Chapter X: Section IX (2)

They have traditions concerning the creation, which, as might be expected, are complex and clouded with obscurity. They say, that a goddess, having a lump or mass of earth suspended in a cord, gave it a swing, and scattered about pieces of land, thus constituting Otaheite and the neighbouring islands, which were all peopled by a man and woman, originally fixed at Otaheite. This, however, only respects their own immediate creation; for they have notions of an universal one before this; and of lands, of which they have now no other knowledge than what is mentioned in the tradition. Their most remote account reaches to Tatooma and Tapuppa, male and female stones or rocks, who support the congeries of land and water, or our globe underneath. These produced Totorro, who was killed, and divided into land; and after him Otaia and Oroo were begotten, who were afterward married, and produced, first, land, and then a race of gods. Otaia is killed, and Oroo marries a god, her son, called Teorrhaha, whom she orders to create more land, the animals, and all sorts of food found upon the earth; as also the sky, which is supported by men called Teeferei. The spots observed in the moon, are supposed to be groves of a sort of trees which once grew in Otaheite, and being destroyed by some accident, their seeds were carried up thither by doves, where they now flourish.

They have also many legends, both religious and historical; one of which latter, relative to the practice of eating human flesh, I shall give the substance of, as a specimen of their method. A long time since there lived in Otaheite two men, called _Taheeai_, the only name they yet have for cannibals; none knew from whence they came, or in what manner they arrived at the island. Their habitation was in the mountains, from whence they used to issue, and kill many of the natives, whom they afterward devoured, and by that means prevented the progress of population. Two brothers, determined to rid their country of such a formidable enemy, used a stratagem for their destruction, with success. These still lived farther upward than the _Taheeai_, and in such a situation that they could speak with them without greatly hazarding their own safety; they invited them to accept of an entertainment that should be provided for them, to which these readily consented. The brothers then taking some stones, heated them in a fire, and thrusting them into pieces of _mahee_, desired one of the _Taheeai_ to open his mouth; on which one of these pieces was dropped in, and some water poured down, which made a boiling or hissing noise, in quenching the stone, and killed him. They entreated the other to do the same; but he declined it, representing the consequences of his companion's eating. However, they assured him that the food was excellent, and its effects only temporary; for that the other would soon recover. His credulity was such that be swallowed the bait, and shared the fate of the first. The natives then cut them in pieces, which they buried; and conferred the government of the island on the brothers, as a reward for delivering them from such monsters. Their residence was in the district called Whapaeenoo; and to this day there remains a bread-fruit tree, once the property of the _Taheeais_. They had also a woman, who lived with them, and had two teeth of a prodigious size. After they were killed, she lived at the island Otaha; and when dead, was ranked amongst their deities. She did not eat human flesh, as the men; but, from the size of her teeth, the natives still call any animal that has a fierce appearance, or is represented with large tusks, _Taheeai_.

Every one must allow that this story is just as natural as that of Hercules destroying the hydra, or the more modern one of Jack the giant-killer. But I do not find that there is any moral couched under it, any more than under most old fables of the same kind, which have been received as truths only during the prevalence of the same ignorance that marked the character of the ages in which they were invented. It, however, has not been improperly introduced, as serving to express the horror and detestation entertained here against those who feed upon human flesh. And yet, from some circumstances, I have been led to think that the natives of these isles were formerly cannibals. Upon asking Omai, he denied it stoutly; yet mentioned a fact, within his own knowledge, which almost confirms such an opinion. When the people of Bolabola, one time, defeated those of Huaheine, a great number of his kinsmen were slain. But one of his relations had, afterward, an opportunity of revenging himself, when the Bolabola men were worsted in their turn, and cutting a piece out of the thigh of one of his enemies, he broiled, and eat it. I have also frequently considered the offering of the person's eye, who is sacrificed, to the chief, as a vestige of a custom which once really existed to a greater extent, and is still commemorated by this emblematical ceremony.

The being invested with the _maro_, and the presiding at human sacrifices, seem to be the peculiar characteristics of the sovereign. To these, perhaps, may be added the blowing a conch-shell, which produces a very loud sound. On hearing it, all his subjects are obliged to bring food of every sort to his royal residence, in proportion to their abilities. On some other occasions, they carry their veneration for his very name to an extravagant and very destructive pitch. For if, on his accession to the _maro_, any words in their language be found to have a resemblance to it in sound, they are changed for others; and if any man be bold enough not to comply, and continue to use those words, not only he, but all his relations, are immediately put to death. The same severity is exercised toward those who shall presume to apply this sacred name to any animal. And, agreeably to this custom of his countrymen, Omai used to express his indignation, that the English should give the names of prince or princess to their favourite horses or dogs. But while death is the punishment for making free with the name of their sovereign, if abuse be only levelled at his government, the offender escapes with the forfeiture of lands and houses.

