We talked of the sweeping away of the people of the Marquesas Islands and of all the Polynesians. The Hawaiians are only twenty-two thousand. When the haole set foot on shore there, he counted four hundred thousand.
Time was when so great was the congestion in these islands, as in the Marquesas and Hawaii, that the priests and chiefs instituted devices for checking it. Infanticide seemed the easiest way to prevent hurtful increase. Stringent rules were made against large families. On some islands couples were limited to two children or only one, and all others born were killed immediately. Race suicide had here its simplest form. The Polynesian race must have grown to very great numbers on every island they settled from Samoa to Hawaii, and perhaps these numbers induced migrations. They doubtless grew to threatening swarms before they began checking the increase. Thomas Carver, professor of political economy at Harvard, says:
Even if the wants of the individual never expanded at all, it is quite obvious that an indefinite increase in the number of individuals in any locality would, sooner or later, result in scarcity and bring them into conflict with nature, and, therefore, into conflict with one another. That human populations are physiologically capable of indefinite increase, if time be allotted, is admitted, and must be admitted by any one who has given the slightest attention to the subject. Among the non-economizing animals and plants, it is not the limits of their procreative power but the limits of subsistence which determine their numbers. Neither is it lack of procreative power which limits numbers in the case of man, the economic animal. With him also it is a question of subsistence, but of subsistence according to some standard. Being gifted with economic foresight he will not multiply beyond the point where he can maintain that standard which he considers decent. But—and this is especially to be noted—so powerful are his procreative and domestic instincts that he will multiply up to the point where it is difficult to maintain whatever standard he has.
Instinct early taught society everywhere protection against the irksome condition of too many people and too little food. The old were killed or deserted in wanderings or migrations, and infanticide and abortion practised, as they are commonly in Africa to-day. Six-sevenths of India have for ages practised female infanticide, yet India increases two millions annually, and famine stalks year in and year out. Fifteen million Chinese are doomed to die of starvation in 1921, according to official statements.
Able-bodied adults in their prime bear the burdens of society everywhere. The elders and their children are a burden on them, especially in primitive society, where capital is not amassed, and food must be procured by some labor, either of the chase, fishing, or gathering fruits and herbs. Only advance in economic power has arrested infanticide. The Greeks thought it proper; the Romans, too. The early Teutons exposed babes. The Chinese have always done so.
Procreation, if not a dominant passion, would probably have ceased long ago, and the race perished. Individual and even national “race suicide” in France and New England indicated the possibilities of this tendency. The teachings of asceticism which had such power among Christians until the sixteenth century are again heard under a different guise in at least one of the modern cults most successful in the United States. Neo-Malthusianism is found exemplified in the two-child families of the nobles of France and Germany and the rich of New England. Parents want to do more for children, and so have fewer, and think proper contraception and even killing the foetus in its early stages. Modern medicine has aided this. Many women in many countries for ages have practised abortion in order not to spoil their bodies by child-bearing. To-day the demands of fashion and of social pleasures have caused large families to be considered even vulgar among the extremists in the mode. Organizations incited by the new feminism send heralds of contraception schemes on lecture tours to instruct the proletariat, and brave women to go to prison for giving the prescription. The well-to-do have always been cognizant of it.
The Tahitians have ever been adoring of little ones, and if their annals are stained by the blood of innumerable innocents murdered at birth, let it be remembered that it was a law, and not a choice of parents—a law induced by the sternest demands of social economy. Religion or the domination of priests commanded it. They obeyed, as Abraham did when he began to whet his knife for his son Isaac. To-day in Europe conditions prescribe conduct. Morality fades before race demands. Polygamy or promiscuity looms a possibility, and may yet have state and church sanction, as in Turkey.
In Tahiti, from time immemorial, as native annals went, there was a wondrous set of men and women called Arioi who killed all their children, and whose ways and pleasures recall the phallic worshipers of ancient Asian days. Forgotten now, with accounts radically differing as to its composition, its aims, and even its morals, a hundred romances and fables woven about its personnel, and many curious hazards upon its beginnings and secret purposes, the Arioi society constitutes a singular mystery, still of intense interest to the student of the cabalistic, though buried with these South Sea Greeks a century ago.
The Arioi, in its time of divertisement, was a lodge of strolling players, musicians, poets, dancers, wrestlers, pantomimists, and clowns, the merry men and women of the Pacific tropics. They were the leaders in the worship of the gods, the makers and masters of the taboo, and when war or other necessity called them from pleasure or religion, the leaders in action and battle.
The ending of the celebrated order came about through the work of English Christian missionaries and the commercialized conditions accompanying the introduction among the Tahitians of European standards, inventions, customs, and prohibitions. The institution was of great age, without written chronicles, and, like all Polynesian history, obscured by the superstitions bred of oral descent.