Chapter VII: Religion (3)

The priests of one god were generally, but not always, confined to one family. They owed their consideration to their office rather than to their rank, which was generally humble. They ranked according to the importance of the god to whom they ministered. When the chieftancy and the priesthood were united in the same person, both were of low order. The titular spiritual chief (Roko Tui) was not a priest, although divine honours were paid to him, for the act of inspiration appeared to be thought derogatory to the dignity of a high chief. The priesthood could not be dispensed with, because the gods could not be approached except through the medium of a priest, who could only be inspired in the temple of his god except on rare occasions, such as a campaign in a distant island, when the oracle must be consulted in a private house if at all.

"One who intends to consult the oracle dresses and oils himself, and, accompanied by a few others, goes to the priest, who, we will suppose, has been previously informed of the intended visit, and is lying near the sacred corner, getting ready his response. When the party enters he rises and sits so that his back is near to the white cloth by which the god visits him, while the others occupy the opposite side of the _mbure_. The principal person presents a whale's tooth, states the purpose of the visit, and expresses a hope that the god will regard him with favour. Sometimes there is placed before the priest a dish of scented oil with which he anoints himself and then receives the tooth, regarding it with deep and serious attention. Unbroken silence follows. The priest becomes absorbed in thought, and all eyes watch him with unblinking steadiness. In a few minutes he trembles; slight distortions are seen in his face, and twitching movements in his limbs. These increase to a violent muscular action, which spreads until the whole frame is violently convulsed, and the man shivers as with a strong ague fit. In some instances this is accompanied with murmurs and sobs, the veins are greatly enlarged, and circulation of the blood quickened. The priest is now possessed by his god, and all his words and actions are considered as being no longer his own, but those of the deity who has entered into him. Shrill cries of '_Koi au! Koi au!_' (It is I! It is I!) fill the air, and the god is supposed thus to notify his approach. While giving the answer the priest's eyes stand out and roll as in a frenzy; his voice is unnatural, his face pale, his lips livid, his breathing depressed, and his entire appearance like that of a furious madman. The sweat runs from every pore, and tears start from his strained eyes; after which the symptoms gradually disappear. The priest looks round with a vacant stare, and, as the god says, 'I depart!' announces his actual departure by flinging himself down on the mat, or by suddenly striking the ground with a club, while those at a distance are informed by blasts on the conch, or by the firing of a musket, that the deity has returned to the world of spirits. The convulsive movements do not entirely disappear for some time; they are not, however, so violent as to prevent the priest from enjoying a hearty meal, or a draught of yankona or a whiff of tobacco, as either may happen to be at hand. Several words are used by the natives to express these priestly shakings. The most common are _sika_ and _kundru_. _Sika_ means to appear, and is used chiefly of supernatural beings; _kundru_ means to grunt or grumble. The one refers to the appearance, the other to the sound attendant upon these inspired shakings.

[Pageheader: AN INSPIRED PRIEST]

As whatever the priest says during the paroxysm is supposed to be direct from the god, a specimen or two of these responses will be interesting.... A priest of Ndengei, speaking for that divinity, once said, "Great Fiji is my small club. Muaimbila is the head; Kamba is the handle. If I step on Muaimbila I shall sink it into the sea, while Kamba shall rise to the sky. If I step on Kamba it will be lost in the sea, and Muaimbila shall rise to the sky. Yes, Vitilevu is my small club. I can turn it as I please. I can turn it upside down."[61]

The propitiatory offering might be anything from a bunch of cocoanuts covered with turmeric powder to a great feast. In the last case, part, called the _singana_, was set apart for the god, the rest apportioned among the people. In theory the god consumed the spiritual essence of all the food, and the people ate its grosser fibre. The _singana_ was eaten by the priest and a few privileged old men; it was tabu to youths and women.

The psychological aspect of the inspiration of the Fijian priest is difficult to appreciate. The inspired paroxysm is something more than conscious deception. Williams was present when a famous Lakemba priest was questioned by the Tongan chief, Tubou Totai:--

"Lanngu, did you shake yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Did you think beforehand what to say?"

"No."

"Then you just say what you happen to think at the time, do you?"

"No. I do not know what I say. My own mind departs from me, and then, when it is truly gone, my god speaks by me."

