As we poked about Vao, we decided that the island would be a good place in which to maroon the people who have the romantic illusion that savages lead a beautiful life. We had long ago lost that illusion, but even for us Vao had some surprises. One day, I made a picture of an old, blind man, so feeble that he could scarcely walk. He was one of the few really old savages about, and I gathered that he must have been a powerful chief in his day, or otherwise he would not have escaped the ordinary penalty of age—being buried alive. But on the day after I had taken his picture, when I went to his hut to speak to him, I was informed that “he stop along ground” and I was shown a small hut, in which was a freshly dug grave. My notice of the old man had drawn him into the limelight. The chiefs had held a conference and decided that he was a nuisance. A grave was dug for him, he was put into it, a flat stone was placed over his face so that he could breathe (!), and the hole was filled with earth. Now a devil-devil man was squatting near the grave to be on hand in case the old man asked for something. There was no conscious cruelty in the act, simply a relentless logic. The old man had outlived his usefulness. He was no good to himself or to the community. Therefore, he might as well “stop along ground.”
Only a few days later, as we approached a village, we heard, at intervals, the long-drawn-out wail of a woman in pain. In the clearing we discovered a group of men laughing and jeering at something that was lying on the ground. That something was a writhing, screaming young girl. The cause of her agony was apparent. In the flesh back of her knee, two great holes had been burned. I could have put both hands in either of them.
“One fellow man, him name belong Nowdi, he ketchem plenty coconuts, he ketchem plenty pigs, he ketchem plenty Mary,” said Arree, and he went on to explain that the “Mary” on the ground was the newest wife of Nowdi, whom he pointed out to us among the amused spectators. The savage had paid twenty pigs for her—a good price for a wife in the New Hebrides—but he had made a bad bargain; for the girl did not like him. Four times she ran away from him and was caught and brought back. The last time, nearly six months had elapsed before she was found, hiding in the jungle of the mainland. The day before we saw the girl, the men of the village had gathered in judgment. A stone was heated white-hot. Then four men held the girl while a fifth placed the stone in the hollow of her knee, drew her leg back until the heel touched the thigh, and bound it there. For an hour they watched her anguish as the stone slowly burned into her flesh. Then they turned her loose. Thenceforth she would always have to hobble, like an old woman, with the aid of a stick. She would never run away again.
We turned aside, half sick. It was hard for me to keep my hands off the brutes that stood laughing around the girl. Only the knowledge that to touch them would be suicide for me and death or worse for Osa held me back. But as we returned to the bungalow, I gradually cooled down. I realized that it was not quite fair to judge these savages—still in the stage of development passed by our own ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago—according to the standards of civilized society. And I remembered how beastly even men of my own kind sometimes are when they are released from the restraints of civilization.
The next morning, after our morning swim, Osa and I sat on the beach and watched the commuters set off for Malekula. In some fifty canoes, “manned” by women, the entire female population went to the big island every day to gather firewood and fruit and vegetables. For the small island of Vao could not support its four hundred inhabitants, and the native women had accordingly made their gardens on the big island. This morning, as usual, the women were accompanied by an armed guard; for although the bush natives of Malekula were supposed to be friendly, the Vao men did not take any chances when it came to a question of losing their women. Late in the evening the canoes came back again. The women had worked all day, many of them with children strapped to their backs; the men had lounged on the beach, doing nothing. But it was the women who paddled the canoes home. There was a stiff sea and it took nearly three hours to paddle across the mile-wide channel. But the men never lifted a finger to help. When the boats were safely beached, the women shouldered their big bundles of vegetables and firewood and trudged wearily toward their villages, the men bringing up the rear, with nothing to carry except their precious guns. Among the poor female slaves—they were little more—we saw five who hobbled along with the aid of sticks. They were women who had tried to run away.
A few days later, Arree asked us if we should like to attend a feast that was being held to celebrate the completion of a devil-devil, one of the crude, carved logs that are the only visible signs of religion among the savages. We did not see why that should be an event worth celebrating, for there were already some hundreds of devil-devils on the island, but we were glad to have the opportunity of witnessing one of the feasts of which Arree had so often told us.
NAGAPATE AMONG THE DEVIL-DEVILS
Feasting was about the only amusement of the natives of Vao. A birth or a death, the building of a house or a canoe, or the installation of a chief—any event in the least out of the ordinary furnished an excuse for an orgy of pig meat—usually “long.” The one we attended was typical. First the new devil-devil was carried into the clearing and, with scant ceremony, set up among the others. Then some of the men brought out about a hundred pigs and tied them to posts. Others piled hundreds of yams in the center of the clearing, and still others threw chickens, their legs tied together, in a squawking heap. When all was ready, the yams were divided among the older men, each of whom then untied a pig from a post and presented it solemnly to his neighbor, receiving in return another pig of about the same size. The savages broke one front and one hind leg of their pigs and threw the squealing little beasts on the ground beside the yams. Then they exchanged chickens and promptly broke the legs and wings of their fowls. I shall never forget the terrible crunching of bones and the screaming of the tortured pigs and chickens. When the exchange was completed, the men took their pigs to the center of the clearing, beat them over the head with sticks until they were nearly dead and threw them down to squeal and jerk their lives away.
When the exchange of food was completed, the men built little fires all around the clearing to cook the feast. Most of them were chiefs. It is a general rule throughout the region that no chief may eat food prepared by an inferior, or cooked over a fire built by an inferior. The rather doubtful honor of being his own cook is, indeed, practically the only mark that distinguishes a chief. As a rule a chief has no real authority. He cannot command the least important boy in his village. Only his wives are at his beck and call—and they are forbidden by custom to cook for him!