Stirring scenes in savage lands

by James Greenwood

Under the influence of these causes, in the course of a few weeks the muscles were dried up, and the whole body appeared as if covered with a kind of parchment. It was then clothed, and fixed in a sitting posture; a small altar was erected before it, and offerings of fruit, food, and flowers daily presented by the relatives or the priest appointed to attend the body. In this state it was kept many months, when the body was buried, and the skull preserved by the family.

In commencing the process of embalming, and placing the body on the bier, another priest was employed, who was called the tahna lure tiapapau, or “corpse-praying priest.” His office was singular. When the house for the dead had been erected, and the corpse placed upon the bier, the priest ordered a hole to be dug near the foot of it. Over this hole the priest prayed to the god by whom it was supposed the spirit of the deceased had been required. The purport of his prayer was, that all the dead man’s sins, and especially that for which his soul had been called away, might be deposited there; that they might not attach in any degree to the survivors; and that the anger of the god might be appeased. After the prayer, the priest, addressing the deceased, exclaimed, “With you let the guilt now remain.” Then a pillar of wood was planted in the “sin-hole,” and the earth filled in. Then the priest, taking a number of small slips of plantain leaf-stalk, approached the body, and laid some under the arms, and strewed some on the breast, saying, “There are your family; there are your children, there is your wife, there is your father, and there is your mother. Be contented in the world of spirits. Look not towards those you have left in the world.” And—or so thought the benighted creatures among whom this singular rite was performed—the dead man’s spirit being hoodwinked into the belief that the chief of his relations were no longer inhabitants of the world, ceased to trouble itself further about mundane affairs, and never appeared in ghostly shape at the midnight couches of living men.

All who were employed in the embalming, which was called muri, were during the process carefully avoided by every person, as the guilt of the crime for which the deceased had died was supposed in some degree to attach to such as touched the body. They did not feed themselves, lest the food defiled by the touch of their polluted hands should cause their death, but were fed by others. As soon as the ceremony of depositing the sin in the hole was over, all who had touched the dead man or his garments fled precipitately into the sea, where for a long time they bathed, and came away leaving their contaminated clothes behind them. At the conclusion of their ablutions they dived, and brought from the sea-bed some bits of coral. Bearing these in their hands, their first journey was to the sin-hole of the defunct, at which the bits of coral were cast, with the adjuration, “With you may all pollution be!”

On the death of Finow, King of Tonga, Mr. Mariner informs us, the chiefs and grand company invited to take part in his funeral obsequies, seated themselves, habited in mats, waiting for the body of the deceased king to be brought forth. The mourners (who are always women), consisting of the female relations, widows, mistresses, and servants of the deceased, and such other females of some rank who chose out of respect to officiate on such an occasion, were assembled in the house and seated round the corpse, which still lay out on the blades of gnatoo. They were all habited in large old ragged mats—the more ragged the more fit for the occasion, as being more emblematical of a spirit broken down, or, as it were, torn to pieces by grief. Their appearance was calculated to excite pity and sorrow in the heart of anyone, whether accustomed or not to such a scene; their eyes were swollen with the last night’s frequent flood of grief, and still weeping genuine tears of regret; the upper part of their cheeks perfectly black, and swollen so that they could hardly see, with the constant blows they had inflicted on themselves with their fists.

Among the chiefs and matabooles who were seated on the marly, all those who were particularly attached to the late king or to his cause evinced their sorrow by a conduct usual indeed among these people at the death of a relation, or of a great chief (unless it be that of Tooitonga, or any of his family), but which to us may well appear barbarous in the extreme; that is to say, the custom of cutting and wounding themselves with clubs, stones, knives, or sharp shells; one at a time, or two or three together, running into the middle of the circle formed by the spectators to give these proofs of their extreme sorrow for the death, and great respect for the memory of their departed friend.

