Chapter XXIV: Section VIII

_A more particular Account of the Inhabitants of Otaheite, and of their domestic Life, Manners, and Arts_.

Having lain off this island from the 24th of June to the 27th of July, I shall now give the best account of its inhabitants, with their manners and arts, that I can; but having been in a very bad state of health the whole time, and for great part of it confined to my bed, it will of necessity be much less accurate and particular than I might otherwise have made it.

The inhabitants of this island are a stout, well-made, active, and comely people. The stature of the men, in general, is from five feel seven to five feet ten inches, though a few individuals are taller, and a few shorter; that of the women from five feet to five feet six. The complexion of the men is tawney, but those that go upon the water are much redder than those who live on shore. Their hair in general is black, but in some it is brown, in some red, and in others flaxen, which is remarkable, because the hair of all other natives of Asia, Africa, and America, is black, without a single exception. It is generally tied up, either in one bunch, in the middle of the head, or in two, one on each side, but some wear it loose, and it then curls very strongly: In the children of both sexes it is generally flaxen. They have no combs, yet their hair is very neatly dressed, and those who had combs from us, made good use of them. It is a universal custom to anoint the head with cocoa-nut oil, in which a root has been scraped that smells something like roses. The women are all handsome, and some of them extremely beautiful. Chastity does not seem to be considered as a virtue among them, for they not only readily and openly trafficked with our people for personal favours, but were brought down by their fathers and brothers for that purpose: They were, however, conscious of the value of beauty, and the size of the nail that was demanded for the enjoyment of the lady, was always in proportion to her charms. The men who came down to the side of the river, at the same time that they presented the girl, shewed a stick of the size of the nail that was to be her price, and if our people agreed, she was sent over to them, for the men were not permitted to cross the river. This commerce was carried on a considerable time before the officers discovered it, for while some straggled a little way to receive the lady, the others kept a look-out. When I was acquainted with it, I no longer wondered that the ship was in danger of being pulled to pieces for the nails and iron that held her together, which I had before puzzled myself to account for in vain, the whole ship's company having daily as much fresh provision and fruit as they could eat. Both men and women are not only decently but gracefully clothed, in a kind of white cloth, that is made of the bark of a shrub, and very much resembles coarse China paper. Their dress consists of two pieces of this cloth: One of them, a hole having been made in the middle to put the head through hangs down from the shoulders to the mid leg before and behind; another piece, which is between four and five yards long, and about one yard broad, they wrap round the body in a very easy manner. This cloth is not woven, but is made, like paper, of the macerated fibres of an inner bark spread out and beaten together. Their ornaments are feathers, flowers, pieces of shells, and pearls: The pearls are worn chiefly by the women, from whom I purchased about two dozen of a small size: They were of a good colour, but were all spoiled by boring. Mr Furneaux saw several in his excursion to the west, but he could purchase none with any thing he had to offer. I observed, that it was here a universal custom both for men and women to have the hinder part of their thighs and loins marked very thick with black lines in various forms. These marks were made by striking the teeth of an instrument, somewhat like a comb, just through the skin, and rubbing into the punctures a kind of paste made of soot and oil, which leaves an indelible stain. The boys and girls under twelve years of age are not marked: But we observed a few of the men whose legs were marked in chequers by the same method, and they appeared to be persons of superior rank and authority. One of the principal attendants upon the queen appeared much more disposed to imitate our manners than the rest; and our people, with whom he soon became a favourite, distinguished him by the name of Jonathan. This man, Mr Furneaux clothed completely in an English dress, and it sat very easy upon him. Our officers were always carried on shore, it being shoal water where we landed, and Jonathan, assuming new state with his new finery, made some of his people carry him on shore in the same manner. He very soon attempted to use a knife and fork at his meals, but at first, when he had stuck a morsel upon his fork, and tried to feed himself with that instrument, he could not guide it, but by the mere force of habit his hand came to his mouth, and the victuals at the end of the fork went away to his ear.

