Suddenly, at the far side of the clearing, a huge savage appeared. It was Nagapate. He stood for a moment, looking over the audience; then he walked slowly and majestically into the center of the clearing. He roared a few words to his men. Then he turned to us. A native came running up—the laziest black stepped lively when Nagapate commanded—with a block of wood for a throne. The chief sat down near us, and we stepped forward and shook hands with him. He had grown used to this form of greeting and responded with graciousness.
It had been a wonderful entrance. But then Nagapate had an instinct for the dramatic. Throughout our stay in his village, I noticed, he never made a move that was not staged. He let it be known by his every act that he was no common chief, who had won his position through skill in killing pigs or men. Nagapate was a king and a descendant of kings. His was the only tribe I had come across during my travels among the blacks of the South Pacific that had an hereditary ruler.
After he had greeted us, he uttered a sharp command and a native stepped up with a big bamboo water-bottle. Nagapate drank from it, and then the native offered it, tilted at the proper angle, to each of us in turn. It was not pleasant to drink from the mouthpiece at which Nagapate’s great lips had sucked. But we gathered that the bottle was the South Sea equivalent of a pipe of peace; so we drank gladly. I then presented to Nagapate a royal gift of knives, calico, and tobacco, and I told one of the boys to give two sticks of tobacco to each native.
The natives smoked their tobacco (those that did not eat it) at once and greedily. It seemed to break the ice a bit; so I got out my cameras. For three hours, I made pictures. But I did not get any “action.” I wanted a picture of a man coming out of his house; for the doors of the huts are so low that the people have to come out on all fours. I persuaded a native to go into his hut and come out again. He did so. But his companions laughed and jeered at him, and after that every one had stage fright.
As the afternoon wore on, scores of women and children appeared. I have never seen human beings more wretched than those women. At first sight they looked like walking haystacks. They wore dresses of purple dyed grasses, consisting of a bushy skirt that hung from the waist to the knees, a sort of widow’s veil that was thrown over the head and face so as to leave a tiny peep-hole for the wearer to look through, and a long train that hung down the back nearly to the ground. A more cumbersome and insanitary dress was never devised. It was heavy. It was hot. Worst of all, it was dirty. Every one of the dresses was matted with filth. I did not see a single pig—and there were dozens of them rooting about inside and outside the houses—that was so dirty as the women of that village. I afterward found that for women to wash was strictly taboo. From birth to death water never touched their skins!
I got my cameras ready, but the women hid in the houses and would not come out to be photographed. Not until Nagapate commanded them to come into the clearing did they creep whimpering in terror from the low doors.
We had heard from the natives at our headquarters on the island of Vao that Nagapate had a hundred wives, but there were only ten of them, and they were as wretched as any of the other women. Osa presented them each with a string of beads and a small glass jar of cheap candy. They did not even look at their gifts. They wanted only to get the ordeal over and to escape. During all our stay in the village the poor, browbeaten wretches never got up enough courage to look at us. Their lords and masters felt our skins and our hair and our clothes, examining us with embarrassing freedom. But whenever we came upon a woman, she squatted down and hid her face behind her grass veil.
Since the women and children had appeared, we gained confidence and walked about the village, inspecting the houses. As we approached, the children, scrawny little wretches, big-bellied from malnutrition and many of them covered with sores, scurried off into the bush like frightened rabbits. The houses were wretched huts made of poles with a covering of leaves and grass, or, occasionally, of woven bamboo. Inside were the embers of fires—nothing more. A hard, worn place on the ground in one corner showed where the owner slept. Nagapate’s house stood off by itself. It was larger than the rest and more compactly made. But it was as bare as any of the others.
Toward sunset we built a fire and cooked our supper. The natives gathered around and watched us in astonishment. They themselves made no such elaborate preparation for eating. Once in a while a man would kindle a fire and throw a few yams among the coals. When the yams were burned black on one side, he would turn them with a stick and burn them on the other. Then they were ready for eating—the outside burned crisp and the inside raw. One evening some of the men brought in some little pigs, broke their legs, so that they could not escape, and threw them, squealing, into a corner of a hut. The next day there was meat to eat. Like the yams, it was only half-cooked. The natives tore it with their teeth as if they had been animals, and they seemed especially to relish the crisp, burned portions. Each man was his own cook. Even Nagapate made his own fire and cooked his own food, for it was taboo for him to eat anything prepared by an inferior or cooked over a fire made by an inferior. He conveniently considered us his superiors and ate greedily everything we gave him. He never shared the salmon and rice he got from us either with his cronies or with his wives. In fact, we never saw a woman eating, and the children seemed to live on sugar-cane and on clay that they dug up with their skinny little fingers.
Our first day as Nagapate’s guests drew to an end. Just before dark a native came and motioned to us to follow him. He led us to a new house and indicated that we were to make ourselves at home there. We were tired out after our long march; so we turned in without delay. We spread our blankets on the ground and lay, fully dressed, on top of them. The camp soon became quiet, but we could not sleep. So far, everything had gone well, but still we did not feel quite safe. Our boys seemed to share our apprehension. They crowded around the hut, as close to us as they could get. Some of them slipped under the grass walls and lay half inside the hut.