A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16

by Robert Kerr

It is also amongst the better sort that the ava is chiefly used. But this beverage is prepared somewhat differently, from that which we saw so much of at the Friendly Islands. For they pour a very small quantity of water upon the root here, and sometimes roast or bake and bruise the stalks, without chewing it previously to its infusion. They also use the leaves of the plant here, which are bruised, and water poured upon them, as upon the root. Large companies do not assemble to drink it in that sociable way which is practised at Tongataboo. But its pernicious effects are more obvious here; perhaps owing to the manner of preparing it, as we often saw instances of its intoxicating, or rather stupifying powers. Some of us, who had been at these islands before, were surprised to find many people, who, when we saw them last, were remarkable for their size and corpulency, now almost reduced to skeletons; and, upon enquiring into the cause of this alteration, it was universally allowed to be the use of the ava. The skins of these people were rough, dry, and covered with scales, which, they say, every now and then fall off, and their skin is, as it were, renewed. As an excuse for a practice so destructive, they allege, that it is adopted to prevent their growing too fat; but it evidently enervates them, and, in all probability, shortens their days. As its effects had not been so visible during our former visits, it is not unlikely that this article of luxury had never been so much abused as at this time. If it continues to be so fashionable, it bids fair to destroy great numbers.

The times of eating at Otaheite are very frequent. Their first meal, or (as it may rather be called) their last, as they go to sleep after it, is about two o'clock in the morning; and the next is at eight. At eleven, they dine; and again, as Omai expressed it, at two, and at five; and sup at eight. In this article of domestic life, they have adopted some customs which are exceedingly whimsical. The women, for instance, have not only the mortification of being obliged to eat by themselves, and in a different part of the house from the men, but, by a strange kind of policy, are excluded from a share of most of the better sorts of food. They dare not taste turtle, nor fish of the tunny kind, which is much esteemed; nor some particular sorts of the best plantains; and it is very seldom that even those of the first rank are suffered to eat pork. The children of each sex also eat apart; and the women generally serve up their own victuals; for they would certainly starve before any grown man would do them such an office. In this, as well as in some other customs relative to their eating, there is a mysterious conduct which we could never thoroughly comprehend. When we enquired into the reasons of it, we could get no other answer, but that it is right and necessary that it should be so.

In other customs respecting the females, there seems to be no such obscurity; especially as to their connexions with the men. If a young man and woman, from mutual choice, cohabit, the man gives the father of the girl such things as are necessary in common life; as hogs, cloth, or canoes, in proportion to the time they are together; and, if he thinks that he has not been sufficiently paid for his daughter, he makes no scruple of forcing her to leave her friend, and to cohabit with another person who may be more liberal. The man, on his part, is always at liberty to make a new choice; but, should his consort become pregnant, he may kill the child; and, after that, either continue his connexion with the mother, or leave her. But if he should adopt the child, and suffer it to live, the parties are then considered as in the married state, and they commonly live together ever after. However, it is thought no crime in the man to join a more youthful partner to his first wife, and to live with both. The custom of changing their connexions is, however, much more general than this last; and it is a thing so common, that they speak of it with great indifference. The Erreoes are only those of the better sort, who, from their fickleness, and their possessing the means of purchasing a succession of fresh connexions, are constantly roaming about; and, from having no particular attachment, seldom adopt the more settled method mentioned above. And so agreeable is this licentious plan of life to their disposition, that the most beautiful of both sexes thus commonly spend their youthful days, habituated to the practice of enormities which would disgrace the most savage tribes; but are peculiarly shocking amongst a people whose general character, in other respects, has evident traces of the prevalence of humane and tender feelings.[³] When an Erreoe woman is delivered of a child, a piece of cloth, dipped in water, is applied to the mouth and nose, which suffocates it.

As in such a life, their women must contribute a very large share of its happiness, it is rather surprising, besides the humiliating restraints they are laid under with regard to food, to find them often treated with a degree of harshness, or rather brutality, which one would scarcely suppose a man would bestow on an object for whom he had the least affection. Nothing, however, is more common, than to see the men beat them without mercy; and, unless this treatment is the effect of jealousy, which both sexes, at least, pretend to be sometimes infected with, it will be difficult to account for it. It will be less difficult to admit this as the motive, as I have seen several instances where the women have preferred personal beauty to interest; though, I must own, that even in these cases, they seem scarcely susceptible of those delicate sentiments that are the result of mutual affection; and, I believe, that there is less Platonic love in Otaheite than in any other country.

