Here in the Marquesas, as in all Polynesia, a period of voluntary seclusion preceded the début of the maiden, or the preparation for a special pas seul by a noted beauty.
Seclusion of the girl was practiced at the time of puberty. It has a curious analogy in such far separated places as Torres Straits and British Columbia, one Australasia and the other North America. The girls of a tribe in Torres Straits are hidden for three months behind a circle of bushes in their parent’s house at the first signs of womanhood. No sun must reach them, and no man, even though he be the father, enter the house, nor must they feed themselves. The Nootkas of British Columbia also conceal their nubile virgins, and insist that they touch their own bodies for a period only with a comb or a bone, never laying their hands upon it.
It would seem that all this mystery had the same purpose, that of adding to the attractiveness of the girls and heightening the romance of their new condition. Our coming-out parties parallel the goal of these strange peoples, announcements, formal introductions, as brilliant as possible, being considered desirable both among savages and ourselves to give notice of a marriageable state. Our débuts have not departed far from aboriginal ideas.
The Junoesque wife of Seventh Man Who Wallows had just come from the via puna in her accustomed bathing attire, and, still dripping, seated herself in the sun near me to dry. She had added a jasmine blossom to the heavy gold hoops in her ears and had lit her pipe, and her handsome, large face was twisted between smiles and frowns as she tried to put in understandable words and gestures her recital of these customs:
“Our girls, daughters of chiefs, such as I am, were kept hidden for months before we appeared for the first time in public in the tribal dance. The tapu was strict. We were secret in our mother’s house and inclosure, without supposedly even being seen by any one but our relatives and their retainers. It was death to gaze upon us. We were tapu tapu. If we had cause to go out, our official guardian blew a conch-shell to warn all from the neighborhood. Not until the day of the dance or marriage ceremony, not until the feast was spread and the accepted suitor present to claim us, or the drums booming for the dance, were we shown to the multitude; we had had months of omi omi, and would be in perfect condition and most beautiful.”
It was this omi omi, or massage, that many of the earlier chroniclers of the South Seas believed to be the cause of the chiefs and headmen of all these islands being much bigger and handsomer than the common people. The hakaiki, or chiefs, men and women, throughout Polynesia astonished the voyagers and missionaries by their huge size. Often they were from four to six inches above six feet tall, and framed in proportion. Hardly a writing sailor or visitor to Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa, or the Marquesas but remarks this striking fact. Many thought these headmen a different race than the others, but scientists know that family, food, and the curious effect of the strenuous massage from infancy account for the differences. The omi omi of these islands, the tarumi of Tahiti, and the lomi lomi of the Hawaiians all have a relation to the momi-ryoji, practiced by the tens of thousands of whistling blind itinerants throughout Japan.
I had a remarkable illustration of the curative merits of omi omi when, having bruised my back by awkwardness in sliding down a rocky waterfall into a once tabooed pool with Vanquished Often and Exploding Eggs, I submitted myself to the ministrations of Juno and Vanquished Often. They would have me in the glare of the early morning sun on Seventh Man’s paepae, and there were gales of laughter as they shouted out my physical differences from the Marquesans, my excellences, and my blemishes. On one side and on the other, both squatted, they handled me as if they understood the locations of each muscle and nerve. They pinched and pulled, pressed and hammered, and otherwise took hold of and struck me, but all with a most remarkable skill and seeming exact knowledge of their method and its results. I was in agony over their treatment of me, but after a day as well as ever.
Before I was given the omi omi, I was bathed by the two ladies with a care and nicety not to be bought at our best hammams. A tiny penthouse was made quickly of cocoanut-leaves, and in this was placed a great wooden trencher of water in which white hot stones were dropped. On a tiny stool I sat in the resulting steam, the delicious odor of kakaa leaves thrown into the boiling water aiding the vapor in effect on skin and nerves. Quite ten minutes I was compelled to remain in the penthouse, my fair jailers remaining obdurate outside despite my imploring cries to be released, my protestations that I was being dissolved and would emerge a thing of shreds and patches. When I could not have stood it another second, my lungs bursting with restraint, and my body hot enough to hurt my nervously caressing hands, I was suddenly let out and hurried to the beach, where Vanquished Often rushed with me into the beating surf.
The sea seemed cold as an Adirondack lake, and I was for swimming beyond the breakers in fullest enjoyment of the relief, but my doctors would not allow me another minute and hand in hand rushed me to the chief’s paepae, now my own, for my lenitive kneading. The bruises I had got in my awkward essay to emulate the agility of Exploding Eggs and Vanquished Often were deep and painful, but after half an hour of their pounding I fell asleep and remained unconscious six hours. I was to myself a celestial musical instrument, a human xylophone, from which houris struck notes that made the stars whirl, and to the music of which Vanquished Often danced in the purple moonlight upon a milky cloud. Their cessation of the omi omi woke me. It was past noon when I joined them and the whole merry populace of Vaitahu in the warm ocean waves. I was without pain or stiffness, and reborn to a childhood I had forgotten.