The Call of the South / 1908

by Louis Becke

For two years the struggle continued, the Manonoans generally proving victorious in many bloody battles. Then Fasito'otai was surprised in the night, and two-thirds of its defenders, including many women and children, slaughtered. Among those who died were the two white men. They fell with thirty young men, who covered the retreat of the survivors of the defending force.

The extraordinary valour which the A'ana people had displayed, exasperated the Manono warriors to deeds of unnamable violence to whatever prisoners fell into their cruel hands. One man—an old Manono chief—who had taken part in the struggle, told me with shame that he saw babies impaled on bayonets and spears carried exultingly from one village to another.

Broken and disorganised, the beaten A'ana people dispersed in parties large and small. Some sought refuge in the mountain forests, others put to sea in frail canoes, and mostly all perished, but one party of seventeen in three canoes succeeded in reaching Uea (Wallis Island), three hundred miles to the westward of Samoa. Among them was a boy of seven years of age, who afterwards sailed with me in a labour vessel. He well remembered the horrors of that awful voyage, and told me of his seeing his father “take a knife and open a vein in his arm so that a baby girl, who was dying of hunger, could drink”.

Relentless in their hate of the vanquished foe, the Manono warriors established a cordon around them from the mountain range that traverses the centre of Upolu to the sea, and at last, after many engagements, drove them to the beach, where a final battle was fought. Exhausted, famine-stricken, and utterly disheartened by their continuous reverses, the unfortunate A'ana people were easily overcome, and the fighting survivors surrendered, appealing to their enemies to at least spare the lives of their women and children.

But no mercy was shown. As night began to fall, the Manonoans began to dig a huge pit at a village named Maotâ, a mile from the scene of the battle, and as some dug, others carried an enormous quantity of dead logs of timber to the spot. By midnight the dreadful funeral pyre was completed.

In case that it might be thought by my readers that I am exaggerating the horrors of “The Pit of Maotâ,” I will not here relate what I, personally, was told by people who were present at the awful deed, but repeat the words of Mr. Stair, an English missionary of the London Missionary Society, whose book, entitled Old Samoa, tells the story in quiet, yet dramatic language, and although in regard to some minor details he was misinformed, his account on the whole is correct, and is the same as was told to me by men who had actually participated in the tragedy.

The awful preparations were completed, and then the victors, seizing those of their captives who were bound on account of their strength and had a few hours previously surrendered, hurried them to the fatal pit, in which the huge pile of timber had been lit. And as the flames roared and ascended, and the darkness of the surrounding forest was made as light as day, the first ten victims of four hundred and sixty-two were cast in to burn, amid the howls and yells of their savage captors.

Mr. Stair says: “This dreadful butchery was continued during one or two days and nights, fresh timber being heaped on from time to time, as it was with difficulty that the fire could be kept burning, from the number of victims who were ruthlessly sacrificed there.

“The captives from Fasito'otai were selected for the first offerings, and after them followed others in quick succession, night and day, early and late, until the last wretched victim had been consumed. Most heartrending were the descriptions I received from persons who had actually looked on the fearful scenes enacted there.

“Innocent children skipped joyfully along the pathway by the side of their conductors and murderers,{*} deceived by the cruel lie that they were to be spared, and were then on their way to bathe; when suddenly the blazing pile (in the Pit of Noatâ) with the horrid sight of their companions and friends being thrown alive into the midst, told them the dreadful truth; whilst their terror was increased by the yells of savage triumph of the murderers, or the fearful cries of the tortured victims which reached their ears.”