Williams adds that this man "had the most stubborn confidence in his deity, although his mistakes were such as to shake any ordinary trust. His inspired tremblings were of the most violent kind, bordering on frenzy."[62] He was, no doubt, absolutely sincere. In this race, as in the Hindus and the Malays, there is an undercurrent of hysteria which no one looking at their placid surface would suspect. In the first heat of conversion to Christianity it was quite common in the Mission services for a man to be inspired (by the Holy Spirit, as he said) and to interrupt the minister with an outburst of gibberish accompanied with all the contortions that seized the heathen priest. His companions would try to calm him by patting him gently with soothing exclamations, and the good missionaries, who had been enlarging on the gift of tongues at Pentecost, were not a little embarrassed in discouraging the practice. The "revival" which took place at Viwa in 1845 was a curious instance of this. To judge from John Hunt's account of it, the entire island was seized with religious hysteria, and "business, sleep and food were entirely laid aside" for several days, until the missionaries had to force the new converts to eat. Such ebullitions are rare in these days, but that they are still smouldering unsuspected is shown by the hysterical outbursts of emotion that sometimes take place at the _Bolotu_ or Night Revival meetings, introduced from Tonga. More than one generation must come and go before all danger from this neurotic chord in the Fijian constitution is removed. Any acute cause of native discontent which might be fanned into active hostility to the white race would most certainly produce the heathen priest again, and the most dangerous of these might well be the man who now delivers eloquent emotional sermons to Wesleyan congregations Sunday after Sunday. Such a spectacle would shock the European missionaries beyond expression, but it would not surprise those who know the natives intimately. The schism of Ndungumoi and the heathen outbreak of Vanualevu in 1895 were but a bubble from the seething pitch that lies below the placid outer crust of the converted Fijian.

[Pageheader: THE TOOLS OF THE WIZARD]

Even now a practised eye might pick out from an assembly of Fijians the sons of the heathen priests, by their shifty glance, their crafty expression, and their smooth, insinuating address, which are as much a part of them as the set of their eyes and the colour of their skin.[63]

Witchcraft

_Ndraunikau_ (_lit._, leaves)

In 1618 two women were executed at Lincoln for burying the glove of Henry, Lord Rosse, in order that "as that glove did rot and waste, so did the liver of the said lord rot and waste." The belief illustrated by this trial is found in every people, in every country, and in every age. Dr. E. B. Tylor has remarked with much force that the occult sciences are nothing but "bad reasoning." There being obvious relation between a glove and its owner, between a waxen image and the person it represents, the sorcerer reasons that what he does to the one will happen to the other. Health being the normal condition of all, except the very aged, sickness and death must be the work of some malevolent agency, divine or human; and, if the sick person is free from all suspicion of sacrilege, the gods can have no motive for afflicting him. Instead of "Whom the gods love die young," the primitive man reads "An enemy hath done this." This theory of disease being once established, it is a short step to the professional agents of disease, who, for a consideration, will wreck the health of the strongest man with the simplest of tools--a lock of his hair, a scrap of his food, or a garment that he has worn. The belief in such powers is not more wildly foolish than our own theory of microbes would have seemed if it had been put forward before there were microscopes to prove its truth. It could at least point to success in its support, for there can be no doubt whatever that numbers of bewitched persons did actually die--from fear--and that many sick recovered as the result of curative counterspells that put new heart into them.

The terror of witchcraft was never absent from the mind of a Fijian. Williams relates that the sceptics who laughed at the pretensions of a priest trembled at the power of the wizard, and that this was the last superstition to be eradicated from the mind of the convert to Christianity. It would be more true to say that the Christian native has never lost it. The professional wizard was not necessarily a priest, but if he had not the protection of sanctity, he was a person of considerable courage, for witchcraft was a dangerous profession. The pay was very high, but since the transaction could never be kept entirely secret, the wizard had to brave the resentment of his victim's relations.

