"The 'dining-room' was the space in front of the houses, and there, spread on the huge leaves of the banana and taro, the feast was laid. Meat was handled with big four-tined forks of wood; poi and other soft dishes in calabashes of coco shell and shallow wooden platters. The drinking cups, in which were served a fiery wine made from the juice of the tender shoots of the coconut, were the hollow shells of nuts. The food, in addition to human flesh or 'long-pig,' included the meat of the wild cattle, goats and pigs, roasted, boiled, fried and salted raw, and served with miti-hari, a most piquant sauce still in use and which is composed of a mixture of lime juice and the pressed-out milk of grated coconuts. Bananas and plantains, cooked and uncooked, were served; also taro in balls which looked like mud and tasted like sago and brown sugar; breadfruit, avocados, seaweed, squid, prawns and shrimps and an endless variety of indigenous tropical fruits.
"The general plan of the place was, roughly, as follows: Beginning at the right and running in a seaward direction, there was first the private stairway for an official who might be designated as the Captain of the Guard, a curving four-foot passage, the steps of which were cut into the earth and faced with stones. This stairway led up to the box where the Captain presided during the festivities, and was for his private use. Next came the main approach to the feast level, a stairway two paces in width, terminating between two round towers in which soldiers with clubs were stationed to welcome bona fide guests and intercept intruders. A functionary who stood at the head of the stairs greeted each guest on his arrival with a loud shout of welcome and a blast from a pao or conch trumpet, announcing him immediately afterwards to the company with a flowery recital of his personal career.
"Farther on was the stairway for the cooks, provision bearers and the human victims. This led to the 'kitchen,' where the firestones and chopping blocks were located. The firestones lined a circular depression in the earth, and after this had been thoroughly heated, the meat and fruit, all wrapped in ti leaves, were laid sociably together to cook. The blackened stones of this old cannibal oven are still in place, and a half-hour's work with an ax and cutlass would put it in shape for service.
The best surviving example of Marquesan tattooing
"Into it were thrown the bones of the victims after
the feast was over"
"Back of the kitchen was the 'larder,' a round, deep hole where the 'long-pig' was kept until ready for the oven. Directly over the mouth of this hole, and about forty feet above it, was the horizontally projecting limb of the sacred banyan, the only tree, by the way, which was permitted to grow within the walls. Over this limb hung a stout rope braided of the fibrous bark of the hau tree. When the call for more meat came from the 'kitchen,' the noosed end of this rope was lowered over the head of the victim next in order, and he was pushed over the brink of the hole, the fall usually breaking his neck. Dismemberment, according to prescribed rules, followed, the choice bits, such as the hands and eyes and ears, being laid aside for the chiefs.
"Beyond the oven, and not far from the chief's house, was what might be called the 'bone-hole,' a rock-lined, well-like sort of an affair about nine feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. Into it were thrown the bones of the victims after the feast was over, and above these gruesome remnants the priests performed certain ceremonies calculated to protect the living from the spirits of the outraged dead. Cutting around the rim of this hole with our cutlasses, we managed, after an hour of tugging and hauling, to dislodge and remove a great mass of creepers, disclosing a huge pile of human bones. A couple of pieces of mahogany, which must have been taken from some ship, were lying near the top of the heap, and led us to wonder how many of the bones mouldering in the pile beneath were those of white men.
"After the keen edges of their appetites had worn off, the feasters adjourned to the 'dance hall,' a rectangular subterranean chamber of about thirty by fifty feet. The most of this great room was a natural cave which pierced the mountain immediately under the feast ground, but to seaward a considerable extension of masonry had been added to give more space. The latter had been destroyed in a freshet and hurricane which occurred about two years previous to our visit, but the cave portion was still in a fair state of preservation. This had been roughly squared with walls of fitted boulders, and off from it opened numerous little retiring rooms which connected with private stairways with the group of guest-houses above. The floor of this chamber was covered with a cement made of coral lime and a puttylike clay, and still remains as smooth and hard as concrete.