This is not the only instance of the kind quoted by travellers familiar with the manners and customs of the Figians. Take the following:—“Ratu Varam (a chief) spoke of one among many whom he had caused to be buried alive. She had been weakly for a long time, and the chief, thinking she was likely to remain so, had a grave dug. The curiosity of the poor girl was excited by loud exclamations, as though something extraordinary had happened, and on stepping out of the house she was seized and thrown into the grave. In vain she shrieked with horror, and cried out, ‘Do not bury me! I am quite well now!’ Two men kept her down by standing on her, while others threw the earth in upon her until she was heard no more.”
If a Figian ceases to exist, towards the evening a sort of wake is observed. Parties of young men sit and “watch” the body, at the same time chaunting the most melancholy dirges. Early the next morning the preparations for the funeral and the funeral feast commence. Two go to dig the grave, others paint and dress the body, while others prepare the oven, and attend to culinary matters. The two grave diggers seated opposite each other make three feints with their digging sticks, which are then stuck into the earth, and a grave rarely more than three feet deep is prepared. Either the grave-diggers or some one near repeat twice the words “Figi Tonga.” The earth first thrown up is laid apart from the rest. When the grave is finished mats are laid at the bottom, and the body or bodies, wrapped in other mats or native cloths, are placed thereon, the edges of the mats folding over all; the earth is then thrown in. Many yards of the man’s masi are often left out of the grave and carried in festoons over the branches of a neighbouring tree. The sextons go away forthwith and wash themselves, using during their ablution the leaves of certain shrubs for purification, after which they return and share the food which has been prepared for them. Mr. Williams further relates that a respectable burial is invariably provided for the very poorest of the community, and that he has repeatedly seen poor wretches unable to procure a decent mat to lie on while alive, provided with five or six new ones to lie on in the grave. Moreover, the fact of a person dying far out at sea, or even being killed in battle with a distant tribe, whose horrid maws have provided him a sepulchre, does not diminish the responsibility of his relations in the matter of his funeral obsequies. The koloku, as the after-death ceremonies are named, takes place just as if the man had died at home, and the desire to make sacrifice is even more imperative. For instance, a bold and handsome Figian chief, named Ra Nibittu, was drowned at sea. As soon as the doleful news reached the land, seventeen of his wives were straightway strangled, and their bodies used as grass in a grave dedicated to the dead Ra Nibittu. Again, after the news of the massacre of the Namena people at Vicca in 1839, eighty women were strangled to accompany the spirits of their murdered husbands.
In Figi, as in England, the popular superstition concerning the midnight howling of a dog is prevalent, and thought to betoken death. A cat purring and rubbing against the legs of a Figian is regarded just as ominously. If, where a woman is buried, the marks of cat scratchings are found on the soil, it is thought certain evidence that while in life the woman was unchaste. Should a warrior fail after repeated efforts to bring his complexion by aid of various pigments to the orthodox standard of jetty blackness, he regards himself, and is regarded by others, as a doomed man, and of course the more he frets and fumes about the matter, the more he perspires, and the less chance he has of making the paint stick.
A proper winding up of this string of curious horrors connected with Figian death and burial, will be the Figian doctrine of the universal spread of death, as furnished to Mr. Williams, from whom it is only justice once more to remark these particulars are chiefly derived. “When the first man, the father of the human race was being buried, a god passed by this first grave and enquired what it meant. On being informed by those standing by that they had just buried their father, he said, ‘Do not inter him; dig the body up again.’—‘No,’ was the reply, ‘we cannot do that; he has been dead four days, and is unfit to be seen.’—‘Not so,’ said the god, ‘disinter him, and I promise you he shall live again.’ Heedless, however, of the promise of the god, these original sextons persisted in leaving their father’s remains in the earth. Perceiving their perverseness, the god said, ‘By refusing compliance with my demands, you have sealed your own destinies. Had you dug up your ancestor, you would have found him alive, and yourselves also as you passed from this world, should have been buried, as bananas are, for the space of four days, after which you should have been dug up, not rotten, but ripe. But now, as a punishment for your disobedience, you shall die and rot.’—‘Ah!’ say the Figians, after tearing this legend recounted, ‘Ah! if those children had dug up that body!’”
