§ 5. Amusements, Dancing-places, Banqueting-halls
A favourite amusement of the islanders was racing or combating on stilts. A stilt was composed of two pieces, a pole of light wood which the runner held in his hand, and a step or foot-rest of hard wood, on which he planted one of his feet. The step or foot-rest was often adorned with human figures curiously carved, which are said to have represented gods. The races or combats took place on the paved areas which were to be seen in most villages, and which formed the scene of public entertainments. In these contests each runner or combatant tried to get in the way of his adversary, and, balancing himself on one stilt, to strike his rival with the other, so as to bring him to the ground amid the laughter and jeers of the spectators. It has sometimes been supposed that the use of stilts in the Marquesas originated in the practical purpose of enabling people to cross a stream without wetting their feet. But the supposition is highly improbable. For, on the one hand, the streams in the islands are mere rivulets, which dry up for the greater part of the year; and, on the other hand, the natives are almost amphibious, often spending whole days in the water, and swimming for hours without fatigue. Hence it is absurd to imagine that they invented stilts simply to keep their feet dry at crossing a shallow stream.[46]
But perhaps the most popular recreation of the Marquesans was dancing and singing, which formed a leading feature of their festivals. Every inhabited district had its dancing-place, a sort of public square, where places were set apart for the use of the performers, the musicians, and the spectators. These have been described by the missionary, C. S. Stewart, from personal observation. He says, "Our walk terminated at what may be called the theatre or opera house of the settlement, a large rectangular platform of stone pavement, surrounded by low terraces also laid with stone; the first designed for the public exhibitions of the song and the dance, and the last for the accommodation of the spectators who assemble to witness the performance. Entertainments of this kind are the most fashionable and favourite amusements at the Washington and the Marquesan groups. Every inhabited district has its Tahua, or public square of this kind; some of them so extensive, it is said, as to be capable of accommodating ten thousand people."[47] Again, speaking of another of these dancing-places, the same writer observes, "This Tahua, or theatre, is a structure altogether superior to that visited by us yesterday, and so massive and well built as to be capable of enduring for ages. It is a regular oblong square, about sixty feet in length and forty broad. The outer wall consists of immense stones, or slabs of rock, three feet high, and many of them four or six feet long, joined closely together and hewn with a regularity and neatness truly astonishing, in view of the rude implements by which it must have been accomplished. On a level with the top of this outer wall, a pavement of large flat stones, several feet in width, extends entirely round, forming seats for the chiefs, warriors, and other persons of distinction, and singers performing the recitatives and choruses accompanying the dance. Within this, and some inches lower, is another pavement still wider, having large flat-topped stones fixed in it at regular intervals of six or eight feet, used as seats by the beaters on the drums, and other rude instruments of music, and immediately within this again, an unpaved area, some twenty feet long by twelve broad, constituting the stage on which the dancers exhibit their skill."[48]
Some of these dancing-places appear to have been much larger than those seen by Stewart. According to Langsdorff they were sometimes not less than a hundred fathoms in length, and the great smooth pavement consisted of blocks of stone, several feet broad, laid so neatly and so close together that you might have imagined it to be the work of European master-masons.[49] Radiguet describes one such dancing-place as a rectangular area eighty metres (about two hundred and sixty feet) long by thirty metres (about one hundred feet) broad, and surrounded by a terrace paved with stone, on which the spectators were seated.[50]
The festivals (koikas) celebrated at these places were either periodical or occasional. Among the periodical perhaps the most important was that held at the ingathering of the bread-fruit harvest in February and March. Among the occasional were those held after a successful fishing, at the ratification of peace, and after the death of a priest or chief, who had been raised to the rank of a deity. A messenger decked in all the native finery repaired to the surrounding villages inviting the inhabitants to attend the festival. Immense numbers of hogs were killed and huge troughs filled with bread-fruit were provided by the hosts for the banquet. The festivals were attended not only by the people of the particular valley in which they were held, but by the inhabitants of other valleys and even of other islands; for so long as a festival lasted, a special taboo forbade the natives to harm the strangers in their midst. A general truce was observed; members of hostile tribes came to share the pleasures of the festival with the foes whom they had recently fought, and whom they would fight again in a few days.[51] Yet such visitors were careful to observe certain precautions: they never came unarmed, and they always kept together on one side of the festival ground, in order that they might rally the more easily for mutual defence, if they should be suddenly attacked.[52]
The performers who sang and danced at these festivals for the entertainment of the public were called Hokis or Kaioas: they are described as a sort of wandering troubadours or minstrels, who went from tribe to tribe, seeking their fortune. They took great care of their persons, which they artificially whitened. At once poets, musicians, and dancers, they nevertheless did not enjoy the public esteem; on the contrary, their effeminate habits incurred the contempt of a people who had small taste for the fine arts.[53] Thus these wandering minstrels and mountebanks would seem to have corresponded to the Areois of the Society Islands.[54] The dances were accompanied by the beating of drums and the songs of a chorus, it might be of a hundred and fifty singers, who sat on the upper platform along with the chiefs and warriors. Sometimes in the intervals between the dances a choir of women, seated on an adjoining and elevated platform, would chant in dull monotonous tones, clapping their hands loudly in unison with their song. The subjects of the songs were various and were often furnished by some passing event, such as the arrival of a ship or any less novel incident. Not unfrequently, like ballads in our own country, the songs caught the popular fancy and became fashionable, being sung in private by all classes of society. So passionately addicted were the Marquesans to these entertainments that they undertook the longest and most fatiguing journeys from all parts of the island in order to be present at them, carrying their food and suffering great hardships by the way; they even came in their crazy canoes, at the hazard of their lives, from other islands, and accepted the risk of being knocked on the head at one of the brawls with which such gatherings usually ended.[55]
Closely connected with the festivals were the banqueting-halls, as they may be called. These were houses, or rather sheds, thatched with leaves and open in front, where the lower end of the sloping roof was supported on short wooden pillars, of which the upper parts were rudely carved in the likeness of the god Tiki, thus forming a sort of Caryatids. These sheds varied in length from thirty to sixty and even two hundred feet in length. They stood on quadrangular stone platforms of the usual type, ranging from three or four to six, eight, twelve, and even fifteen feet in height. The blocks of stone put together to form the platforms were sometimes enormous, many of them measuring eight feet long by four feet thick and wide; and they were hewn and polished into such perfect form as to excite the wonder of the European beholder, who reflected with astonishment on the vast labour requisite to bring these huge rocks from the sea and to chisel them into shape without the help of iron tools. Access to the platforms was afforded by sloping trunks of trees notched into steps. In these open sheds the men feasted and prayed. Before each repast it was customary to offer to the deity a small portion of food wrapt in leaves. Sometimes the priests would thrust the morsels into the mouths of Tiki's grotesque images. No woman might enter these banqueting-halls or mount the platforms on which they stood. The place was strictly tabooed to them, and the taboo was signified in the usual way by long pennants of white cloth attached to the posts of the house.[56]
§ 6. Social Ranks, Taboo
Socially the Marquesans were divided into chiefs or nobles and commoners; but the chiefs seem to have possessed very little authority, and to have received few outward marks of deference and respect. A monarchical government in any proper sense of the word was unknown.[57] The power of the chiefs, such as it was, rested mainly on their superior wealth, particularly on their landed property; for the larger their estates, the greater the number of the tenants whose services they could command. Hence the government has been called aristocratic and compared to the feudal system.[58] In a fruitful season the chiefs had a right to a fourth part of the produce, and in other seasons a share according to circumstances. Their dignity was hereditary.[59] There was no general government of the archipelago as a whole. Each island was quite independent of all the rest; and in every island there were several independent tribes, which were generally at war with each other.[60]
A powerful instrument in the hands of the nobles was the taboo or tapu, which, though it seems to have been originally a religious institution,[61] was turned to political and economic account by the chiefs and priests acting in conjunction. One of our best authorities on the Marquesans describes the institution as a tool of despotism for the gratification of the passions and caprices of such as could wield it.[62] But this is a somewhat one-sided and imperfect view to take of its scope. There is no doubt, as other good authorities on the Marquesans have pointed out, that in the absence of a strong government which could maintain order and protect life and property, the taboo to a great extent served the purposes which in more civilised society are fulfilled by laws.[63] The taboo was a sacred interdiction, a breach of which was believed of itself to entail disastrous consequences on the transgressor. The interdiction might be either public or private. To give examples of public interdictions, when the quantity of breadfruit, on which the people depended for their subsistence, was from any cause seriously diminished in a district, the chief had the right to impose a taboo on bread-fruit trees for twenty months, during which no one might gather the fruit. This close time allowed the trees to recover their strength and fertility. Similarly, if fish were scarce, the chief might pronounce a taboo on the neighbouring bay, or a part of it, in order to allow the fish to multiply undisturbed and replenish the sea in the neighbourhood of human habitations. Again, in the prospect of a great festival, a chief might lay an interdict on pigs for two or three years in advance, in order that, when the time came, there might be plenty of pork for the multitude at the banquet. Similarly, when the paper-mulberry, from which the Marquesans made their bark-cloth, threatened to give out, the chief might lay the trees under an interdict for five years, at the end of which the crop was sure to be magnificent.[64] In these and similar cases the taboo was of public utility by ensuring a proper supply of the necessaries of life. However, its imposition was not always guided by rational considerations, and hence it sometimes failed of its purpose. For example, so long as the bread-fruit was unripe, almost all kinds of fish were taboo and therefore might not be eaten, and this interdiction, instead of alleviating, tended naturally to aggravate the scarcity of food. The reason for the taboo was a curious superstition that if any one were to eat fish while the bread-fruit was unripe, the fruit would fall from the trees.[65]