CHAPTER VIII
Characteristics of Marquesan Natives—Mixed Creeds—Temao and Mendos—Queen Vaekehu
IT may strike one as rather overdrawn that a girl of Waylao’s age should interrogate a priest, or worry about religion at all. But the maids of southern climes must not be judged in the same way as the maids of our own lands. From infancy a child in the South Seas hears wild discussions on creeds. Ere the dummy is cast altogether from their lips they see the big, tattooed chief pass down the forest track swearing against the fates that brought the white man to his demesne. Yes, with his old tappa blanket wrapped about him, he shouts and yells his defiance to the missionary, or to anyone who would speak disparagingly about his race. Half-caste girls and youths (children of the settlers) lived in a world of perpetual change. For those isles, where I found myself as a boy, were not only populated by fearless shellbacks who drifted in on the tide.
Tai-o-hae at that time was surrounded by wild scenery and mountain-guarded glooms. Those glooms were haunted by handsome, tattooed native men and picturesquely robed girls. By night one could hear their songs from afar, chants in a strange tongue, as they flitted soft-footed through the moonlit forest.
In cleared spaces of those wild valleys nestled villages full of the hubbub of native life. I spent days in those tiny pagan cities, and so got a good insight into the native ways.
Native tattooed with Armorial Bearings
Through the influence of emigrant missionaries, their arguments, hopes and ambitions seemed to be based on the subject of creeds. Natives who one day had embraced Catholicism, or Protestantism, or had become sun-worshippers, Mormons, Buddhists and Mohammedans, to-morrow cast the faith aside and re-embraced some other creed that appeared to give greater hope of earthly happiness. These changes were chiefly caused by some apparent miracle performed by a native who had gone over to a new creed. He would rush into the village and tell the excited mob of his success; probably some scheme had met with sudden triumph. I myself have heard a native chief shout in this wise:
“What ams ze goods of a creed that promise me heaven to-mollow, when me allee samee have heaven to-day?”