On this and many adjacent islands, cutting off a portion of the little finger as a sacrifice to the gods for the recovery of a superior sick relation is very commonly done; indeed there is scarcely a person living at Tonga but who has lost one or both or a considerable portion of both little fingers. Those who can have but few superior relations, such as those near akin to Tooitonga, or the king, or Veachi, have some chance of escaping, if their relations are tolerably healthy. It does not appear that the operation is painful. Mr. Mariner records that he has witnessed more than once little children quarrelling for the honour (or rather out of bravado) of having it done. The finger is laid flat upon a block of wood, a knife, axe, or sharp stone is placed with the edge upon the line of the proposed separation, and a powerful blow given with a mallet or large stone, the operation is finished. From the nature and violence of the action the wound seldom bleeds much. The stump is then held in the smoke and steam arising from the combustion of fresh plucked grass; this stops any flow of blood. The wound is not washed for two days; afterwards it is kept clean, and heals in about two or three weeks without any application whatever. One joint is generally taken off, but some will have a smaller portion, to admit of the operation being performed several times on the same finger, in case a man has many superior relations.
In certain islands of the Polynesian group there was observed at the approaching dissolution of a man of any importance a rite terribly fantastic and cruel. As soon as the dying man’s relatives were made acquainted with the impending calamity, they straightway and deliberately proceeded to act the part of raving mad men. “Not only,” says Ellis, “did they wail in the loudest and most affecting manner, but they tore their hair, rent their garments, and cut themselves with knives or with shark’s teeth in the most shocking manner. The instrument usually employed was a small cane about four inches long, with five or six shark’s teeth fixed in on opposite sides. With one of these instruments every female provided herself after marriage, and on occasions of death it was unsparingly used.
“With some this was not sufficient: they prepared a sharp instrument, something like a plumber’s mallet, about five or six inches long, rounded at one end for a handle, and armed with two or three rows of shark’s teeth fixed in the wood at the other. With this, on the death of a relative or friend, they cut themselves unmercifully, striking the head, temples, cheeks, and breast, till the blood flowed profusely from the wounds. At the same time they uttered the most deafening and agonizing cries; and the distortion of their countenances, their torn and dishevelled air, the mingled tears and blood that covered their bodies, their wild gestures and unruly conduct, often gave them a frightful and almost inhuman appearance. I have often conversed with these people on their reasons for this strange procedure, and have asked them if it was not exceeding painful to cut themselves as they were accustomed to do. They have always answered that it was very painful in some parts of the face, that the upper lip or the space between the upper lip and the nostrils was the most tender, and a stroke there was always attended with the greatest pain.... The females on these occasions sometimes put on a kind of short apron of a particular sort of cloth, which they held up with one hand, while they cut themselves with the other. In this apron they caught the blood that flowed from these grief-inflicted wounds until it was almost saturated. It was then dried in the sun and given to the nearest surviving relations, as a proof of the affection of the donor, and was preserved by the bereaved family as a token of the estimation in which the departed had been held.
“I am not prepared to say that the same enormities were practised here as in the Sandwich Islands at these times, but on the death of a king or principal chief, the scenes exhibited in and around the house were in appearance demoniacal. The relatives and members of the household began; the other chiefs of the island and their relatives came to sympathize with the survivors, and on reaching the place joined in the infuriated conduct of the bereaved. The tenantry of the chiefs came also, and giving themselves to all the savage infatuation which the conduct of their associates, or the influence of their superstitious belief inspired, they not only tore their hair and lacerated their bodies till they were covered with blood, but often fought with clubs and stones till murder followed.”
As soon as an individual of the islands above alluded to died, a ceremony known as “tahna tertera” was performed, with a view of discovering the cause of death. In order to effect this the priest took his canoe, and paddled slowly along on the sea near the house where the body was lying, to watch the passage of the spirit, which they supposed would fly upon him with the emblem of the cause for which the person died. If he had been cursed by the gods, the spirit would appear with a flame, fire being the agent employed in the incantations of the sorcerers; if killed by the bribe of some enemy given to the gods, the spirit would appear with a red feather, an emblem signifying that evil spirits had entered his food. After a short time the tahna or priest returned to the house of the deceased, and told the survivors the cause of his death, and received his fee, the amount of which was regulated by the circumstances of the parties. To avert mischief from the dead man’s relations, the priest now performed certain secret ceremonies, and in a day or two he again made his appearance with a cheerful countenance, to assure them that they need no longer go in fear, received another fee, and took his departure.
The bodies of the chiefs and persons of rank and affluence were embalmed. The art of embalming, generally thought to indicate a high degree of civilization, appears to have been known and practised among the Polynesians from a very remote period, and however simple the process, it was thoroughly successful. The intestines, brain, etc., were removed, and the body fixed in a sitting posture, and exposed to the direct rays of the sun. The inside was, after a while, filled with shreds of native cloth, saturated with perfumed oil, with which the exterior was plentifully and vigorously anointed. This, together with the heat of the sun and the dryness of the atmosphere, favoured the preservation of the body.