The king never enters the house of any of his subjects, but has, in every district where he visits, houses belonging to himself. And if, at any time, he should be obliged by accident to deviate from this rule, the house thus honoured with his presence, and every part of its furniture, is burnt. His subjects not only uncover to him, when present, down to the waist; but if he be at any particular place, a pole, having a piece of cloth tied to it, is set up somewhere near, to which they pay the same honours. His brothers are also entitled to the first part of the ceremony; but the women only uncover to the females of the royal family. In short, they seem even superstitious in their respect to him, and esteem his person little less than sacred. And it is, perhaps, to these circumstances, that he owes the quiet possession of his dominions. For even the people of Tiaraboo allow him the same honours as his right; though, at the same time, they look upon their own chief as more powerful; and say, that he would succeed to the government of the whole island, should the present reigning family become extinct. This is the more likely, as Waheiadooa not only possesses Tiaraboo, but many districts of Opooreanoo. His territories, therefore, are almost equal in extent to those of Otoo; and he has, besides, the advantage of a more populous and fertile part of the island. His subjects, also, have given proofs of their superiority, by frequent victories over those of Otaheite-nooe, whom they affect to speak of as contemptible warriors, easily to be worsted, if at any time their chief should wish to put it to the test.

The ranks of people, besides the _Eree de hoi_ and his family, are the _Erees_, or powerful chiefs; the _Manahoone_, or vassals; and the _Teou_, or _Toutou_, servants, or rather slaves. The men of each of these, according to the regular institution, form their connexions with women of their respective ranks; but if with any inferior one, which frequently happens, and a child be born, it is preserved, and has the rank of the father, unless he happens to be an _Eree_, in which case it is killed. If a woman of condition should choose an inferior person to officiate as a husband, the children he has by her are killed. And if a _Teou_ be caught in an intrigue with a woman of the blood-royal, he is put to death. The son of the _Eree de hoi_ succeeds his father in title and honours as soon as he is born; but if he should have no children, the brother assumes the government at his death. In other families, possessions always descend to the eldest son; but he is obliged to maintain his brothers and sisters, who are allowed houses on his estates.

The boundaries of the several districts, into which Otaheite is divided, are, generally, either rivulets, or low hills, which, in many places, jut out into the sea. But the subdivisions into particular property, are marked by large stones, which have remained from one generation to another. The removal of any of these gives rise to quarrels, which are decided by arms; each party bringing his friends into the field. But if any one complain to the _Eree de hoi_, he terminates the difference amicably. This is an offence, however, not common; and long custom seems to secure property here as effectually as the most severe laws do in other countries. In conformity also to ancient practice established amongst them, crimes of a less general nature are left to be punished by the sufferer, without referring them to a superior. In this case, they seem to think that the injured person will judge as equitably as those who are totally unconcerned; and as long custom has allotted certain punishments for crimes of different sorts, he is allowed to inflict them, without being amenable to any other person. Thus, if any one be caught stealing, which is commonly done in the night, the proprietor of the goods may put the thief instantly to death; and if any one should enquire of him after the deceased, it is sufficient to acquit him, if he only informs them of the provocation he had to kill him. But so severe a punishment is seldom inflicted, unless the articles that are stolen be reckoned very valuable; such as breast-plates and plaited hair. If only cloth, or even hogs, be stolen, and the thief escape, upon his being afterward discovered, if he promise to return the same number of pieces of cloth, or of hogs, no farther punishment is inflicted. Sometimes, after keeping out of the way for a few days, he is forgiven, or, at most, gets a slight beating. If a person kill another in a quarrel, the friends of the deceased assemble, and engage the survivor and his adherents. If they conquer, they take possession of the house, lands, and goods of the other party; but if conquered, the reverse takes place. If a _Manahoone_ kill the _Toutou_, or slave of a chief, the latter sends people to take possession of the lands and house of the former, who flies either to some other part of the island, or to some of the neighbouring islands. After some months he returns, and finding his stock of hogs much increased, he offers a large present of these, with some red feathers, and other valuable articles, to the _Toutou_'s master, who generally accepts the compensation, and permits him to repossess his house and lands. This practice is the height of venality and injustice; and the slayer of the slave seems to be under no farther necessity of absconding, than to impose upon the lower class of people, who are the sufferers. For it does not appear that the chief has the least power to punish this _Manahoone_; but the whole management marks a collusion between him and his superior, to gratify the revenge of the former, and the avarice of the latter. Indeed, we need not wonder that the killing of a man should be considered as so venial an offence, amongst a people who do not consider it as any crime at all to murder their own children. When talking to them, about such instances of unnatural cruelty, and asking, whether the chiefs or principal people were not angry, and did not punish them? I was told, that the chief neither could nor would interfere in such cases; and that every one had a right to do with his own child what he pleased.

Though the productions, the people, and the customs and manners of all the islands in the neighbourhood, may, in general, be reckoned the same as at Otaheite, there are a few differences which should be mentioned, as this may lead to an enquiry about more material ones hereafter, if such there be, of which we are now ignorant.

With regard to the little island Mataia, or Osnaburgh Island, which lies twenty leagues east of Otaheite, and belongs to a chief of that place, who gets from thence a kind of tribute, a different dialect from that of Otaheite is there spoken. The men of Mataia also wear their hair very long; and when they fight, cover their arms with a substance which is beset with sharks' teeth, and their bodies with a sort of shagreen, being skin of fishes. At the same time they are ornamented with polished pearl-shells, which make a prodigious glittering in the sun; and they have a very large one, that covers them before, like a shield or breast plate.

The language of Otaheite has many words, and even phrases, quite unlike those of the islands to the westward of it, which all agree; and this island is remarkable for producing great quantities of that delicious fruit we call apples, which are found in none of the others, except Eimeo. It has also the advantage of producing an odoriferous wood, called _eahoi_, which is highly valued at the other isles, where there is none; nor even in the south-east peninsula, or Tiaraboo, though joining it. Huaheine and Eimeo, again, are remarkable for producing greater quantities of yams than the other islands. And at Mourooa there is a particular bird, found upon the hills, much esteemed for its white feathers; at which place there is also said to be some of the apples, though it be the most remote of the Society Islands from Otaheite and Eimeo, where they are produced.

Though the religion of all the islands be the same, each of them has its particular, or tutelar god; whose names, according to the best information I could receive, are set down in the following list:

_Gods of the Isles_,

Huaheine, _Tanne._
Ulietea, _Oore._
Otaha, _Tanne._
Bolabola, _Oraa._
Mourooa, _Otoo, ee weiahoo._
Toobaee, _Tamouee._
Tabooymanoo, or Saunders's \
Island, which } _Taroa._
is subject to Huaheine,/
Eimeo, _Oroo hadoo._

Otaheite-nooe,} _Ooroo._
Otaheite, {
Tiaraboo, } {_Opoonooa_ and whom they have
{_Whatooteeree_, { lately changed
for Oraa, god
of Bolabola.

Mataia or Osnaburgh _Tooboo, toobooai, Ry maraiva._
Island

The Low Isles, Eastward _Tammaree._

Besides the cluster of high islands from Mataia to Mourooa inclusive, the people of Otaheite are acquainted with a low uninhabited island, which they name Mopeeha, and seems to be Howe's Island, laid down to the westward of Mourooa in our late charts of this ocean. To this the inhabitants of the most leeward islands sometimes go. There are also several low islands, to the north-eastward of Otaheite, which they have sometimes visited, but not constantly; and are said to be only at the distance of two days' sail, with a fair wind. They were thus named to me:

Mataeeva,
Oanaa, called Oannah, in Dalrymple's letter to Hawkesworth
Taboohoe,
Awehee,
Kaoora,
Orootooa,
Otavaoo, where are large pearls.

The inhabitants of these isles come more frequently to Otaheite and the other neighbouring high islands, from whose natives they differ in being of a darker colour, with a fiercer aspect, and differently punctured. I was informed, that at Mataeeva, and others of them, it is a custom for the men to give their daughters to strangers who arrive amongst them; but the pairs must be five nights lying near each other, without presuming to proceed farther. On the sixth evening, the father of the young woman, treats his guest with food, and informs his daughter, that she must, that night, receive him as her husband. The stranger, however, must not offer to express the least dislike, though the bed-fellow allotted to him should be ever so disagreeable; for this is considered as an unpardonable affront, and is punished with death. Forty men of Bolabola, who, incited by curiosity, had roamed as far as Mataeeva in a canoe, were treated in this manner; one of them having incautiously mentioned his dislike of the woman who fell to his lot, in the hearing of a boy, who informed her father. In consequence of this the Mateevans fell upon them; but these warlike people killed three times their own number; though with the loss of all their party, except five. These hid themselves in the woods, and took an opportunity, when the others were burying their dead, to enter some houses, where, having provided themselves with victuals and water, they carried them on board a canoe, in which they made their escape; and, after passing Mataia, at which they would not touch, at last arrived safe at Eimeo. The Bolabolans, however, were sensible enough that their travellers had been to blame; for a canoe from Mateeva, arriving some time after at Bolabola, so far were they from retaliating upon them for the death of their countrymen, that they acknowledged they had deserved their fate, and treated their visitors kindly.

