In the case of the South Sea Islanders there is no doubt that the missionaries have afforded them protection against the tyranny and vices introduced by many of the low-class traders and beachcombers who exploited them in every possible way. The missionaries have done their best to stop their drinking the horrible spirits received from such men, in return for forced labour and the produce of their land. They have done much to eradicate cannibalism and other evil customs. Their error seems to have been the attempt to put down dances and festivities of all kinds on the plea that these were connected with heathen rites, instead of encouraging them under proper restrictions. Even when we were in the Islands, however, many of the more enlightened missionaries had already realised that human nature must have play, and that, as St. John told the huntsman who found him playing with a partridge, you cannot keep the bow always bent. Probably by now the Christian Churches in the Pacific have learnt much wisdom by experience.
As before remarked, there were, in 1892, three sets of missionaries in Samoa. Apart from the Roman Catholics, the most important were the London Missionaries, whose founders had been men of high education and who had settled in the Islands about the time of Queen Victoria’s accession. The Wesleyans had also made many converts.
Some years before our visit a sort of concordat had been arranged between the various Anglican and Protestant Churches working in the Pacific. The Church of England clergy were to work in the Islands commonly called Melanesia; the Wesleyans, whose great achievements had been in Fiji, were to take that group, Tonga, and other offshoots of their special missions; the London missionaries were to have Samoa and other fields of labour where their converts predominated. Under this agreement the Wesleyan missionaries left Samoa, but alas! after a time they came back, to the not unnatural indignation of the London missionaries. Their plea was that their flock begged them to return. An outsider cannot pronounce on the rights and wrongs of the question, but the feeling engendered was evident to the most casual observer.
As for the Roman Catholics, we were sitting one evening with a London missionary, when a native servant ran in to inform him that the R.C. priest was showing a magic-lantern in which our host and one of his colleagues were represented in hell!
I should add that I noticed that in a course of lectures given to their students by the London missionaries was one “on the errors of the Roman Church,” but that was not as drastic, nor, I presume, so exciting, as the ocular argument offered by the priest.
SAMOAN MYTHOLOGY
The mythology of the Samoans was much like that of other primitive nations, and as in similar cases their gods and heroes were closely connected. The chief deity was a certain Tangoloalangi or “god-of-heaven.” He had a son called Pilibuu, who came down to earth, settled in Samoa, and planted kava and sugar-cane. He also made a fishing-net and selected as his place of abode a spot on Upolu large enough to enable him to spread it out. Pilibuu had four sons to whom he allotted various offices; one was to look after the plantations, another to carry the walking-stick and fly-whisk to “do the talking,” a third as warrior carried the spear and club, while the youngest had charge of the canoes. To all he gave the excellent advice, “When you wish to work, work; when you wish to talk, talk; when you wish to fight, fight.” The second injunction struck me as that most congenial to his descendants.
The Samoans had legends connected with their mats, those of fine texture being valued as jewels are in Western lands. One was told me at great length about a mat made by a woman who was a spirit, who worked at different times under the vines, under a canoe, and on the sea-shore. Either her personal charms or her industry captivated Tangoloalangi, and he took her up to heaven and made her his wife. Her first child, a daughter, was endowed with the mat, and looking down from heaven she was fascinated by the appearance of a fine man attired in a lava-lava of red bird-of-paradise feathers. She descended in a shower of rain, but her Endymion, mistaking her mode of transit for an ordinary storm, took off his plumes for fear they should get wet. Arrived on earth she went up to him and said, “Where is the man I saw from heaven wearing a fine lava-lava?” “I am he,” replied the swain. Incredulous, she retorted, “I saw a man not so ugly as you.” “I am the same as before, but you saw me from a distance with a red lava-lava on.” In vain he resumed his adornment; the charm was broken and she would none of him. Instead of returning to the skies she wandered to another village and had further adventures with the mat, which she gave to her daughter by the earthly husband whom she ultimately selected. She told the girl that on any day on which she took the mat out to dry in the sun there would be darkness, rain, and hurricane. The mat was still preserved in the family of the man who told me the story, and was never taken out to dry in the sun.
The Samoans, like other races, had a story of the Flood, and one derivation (there are several) of the name of the Group is Sa = sacred or preserved, Moa = fowl, as they say that one of their gods preserved his fowls on these islands during the deluge.
They had sacred symbols, such as sticks, leaves, and stones, and a general belief in spirits, but I never heard of any special ritual, nor were there any traces of temples on the Islands. They seemed a gentle, amiable people, not fierce like the natives of New Ireland, the New Hebrides, and others of negroid type.