Stirring scenes in savage lands

by James Greenwood

“This revolting custom of burying alive is, as I have noted, not confined to infants and the aged. If a person in sickness shows signs of delirium, his grave is dug, and he is buried forthwith, to prevent the disease spreading to other members of the family. A young man in the prime of life was thus buried lately. He burst up the grave and escaped. He was caught and forced into the grave again. A second time he struggled to the surface, and they led him to the bush, lashed him fast to a tree, and left him there to die.

“Whenever the eye is fixed in death the house becomes a scene of indescribable lamentation and wailing. ‘Oh! my father, why did you not let me die, and you live here still?’ ‘Oh! my brother, why have you run away and left your only brother to be trampled upon?’ ‘Oh! my child, had I known you were going to die! Of what use is it for me to survive you?’ These and other doleful cries may be heard two hundred yards from the house; and as you go near you find that they are accompanied by the most frantic expressions of grief, such as rending garments, tearing the hair, thumping the face and eyes, burning the body with small piercing firebrands, beating the head with stones till the blood runs; and this they called an ”offering of blood for the dead.” Every one acquainted with the historical parts of the Bible will here observe remarkable coincidences. After an hour or so, the more boisterous wailing subsides, and, as in that climate the corpse must be buried in a few hours, preparations are made without delay. The body is laid out on a mat oiled with scented oil, and, to modify the cadaverous look, they tinge the oil for the face with a little turmeric. The body is then wound up with several folds of native cloth, the chin propped up with a little bundle of the same material, and the face and head left uncovered, while for some hours longer the body is surrounded by weeping relatives. If the person has died of a complaint which has carried off some other members of the family, they will probably open the body to search for the disease. Any inflamed substance they happen to find they take away and burn, thinking that this will prevent any other members of the family being affected with the same disease. This is done when the body is laid in the grave.

“While a dead body is in the house no food is taken under the same roof. The family have their meals outside, or in another house. Those who attended the deceased were formerly most careful not to handle food, and for days were fed by others as if they were helpless infants. Baldness and the loss of teeth were supposed to be the punishment inflicted by the household, if they violated the rule. Fasting was common at such times, and they who did so, ate nothing during the day, but had a meal at night, reminding us of what David said when mourning the death of Abner: ‘So do God to me and more also, if I taste bread or aught else till the sun be down.’ The fifth day was a day of purification. They bathed the face and hands with hot water, and then they were clean, and resumed the usual time and mode of eating.

“The death of a chief of high rank was attended with great excitement and display: all work was suspended in the settlement; no stranger dared to pass through the place. For days they kept the body unburied, until all the different parties connected with that particular clan assembled from various parts of the island, and until each party had in turn paraded the body, shoulder high, through the village, singing at the same time some mournful dirge. The body, too, was wrapped up in the best robe, viz., the most valuable fine mat clothing which the deceased possessed. Great respect is still shown to chiefs on these occasions, and there was a recent instance of something like a thirty days’ mourning; but the body is seldom paraded about the settlements now-a-days.

“The burial generally takes place the day after death. As many friends as can be present in time attend. Every one brings a present; and the day after the funeral, these presents are all so distributed again as that every one goes away with something in return for what he brought. Formerly, the body was buried without a coffin, except in the cases of chiefs; but now it is quite common to cut off the ends of some canoe belonging to the family, and make a coffin of it. The body being put into this rude encasement, all is done up again in some other folds of native cloth, and carried on the shoulders of four or five men to the grave. The friends follow, but in no particular order; and at the grave again there was often further wailing, and exclamations such as, “Alas! I looked to you for protection, but you have gone away! why did you die! would that I had died for you!” Since the introduction of Christianity, all is generally quiet at the grave. The missionary, or some native teacher appointed by him, attends, reads a portion of Scripture, delivers an address, and engages in prayer, that the living may consider and prepare for the time to die. The grave is called the last resting place; and in the case of chiefs the house is thatched with the leaves of sandal wood, alluding to the custom of planting some tree with pretty foliage near the grave. Attempts have been made to get a place set apart as the village burying-ground, but it is difficult to carry it out. All prefer laying their dead among the ashes of their ancestors, on their own particular ground. As the bones of Joseph were carried from Egypt to Canaan, so did the Samoans carry the skulls of their dead from a land where they had been residing during war, back to the graves of their fathers as soon as possible after peace was proclaimed. The grave is often dug close by the house. They make it about four feet deep; and, after spreading it with mats like a comfortable bed, there they place the body, with the head to the rising of the sun and the feet to the west. With the body they deposit several things which may have been used to answer the purpose of a pickaxe in digging the grave; not that they think these things of any use to the dead, but it is supposed that if they are left and handled by others, further disease and death will be the consequence. Other mats are spread over the body, on these a layer of white sand from the beach, and then they fill up the grave.

A Samoan Sepulchre.

“The spot is marked by a little heap of stones a foot or two high. The grave of a chief is nearly built up in an oblong slanting form, about three feet high at the foot and four at the head. White stones or shells are intermixed with the top layer; and if he has been a noted warrior, his grave may be surrounded with spears, or his gun laid loosely on the top.”

Embalming, the same authority informs us, is known and practised with surprising skill in one particular family of Samoan chiefs. Unlike the Egyptian method, as described by Herodotus, it is performed in Samoa exclusively by women. The viscera being removed and buried, they day after day anoint the body with a mixture of oil and aromatic juices, and they continue to puncture the body all over with fine needles. In about two months the process of desiccation is completed. The hair, which had been cut off and laid aside at the commencement of the operation, is now glued carefully on to the scalp by a resin from the bush. The abdomen is filled up with folds of native cloth, the body is wrapped up with the same material, and laid out on a mat, leaving the hands, face, and head exposed.

A house is built for the purpose, and there the body is placed with a sheet of native cloth loosely thrown over it. Now and then the face is oiled with a mixture of scented oil and turmeric, and passing strangers are freely admitted to see the remains of the departed. At present there are four bodies laid out in this way in a house belonging to the family to which we refer—viz., a chief, his wife, and two sons. They are laid on a platform, raised on a double canoe. It must be upwards of thirty years since some of them were embalmed, and although thus exposed they are in a remarkable state of preservation. They assign no particular reason for this embalming, further than that it is the expression of their affection to keep the bodies of the departed still with them as if they were alive.