This tapu, most important to the men, was maintained until a Pankhurst sprang from the ranks of complaining but inactive women. There being many more men, women had always had a singular sex liberty, but, as I have said, the artful men had invoked rigid tapus to keep them from all water-craft. The females might have three or four husbands, might outshine an Aspasia in spell of pulchritude and collected tribute, and the portioned men must submit for passion’s sake, but when economics had concern, the pagan priests brought orders directly from deity.
The dread gods of the High Place, the demons of the Paepae Tapu, had centuries before sealed canoes against women. In canoes women might wander; they might visit other bays and valleys, even other islands, and learn of the men of other tribes. They might go about and fall victims to the enemies of the race. They might assume to enter the Fae Enata, the House of Council, which was on a detached islet.
And they certainly would catch other fish than those they now snared from rocks or hooked, as both swam in the sea. Fish are much the diet of the Marquesans, and were propitiations to maid and wife—the current coin of the food market. To withhold fish was to cause hunger. The men alone assumed the hazard of the tossing canoe, the storms, the hot eye of the vertical sun, and the devils of the deep who grappled with the fisher; and theirs was the reward, and theirs the weapons of control.
But there were always women who grumbled, women who even laughed at such sacred things, and women who persisted. Finally the very altar of the Forbidden Height was shaken by their madness. How and what came of it were told me by an old priest or sorcerer, as we sat in the shade of the great banyan on the beach and waited for canoes to come from the fishing.
The sorcerer and I passed the ceremonial pipe, and his words were slow, as becoming age and a severe outlook on life.
“There were willful women who would destroy the tapu against entering canoes?” I asked, to urge his speech.
“E, it was so!” he said.
“Me imui? What happened?” I queried further.
“A long time this went on. My grandfather told me of a woman who talked against that tapu when he was a boy.”
“And she—?”