[Pageheader: A CHIEF IS BEWITCHED]

The procedure was this: If a man desired the death of a rival he procured something that had belonged to his person--a lock of hair, the parings of his nails, a scrap of food, or, best of all, his excreta, for witchcraft by these produced incurable dysentery. With these he visited the wizard by night, taking a whale's tooth as an earnest of the reward that he would pay when the death of his rival was accomplished. The wizard then prepared the charm by wrapping the object in certain leaves of magical properties, and burying the parcel in a bamboo case either in the victim's plantation or in the thatch of his house. In a few days the man began to sicken--generally, no doubt, because hints of the design had been conveyed to him--and if the charm could then be discovered and destroyed, he would recover. But if a diligent search failed, offerings were made to the gods, or the chief in whose district the wizard lived was invoked to use his authority. It was more common, however, to fee another wizard to make the charm innocuous by counterspells, which were often effective through the fresh hope infused into the sufferer, to the profit of both practitioners. When the victim died the wizard claimed his reward by attending the funeral with a blackened face, and bold indeed would be the employer who dared to bilk him. This practice was sometimes abused. Any sudden death being ascribed to witchcraft, a professional wizard, who was entirely innocent, would blacken his face at the funeral in the hope that some one who had an interest in the death would pay him the fee he had never earned. Such a case occurred as late as 1887 at the funeral of Mbuli Mbemana, who died of a chill contracted in taking a huge _vesi_ log down the river as a king-post for the council-house at Nandronga. A man with a blackened face was pointed out to me at the funeral, and shortly afterwards a formal complaint was made by the dead man's relations against the river tribes of having fee'd this wizard to compass the Mbuli's death. I summoned them to a meeting, but all my arguments were impotent against the undoubted fact that the Mbuli was dead, that the river tribes detested him and had an interest in his death, and that their wizard had appeared with a black face at his funeral. _Fiat experimentum_: let them commission their most famous wizards to compound a spell that no man could withstand--I would supply them with all the material they wanted--and if I still lived they would put away this superstition for ever. They discussed the proposition with gravity, and replied through their spokesman that this would be no proof at all, for it was well known that white men, who subsist on outlandish meats, were proof against Fijian spells. There was with me a Tongan, named Lijiate (the nearest the Tongans can get to "Richard"), whose enlightened contempt for the dark-mindedness of these heathen had been expressed with unnecessary emphasis. Him I proffered as a substitute. But I had reckoned without my host. "Pardon me," he said, when I asked him for a lock of his hair, "but I almost believe in it myself." One stout-hearted Fijian servant was ready to step into the breach, but it was then my turn to interfere, for the knowledge that he was bewitched would lay the stoutest-hearted Fijian low in less than a week.[64]

A man, delirious with triumph at his narrow escape, once brought me a spell that he had found buried in the thatch of his house in Tawaleka. It was a bamboo six inches long, corked with a tuft of grass. Within was a shred of _masi_, torn, no doubt, from his clothing and a handful of withered leaves of some bush shrub. He wished me to hold inquisition over the countryside in the hope that his enemy would confess the crime, for _ndraunikan_ had been wisely made a punishable offence. Its utility has long passed away, and its power for harm remains. Apart from the death and suffering it may inflict on the victim through terror, it not infrequently leads to actual violence. The murder of Mbuli Mbureta in 1884 is a notable instance. At the trial of his murderers it was elicited that a number of disaffected chiefs in his district had fee'd a wizard to remove him by witchcraft. When weeks had passed, and the unpopular chief continued in obstinate good health, the wizard's employers taunted him with his lack of skill, and received a definite promise of the Mbuli's death before a fixed date. The promise was kept; the victim disappeared, but when his body was discovered it was found that the skull had been fractured by an axe-stroke from behind.

In the face of such instances as these it demands some courage to assert that upon the whole the belief in witchcraft was formerly a positive advantage to the community. It filled, in fact, the place of a system of sanitation. The wizard's tools consisting in those waste matters that are inimical to health, every man was his own scavenger. From birth to old age a man was governed by this one fear; he went into the sea, the graveyard or the depths of the forest to satisfy his natural wants; he burned his cast-off _malo_; he gave every fragment left over from his food to the pigs; he concealed even the clippings of his hair in the thatch of his house. This ever-present fear even drove women in the western districts out into the forest for the birth of their children, where fire destroyed every trace of their lying-in. Until Christianity broke it down, the villages were kept clean; there were no festering rubbish-heaps nor filthy _raras_.

[Pageheader: SOOTHSAYERS]

In this respect Fijian witchcraft was immeasurably superior to that of other primitive races who employ similar methods. The Gold Coast tribes slay men by spells of roots tied together with a curse;[65] the priest-king Laibou of the Wa-Nandi tried to annihilate the Uganda force sent against him by leaving a snake tied to a dog near their camp.[66] The Swahili bury medicine at the door of the hut by which the doomed person must pass.[67] But in none of these cases are the excreta of the victim necessary, nor does the superstition react in the interest of public health.