The sentiments expressed by these victims of popular superstition were to the following purpose. “Finow, I know well your mind; you have departed to Bolotoo, and left your people under suspicion that I or some of those about you are unfaithful; but where is the proof of infidelity? where is a single instance of disrespect?” Then inflicting violent blows and deep cuts in the head with a club, stone, or knife, would again exclaim at intervals, “Is this not a proof of my fidelity? does this not evince loyalty and attachment to the memory of the departed warrior?” Then perhaps two or three would run on and endeavour to seize the same club, saying with a furious tone of voice, “Behold the land is torn with strife, it is smitten to pieces, it is split by revolts; how my blood boils; let us haste and die! I no longer wish to live: your death, Finow, shall be mine. But why did I wish hitherto to live? it was for you alone; it was in your service and defence only that I wished to breathe; but now, alas! the country is ruined. Peace and happiness are at an end; your death has insured ours: henceforth war and destruction alone can prosper.” These speeches were accompanied with a wild and frantic agitation of the body, whilst the parties cut and bruised their heads every two or three words with the knife or club they held in their hands. Others, somewhat more calm and moderate in their grief, would parade up and down with rather a wild and agitated step, spinning and whirling the club about, striking themselves with the edge of it two or three times violently upon the top or back of the head, and then suddenly stopping and looking stedfastly at the instrument spattered with blood, exclaim, “Alas! my club, who could have said that you would have done this kind office for me, and have enabled me thus to evince a testimony of my respect for Finow? Never, no never, can you again tear open the brains of his enemies. Alas! what a great and mighty warrior has fallen! Oh, Finow, cease to suspect my loyalty; be convinced of my fidelity! But what absurdity am I talking! if I had appeared treacherous in your sight, I should have met the fate of those numerous warriors who have fallen victims to your just revenge. But do not think, Finow, that I reproach you; no, I wish only to convince you of my innocence, for who that has thoughts of harming his chiefs shall grow white headed like me (an expression used by some of the old men). O cruel gods to deprive us of our father, of our only hope, for whom alone we wished to live. We have indeed other chiefs, but they are only chiefs in rank, and not like you, alas! great and mighty in war.”

Such were their sentiments and conduct on this mournful occasion. Some, more violent than others, cut their heads to the skull with such strong and frequent blows, that they caused themselves to reel, producing afterwards a temporary loss of reason. It is difficult to say to what length this extravagance would have been carried, particularly by one old man, if the prince had not ordered Mr. Mariner to go up and take away the club from him, as well as two others that were engaged at the same time. It is customary on such occasions, when a man takes a club from another, to use it himself in the same way about his own head; but Mr. Mariner, being a foreigner, was not expected to do this; he therefore went up and, after some hesitation and struggle, secured the clubs one after another, and returned with them to his seat, when, after a while, they were taken by others, who used them in like manner.

After these savage expressions of sorrow had been continued for nearly three hours, the prince gave orders that the body of his father should be taken to Felletoa to be buried. In the first place, a bale of gnatoo was put on a kind of hurdle, and the body laid on the bale; the prince then ordered that, as his father was the first who introduced guns in the wars of Tonga, the two carronades should be loaded and fired twice before the procession set out, and twice after it had passed out of the marly; he gave directions also that the body of Finow’s daughter, lately deceased, should be taken out in the model of a canoe, and carried after the body of her father; that during his life, as he wished always to have her body in his neighbourhood, she might now at length be buried with him.

Matters being thus arranged, Mr. Mariner loaded the guns and fired four times with blank cartridge. The procession then went forward, and in the course of two hours arrived at Felletoa, where the body was laid in a house on the marly at some distance from the grave, till another and smaller house could be brought close to it; and this was done in course of an hour. The post being taken up, the four pieces which compose the building (a kind of shed in a pyramidal form, the eaves reaching within four feet of the ground) were brought by a sufficient number of men, and put together at the place where it was wanted. This being done, the body was brought on the same hurdle or hand-barrow to the newly-erected building (if it may be so termed); and then being taken off the hurdle, it was laid within, on the bale of gnatoo, and the house was hung round with black gnatoo, reaching from the eaves to the ground.

The women, who were all assembled and seated round the body, began a most dismal lamentation. In the mean time a number of people, whose business it is to prepare graves, were digging the place of interment under the direction of a mataboole, whose office is to superintend such affairs. Having dug about ten feet, they came to the large stone covering a vault; a rope was fastened double round one end of the stone, which always remains a little raised for the purpose, and was raised by the main strength of 150 or 200 men, pulling at the two ends of the rope towards the opposite edge of the grave till it was brought up on end. The body being oiled with sandal-wood oil, and then wrapped in mats, was handed down on a large bale of gnatoo into the grave; the bale of gnatoo was then, as is customary, taken by the before-mentioned mataboole as his perquisite. Next, the body of his daughter, in the model of a canoe, was let down in like manner, and placed by his side. The great stone was then lowered down with a loud shout. Immediately certain matabooles and warriors ran like men frantic round about the place of sepulture, exclaiming, “Alas! how great is our loss! Finow, you are departed: witness this proof of our love and loyalty!” At the same time they cut and bruised their own heads with clubs, knives, axes, etc.