Their food consists of pork, poultry, dog's flesh, and fish, bread-fruit, bananas, plantains, yams, apples, and a sour fruit, which, though not pleasant by itself, gives an agreeable relish to roasted bread-fruit, with which it is frequently beaten up. They have abundance of rats, but, as far as I could discover, these make no part of their food. The river affords them good mullet, but they are neither large nor in plenty. They find conchs, mussels, and other shellfish on the reef, which they gather at low-water, and eat raw with bread-fruit before they come on shore. They have also very fine cray-fish, and they catch with lines, and hooks of mother-of-pearl, at a little distance from the shore, parrrot-fish, groopers, and many other sorts, of which they are so fond that we could seldom prevail upon them to sell us a few at any price. They have also nets of an enormous size, with very small meshes, and with these they catch abundance of small fish about the size of sardines; but while they were using both nets and lines with great success, We could not catch a single fish with either. We procured some of their hooks and lines, but for want of their art we were still disappointed.

The manner in which they dress their food is this: They kindle a fire by rubbing the end of one piece of dry wood, upon the side of another, in the same manner as our carpenters whet a chissel; then they dig a pit about half a foot deep, and two or three yards in circumference: They pave the bottom with large pebble stones, which they lay down very smooth and even, and then kindle a fire in it with dry wood, leaves, and the husks of the cocoa-nut. When the stones are sufficiently heated, they take out the embers, and rake up the ashes on every side; then they cover the stones with a layer of green cocoa-nut tree leaves, and wrap up the animal that is to be dressed in the leaves of the plantain; if it is a small hog they wrap it up whole; if a large one they split it. When it is placed in the pit, they cover it with the hot embers, and lay upon them bread-fruit and yams, which are also wrapped up in the leaves of the plantain: Over these they spread the remainder of the embers, mixing among them some of the hot stones, with more cocoa-nut tree leaves upon them, and then close all up with earth, so that the heat is kept in. After a time proportioned to the size of what is dressing, the oven is opened, and the meat taken out, which is tender, full of gravy, and, in my opinion, better in every respect than when it is dressed any other way. Excepting the fruit, they have no sauce but salt water, nor any knives but shells, with which they carve very dexterously, always cutting from them. It is impossible to describe the astonishment they expressed when they saw the gunner, who, while he kept the market, used to dine on shore, dress his pork and poultry by boiling them in a pot. Having, as I have before observed, no vessel that would bear the fire, they had no idea of hot water or its effects: But from the time that the old man was in possession of an iron pot, he and his friends eat boiled meat every day. The iron pots which I afterwards gave to the queen and several of the chiefs, were also in constant use, and brought as many people together, as a monster or a puppet-show in a country fair. They appeared to have no liquor for drinking but water, and to be happily ignorant of the art of fermenting the juice of any vegetable, so as to give it an intoxicating quality: They have, as has been already observed, the sugar-cane, but they seemed to make no other use of it than to chew, which they do not do habitually, but only break a piece off when they happen to pass by a place where it is growing.

Of their domestic life and amusements, we had not sufficient opportunity to obtain much knowledge; but they appear sometimes to have wars with each other, not only from their weapons, but the scars with which many of them were marked, and some of which appeared to be the remains of very considerable wounds, made with stones, bludgeons, or some other obtuse weapon: By these scars also they appear to be no inconsiderable proficients in surgery, of which indeed we happened to have more direct evidence. One of our seamen, when he was on shore, run a large splinter into his foot, and the surgeon being on board, one of his comrades endeavoured to take it out with a penknife; but after putting the poor fellow to a good deal of pain, was obliged to give it over. Our good old Indian, who happened to be present, then called over one of his countrymen that was standing on the opposite side of the river, who, having looked at the seaman's foot, went immediately down to the beach, and, taking up a shell, broke it to a point with his teeth; with this instrument, in little more than a minute, he laid open the place, and extracted the splinter; in the mean time the old man, who, as soon as he had called the other over, went a little way into the wood, returned with some gum, which he applied to the wound upon a piece of the cloth that was wrapped round him, and in two days time it was perfectly healed. We afterward learned that this gum was produced by the apple tree, and our surgeon procured some of it, and used it as a vulnerary balsam with great success.