Cutting, or inciding the foreskin, should be mentioned here as a practice adopted amongst them from a notion of cleanliness; and they have a reproachful epithet in their language for those who do not observe that custom. When there are five or six lads pretty well grown up in a neighbourhood, the father of one of them goes to a Tahoua, or man of knowledge, and lets him know. He goes with the lads to the top of the hills, attended by a servant, and seating one of them properly, introduces a piece of wood underneath the foreskin, and desires him to look aside at something he pretends is coming; having thus engaged the young man's attention to another object, he cuts through the skin upon the wood with a shark's tooth, generally at one stroke. He then separates, or rather turns back the divided parts; and having put on a bandage, proceeds to perform the same operation on the other lads. At the end of five days they bathe, and the bandages being taken off, the matter is cleaned away. At the end of five days more they bathe again, and are well; but a thickness of the prepuce, where it was cut, remaining, they go again to the mountains with the Tahoua and servant; and a fire being prepared, and some stones heated, the Tahoua puts the prepuce between two of them, and squeezes it gently, which removes the thickness. They then return home, having their heads, and other parts of their bodies, adorned with odoriferous flowers; and the Tahoua is rewarded for his services by their fathers, in proportion to their several abilities, with presents of hogs and cloth; and if they be poor, their relations are liberal on the occasion.

Their religious system is extensive, and, in many instances, singular; but few of the common people have a perfect knowledge of it; that being confined chiefly to their priests, who are pretty numerous. They do not seem to pay respect to one god, as possessing pre-eminence; but believe in a plurality of divinities, who are all very powerful; and in this case, as different parts of the island, and the other islands in the neighbourhood, have different ones, the inhabitants of each, no doubt, think that they have chosen the most eminent, or, at least, one who is invested with power sufficient to protect them, and to supply all their wants. If he should not answer their expectations, they think it no impiety to change; as has very lately happened in Tiarabooa, where, in the room of the two divinities formerly honoured there, Oraa,[⁴] god of Bolabola, had been adopted, I should suppose, because he is the protector of a people who have been victorious in war; and as, since they have made this change, they have been very successful themselves against the inhabitants of Otaheite-nooe, they impute it entirely to Oraa, who, as they literally say, fights their battles.

Their assiduity in serving their gods is remarkably conspicuous. Not only the whattas, or offering-places of the morais, are commonly loaded with fruits and animals, but there are few houses where you do not meet with a small place of the same sort near them. Many of them are so rigidly scrupulous, that they will not begin a meal without first laying aside a morsel for the Eatooa; and we had an opportunity, during this voyage, of seeing their superstitious zeal carried to a most pernicious height, in the instance of human sacrifices; the occasions of offering which, I doubt, are too frequent. Perhaps they have recourse to them when misfortunes occur; for they asked, if one of our men, who happened to be confined, when we were detained by a contrary wind, was taboo? Their prayers are also very frequent, which they chaunt, much after the manner of their songs in their festive entertainments. And the women, as in other cases, are also obliged to shew their inferiority in religious observances; for it is required of them, that they should partly uncover themselves as they pass the morais, or take a considerable circuit to avoid them. Though they have no notion that their god must always be conferring benefits, without sometimes forgetting them, or suffering evil to befall them, they seem to regard this less than the attempts of some more inauspicious being to hurt them. They tell us, that Etee is an evil spirit, who sometimes does them mischief; and to whom, as well as to their god, they make offerings. But the mischiefs they apprehend from any superior invisible beings, are confined to things merely temporal.

They believe the soul to be both immaterial and immortal. They say that it keeps fluttering about the lips during the pangs of death; and that then it ascends and mixes with, or, as they express it, is eaten by the deity. In this state it remains for some time; after which it departs to a certain place, destined for the reception of the souls of men where it exists in eternal night; or, as they sometimes say, in twilight or dawn. They have no idea of any permanent punishment after death, for crimes that they have committed on earth; for the souls of good and of bad men are eat indiscriminately by God. But they certainly consider this coalition with the deity as a kind of purification necessary to be undergone before they enter a state of bliss. For, according to their doctrine, if a man refrain from all connexion with women some months before death, he passes immediately into his eternal mansion, without such a previous union; as if already, by this abstinence, he were pure enough to be exempted from the general lot.

They are, however, far from entertaining those sublime conceptions of happiness, which our religion, and indeed reason, gives us room to expect hereafter. The only great privilege they seem to think they shall acquire by death is immortality; for they speak of spirits being, in some measure, not totally divested of those passions which actuated them when combined with material vehicles. Thus, if souls, who were formerly enemies, should meet, they have many conflicts; though, it should seem, to no purpose, as they are accounted invulnerable in this invisible state. There is a similar reasoning with regard to the meeting of man and wife. If the husband dies first, the soul of the wife is known to him on its arrival in the land of spirits. They resume their former acquaintance, in a spacious house, called tourooa, where the souls of the deceased assemble to recreate themselves with the gods. She then retires with him, to his separate habitation, where they remain for ever, and have an offspring; which, however, is entirely spiritual, as they are neither married, nor are their embraces supposed to be the same as with corporeal beings.