Faery Lands of the South Seas

by James Norman Hall; Charles Nordhoff

"The other evening, when I was having a yarn with Apakura, she told me about another kind of varua ino, who figures as the villain in the tale of a Polynesian Cinderella. It may interest you. A great many years ago, on Ahu Ahu, there was a man named Tautu—one of Apakura's family—a renowned fighting man, who dabbled in sorcery when there were no wars to be fought. Tall, handsome, and famous, it was no wonder that Tautu was pursued by all the island girls—scheming sisters, in particular, who went so far as to build a hut near where he lived. Hoping to catch the eye of the hero, they took their finest ornaments and robes of tapa and went to live in the hut, accompanied by their little sister, Titiara, who was to act as a drudge about the house. Young Titiara had no designs on Tautu, and she possessed no finery to make herself beautiful in his eyes, but one day, when she was gathering wood in the bush, he chanced to pass. Stopping to speak with her, he was struck with her goodness and beauty, and from that time the two met every day in the forest. The older sisters, meanwhile, were the victims of a mischievous earth spirit which haunted the vicinity and visited them in the guise of Tautu. They were triumphant—when it was known that they had won the warrior's favors all their friends would be wild with jealousy; they could not resist preening themselves before their little sister. 'Tautu loves us,' they told her; 'he comes every day when you are off gathering wood.' 'But that is impossible,' said Titiara, 'for Tautu is my lover; he meets me each day in the forest.' The older girls laughed scornfully at this, but Titiara said no more until she met her lover in the evening. When she told him what her sisters had said, he laughed. 'It is a varua ino,' he informed her, 'a mischievous spirit whose true appearance is that of a hideous old man. To-morrow I will prove to your sisters that it is not I who visit them.' That night Tautu sat up late, weaving a magic net of hibiscus bark—a net which had the property of causing a spirit to assume its true shape. Next afternoon Tautu and Titiara stole up to the house where the spirit, in the form of a splendid warrior, was talking and laughing with the two sisters. Tautu cast the net; next moment the spirit was howling and struggling in the magic meshes, unable to escape, moaning as it shriveled and changed to the appearance of an old man, gray-bearded, trembling, and hideous. The two sisters shrank back in loathing and mortification, while Tautu told them that he had chosen Titiara to be his wife."

As he finished his story Tari rose, crossed the room to a bookshelf, and returned to hand me a volume bound in worn yellow leather.

"I'm going to turn in now," he remarked; "we'll go fishing in the morning if you will plan to stop over. Take this to your room if you are not sleepy; it is worth running over—Bligh's account of the voyage of the Bounty, published at Dublin in seventeen ninety-two."

Propped up in bed, with a lamp burning on the table beside me, I opened Bligh's quaint and earnest account of his voyage. The mutiny, the commander's passage in an open boat from Tonga to Timor, and the settlement of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island have been made familiar by a voluminous and sentimental literature, but I had never before come across the story of Bligh's residence among the natives of Tahiti, one hundred and thirty-two years ago.

More than any other Eastern island, perhaps, Tahiti was the cradle of the oceanic race; called the Lap of God by Kamapiikai, the fabled Hawaiian voyager, who discovered, in the southern group, the fountain of eternal youth. Knowing something of the island as it is to-day, I had listened with interest when Tari remarked, "Civilization has barely scratched the inner life of Tahiti." Bligh was a close observer, blessed with insight and a pleasant sense of humor; at the time of his visit the people were untouched by European influence. It is interesting to check his observations against what any traveler may see nowadays—to judge for oneself how deeply the civilization of Europe has been able to modify the peculiarities of Polynesian character.