The habitations of these happy people I have described already; and besides these, we saw several sheds inclosed within a wall, on the outside of which there were several uncouth figures of men, women, hogs, and dogs, carved on posts, that were driven into the ground. Several of the natives were from time to time seen to enter these places, with a slow pace and dejected countenance, from which we conjectured that they were repositories of the dead. The area within the walls of these places was generally well paved with large round stones, but it appeared not to be much trodden, for the grass every where grew up between them. I endeavoured with particular attention to discover whether they had a religious worship among them, but never could find the least traces of any.

The boats or canoes of these people are of three different sorts. Some are made out of a single tree, and carry from two to six men: These are used chiefly for fishing, and we constantly saw many of them busy upon the reef: Some were constructed of planks, very dexterously sewed together: These were of different sizes, and would carry from ten to forty men. Two of them were generally lashed together, and two masts set up between them; if they were single, they had an out-rigger on one side, and only one mast in the middle. With these vessels they sail far beyond the sight of land, probably to other islands, and bring home plantains, bananas, and yams, which seem also to be more plenty upon other parts of this island, than that off which the ship lay. A third sort seem to be intended principally for pleasure and show: They are very large, but have no sail, and in shape resemble the gondolas of Venice: The middle is covered with a large awning, and some of the people sit upon it, some under it. None of these vessels came near the ship, except on the first and second day after our arrival; but we saw, three or four times a week, a procession of eight or ten of them passing at a distance, with streamers flying, and a great number of small canoes attending them, while many hundreds of people run a-breast of them along the shore. They generally rowed to the outward point of a reef which lay about four miles to the westward of us, where they stayed about an hour, and then returned. These processions, however, are never made but in fine weather, and all the people on board are dressed; though in the other canoes they have only a piece of cloth wrapped round their middle. Those who rowed and steered were dressed in white; those who sat upon the awning and under it in white and red, and two men who were mounted on the prow of each vessel were dressed in red only. We sometimes went out to observe them in our boats, and though we were never nearer than a mile, we saw them with our glasses as distinctly us if we had been upon the spot.

The plank of which these vessels are constructed, is made by splitting a tree, with the grain, into as many thin pieces us they can. They first fell the tree with a kind of hatchet, or adze, made of a tough greenish kind of stone, very dexterously fitted into a handle; it is then cut into such lengths as are required for the plank, one end of which is heated till it begins to crack, and then with wedges of hard wood they split it down: Some of these planks are two feet broad, and from fifteen to twenty feet long. The sides are smoothed with adzes of the same materials and construction, but of a smaller size. Six or eight men are sometimes at work upon the same plank together, and, as their tools presently lose their edge, every man has by him a cocoa-nut shell filled with water, and a flat stone, with which he sharpens his adze almost every minute. These planks are generally brought to the thickness of about an inch, and are afterwards fitted to the boat with the same exactness that would be expected from an expert joiner. To fasten these planks together, holes are bored with a piece of bone that is fixed into a slick for that purpose, a use to which our nails were afterwards applied with great advantage, and through these holes a kind of plaited cordage is passed, so as to hold the planks strongly together: The seams are caulked with dried rushes, and the whole outside of the vessel is paid with a gummy juice, which some of their trees produce in great plenty, and which is a very good succedaneum for pitch.

The wood which they use for their large canoes, is that of the apple-tree, which grows very tall and straight. Several of them that were measured, were near eight feet in the girth, and from twenty to forty to the branches, with very little diminution in the size. Our carpenter said, that in other respects it was not a good wood for the purpose, being very light. The small canoes are nothing more than the hollow trunk of the bread-fruit tree, which is still more light and spongy. The trunk of the bread-fruit tree is six feet in girth, and about twenty feet to the branches.

