Not so with warriors who fell fighting on the field of battle. For a time, indeed, their souls wandered about among the rocks and trees where their bodies were thrown, the ghastly wounds by which they met their fate being still visible. The plaintive chirping of a certain cricket, rarely seen but heard continually at night, was believed to be the voice of the slain warriors sorrowfully calling to their friends. At last the first who fell would gather his brother ghosts at a place a little beyond Araia, on the edge of the cliff and facing the sunset. There they would linger for a time. But suddenly a mountain sprang up at their feet, and they ascended it over the spears and clubs which had given them their mortal wounds. Arrived at the summit they leaped up into the blue expanse, thus becoming the peculiar clouds of the winter or dry season. During the rainy season they could mount up to the warriors' paradise in the sky. In June, the first month of winter, the atmosphere was pervaded by these ghosts, to whom the chilliness of death still clung. For days together their thronging shapes hid the sun, dimming the sky and spreading among men the heaviness and oppression of spirits which are characteristic of the season. But with the early days of August, when the coral-tree puts forth its blood-red blossoms and the sky grows mottled with light fleecy clouds, the ghosts of the brave prepare to take flight for heaven. Soon the sky is cloudless, the weather bright and warm. The ghosts have fled away, and the living resume their wonted avocations in quiet and comfort.[68]
In their celestial home the spirits of the slain are immortal. There, in memory of their deeds on earth, they dance their old war dances over again, decked with gay flowers—the white gardenia, the yellow bua, the golden fruit of the pandanus, and the dark crimson, bell-like blossom of the native laurel, intertwined with myrtle; and from their blissful heights they look down with pity and disgust on the wretched souls in Avaiki entangled in the fatal net and besmeared with filth. For the spirits of the slain in battle are strong and vigorous, their bodies never having been wasted by disease; whereas the spirits of those who die a natural death are excessively feeble and weak, like their bodies at the moment of dissolution. The natural result of such beliefs was to breed an utter contempt for a violent death, nay even a desire to seek it. Many stories are told of aged warriors, scarcely able to hold a spear, who have insisted on being led to the battlefield in the hope of finding a soldier's death and gaining a soldier's paradise.[69]
Beliefs of the same general character concerning the fate of the dead prevailed in other islands of the Hervey Group. Thus in Rarotonga the great meeting-place of the ghosts was at Tuoro, facing the sunset. There at a stately tree, called "the Weeping Laurel," the disembodied spirits used to bewail their hard fate. If no pitying spirit sent him back to life, the ghost had to scramble up a branch of an ancient bua tree which grew on the spot. Should the bough break under his weight, the ghost was precipitated into the net which Muru had spread out for him in a natural circular hollow of the rock. A lively ghost might break the meshes of the net and escape for a while, but passing on to the outer edge of the reef, in the hope of traversing the ocean, he inevitably fell into another net artfully concealed by Akaanga. From this second net escape was impossible. The demons drew the captive ghosts out of the nets, and ruthlessly dashing out their brains on the sharp coral they carried off the shattered victims in triumph to devour them in the lower world. Ghosts from Ngatangiia ascended the noble mountain range which stretches across the island, dipping into the sea at Tuoro. Inexpressibly weary and sad was this journey over a road which foot of living wight had never trod. The departed spirits of this tribe met at a great iron-wood tree, of which some branches were green and others dead. The souls that trod on the green branches came back to life; but the souls that crawled on to the dead boughs were at once caught in the net either of Muru or of Akaanga.[70]
In Rarotonga, as in Mangaia, the lot of warriors who died in battle was much happier than that of the poor wretches who had the misfortune to die quietly in bed or to be otherwise ignominiously snuffed out. The gallant ghosts were said to join Tiki, who in Rarotonga appears to have been a dead warrior, whereas in Mangaia, as we saw, Tiki was a dead woman. In the Rarotongan Hades, which also went by the name of Avaiki, this Tiki sat at the threshold of a very long house built with walls of reeds, and surrounded by shrubs and flowers of fadeless bloom and never-failing perfume. Each ghost on his arrival had to make an offering to the warder Tiki, who, thus propitiated, admitted him to the house. There, sitting at their ease, eating, drinking, dancing, or sleeping, the brave of past ages dwelt in unwithering beauty and perpetual youth; there they welcomed newcomers, and there they told the story of their heroic exploits on earth and fought their old battles over again. But ghosts who had nothing to give to Tiki were compelled to stay outside in rain and darkness for ever, shivering with cold and hunger, watching with envious eyes the joyous revels of the inmates, and racked with the vain desire of being admitted to share them.[71]
Such beliefs in the survival of the soul after death may have nerved the warrior with fresh courage in battle; but they can have contributed but little to the happiness and consolation of ordinary people, who could apparently look forward to nothing better in the life hereafter than being cooked and eaten by a hideous hag.
FOOTNOTES
[1] F. H. H. Guillemard, Australasia, ii. (London, 1894) p. 509.
[2] W. W. Gill, Life in the Southern Isles (London, N.D.), p. 11. Compare John Williams, Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands (London, 1838), pp. 16, 174-176. According to Dr. Guillemard (loc. cit.), the height of Rarotonga is 2900 feet; according to W. W. Gill, our principal authority on the island, it is 4500 feet.
[3] W. W. Gill, Life in the Southern Isles. pp. 7 sq.; id., From Darkness to Light in Polynesia (London, 1894), pp. 6 sq.; A. Baessler, Neue Südsee-Bilder (Berlin, 1900), pp. 271 sqq., 274 sqq. (as to the caverns).
[4] F. H. H. Guillemard, Australasia, ii. 509. Compare A. Baessler, Neue Südsee-Bilder, pp. 257 sq., 269. The latter writer remarks on the great variety of types among the natives of these islands. In Mangaia he found the people darker than in Rarotonga, undersized, sturdy, with thick lips, noses broad and sunken at the bridge, which gave them a somewhat wild appearance. As to the tradition of an emigration of the Hervey Islanders from Samoa, see W. W. Gill, Life in the Southern Isles, pp. 23 sqq. "The Mangaians themselves trace their origin to Avaiki, or nether world; but Avaiki, Hawai'i, and Savai'i, are but slightly different forms of one word. The s of the Samoan dialect is invariably dropped in the Hervey Group dialects, whilst a k is substituted for the break at the end. No native of these days doubts that by Avaiki his ancestors really intended Savai'i, the largest island of the Samoan Group. In Polynesia, to sail west is to go down; to sail east is to go up. To sail from Samoa to Mangaia would be 'to come up,' or, to translate their vernacular closely, 'to climb up.' In their songs and myths are many references to 'the hosts of Ukupolu,' undoubtedly the Upolu of Samoa" (W. W. Gill, op. cit. p. 25). Compare id., Myths and Songs from the South Pacific (London, 1876), pp. 166 sq.