Now, to the native who saw all around him on the ship huge masses of the material most precious to him in the world, it was as if an American in Yucatan saw in a native hut heaps of gold and diamonds not valued by the savage. Suppose the savage left the American alone with the treasure!
But the Tahitians did not murder for blood lust, had no assassination, and virtually no theft. Our own Anglo-Saxon law laid down the maxim, “Caveat emptor!” “Let the buyer beware!” which meant that the truth notwithstanding, the buyer must not let the seller of anything cheat him by failure to state the exact facts or faults, and expect the law to remedy his stupidity.
Chief Tetuanui’s word was his bond because he had learned that square-dealing brought him peace of mind, but other natives had found out that to cheat the white man first was the only possible way of keeping even with him. The maxim of the king of Apamama, quoted by Ivan Stroganoff, was pertinent. Hospitality was as sacred to the Tahitians as to the old Irish. It was shameful not to give a guest anything he desired.
“Es su casa, señor!” said the Spaniard, and did not mean it; but the Tahitians literally did mean that the visitor was welcome to all his valuables, and did not reserve his family, as did the don.
The chevalier of the Legion of Honor upon whose mat I sat was emphatic as to the respect of the old Tahitians for their chiefs.
“It was the whole code,” said he, “and when the French broke it down they destroyed us. There is Teriieroo a Teriierooterai, whose family were chiefs of Punaauia for generations, shifted to Papenoo. Each governor or admiral made these transfers here, as in the Marquesas and all the islands, with the primary object of lessening native cohesion, of Frenchifying us. They ruined our highest aspirations and our manners.”
I had seen something of the same sweeping away of a code and the resultant evils and degradation in Japan. When Bushido imposed itself on all above the herd, they had a sense of honor not surpassed by the people of any nation; but commerce, the destruction of the castes of samurai, heimin, and eta, the plunging of a military people into business and competition with Western cunning, and the lacquer of Christianity which had done little more than Occidentalize to a considerable degree a few thousands, without giving them the practice of the golden rule, or an appreciation of the Sermon on the Mount, had robbed the Japanese of an ancient code of morality and honor, and replaced it with nothing worth while—an insatiable ambition to equal Occidental peoples and to conquer Oriental ones, and a thousand factories which killed women and children.
“We were divided into three distinct castes,” said Tetuanui. “The Arii, or princes; Raatira, or small chiefs and simple landed proprietors; and the Manahune, or proletariat. Alliances between Arii and Raatira made an intermediate class—Eietoai. There was also a caste of priests subject to the chief, their power all derived from him, but yet tending to become hereditary by the priests instructing their sons in the ceremonies and by taking care of the temple.”
“That’s the way the Aaron family got control of the Jewish priesthood,” I interpolated. “They gave the people what they wanted, first a golden calf god, and then an ark, and they had charge of both.”
The chief frowned. He was a confirmed Bible reader, and the Old Testament was so much like the Tahitian legends that he believed every word of it.