To judge by their progress in the industrial arts, their elaborate political institutions, and the courtesy of their manners, the South Sea Islander, particularly the Tahitians, might claim a place among civilized nations, but in many respects they were still deeply plunged in barbarism. Their wars were sanguinary and cruel, their morals dissolute. Infanticide was extremely common among them, and the cause of this horrible crime was not the want of food but a culpable laziness. Although the fertility of the soil and the mildness of a delicious climate rendered it easy to provide for a large family, the general indolence was so great that a man with more than three children (a rare case) was looked upon as groaning under an intolerable burden, and thus thousands of infants were immolated to the love of ease of their unnatural parents.
Human sacrifices were frequently offered to propitiate the gods—in war time, on the occasion of some great festival, of the illness or coronation of a king, or at the building of a temple. Each of the pillars which sustained the roof of one of these edifices was planted in the body of a wretch immolated in honour of the cruel divinity to whom the building was consecrated. To the honour of Polynesian humanity it must, however, be added, that the victims—either prisoners of war or persons who had incurred the enmity of some priest or noble—were not made to suffer any additional torment, but suddenly despatched by the unexpected blow of a club.
In all the larger Polynesian groups the state of society briefly described in the foregoing pages has long since disappeared.
In Hawaii, Tahiti, Tonga, and Samoa, the ancient religion, the ancient customs, the ancient manufactures have more or less given way to European influences, and now only exist in the more remote or more insignificant islands where the missionary has either not appeared or which are too poor to tempt our avarice.
The difference between the geological structure of the different islands of the Pacific has a marked influence upon the condition of their inhabitants. In the high and more extensive islands, where the structure is primitive and volcanic, the productions of the soil are more abundant and various, and the conditions for social development more favourable, than in the low small islands of a coralline structure, where food is less abundant, the sun more scorching, and generally the complexion of the inhabitants darker.
While the Tahitians, Sandwich Islanders, Samoans, and Fijians cultivate the taro plant or pluck the fruits of the bread-fruit tree, the coral islander is frequently restricted to the nuts of the cocoa palm, or even to those of the screw pine, and adds to his sparing vegetable meal only a few crabs or fishes which he gathers on the reef or catches in the lagoon.
On some of the low Caroline Islands, whose inhabitants undertake long sea voyages, the ideas of the people have naturally a somewhat wider range; but in general the poverty of the language corresponds with the narrow circle of a life confined to so small a space and to so few objects of interest.
The inhabitants of Hau or Bow Island, situated in the centre of the extensive Paumotu group, give us a good idea of the dreary monotony of a coral islander’s life. Captain Beechey, who visited them in 1826, describes them as an ill-favoured, indolent race, above the middle size, with strong bones but flaccid muscles. The ugliness of the men was surpassed by that of the women, who were obliged to work in the hot sun while their lazy lords and masters looked on, reclining in the shade. Having obtained the chief’s permission to fell some wood, he endeavoured to procure the natives’ assistance by liberal offers of tobacco and shirts, but in spite of this tempting salary the chief was the only man among them who could be roused from his lethargy and induced to work, and even he let the axe drop before the first tree was felled.
With the aid of an interpreter, Captain Beechey learned many interesting particulars about these islanders during his four days’ sojourn among them. They had, as they said, given up cannibalism some time ago; but, to judge by the diabolical animation which spread over the chief’s brutal countenance as he described the excellent flavour of human flesh, there is every reason to believe that they were in great danger of a relapse. These savages preferred eating their victuals raw, and were thus in fact but one degree removed from that horrid custom. A canoe full of fish having landed in the neighbourhood of the village, they immediately devoured the whole cargo, leaving nothing but the bones and fins. Their marriage ceremonies were as simple as possible: a man had only to say to a woman ‘Thou shalt be my wife!’ and, provided she was not pre-engaged, no further ceremony was required. The children seemed to be the only objects for which the men showed any affection; the women at least came in for no share of it. While the men stretched their lazy limbs in the shade, these unfortunate creatures were obliged to gather shell-fish on the pointed coral reefs, or to seek for pandanus nuts in the woods. They went to this work at break of day, and on returning from their morning’s labour had no time to rest, but were obliged to serve their hungry masters, who first devoured the best part of the fleshy substance inclosed in the rind of the nuts and then threw the rest to the women as we should throw a bone to a dog. After this, the women cracked the nuts with a heavy stone in order to extract the four or five small kernels about the size of an almond which they contain, and which, were laid aside for the men. As a great number of nuts was necessary to satisfy their voracious appetite, the women were in fact occupied all day long in gathering mussels, sea-urchins, and pandanus nuts, and cracking the latter.
The supremacy of the stronger sex was asserted with the utmost severity, and nowhere did the tyranny of man show itself in a more contemptible light. Once a poor woman, fancying herself unobserved, ventured to eat a few kernels of the nuts she had fetched from a great distance, but unfortunately did not escape the vigilant eye of her brutal husband, who immediately rose and knocked her down. Thus overworked and debased by ill-treatment, we cannot wonder if the females possess none of those qualities and graces which render women in Europe so charming.