Mystic Isles of the South Seas.

by Frederick O'Brien

“If your first man and woman took the lizard’s word and ate fruit from the tabu tree, they should have been punished, and if their children killed the son of your God, they should have been punished; but why worry us about it? We have not killed you, and our first man and woman respected all tabu trees.”

They disdained the cruel message that their forefathers were in the perpetually burning umu, the oven, as did that Frisian king, Radbod, who with one leg in the baptismal font, bethought him to ask where were his dead progenitors, and was answered by the militant bishop, Wolfran, “In hell, with all unbelievers.”

“Then will I rather feast with them in the halls of Woden than dwell with your little, starveling Christians in heaven” said the pagan, and withdrew his sanctified limb to walk to an unblessed grave in proud pantheism.

Otu, the son of King Pomaré, had a revelation that the god Oro wished to be removed to Tautira from Atehuru. The chiefs of that district protested, and Otu’s followers seized the idol, and went to sea with him. They landed as soon as it was safe, and mollified the god by a sacrifice; and having no victim, they killed one of Pomaré’s servants. The island then divided into hateful camps, and Moorea joined the fray. The mission sided with the king, and the crews of two English vessels fortified the mission, and with their modern weapons helped the royal party to whip the other faction. Wars followed, the mission was again invaded, the houses burned, and the missionaries, not desiring martyrdom, fled to Australia, thousands of miles away. But two remained, and kept at their preaching, and finally the genius of the Clapham clerics triumphed. Pomaré ate the tabu turtle of the temple, and a Christian nucleus was formed, headed by the sovereign. For years a bloody warfare over Christianity distracted the islands, comparable in intensity of feeling to that between Catholics and Huguenots in France. The Christian converts were slaughtered by the hundreds, and the pagans drove all the survivors to Moorea. After a season the conquerors grew lonesome, and invited them to return and abjure their false god, Ietu Kirito, whom they had defeated, and who by the Christians’ own statement had been hanged on a tree by the Ati-Iuda, the tribe of Jews. Pomaré and eight hundred men landed from Moorea, and with the missionaries began a song service on the beach, and “Come, let us join our friends above,” and “Blow ye the trumpets, blow!” echoed from the hills.

Couriers carried all over Tahiti word of the outrage to the gods, and the incensed heathens rose in immense numbers and attacked the hymners. Fortunately, says the missionary chronicle, the Christians had their arms with them, and after prayers and exhortations by the clergy, Pomaré led his cohorts, men and women; and by the grace of God and the whites, with a few muskets, they smote the devil-worshipers hip and thigh, and chased them to the distant valleys.

Pomaré, directed by the now militant missionaries, sent a body of gunmen to Tautira to capture the god Oro, whose principal temple was very near where stood my kitchen. The iconoclasts, with the zeal of neophytes, destroyed every vestige of the magnificent marae, and, unwinding the many coverings of Oro, carried to the king the huge log which had been the national god for ages. The king first used it in his cook-house as a shelf, and finally for firewood.

From then on the cross hecame the symhol of the new religion, and those who had been most faithful to the old were the strongest disciples. Until the French expelled the missionary-consul of England, Pritchard, the missionaries virtually governed Tahiti; but with the conflict of sects and the growing claims of trade, piety languished, until now church-going was become a social pastime, and of small influence upon the conduct of the Tahitians. The pastors were no longer of the type of the pioneers, and with the fast decrease of the race, the Tahitians were left largely to their own devices. Half a dozen religions supported ministers from America and Europe in Papeete; but there was no longer a fire of proselytizing, as all were nominally Christians. In Tautira everybody went to the Protestant or the Catholic church, the latter having a fifth as many attendants as the former. A reason for this may have been that there was no French priest resident at Tautira, and no Tahitian priests, whereas Tahitian preachers abound. Also the chiefs were Protestants, and their influence notable.

Ori-a-Ori, though busied in his official duties, and by nature a silent man, assumed of me a care, and in time gave me a friendship beyond my possible return to him. I sent to Papeete for a variety of edibles from the stores of the New-Zealand and German merchants, and spread a gay table, to which I often invited Choti and T’yonni, who were my hosts as frequently. Ori-a-Ori every evening sat with me, and numbers of times we read the Bible, I, first, reciting the verse in French, and he following in Tahitian. His greatest liking was for the chapters in which the Saviour’s life on the seaside with the fishermen was described, but the beatitudes brought out to the fullest his deep, melancholy voice, as by the light of the lamp upon the low table the chief intoned the thrilling gospel of humility and unselfishness.

Never before had I appreciated so well the divine character of Jesus or conjectured so clearly the scenes of his teaching upon the shores of the Lake of Galilee. Excepting the tropical plants and the eternal accent of the reef, the old Tahitian and I might have been in Palestine with Peter and the sons of Zebedee and the disciples. They were people of slender worldly knowledge, the carpenter’s son knew nothing of history, and ate with his fingers, as did Ori-a-Ori; but their open eyes, unclouded by sophistication and complex interests, looked at the universe and saw God. They lived mostly under the open sky in touch with nature, dependent on its manifestations immediately about them for their sustenance, and with its gifts and curses for their concerns and symbols.

Occidentals, who seldom muse, to whom contemplation is waste of time, do not enjoy the oneness with nature shared by these Polynesians with the sacred Commoner whose beatitudes were to bring anarchy upon the Roman world, and destroy the effects of the philosophies of the ablest minds of Greece. The fishermen of Samaria were gay and somber by turn, as were the Tahitians, doing little work, but much thinking, and innocent and ignorant of the perplexing problems and offensive indecencies of striving and luxury. The air and light nurtured them, and they confidently leaned upon the hand of God to guide and preserve.