These low isles are, doubtless, the farthest navigation which those of Otaheite and the Society Islands perform at present. It seems to be a groundless supposition, made by Mons. de Bougainville, that they made voyages of the prodigious extent[5] he mentions; for I found, that it is reckoned a sort of a prodigy, that a canoe, once driven by a storm from Otaheite, should have fallen in with Mopeeha, or Howe's Island, though so near, and directly to leeward. The knowledge they have of other distant islands is, no doubt, traditional; and has been communicated to them by the natives of those islands, driven accidentally upon their coasts, who, besides giving them the names, could easily inform them of the direction in which the places lie from whence they came, and of the number of days they had been upon the sea. In this manner, it may be supposed, that the natives of Wateeoo have increased their catalogue by the addition of Otaheite and its neighbouring isles, from the people we met with there, and also of the other islands these had heard of. We may thus account for that extensive knowledge attributed by the gentlemen of the Endeavour to Tupia in such matters. And, with all due deference to his veracity, I presume that it was, by the same means of information, that he was able to direct the ship to Oheteroa, without having ever been there himself, as he pretended; which, on many accounts, is very improbable.[6]

[Footnote 5: See _Bougainville's Voyage autour du Monde_, p. 228, where we are told that these people sometimes navigate at the distance of more than three hundred leagues.--D.]

[Footnote 6: Though much of Mr Anderson's account of Otaheite, &c. be very similar to what has been given in the preceding relations, yet it must be allowed to possess too great merit to warrant omission or alteration. He has been fortunate, certainly, in delineating the manners and opinions of the people; and perhaps, on the whole, his information bears more decisive marks of care and intimate acquaintance than any other we possess on the subject. This, it may be said, is no very high merit; because, having the benefit of pretty extensive labours, he had only to compare a picture with its original, as presented to his notice, and was under no necessity of dividing his attention among a multiplicity of unconnected objects. Still this remark is not just, unless it be shewn that he has merely affirmed the likeness or unlikeness he observed betwixt them, and specified the peculiarities of resemblance or dissimilarity. In place of doing so, however, he has executed another picture. But such analogical reasoning is more fanciful than judicious; and even were it correctly applicable to the case, it is evident, that no one would be entitled to decide as to the respective merits of the productions, who was not familiar with the objects which they represented. Now, the fact is, that Mr Anderson had no opportunity of availing himself of what others had done before, unless we except the avowedly imperfect delineations in Hawkesworth's Narrative, from which we can scarcely believe he could derive material assistance. The reader will understand this at once, by considering, that neither Cook's account of his second voyage, nor the productions of Mr Forster, had been published before the commencement of this expedition. It may, however, be imagined, that Cook himself would communicate to Mr Anderson such particulars of his former journal as were likely to aid him in his present researches. Even this supposition is exceedingly unnecessary; because, it appears from the Memoir of Cook, in the Biog. Brit. that that officer rather received assistance from Mr Anderson during the former navigation; and we shall afterwards see reason to consider him as possessed of abilities, and a talent for observation, which rendered him very independent of others. His description, therefore, is to be judged an original one, and as such is entitled to the highest distinction. It may indeed be somewhat chargeable with the exaggerations of a warm fancy, especially as to what is said of the religious notions of these islanders, which perhaps assume more of system and regularity through the medium of Mr A.'s report, than it is altogether likely would be found to exist in their popular creeds. This is easily understood, without any aspersion on his veracity. For, as it will be allowed that he possessed greater compass of mind, and was more in the habit of exercising thought than the people whose opinions he described, so it may thence be readily inferred, that, what to them was confused and unconnected, as is commonly the case with the superstitions of the illiterate in all countries, his philosophical genius, working on obvious and remote analogies, wrought into order, and stamped with the semblance, at least, of theoretical consistency. We had at one time purposed to offer a few remarks on certain parts of his description, but, on second thoughts, it occurred, that, on the whole, the subject had received a very ample share of attention in the course of these voyages.--E.]