The family of Pomare, of which the chief Tu (called Otoo by Cook, Tinah by Bligh) was the founder, owed its rise to power largely to the friendship of the English. Bligh often entertained Tinah and his wife, Iddeah, on board the Bounty—they must have been amusing parties. "Tinah was fed by one of his attendants, who sat by him for that purpose ... and I must do him the justice to say he kept his attendant constantly employed: there was, indeed, little reason to complain of want of appetite in any of my guests. As the women are not allowed to eat in presence of the men, Iddeah dined with some of her companions about an hour afterward, in private, except that her husband, Tinah, favored them with his company and seemed to have entirely forgotten that he had already dined." In his rambles about the island Bligh noticed precisely what strikes one to-day: "In any house that we wished to enter we always experienced a kind reception and without officiousness. The Otaheiteans have the most perfect easiness of manners, equally free from forwardness and formality. When they offer refreshments, if they are not accepted, they do not think of offering them the second time; for they have not the least idea of that ceremonious kind of refusal which expects a second invitation." Bligh was not deceived, like the French philosophers who read Bougainville's account of Tahiti, and rhapsodized about the beauty of a life free from all restraint; he remarked the deep-rooted system of class inherent in the island race, a system of which the outward marks are gone, but which is far from dead to-day. "Among people so free from ostentation as the Otaheiteans, and whose manners are so simple and natural, the strictness with which the punctilios of rank are observed is surprising. I know not if any action, however meritorious, can elevate a man above the class in which he was born, unless he were to acquire sufficient power to confer dignity on himself. If any woman of the inferior classes has a child by an Earee it is not suffered to live."

Bligh's observations on the gay and humorous character of the people and their extraordinary levity might have been written yesterday. "Some of my constant visitors had observed that we always drank His Majesty's health as soon as the cloth was removed; but they were by this time become so fond of wine that they would frequently remind me of the health in the middle of dinner by calling out, 'King George Earee no Brittanee'; and would banter me if the glass was not filled to the brim. Nothing could exceed the mirth and jollity of these people when they met on board." One day Tinah told Bligh of an island "to the eastward of Otaheite four or five days' sail, and that there were large animals upon it with eight legs. The truth of this account he very strenuously insisted upon and wished me to go thither with him. I was at a loss to know whether or not Tinah himself gave credit to this whimsical and fabulous account; for though they have credulity sufficient to believe anything, however improbable, they are at the same time so much addicted to that species of wit which we call humbug that it is frequently difficult to distinguish whether they are in jest or in earnest." On another occasion, while walking near a place of burial, Bligh was "surprised by a sudden outcry of grief. As I expressed a desire to see the distressed person, Tinah took me to the place, where I found a number of women, one of whom was the mother of a young female child that lay dead. On seeing us their mourning not only immediately ceased, but, to my astonishment, they all burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, and, while we remained, appeared much diverted at our visit. I told Tinah the woman had no sorrow for her child, otherwise her grief would not have so easily subsided, on which he jocosely told her to cry again: they did not, however, resume their mourning in our presence. This strange behavior would incline us to think them hard-hearted and unfeeling did we not know that they are fond parents and, in general, very affectionate: it is therefore to be ascribed to their extreme levity of disposition; and it is probable that death does not appear to them with so many terrors as it does to people of a more serious cast."

When the surgeon of the Bounty died and was buried ashore "some of the chiefs were very inquisitive about what was to be done with the surgeon's cabin, on account of apparitions. They said when a man died in Otaheite and was carried to the Tupapow that as soon as night came he was surrounded by spirits, and if any person went there by himself they would devour him: therefore they said that not less than two people together should go into the surgeon's cabin for some time." I thought of Tari and his tales of the varuo ino ... four generations of schools and churches have failed to work a metamorphosis.

I read on till drowsiness overcame me and the pages blurred before my eyes. It was late and the night was very calm; a vagrant night breeze, wandering down from the mountains, rustled gently among the fronds of the old palms around the house. When the rustling ceased—so faint as to be almost inaudible—I could hear the far-off whisper of the sea. The world about me was asleep; I roused myself with an effort, adjusted the mosquito net, and blew out the lamp.