Kinda and Yalovaki

Not less important in the native polity were the wizard's services in the detection of crime. This was a special branch of the black art, and the _ndaukinda_ seldom engaged in the deadly business of _ndraunikau_. When property was stolen the owner took a present to the seer, and told the story of his loss. The seer, bidding the man pronounce the names of those whom he suspected, fell into deep abstraction, and presently checked the man at a certain name, announcing that an itching in his side or this finger or toe proved the person named to be the thief. If the seer was a member of the tribe he would dispense with the names, and would begin to twitch convulsively and himself pronounce the thief's name. If he was lucky enough to hit upon the right man--and an intimate knowledge of the characters and relations of his fellow-tribesmen often enabled him to do so--the offender would confess at once, for to brazen out a theft against the evidence of a seer's little finger demanded an effrontery that no Fijian could boast. The proper course for a person wrongfully accused by a seer was shown in the case of Mbuli Yasawa, who in 1885 was charged with embezzling the district funds. It appeared that the funds in question were intact, but that, through an error in book-keeping, the scribe had led the people to believe that a considerable sum had been abstracted. Persons were deputed to consult a noted seer, called Ndrau-ni-ivi, whose finger tingled at the mention of the Mbuli's name. The poor Mbuli, knowing for the best of reasons that he was innocent, instead of taking the obvious course of submitting his books to be audited by the magistrate, presented a larger fee to a rival seer to "press down" (_mbika_) that given to Ndrau-ni-ivi, and triumphantly vindicated his character by the verdict of his practitioner's great toe. Upon this evidence he prosecuted his slanderers for defamation before the Provincial Court. The cunning and knack of clever guessing necessary for the lucrative calling of the seer formerly made the business a monopoly of the priests.

The _yalovaki_ (soul-stealing) was an even surer method of detecting crime. It was the mildest form of trial by ordeal ever devised, but no boiling water or hot ploughshare could have been more effective. If the evidence was strong, but the suspect obstinately refused to confess, complaint was made to the chief, who summoned the accused, and called for a scarf. Usually the man confessed at the bare mention of the instrument, but if he did not, the cloth was waved over his head until his spirit (_yalo_) was entangled in it, and it was then folded together and nailed to the prow of the chief's canoe. Then the man went mad, for the mad are they whose soul have been stolen away.

Charms

There is no unusual feature in the Fijians' belief in charms. They were carried to avert calamities of all kinds, but principally shipwreck and wounds in battle. A mountain girl, who had never before seen the sea, was once a fellow-passenger with me in a stormy passage to Suva. A heavy lurch of the little vessel threw her sprawling on the deck, and I noticed that, while the other natives were bantering her, she was crying bitterly. Her fall had disengaged a pebble from her hand which had been given her as a talisman against death by drowning. Charms have their uses in litigation I had once before me a little old man who enjoyed some reputation for skill in witchcraft. Being sentenced for some petty offence, he solemnly removed his loin-cloth, and took from between his thighs a little bag, containing dried root, and flung it away with a gesture of contempt, much to the amusement of the enlightened native police, who explained that it was an amulet against conviction.

[Pageheader: TRAPPING THE LITTLE GODS]

The Kalou-rere

The _kalou-rere_ differed from other religious observances in that, though it was practised in most parts of the group, either under its prevailing name or that of _ndomindomi_, the form was universal. The votaries were youths of the male sex only: there was no recognized priesthood; the cult was rather one of the effervescences of youth which in England find their vent in the football field and the amateur stage. The object of the rites was to allure the "Little Gods"--the _Luve-ni-wai_ (Children of the Water)--a timid race of Immortals, to leave the sea, and take up their temporary abode among their votaries on land. Beyond the gift of immunity from wounds in battle, and such pleasure as may be drawn from the excitement of the secret rites, it is not clear that the Little People conferred any boon upon their worshippers commensurate with the labour and privations that worship entailed, but more than this has been urged against Freemasonry by its critics.

