A native man’s way of wooing is to show off in front of his bride to be, physically. He tries to outdo his rivals by excelling in physical strength, such as husking a coconut with his teeth, stabbing a wild boar, diving and killing a shark single-handed. Instead of protesting their love in so many words they believe in action, and by displaying physical supremacy, they think to impress the women that they are the masters. At the Chief’s words about twenty young natives stepped forward eagerly. The truck driver and Swede made a dive for the center of the clearing too.
“Say, Chief,” spoke up Swede, “I’m stronger than any of these young pups, and I’ll take that little girl with the nice fat figger.” Swede was so pleased with himself that he didn’t notice the anger in Rara-mongai’s face. He spoke harshly in his dialect:
“Maidens choose husband. No white man touch my people.”
To Swede, the dance had just been a good show, and sailor-fashion he was entering into the spirit of it, not realizing he was violating the most sacred rite of Atafu.
By intervening I gained the favor of the Chief once more. The girl that Swede had pointed out never took her eyes off him during the rest of the ceremony. A white man wanted her, and she wouldn’t make any effort to attract her own native kind. Any white man in the South Seas who is healthy looking and strong, can win a native woman away from any native or chief.
For two hours while the rest of the villagers feasted, the native men wooed the virgins by showing off athletically. Not one word is spoken, the whole story of their desire is in pantomime. When the moon reached the center of the sky, the Chief called for silence. According to the custom of the tribe he told the girls that now they must choose a man, by taking the lotus from their left ear and placing it on the right ear of the chosen one. I looked at the faces of the twenty young men who stood in a row hoping to be selected. As the girls walked up slowly with the lotus blossoms in their outstretched hands toward them, fear and triumph flashed down the line. Three girls went to one young buck and gave him their lotus, another man received two flowers, and the others one. Those that were passed up by the girls once more folded their arms in to their bodies.
“Huh,” grunted Swede contemptuously, in my ear, “if those birds just fold their arms and lay down on the job no wonder the janes didn’t pick ’em.”
The Chief walked to the three girls who had picked one man, and did a Solomon. He handed the man to the girl who had reached him first. Primitive law, administered swiftly and without question. A couple stood before the Chief. With his tortoise-shell emblem of state he touched the girl and the man on the head, the native sign of wedlock. To the woman he said:
“By choosing this man you now become nothing. He is the stronger. If any man touch you after this wedlock the man shall be punished, for you have no right or privilege to say what shall be done with your body. If your husband gives privilege of your body to man he must be paid for it. If man take you without your husband’s willingness, that man shall be sent to the coral reef to scrape the salt that dries there from the surf. There he shall stay until he is again like a child (until madness seizes him) and then he shall fall in the sea.”
The native man turned to the girl, she lifted her bare shoulder to his lips, and he bit her until her blood came. The Chief went on: