A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

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What had happened to the fierce tabu on feces examinations, which had embarrassed us on our former trip? Old Tahua, in whose presence we had not dared to whisper the forbidden thing, was now strangely approachable. Perhaps an extra box of fishhooks tickled his overdeveloped acquisitiveness. At any rate, he permitted Malakai, aided by Buia, to give him our stock hookworm lecture with chart and all the fixings. Immediately he commanded that a number of young boys should report to the tent we had set up on the beach, and be properly examined. Later on he ordered out a number of women for the same inspection.

This concession was obliging to us and convenient to our work. But underneath the courtesy I felt a certain loosening of the old religious ties which had held Rennell’s proud racial identity. World without end, they had worshiped with a single-mindedness which was like that of Medieval Europe when the Church was all in all and the Pope its interpreter. Religion had come first with the Rennell folk, and had entered into every duty of their practical lives.

Outwardly they were still religious. But what undercurrents of doubt were entering the new desires and ambitions? They still seemed unquestioningly obedient to the Big Masters, who spoke with the voice of God. Did the Divine One and his lesser divinities still listen to their inner thoughts, as they had three short years ago? Their code of sins and virtues had been different from ours, but just as strict. What would happen to them when all their traditions went to the junk-pile?

As I worked in my tent on the beach, many things that I had not known before came filtering in. Dr. Macgregor told me more, for he was there to study the past and present of a strange people. Through Buia, loyal to the White Sands, I learned why I had better not go to the Lake this time. Tahua and Taupangi were in a jealous quarrel again over property rights. In the past year or so Taupangi had had an inspiration: If Tahua got iron through his possession of the White Sands, then Taupangi would have an anchorage of his own. Therefore he had made a three-mile shortcut to a place in the cliffs where it was just possible to get up and down. Here he could launch canoes and invite the crews of passing ships to come to the Lake by the shortest way; something like our road-signs, “Shortest Route to Atlantic City.” Roughhewn as the idea was, it fetched some trade to Taupangi’s district. Tahua was in a boiling rage, and the people of the White Sands well knew that the two lesser Masters who had aided in Taupangi’s forbidden trail had been afflicted with a fatal sickness which only Tahua’s God could inflict.

An embassy from the Lake visited my tent with Taupangi’s cordial invitation to come to his district with my treatments. Buia gave me a warning look, so I was obliged to decline. We were indebted to the White Sands for our anchorage and headquarters. No telling what Tahua might do if the white witch doctor should desert him for a hated rival. So I let Gordon White go to the Lake with some of the Zaca’s scientists. Tahua granted them that favor, after I had offered a practical idea for his benefit. Why not join forces with the Lake people and cut a good trail across that awful eight miles of vines and coral? Make communications easy, and Taupangi would forget about his rival anchorage.... It was like asking a blue Republican to junk a tariff barrier for the benefit of mutual trade. But Tahua thought it over....

They were pouring in from every district to be lined up in our tent. While we worked at our trade Macgregor, at the other end, worked at his, and Dr. Hynes, our surgeon, studied the blood groupings of 100 people in hopes of throwing some light on their racial origin. They were almost equally divided between Group O and Group B, with almost no A’s or AB’s, a quite different finding than European grouping, which furnishes data for specialist study in anthropology; and they did not seem to check up with other Polynesian typing.

Dr. Macgregor, who was a Harvard Ph.D. in anthropology and had had the superlative advantages offered by the Bishop Museum, was a young scientist with the proper equipment of learning and enthusiasm. As the line of natives passed through our tent he took head measurements and found a cephalic index of 74-75, about the same as that of the so-called Nordics. He reached the conclusion that they were not usual Polynesians in the sense that Hawaiians, Samoans, Cook Islanders, and others are Polynesians. They had many elements of Melanesian culture, such as certain points in their god-worship, and their habit of betel-chewing. They knew nothing of that Polynesian favorite, kava; and many of their words were not Polynesian at all. But physically they were not Melanesian, nor were they of the Micronesian race that I myself had seen in the Gilberts and the western Bismarcks. It was no wild conjecture to call them pre-Polynesian, of which there is still a small element in Tonga.

Somewhere in their first long voyage from Nowhere to Nowhere they had picked up certain Polynesian arts and habits: like the making of tapa cloth and the smearing of their bodies with sacred turmeric. History records that the Tongafiti, conquering fathers of Polynesia, had fallen upon Rennell Island some 400 years before; but not to conquer. The Rennellese warriors had slain all but one man. That man finally built a canoe and started for his home. The Rennellese had some knowledge of invaders very like the Tongafiti. As we saw them there were no mixed bloods—with the exception of two half-castes, probably the issue of visiting sailors.

Malakai and I, representing the medical end of the enterprise, were busy with a count of native diseases. We were saving hookworm examinations for the last and were winning popular confidence through less objectionable tests. If I had been pessimistic when I came back to Rennell, I was glad to find many of my fears groundless. There was no filariasis, nor was any evidence to be found of the anopheline mosquito; and there were no diagnostic signs of malaria. Buia actually had malaria; I knew, because I treated him for it. But he had been with Barley on Malaita, where he undoubtedly picked it up. As to tuberculosis, I found less on Rennell than anywhere else I had visited. Yaws was no menace; the local habit of isolating sufferers until the sores were healed had reduced the disease to a few tertiary cases—Buia told me that I would find much yaws on Bellona, where they did not practise the ancient quarantine custom. There was still plenty of itch on Rennell, but that too seemed to be wearing itself out.