第18章 CHIEFS AND TAPUS(3)

It serves besides to enforce,in the rare case of some one wishing to enforce them,rights of private property.Thus a man,weary of the coming and going of Marquesan visitors,tapus his door;and to this day you may see the palm-branch signal,even as our great-grandfathers saw the peeled wand before a Highland inn.Or take another case.Anaho is known as 'the country without popoi.'The word popoi serves in different islands to indicate the main food of the people:thus,in Hawaii,it implies a preparation of taro;in the Marquesas,of breadfruit.And a Marquesan does not readily conceive life possible without his favourite diet.A few years ago a drought killed the breadfruit trees and the bananas in the district of Anaho;and from this calamity,and the open-handed customs of the island,a singular state of things arose.Well-watered Hatiheu had escaped the drought;every householder of Anaho accordingly crossed the pass,chose some one in Hatiheu,'gave him his name'-an onerous gift,but one not to be rejected -and from this improvised relative proceeded to draw his supplies,for all the world as though he had paid for them.Hence a continued traffic on the road.Some stalwart fellow,in a loin-cloth,and glistening with sweat,may be seen at all hours of the day,a stick across his bare shoulders,tripping nervously under a double burthen of green fruits.And on the far side of the gap a dozen stone posts on the wayside in the shadow of a grove mark the breathing-space of the popoi-carriers.A little back from the beach,and not half a mile from Anaho,I was the more amazed to find a cluster of well-doing breadfruits heavy with their harvest.

'Why do you not take these?'I asked.'Tapu,'said Hoka;and Ithought to myself (after the manner of dull travellers)what children and fools these people were to toil over the mountain and despoil innocent neighbours when the staff of life was thus growing at their door.I was the more in error.In the general destruction these surviving trees were enough only for the family of the proprietor,and by the simple expedient of declaring a tapu he enforced his right.

The sanction of the tapu is superstitious;and the punishment of infraction either a wasting or a deadly sickness.A slow disease follows on the eating of tapu fish,and can only be cured with the bones of the same fish burned with the due mysteries.The cocoa-nut and breadfruit tapu works more swiftly.Suppose you have eaten tapu fruit at the evening meal,at night your sleep will be uneasy;in the morning,swelling and a dark discoloration will have attacked your neck,whence they spread upward to the face;and in two days,unless the cure be interjected,you must die.This cure is prepared from the rubbed leaves of the tree from which the patient stole;so that he cannot be saved without confessing to the Tahuku the person whom he wronged.In the experience of my informant,almost no tapu had been put in use,except the two described:he had thus no opportunity to learn the nature and operation of the others;and,as the art of making them was jealously guarded amongst the old men,he believed the mystery would soon die out.I should add that he was no Marquesan,but a Chinaman,a resident in the group from boyhood,and a reverent believer in the spells which he described.White men,amongst whom Ah Fu included himself,were exempt;but he had a tale of a Tahitian woman,who had come to the Marquesas,eaten tapu fish,and,although uninformed of her offence and danger,had been afflicted and cured exactly like a native.

Doubtless the belief is strong;doubtless,with this weakly and fanciful race,it is in many cases strong enough to kill;it should be strong indeed in those who tapu their trees secretly,so that they may detect a depredator by his sickness.Or,perhaps,we should understand the idea of the hidden tapu otherwise,as a politic device to spread uneasiness and extort confessions:so that,when a man is ailing,he shall ransack his brain for any possible offence,and send at once for any proprietor whose rights he has invaded.'Had you hidden a tapu?'we may conceive him asking;and I cannot imagine the proprietor gainsaying it;and this is perhaps the strangest feature of the system -that it should be regarded from without with such a mental and implicit awe,and,when examined from within,should present so many apparent evidences of design.

We read in Dr.Campbell's POENAMO of a New Zealand girl,who was foolishly told that she had eaten a tapu yam,and who instantly sickened,and died in the two days of simple terror.The period is the same as in the Marquesas;doubtless the symptoms were so too.

How singular to consider that a superstition of such sway is possibly a manufactured article;and that,even if it were not originally invented,its details have plainly been arranged by the authorities of some Polynesian Scotland Yard.Fitly enough,the belief is to-day -and was probably always -far from universal.

Hell at home is a strong deterrent with some;a passing thought with others;with others,again,a theme of public mockery,not always well assured;and so in the Marquesas with the tapu.Mr.

Regler has seen the two extremes of scepticism and implicit fear.

In the tapu grove he found one fellow stealing breadfruit,cheerful and impudent as a street arab;and it was only on a menace of exposure that he showed himself the least discountenanced.The other case was opposed in every point.Mr.Regler asked a native to accompany him upon a voyage;the man went gladly enough,but suddenly perceiving a dead tapu fish in the bottom of the boat,leaped back with a scream;nor could the promise of a dollar prevail upon him to advance.

The Marquesan,it will be observed,adheres to the old idea of the local circumscription of beliefs and duties.Not only are the whites exempt from consequences;but their transgressions seem to be viewed without horror.It was Mr.Regler who had killed the fish;yet the devout native was not shocked at Mr.Regler -only refused to join him in his boat.A white is a white:the servant (so to speak)of other and more liberal gods;and not to be blamed if he profit by his liberty.The Jews were perhaps the first to interrupt this ancient comity of faiths;and the Jewish virus is still strong in Christianity.All the world must respect our tapus,or we gnash our teeth.