Williams further informs us (117) that "husbands are as frequently away from their wives as they are with them, since it is thought not well for a man to sleep regularly at home." He does not comment on this, but Seeman (191) and Westermarck (151) interpret the custom as indicating Fijian "ideas of delicacy in married life," which, after what has just been said, is decidedly amusing. If Fijians really were capable of considering it indelicate to spend the night under the same roof with their wives, it would indicate their indelicacy, not their delicacy. The utterly unprincipled men doubtless had their reasons for preferring to stay away from home, and probably their great contempt for women also had something to do with the custom.
HOW CANNIBALS TREAT WOMEN
In Fiji, says Crawley (225), women are kept away from participation in worship. "Dogs are excluded from some temples, women from all." In many parts of the group woman is treated, according to Williams,
"as a beast of burden, not exempt from any kind of labor, and forbidden to enter any temple; certain kinds of food she may eat only by sufferance, and that after her husband has finished. In youth she is the victim of lust, and in old age, of brutality."
Girls are betrothed and married as children without consulting their choice. "I have seen an old man of sixty living with two wives both under fifteen years of age." Such of the young women as are acquainted with foreign ways envy the favored women who wed "the man to whom their spirit flies." Women are regarded as the property of the men, and as an incentive to bravery they are "promised to such as shall, by their prowess, render themselves deserving." They are used for paying war-debts and other accounts; for instance, "the people submitted to their chiefs and capitulated, offering two women, a basket of earth, whales' teeth, and mats, to buy the reconciliation of the Rewans."
"A chief of Nandy, in Viti Levu, was very desirous to have a musket which an American captain had shown him. The price of the coveted piece was two hogs. The chief had only one; but he sent on board with it a young woman as an equivalent."
At weddings the prayer is that the bride may "bring forth male children"; and when the son is born, one of the first lessons taught him is "to strike his mother, lest he should grow up to be a coward." When a husband died, it was the national custom to murder his wife, often his mother too, to be his companions. To kill a defenceless woman was an honorable deed.
"I once asked a man why he was called Koroi. 'Because,' he replied, 'I, with several other men, found some women and children in a cave, drew them out and clubbed them and was then consecrated.'"
So far have sympathy and gallantry progressed in Fiji.
"Many examples might be given of most dastardly cruelty, where women and even unoffending children were abominably slain." "I have labored to make the murderers of females ashamed of themselves; and have heard their cowardly cruelty defended by the assertion that such victims were doubly good—because they ate well, and because of the distress it caused their husbands and friends." "Cannibalism does not confine itself to one sex." "The heart, the thigh, and the arm above the elbow, are considered the greatest dainties."