Stirring scenes in savage lands

by James Greenwood

It is also related by Stedman, that on some occasions when the brain has been injured as well as the bone, they have opened the skull, taken out the injured portion of the brain, and, having a pig ready, have killed it, taken out the pig’s brains, put them in the man’s head, and covered them up. They persist in stating that this has been done, but add that the persons always became furious with madness and died.

The sick man finds small compassion in Figi. If he is not very sick he is left to recover as he may, but the patience of his relations is soon exhausted. This does not seem to arise so much from inhumanity of disposition as from the miserable belief that some evil spirit has a hand in the business, and that as long as life remains in the ill conditioned body, the demon will be lurking about, and may presently attack another victim. They are a wonderfully matter-of-fact people, and do not scruple to make urgent representations to the invalid of the peril he is threatening his relations with by this vacillating temper—neither getting well nor dying: “You don’t seem to mend in the least, in fact you are looking disgustingly ill this morning, where’s the use of holding out? If you are to die, why not do it at once? Be reasonable and let some one help you out of your misery.”

Gentle and simple experience the same treatment. Mr. Williams relates the case of a Princess of Nakembo, who fell sick. The aid of the best native doctors was secured, large offerings made to the gods, and a temple begun, to secure their favour, but all was in vain. Rich puddings from sixteen to twenty-one feet in circumference were made, and through the priests sacrificed to the gods, but, despite all, the princess grew worse, and it was formally resolved to do her the charitable office of strangulation, when the missionaries interfered, took charge of and cured her. The same authority also quotes the case of a woman of Somosomo, who was in a very abject state through the protracted absence of her husband. For five weeks, though two women lived in the same house, she lay uncared for, becoming reduced to a mere skeleton. After this she had food and medicine from the missionaries and improved. One morning, however, as a servant was carrying her her breakfast he met a funeral party who told him to take the breakfast back. The man could then remember that on the previous day he had found an old woman at the house of the invalid who made no secret of her errand but openly declared, “I came to see my friend and enquire if she was ready to be strangled, but as she is strong we will not strangle her yet.” As the sequel proved, the old murderess soon altered her mind.

Another instance given of the extraordinary treatment the sick and afflicted of Figi receive at the hands of their fellows concerns a native sailor. There was a violent storm, and the unfortunate in question with several others were spilt into the sea, and, as was thought, perished every one. This one man, however, managed to support himself by swimming till, utterly exhausted, he reached one of a fleet of canoes, and managed to pull himself aboard unperceived. One would have thought that his first act would have been to make himself known to his brother mariners, but he was a Figian among Figians and knew the probable fate that awaited him. As day broke the man was discovered; a short council was held, and it being universally agreed that there was something highly mysterious that this one should be saved while the rest, including the owner of the ship, who was a prince, should be lost, and that since he himself could give no better account of his escape than that “he swam,” the best course would be to knock him on the head and throw him overboard. One of the crew, however, presently recognized the wrecked man as a very skilful sailor, and the craft being short handed, it was finally resolved to let him live, provided he at once took the great steer oar and steered the vessel. To handle the steer oar of a Figian canoe is work for a very strong man. Nevertheless the poor man, weak and trembling from his long immersion, obeyed and steered the vessel through a long and tedious voyage, when, more dead than alive, he was carried ashore and housed in a shed. Here he remained till he was nearly well, when, unluckily, on the very eve of the ship putting to sea again he showed symptoms of a relapse. “No one could be spared to look after the invalid, and to take him on the canoe might give him pain and inconvenience his friends; they therefore concluded that it would be the best plan to strangle him, which purpose they, with his own consent, carried out. They kissed and wept over him! strangled, buried and mourned for him; and the next day set out on their voyage.”

There is, however, a dreadful charge laid at the door of the Figian sick—a charge which Europeans who have lived amongst them declare to be not without foundation. Actuated by inexplicable motives they will, by lying on the mats of their friends, and by handling their clothing and cooking utensils, endeavour to communicate the disease with which they are afflicted. If this be true the anxiety of the Figian to see a sick relative comfortably entombed is in a great measure accounted for.

Turner, the Polynesian missionary, relates that when a Samoan falls sick his friends take a present to the priest: he says he will pray to the god for recovery; and then he goes to the sick person, and anoints with oil the part affected. He uses no particular oil. When he sits down he calls some one of the family to hand him some oil, and dipping his hand into the cup, passes it gently over the part two or three times. No medicines are used for the sick: if the body is hot, they go and lie down in cold water; if cold, they kindle a fire and warm themselves. After death the friends of the deceased are anxious to know the cause of death: they go with a present to the priest, and beg him to get the dead man to speak, and confess the sins which caused his death. The priest may be distant from the dead body, but he pretends to summon the spirit, and to have it within him. He speaks in his usual tone, and tells him to say before them all what he did to cause his death. Then he (the priest) whines out in a weak faltering voice a reply, as if from the spirit of the departed, confessing that he stole cocoa nuts from such a place, or that he fished at some particular spot forbidden by the king, or that he ate the fish which was the incarnation of his family god. As the priest whines out something of this sort, he manages to squeeze out some tears, and sob and cry over it. The friends of the departed feel relieved to know the cause, get up and go home. At death, one will say to his friend, “I’m going to the moon—think of me as being there.” Another will say, “I’m going to be a star;” and mentions the particular part of the heavens where they are to look for him. Another will say, “I shan’t go away—I shall remain in the grave, and be here with you.” Thus they seem to think they have only to choose where their disembodied spirits are to go after death. They tell of a Tokelau man who went up to the moon, and have their tale also of “the man in the moon.” They say, too, that the moon is the special residence of the kings and priests of Tokelau. The stars they believe to be the spirits of the departed. When the full moon begins to wane they suppose that it is being eaten by the inhabitants of the region. From the new moon until the full they consider that the food is growing again. An eclipse of the moon is thought to be some sudden calamity destroying the food of the departed kings, and occasions special concern; and prayers and a meat offering of grated cocoa nut are immediately presented to their great god Tui Tokelau to avert the evil. As the eclipse passes off, they think it is all owing to their prayers.

