinced that the islands needed the rule of a civilized power, the British made a treaty with Thakombau annexing his whole domain. Meantime, the claim of the United States had been allowed to drop during our Civil War, and was never revived.
Though no longer master of the Fijis after the British took possession, Thakombau continued to live in royal state. At his death his mantle fell to his son, the high chief Ratu Epele Nailatikau, who kept up all the show of royalty. He possessed no real power, but he made the natives treat him with the most abject respect. Only the highest chiefs were permitted to enter his house at Mbau, and even they must crouch silently against the wall and await his invitation to speak. Whenever he was through smoking a cigar, he would indicate by a nod which chief might have the honour of finishing the butt. A new clean mat was unrolled for his dinner table about which crept the men and women who bore him food. No commoner was allowed to eat in his presence.
Canoes loaded down with yams, coconuts, turtles, and yaqona root for making the native drink, kava, were constantly landing at Mbau. The offerings were carried humbly to the door of Ratu Epele and the natives crouched outside, gently clapping their hands, until their tributes were graciously accepted. In the days of his grandfather, Tanoa, any island that failed to furnish the expected tribute was frightfully punished. When the people of the island of Maliki, designated to provide turtles for the king, so far forgot themselves as to eat some of their catch, Tanoa sent a fleet of war canoes. Every man and woman on the island was killed, while the children were taken captive to Mbau so that the boys there might earn their titles as killers of men by clubbing them to death.
The Fijians of to-day are among the most civilized of all the South Sea Islanders. They have been converted to Christianity and have their own native preachers. They are divided among a half-dozen denominations, with the Methodists claiming the largest number of converts. The oldest established church in the islands is that of the Methodist mission founded in 1825.
The missionaries established the first schools in the Fijis and until a few years ago the education of the natives was left entirely to the Methodists and the Catholics. The government now maintains a high school near the town of Suva, where the sons of chiefs are trained, and it also helps other schools that comply with its requirements. At an industrial school near Suva the islanders are taught boat building, iron working, and other manual arts. Boys are entered for terms of five years. Children of European residents are educated at government expense in separate institutions.
The Fiji Islands were discovered in 1643 by Tasman, the Dutch navigator, the same man who discovered Tasmania and New Zealand. Their area is less than that of New Jersey, and their total population is little more than that of Dayton, Ohio. Only about half the people are native Fijians. For some years their number decreased steadily, but this decline seems now to have been checked. The people are especially subject to epidemics. In 1875 measles was brought into the islands by sailors from a British ship. The disease took a most virulent form and killed forty thousand natives in a short time. Great numbers of them died when influenza swept the world in 1917 and 1918.
The Fijians are strong and well built, and in appearance far superior to our American Indians. They have dark copper skins and frizzly hair, which stands up about their heads in enormous mops, making them seem tall. In order to get their hair to stick up, they plaster it with damp lime, which bleaches it to an auburn shade, so that they look very grotesque. When young, the women are handsome, having pretty eyes and well-moulded faces. In the settled regions they wear loose cotton gowns, but back in the interior the usual attire is a fringe of grass about the waist, a string of beads, and a fan. The men wear about the same costume.
One frequently sees a native with a long pin, or scratcher, thrust through his hair. This weapon is used to make war upon the vermin with which almost every head is infested. Sometimes the irritation gets beyond the scratching point, and in desperation the man so attacked kindles a fire of banana leaves and, lying down with his head near the fire, thus smokes out his unwelcome visitors.
The Fijians are good-natured. They are cleanly and spend a great part of their time in the water. After every bath they rub themselves down with coconut oil, the rancid odour of which enables one to smell a native long before seeing him.
Though they are practically all Christians, the natives cling stubbornly to many of their old customs. One of these is the performance of the fire walkers. On the island of Beqa is a circular pit about twenty feet in diameter. The bottom is lined with volcanic stones and when a fire walk is to be staged the pit is filled with dry sticks and a fire is kept up until the stones are red hot. Then the glowing coals are brushed aside and out of the forest comes a procession of young men, their bodies gleaming with coconut oil and garlanded with flowers. Slowly they tread over the hot stones, singing as they go. Then they vanish into the dense woods, apparently unhurt. After they have gone, whole pigs and vegetables are put on the hot stones and covered with leaves and earth. Soon a well-cooked feast is ready for both spectators and performers. Scientists say that the volcanic stones used are poor heat conductors and that they radiate heat quickly. Thus the surface cools sufficiently to permit the fire walkers to tread the stones, though they retain enough heat inside to cook the feast. At any rate, nothing will persuade the fire walkers to step on hot limestone, which is a good conductor and a poor radiator. The thickness of the skin on the soles of the natives’ unshod feet no doubt accounts in great measure for the “miracle.”
Many natives live in and about Suva and Levuka, the principal towns, but most of them dwell in villages scattered over the islands. A Fiji village consists almost entirely of thatched huts with walls of woven bamboo built without the use of nails. The roofs are thick and the thatch is so skilfully put on that it seems to be woven. Some of the houses are conical in shape, others oblong, and others oval. The usual hut has but one room, in which the whole family stays in the daytime, when it rains, and where all sleep at night. The bed is a mat on the floor, and the pillow a bamboo log, which is placed under the neck in order to keep the sleeper’s headdress well up from the ground. There is but little cooking, as raw fruit forms a large part of the diet of the people.
