(1.) A BURÉ, OR TEMPLE.
(See [page 962].)
(2.) CANOE HOUSE AT MAKIRA BAY.
(See [page 970].)
We now come to the funeral ceremonies of Fiji, taking those of the chiefs as types of the whole.
Among the Fijians a very singular superstition reigns. When men or women become infirm with age, they are considered to have lived their full time on earth, and preparations are made for their burial. So ingrained is this belief, that if a man finds himself becoming feeble with age or disease, he requests his sons to strangle him, and with this request they think themselves bound to comply. Indeed, if they think that he is too slow in making the request, they suggest to him that he has lived long enough, and ought to rest in the grave. Such conduct seems to imply that they are destitute of affection, but in reality it is their way of showing their love for their parent.
They are really a most affectionate race of people. A young chief has been seen to sob with overpowering emotion at parting from his father for a short time, and yet, were his parents to become ill or infirm, he would think it his duty to apply the fatal rope with his own hands. To be strangled by one’s children, or to be buried alive by them, is considered the most honorable mode of death. The reason for this strange custom seems to be that the Fijians believe the condition of the spirit in the next world to be exactly the same as that of the individual when in life. Consequently, affectionate children are unwilling to allow their parents to pass into the next world in an infirm state of body, and therefore strangle them out of sheer kindness.
From a similar notion of kindness, they also strangle the favorite wives and attendants of the dead chief, so as to provide him with the followers to whom he has been accustomed. They also kill a powerful warrior, in order that he may go before his chief through the passage into the spirit land, and drive away the evil spirits who oppose the progress of a new comer. These victims go by the name of “grass,” and are laid at the bottom of the grave; the warrior painted and dressed for battle, with his favorite club by his side, the women arranged in folds of the finest masi, and the servants with their implements in their hands; so that the inhabitants of the spirit world may see how great a chief has come among them.
All their preparations are carried on in a quiet and orderly manner, the victims never attempting to escape from their fate, but vying with each other for the honor of accompanying their chief. In some cases, when a chief has died young, his mother has insisted on sharing his grave. So deeply do the Fijians feel the necessity for this sacrifice that the custom has been a greater barrier against Christianity even than cannibalism or polygamy, and even those natives who have been converted to Christianity are always uneasy on the subject. On one occasion a Christian chief was shot, and by the same volley a young man was killed. The Christian natives were delighted with the latter catastrophe, inasmuch as it provided an attendant for their slain chief.