The Samoans never had recourse to any internal remedy, except an emetic, which they sometimes tried after having eaten a poisonous fish. Sometimes, juices from the bush were tried; at other times, the patient drank water until it was rejected; and on some occasions, mud, and even the most unmentionable filth was mixed up, and taken as an emetic draught. Latterly, as their intercourse with Tongans, Figians, Tahitians, and Sandwich Islanders increased, they made additions to their pharmacopœia of juices from the bush. As in Egypt, each disease had its particular physician. Shampooing and anointing the affected part of the body with scented oil by the native doctors was common; and to this charms were frequently added, consisting of some flowers from the bush done up in a piece of native cloth, and put in a conspicuous place in the thatch, over the patient. Now, however, European medicines are eagerly sought after; so much so, that every missionary is obliged to have a dispensary, and to set apart a certain hour every day to give advice and medicine to the sick. As the Samoans supposed disease to be occasioned by the wrath of some particular deity, their principal desire, in any difficult case, was not for medicine, but to ascertain the cause of the calamity. The friends of the sick went to the high-priest of the village. He was sure to assign some cause; and, whatever that was, they were all anxiety to have it removed as the means of restoration. If he said they were to give up a canoe to the god, it was given up. If a piece of land was asked, it was passed over at once. Or if he did not wish anything from the party, he would probably tell them to assemble the family, “confess, and throw out.” In this ceremony each member of the family confessed his crimes, and any judgments which, in anger, he had invoked on the family, or upon the particular member of it then ill; and as a proof that he revoked all such imprecations, he took a little water in his mouth and spurted it out towards the person who was sick. The custom is still kept up by many; and the sick bed of a dear friend often forms a confessional, before which long-concealed and most revolting crimes are disclosed.

In surgery they lanced ulcers with a shell or a shark’s tooth, and, in a similar way, bled from the arm. For inflammatory swellings, they sometimes tried local bleeding, but shampooing and rubbing with oil were and are still the more common remedies in such cases. Cuts they washed in the sea and bound up with a leaf. Into wounds in the scalp they blew the smoke of burnt chestnut wood. To take a barbed spear from the arm or leg, they cut into the limb from the opposite side, and pushed it right through. Amputation they never attempted. The treatment of the sick was, as it is now, invariably humane, and all that could be expected. They wanted for no kind of food, which they might desire by night or day, if it was at all in the power of their friends to procure it. In the event of the disease assuming a dangerous form, messengers were dispatched to friends at a distance that they might have an opportunity of being in time to see and say farewell to a departing relative. This is still the custom. The greater the rank, the greater the stir and muster about the sick of friends from the neighbourhood and from a distance. Everyone who goes to visit a sick friend supposed to be near death takes with him a present of a fine mat or some other kind of valuable property as a farewell expression of regard. Among the worldly minded, whose interests centre in this life, this heaping together of property by the bedside of a dying relative is still in high repute.

Of all classes of savage “Mystery-men,” rain-makers, thunder-makers, fly-makers, etc., the most singular of all, perhaps, are those denominated disease-makers. Amongst the Tannese, of Polynesia, these men are feared and worshipped as gods. They are supposed to be able to create disease and death by nohak burning. Nohak is literally rubbish, or refuse of food, which these disease-makers are continually searching after. The people therefore take every precaution, by burning or throwing into the sea all the rubbish they find lying about, to prevent those men from getting it. Should a disease-maker find the skin of a lanana, he rolls it up in a leaf, and wears it all day hanging round his neck, so that the people may see it; who say to each other, “He has got something; he will do for somebody at night.” After wearing it all day long, he takes it home in the evening, and scrapes some bark off a tree; he mixes this up with the lanana skin, and rolls it up tightly in a leaf, and then puts one end of it close enough to the fire to cause it to singe and smoulder, and burn away very gradually. How, when a Tannese falls ill, he is fully persuaded some disease-maker is burning his nohak, so that he provides himself with a rude kind of horn, made out of some perforated shell. This shell he gets some one present to blow for him, and this is fully understood by the disease-maker to mean that the sick man wishes him to discontinue the burning, and also, that a present shall be sent to him the next morning; so that when the disease-maker hears the shell blown, he says to his friends, “That is the man whose rubbish I am burning, he is ill; let us stop burning, and see what present he will bring in the morning.” The sick man faithfully keeps his promise, and, in the morning, some present is made—pigs, mats, and such like. Whereupon the disease-maker promises he will do all he can to prevent the rubbish being again burned. Should a person die, his friends suppose that the disease-makers were not pleased with the presents made, and burned his rubbish to the end. When it is all burned they believe the person will die. Nor do the disease-makers seem to be the impostors, for should one of the craft fall ill, he fully believes some one is burning his nohak, and he blows the shell, and makes the presents as readily as the rest.

Cruel and abominable as are many of the Polynesian methods of disposing of their sick and aged, that there is “in lowest depths a deeper still,” many African tribes furnish an illustration. In an early part of this volume mention has been made of the poor old Bakalai, whom Du Chaillu met, and who was “turned out to die.” Such cases are not without parallel. Burchell quotes such a case, as does Moffat, as occurring among the Namaquas. This latter gentleman was informed that in a certain part of the forest there was an old woman squatting all alone and seemingly dying.