A Yankee doctor in paradise

by S. M. Lambert

Religion was an everyday, every hour affair with these simple, devout people, and the way to Heaven was marked out for them. When a soul entered Paradise it was a very small soul, but it grew as a child grows, and attained magnificent size among the immortals. It was a man’s Heaven, for earth-women were hardly worth sending there, especially since Eternity was supplied with many beautiful creatures, superior in every way to the merely human female. When a Big Master died a heavy club was buried with him to protect him against devil-devils on the way to his Valhalla. The “Big Master’s stick,” his wand of office, was stuck on the top of his grave, and this marked his term of office as a spiritual interpreter; for as long as the stick lasted his earthly successor might use it as a mouthpiece to Heaven and consult with the late Big Master, and with the supreme Ngenggo, the Grandson God. When the stick rotted in the ground the deceased was no longer the heavenly interpreter, and the next in line assumed the office.

Macgregor was at last keen enough to see that my pidgin was a valuable means of communication. He found that the sacred name for their god was Ngenggo, the same as Rengo in Rotumah.[6] Rengo was another name for turmeric, sacred to the bodies of high personages. Between us we found that the Big Masters spoke indirectly to the gods, through their ancestors. As if to throw up a defense across the sacred names, they had two names at least for the two principal gods. On my first trip a Master told me that the principal god was called Tainatua, as I understood it—really Taiinggatua. Then Barley, a little later, learned that the two were Tetanosanga and Teaitutabu (the Sacred God). At the Lake, Macgregor found that Teaitutabu and Ngenggo were one and the same. He collected some wonderful material there, especially concerning religion and ceremonies, and was able to improve on it through his wide experience in Rotumah and the Tokelaus. Incidentally Macgregor saw a two-headed stick used as an object of worship.

As we worked out the puzzling pantheon, Tetanosanga (another name for Taiinggatua) was grandfather to the god Teaitutabu (otherwise Ngenggo). They presided over the world, as Rennell knew it, and Ngenggo never left his home in the skies. His grandfather, however, roamed the earth and reported happenings to Ngenggo. The Grandson God was the most powerful of the Sky Masters, and Buia said, “Suppose him he talk-talk he sabe make you die quick.” While Ngenggo stayed at home the Old One went everywhere, saw and heard everything, and if there were those who ignored divine laws, Ngenggo punished them. Not only could he kill men, but he could demolish trees, islands, anything. There were prayers to the gods before every simple meal. There were ceremonies of food presentation to the gods, too involved to describe in anything but a book on anthropology. But if the regular tribute of food to a god was neglected, the offender would surely sicken and die.

Buia told me of Charley Cowan’s ship which had anchored at Taupangi’s Lake anchorage. Charley, Buia said, gave the ship to Taupangi, and Taupangi in turn gave it to the Big Master along Skies. Then the divinity replied that Cowan might go on using his vessel, provided that he came back at intervals to Taupangi’s anchorage. The Big Master warned him not to take it to Tahua’s beach, but Cowan on his next trip went to the White Sands. As a result of this disobedience, Buia said, Taupangi “talked along” the watchful Grandson God, and as a result both Cowan and his partner died. (As a matter of fact, these men did die, to my knowledge.) It was post hoc rather than propter hoc; but try to make a Rennellese believe that Taupangi didn’t pray them to death! Buia was afraid for the Zaca if it called at Taupangi’s anchorage for Macgregor and White....

Nothing was attempted and few thoughts conceived without first seeking the advice of the gods. The people even consulted their ancestors through a bamboo stick dug into a grave. I once caught the tough Panio using this sort of spirit-telephone.

Gordon White, coming back from Tenggano with the usual tatters and coral scratches, reported that the Lake People had not depreciated much in health. He said that my old chum Taupangi grieved that I had not come up to live with him for the balance of my life. The Zaca’s party at the Lake had dined with the Big Master every day, and were interested to find that somebody had taught him to eat with a fork and drink tea out of a china cup. He liked plenty of sugar in his tea and stirred it for five minutes, with his fork. They took movies of the harvest festival, and Gordon noticed what a change had come over the scene since last we saw it. There was no high fence around the grounds, and women were allowed to look on. Another old tabu was fading out.

Not to be outdone by his hated rival, Taupangi had loosened up on the hookworm tabu; but his people were still so queer about being examined that our party got no good specimens. There was an epidemic of head colds, so frequent that our outfit was now catching the germ from Rennell—a reversal of our first experience there.

When Macgregor came back to the White Sands the majority of the Lake population followed him, crazy to see the Zaca. Gordon White tried to bribe them to stay home, offering toy balloons and tin trumpets, but these things bored them. They were out for iron, and intended to get it. Taupangi overcame his grouch against Tahua (who would allow him nothing better than a leaky leaf-shelter when he was on the beach) and joined the exodus. So did Tekita and Tamata. Only Mua remained as intermediary; although he was the Big Master’s son and heir he hadn’t had enough of God’s authority to coax the people up to Gordon’s tent, so it had become a matter of visiting every leaf-shelter in the place and giving tests. Tuberculosis didn’t seem alarming. Wanderlust was the prevailing ailment. Mua, Tekita, Tamata, everybody who could get a word in edgewise, had tried to wheedle Gordon into taking them away on the boat. If Buia had traveled and learned about the great world, why shouldn’t they? These simple folk, to whom Rennell had been all in all, were growing restless, discontented with this frugal island which had once satisfied their every want—because they had never learned to want the unnecessary. A self-containing social structure, an unquestioning faith in divinities who could give and who could take away, scanty food which they gained by wholesome labor and gratefully thanked God for.... That was their plenty. But to human nature, plenty is too often not enough. Perhaps that is the real Martyrdom of Man.

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Little Bellona Island (Mungiki) lay twenty-five miles over there, and I was anxious to survey it again, and to show it to Crocker’s expedition. The Big Masters of Rennell had explained carefully why Mungiki had a richer soil than theirs. In days of old, the semi-mythical Ko Fiti had been driven out of Rennell, but before they left they had done a spiteful thing; they had scraped the good topsoil off Rennell and dumped it on Mungiki.