Mystic Isles of the South Seas.

by Frederick O'Brien

“Sometimes after a battle the vanquished sent heralds to signify their yielding and to know the wish of the victor; they disbanded their troops, left their arms on the field, and the war was over. Usually the defeated warriors were allowed to return home without more ado after their confession of failure, but when the rage was great, the victors, with furious cries, gave the signal of carnage, and slew all they met. If the prince beaten escaped the first consequences of the rout, he was safe and lost only a portion of his territory, and in some wars only his prestige. He remained respected, and his privileges were about the same as before. The Arii were all of the same tribe, all related, and though they ruled different districts and valleys, and fought one another, they would not degrade one of their own family and rank. Thus power remained in the same families, princes, chiefs, and priests, and only the Raatira and the Manahune, the bourgeoisie and the commoners, really suffered.

“We copied you in Europe,” I interposed. “There the kings, kaisers, and czars took care not to lower the dignity of monarchy, and are virtually all related. None of them ever deposed another of long enthroning, and none of them has been killed in a battle in centuries.”

“Aue!” exclaimed the chief. “Ioba said, ‘Wisdom is no longer with the old.’ ”

“Job talked like a revolutionist,” I said. “That would be treason among the diplomats and lawyers of Europe and America. How did women get along in your father’s day?”

Tetuanui got up to stretch his huge body. He had been squatting on his haunches for an hour.

“Let Haamoura, my wife, say as to them,” he returned laughingly. “She knows all the old ways. I must see if the nets are to be stretched to-day.”

Mme. Tetuanui and I had a lengthy confabulation. No Tahitian was better informed than she upon the former status of her sex in Tahiti, and from her I gained a lively summary.

Woman was inferior among the old Tahitians. Man had here as everywhere so ordained, and religion had fixed her position by taboos, as among the Hebrews. She was often merely a servant, yet she maintained a unique sex freedom. Her body was her own, and not her husband’s as in the English common law. She prepared the man’s food and never sat at meals with him. If she ate at the same time, which was seldom, she sat at a distance, but near enough to hear his commands. It is so to-day when Tahitian men gather for feasting without foreigners, as in the Philippines, Japan, and China, and in many European countries. The Hausfrau of the small merchant, laborer, or farmer is a drudge. In Japan the woman remains subject to the hourly whims and wants of her husband, and to his frequent infidelity, though she is true to him.

The Tahiti wife had the care of the canoe, the paddles, and all the fishing and hunting things, and she accompanied her husband often in these pursuits. The husband had to make the fire, prepare the oven, kill the pig or dog or fowl, and do the outside chores; but she had a lesser position than he at all public observances. She could not become a priest or enter the temple, but must remain always at a distance from the marae. Yet she could be a queen or a chiefess, and as such was as powerful as a man, making war in person, and often leading her troops valiantly. The Tahitian women were nearly as strong as the men and mentally their full equal. They wound their husbands around their fingers or treated them cruelly in many instances, astonishing the whites by their independence. Only religion, the taboos, held them in any restraint.

If a queen bore a child by an unknown father, the child was as royal as if the descendant of a long line of kings; but if the father was notoriously a commoner, the child remained a prince, though not so high of rank as if his father had been an Arii. If a king had children by a woman beneath his rank, they had no rights from their father, but held a mixed position proportioned to the power of the father. He established their rank by his personal prestige, as the kings of Europe forced their bastards on the courts. Sixty years ago Tamatoa, King of Raiatea of the Society Islands, himself the highest born of all the chiefs of the archipelago, was forced to adopt a child of King Pomaré of Tahiti to succeed him because his own children were by a woman of the people.