The chief ports of the Fijis, Suva and Levuka, have steamship service to Sydney, Auckland, the Tongas, and the Samoa Islands. An excursion to Suva, which is also the capital, is a popular winter trip for New Zealanders. Besides the natives, about a thousand Europeans live there, most of them in well-built modern houses. Its chief street, the Victoria Parade, is lined on one side with rain trees whose thick foliage protects one from the sun, and on the other side with hotels and business houses. The British governor has his office at Suva. He lives there like a little king in a palace that cost about a hundred thousand dollars.
The Governor of the Fijis is appointed by the King of England, and gets a salary of fifteen thousand dollars a year, besides the five thousand he is paid as High Commissioner of the Western Pacific. He has a sort of cabinet, or executive council. The laws for the islands are made by a legislative council, of which he is president. There are a large number of district chiefs and native magistrates, and seven of the provinces have resident supervisors to assist the chiefs. In ordinary matters the native laws and customs are respected as far as possible. There is a constabulary of Fijians and East Indians, besides the defence force, which is composed of Europeans, half-castes, and natives.
Most of the money made in the Fijis comes from sugar plantations and coconut groves. Upon the higher portions of the islands coffee is now being grown, and yields about five hundred pounds to the acre. A large number of tea gardens have been set out, and some planters are making money from rubber.
Each coconut tree has an average yield of a hundred nuts per annum, and brings in about a dollar per year net. At this rate, a grove of ten thousand trees will mean ten thousand dollars a year, and as the trees are set close together ten thousand do not take up any great area. After the trees are once planted, little needs to be done until they begin to bear at the end of from five to seven years. The nuts are broken open and the meat is cut up and dried, to be shipped abroad as copra, for use in making soaps, hair restorers, and “nut” butter.
Nearly all the profitable enterprises in the islands are owned or backed by Englishmen. The chief difficulty that confronts them is the labour problem. Having few wants and being blessed by nature with the means of supplying them without much trouble, the Fijians feel no need to work. Sustained effort they abhor, although in their own way they are industrious, and are the best native carpenters and canoe builders in the South Seas.
Though the largest island in the Samoan group, Savii has few inhabitants. It is volcanic and parts of it are often enveloped in clouds of steam caused by boiling lava rushing down into the sea.
The native church at Apia is well attended, the Samoans being fond of religious ceremonies. Most families also hold daily prayer services in their homes.
At mission schools natives are trained in wood-working and boat-building, but the islanders as a rule are not industrious and work only enough to supply their simple needs.
It was just a year after the British took over the islands that the measles epidemic decimated the population, so that, what with the decreased number of the Fijians and the natives’ distaste for work, the plantation owners had to import labourers. Workers were brought in from India, the Solomon Islands, the Gilberts, and the New Hebrides.
The government regulated the employment of imported labour. It cost about seventy-five dollars to bring in a native from the New Hebrides, and forty dollars to get one from the Gilberts, and the employer had to agree to return the labourers at his own expense at the close of their engagement. It cost more to import the East Indians, but they were usually hired for terms of five years, on the understanding that they should have food free for six months after their arrival, and free lodgings and medical care for the whole term. Their wages were paid weekly, the men receiving twenty-five cents a day and the women eighteen cents.
More and more coolies were imported from India, while the numbers brought from other islands fell off. At the close of their terms of service many of the East Indians took up little plantations of their own, where they grew rice, sugar, coconuts, and bananas. There are now upward of sixty thousand of them in the islands, compared with about ninety thousand Fijians, five thousand Europeans, and a sprinkling of half-castes, Polynesians, and Chinese. As in other British colonies to which they have been admitted, the East Indians have bred a serious race problem, and their further importation has been stopped. They declare themselves as good as the whites and demand equal rights with them. A few years ago half the Indian population went on a strike, which reached such a climax of violence that it had to be put down with military force.
Eighty per cent. of the trade of the Fijis is with Australia and New Zealand, and the total amounts to about twenty-two million dollars a year. Some of the imports come from the United States. We supply them with timber, oil, hardware, and cheap clocks and watches. The Fijian will use none but an American axe, which he likes because it is light, sharp, and well tempered. He likes also American-made knives or machetes, with blades about fifteen inches long, with which he clears his fields and gathers his bananas and coconuts. The people buy about one and a half million dollars’ worth of cottons yearly and there is a demand for canned meats and flour.
As High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, the British governor of the Fijis looks after the Tongas, which lie about two hundred miles southeast of the nearest of the Fijis. They still have a native ruler, Salote, the Queen of the Tongans, who handles native matters through her high chiefs. The government is, in fact, a sort of hereditary monarchy under the British crown.
The Tongas have a total area about one tenth that of Connecticut. The largest of them is only twenty miles long, and many are little more than atolls and coral rocks rising out of the sea. Some of them are volcanic, but their soil is well suited to growing coconuts and sugar. The entire population would hardly make a city of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and there is only one town, Nukualofa, the capital. It has a race track and cricket grounds, and claims some of the finest motor roads south of the Equator.