Their principal weapons are stones, thrown either with the hand or sling, and bludgeons; for though they have bows and arrows, the arrows are only fit to knock down a bird, none of them being pointed, but headed only with a round stone.

I did not see one turtle all the while I lay off this island; but, upon shewing some small ones which I brought from Queen Charlotte's Island, to the inhabitants, they made signs that they had them of a much larger size. I very much regretted my having lost our he-goat, which died soon after we left St Iago, and that neither of our she-goats, of which we had two, were with kid. If the he-goat had lived, I would have put them all on shore at this place, and I would have left a she-goat here if either of them had been with kid; and I doubt not, but that in a few years they would have stocked the island.

The climate here appears to be very good, and the island to be one of the most healthy as well as delightful spots in the world. We saw no appearance of disease among the inhabitants. The hills are covered with wood, and the vallies with herbage; and the air in general is so pure, that, notwithstanding the heat, our flesh meat kept very well two days, and our fish one. We met with no frog, toad, scorpion, centipied, or serpent of any kind: And the only troublesome insects that we saw were ants, of which there were but few.

The south-east part of the island seems to be better cultivated and inhabited than where we lay, for we saw every day boats come round from thence laden with plantains and other fruit, and we always found greater plenty, and a lower price, soon after their arrival, than before.

The tide rises and falls very little, and, being governed by the winds, is very uncertain; though they generally blow from the E. to the S.E., and for the most part a pleasant breeze.

The benefit that we received while we lay off this island, with respect to the health of the ship's company, was beyond our most sanguine expectations, for we had not now an invalid on board, except the two lieutenants and myself, and we were recovering, though still in a very feeble condition.

It is certain that none of our people contracted the venereal disease here, and therefore, as they had free commerce with great numbers of the women, there is the greatest probability that it was not then known in the country. It was, however, found here by Captain Cook, in the Endeavour, and as no European vessel is known to have visited this island before Captain Cook's arrival, but the Dolphin, and the Boudeuse and Etoil, commanded by M. Bougainville, the reproach of having contaminated, with that dreadful pest, a race of happy people, to whom its miseries had till then been unknown, most be due either to him or to me, to England or to France; and I think myself happy to be able to exculpate myself and my country beyond the possibility of doubt.

It is well known that the surgeon on board his majesty's ships keeps a list of the persons who are sick on board, specifying their diseases, and the times when they came under his care, and when they were discharged. It happened that I was once at the pay-table on board a ship, when several sailors objected to the payment of the surgeon, alleging, that although he had discharged them from the list, and reported them to be cured, yet their cure was incomplete. From this time, it has been my constant practice when the surgeon reported a man to be cured, who had been upon the sick-list, to call the man before me, and ask him whether the report was true: If he alleged that any symptoms of his complaint remained, I continued him upon the list; if not, I required him, as a confirmation of the surgeon's report, to sign the book, which was always done in my presence. A copy of the sick-list on board the Dolphin, during this voyage, signed by every man in my presence, when he was discharged well, in confirmation of the surgeon's report, written in my own hand, and confirmed by my affidavit, I have deposited in the Admiralty; by which it appears, that the last man on board the ship, in her voyage outward, who was upon the sick-list for the venereal disease, except one who was sent to England in the store-ship, was discharged cured, and signed the book on the 27th of December, 1766, near six months before our arrival at Otaheite, which was on the 19th of June, 1767; and that the first man who was upon the list for that disease, in our return home, was entered on the 26th of February, 1768, six months after we left the island, which was on the 26th of July, 1767; so that the ship's company was entirely free fourteen months within one day, the very middle of which time we spent at Otaheite; and the man who was first entered as a venereal patient, on our return home, was known to have contracted the disease at the Cape of Good Hope, where we then lay.