Tribe after tribe has been completely wiped out by certain powerful chiefs through a continued series of head-hunting expeditions. The methods adopted by the aggressive party are simple and generally most effective. The Rubiana natives are perhaps the most bloodthirsty of all the Solomon group, and, being both rich and powerful, they can descend on a village and overpower it by sheer {98} force of numbers, even without the use of modern weapons, which are now owned by nearly all the important tribes. The most notorious head-hunter in later years was Ingova of Rubiana lagoon, New Georgia, to whom I have already alluded. He is old and wizened now, and his hand trembles as he lifts the glass of grog he begs from you, after telling a yarn of the good old days. Yes, Ingova’s strength and valour are gone now, and could the departed spirits of the hundreds he has killed in days gone by see him as he is to-day—his feeble limbs, his shaking hand, his bloodshot eyes, and seared face—they would indeed wonder what it was they feared in him. Where is the great spirit that once possessed him? they would ask. They would scorn him now, and the women would laugh at him—poor, feeble, tottering Ingova.
Years ago Ingova’s Euro was hung with skulls, hundreds of them were strung in the cross-beams, with staring, vacant eyeholes, which looked out of nothing and yet seemed to see everything. Their drooping lower jaws, showing sets of white teeth which glistened in the rays of the moon, made Ingova’s heart throb with pride as he stood and tried to count them. White naked skulls of brave men all hung in rows—they had all belonged to {99} men, for a woman’s head is not worthy of such an honour.
INGOVA’S HEAD-HUNTERS, BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS
One day, soon after one of Ingova’s rash ventures amongst white men, Commander, now Rear-Admiral, Davis played havoc with his village, burning and sacking it. It was no ordinary attack but a clean sweep he made of Rubiana, and then the shore was littered with Ingova’s skulls: skulls that he and his fathers had collected for generations were scattered in all directions, and lay bleaching on the beach, some half burnt and others cracked and broken.
That was an awful day for Ingova, and for months after he was a broken-hearted man. But the savage spirit was still in him, and he was not long in recovering from the shock, and to rectify his loss he set out on a big head-hunting expedition.
His mode of attack was an ingenious one. He would start out with every war canoe he possessed (some twenty or thirty, manned with a force of five or six hundred men—swarthy, hard, muscular, dark-skinned men), and a British built whaling-boat. Having previously decided on the island he meant to surprise, he would send out two flanking parties and probably land a small force lower down the {100} coast. Then, accompanied by the whaling-boat, he would make straight for the front of the village like an innocent trader, and having enticed the natives to the shore he would commence his slaughter. The two arms of his force would close in and kill all those who failed to get away, the others he would drive back to the centre of the island where the land force would be waiting to drive them to the shore again, killing men all the time. Thus hustled and attacked on both sides they were trebly trapped, and would fall like sheep before the shots and tomahawks of Ingova’s five hundred.
But with all his efforts Ingova never regained the long rows of heads of which he used to be so proud, and now he is too old to go out and look for more, but not too old to forget Captain Davis’s little visit to Rubiana.
He wears no necklace round his neck now, for Admiral Davis has it, it having been given him by Ingova many years after that little visit as a kind of peace offering—they are quite friendly now.
Mai was another chief whose reputation for head-hunting and absolute brutality was a household word in the South Pacific. He was chief of Sapuna in Santa Anna, and periodically raided {101} the adjoining islands, killing and butchering every one who crossed his path.