In a retired place near the sea a small house was built, and enclosed with a rustic trellis fence, tied at the crossings with a small-leafed vine, and interrupted by long poles decorated with streamers. Within the enclosure a miniature temple was erected to contain a consecrated cocoanut, or some other trifle. No effort was spared to make the place attractive to the shy little gods; the roof of the house was draped with _masi_; the wall studded with crab-claws, and span-long yams and painted cocoanuts were disposed about the foundations that they might eat and drink.

A party of twenty or thirty youths spent several weeks in this enclosure, drumming every morning and evening on the ground with hollow bamboos to attract the sea-gods. During this long period they observed certain tabus, and spent the days in complete idleness. Williams heard of a party who, to facilitate the landing of the _Luve-ni-wai_, built a jetty of loose stones for some distance into the sea. When they were believed to be ascending, flags were set up in some of the inland passes to turn back any of them that might try to make for the forests inland. On the great day a Nanga-like enclosure was made with long poles piled to a height of twelve inches and covered with green boughs, spears bearing streamers being set up at the four angles. Within this the lads sat gaily draped, with their votive offerings of clubs and shells before them, thumping their bamboo drums on the earth. Presently the officers of the lodge were seen approaching headed by the _Vuninduvu_, a sort of past-master, armed with an axe, and capering wildly; the _Lingu-viu_ (Fan-holder) circling madly round the drummers, waving a great fan; the _Mbovoro_, dancing and carrying in his hand the cocoanut which he is about to break on his bent knee; the _Lingu-vatu_, pounding his nut with a stone. Amid a terrific din of shrieks and cat-calls the gods entered into the _Raisevu_, who thereafter was regarded as a peculiarly favoured person. Then all went mad; the _Vakathambe_ shouted his challenge; the _Matavutha_ shot at him, or at a nut which he held under his arm, and all became possessed with the same frenzy as the inspired priests. One after another they ran to the _Vuninduvu_ to be struck on the belly, believing themselves invulnerable, and if the _Vuninduvu_ was over-simple or over-zealous he sometimes did them mortal injury. Williams, who gives the above description of the rites, says that in the old days the orgy was free from licentiousness: we shall see how they have deteriorated since the conversion of the people to Christianity.

[Pageheader: THE CAREER OF A _RAISEVU_]

On the western coast of Vitilevu the favourite ascending place of the _Luve-ni-wai_ is marked with a large cairn of little stones, which has grown year by year with the stones flung upon it by each worshipper and by every passer-by. The more republican institutions of the western tribes permit a commoner to rise to considerable influence, and not a few of these great commoners can trace their eminent career to the youthful distinction of having been the _Raisevu_. The combination of hysteria and cunning and impudence necessary to that distinction raised Nemani Ndreu from the lowly position of a commoner of a Nandi village to be the official _Roko Tui_ of Mba. At the date of annexation in 1874 he was _Tui Rara_ (Town-crier); in the heathen outbreak two years later, he was naturally found upon the winning side, and his services as guide and spy were so useful that he rapidly rose in Government favour. I was present at the council when his appointment to the highest office open to Fijians was announced. In an impassioned speech to a cold and hostile audience he suddenly burst into tears that coursed down his cheeks and impeded his utterance, and his most inveterate enemies seemed to be affected. As we left the council-house he turned to me, with the tears still wet upon his cheeks, and said, "How then? Didn't I do that well?" It is unnecessary to add that he was an eminent local preacher.

The _kalou-rere_ was one of the few offences which, under British law, was punished with flogging, a harsh provision if the rites were as innocent as Williams represents. The truth is that they have changed sadly for the worse. The rites are still occasionally practised in secret, but though the ritual is much the same, it may be doubted whether any of the votaries believe that they are alluring the "Little Gods" from the sea. A few lawless young chiefs get a band of roysterers together in a secluded place, and there go through a travesty of the rites as an excuse for nocturnal raids upon the hen-roosts of the neighbouring trader. Usually an equal number of girls are induced to visit them by night under the pretence of practising heathen dances, which are, in reality, mere orgies of debauchery. In one of these cases, reported in detail by the late Mr. Heffernan, stipendiary magistrate of Ba, the frenzy of the votaries was quite genuine, but it found vent in sensuality, the dancers having access to their partners in a set measure controlled by words of command.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 45: Buro-tu, or Bulo-tu as the Samoans and Tongans call it, is Buro, or Bouro or Bauro with the suffix _tu_, signifying high rank, which is found in the words _tu-i_ (king) and _tu-ranga_ (chief). There are two places of that name in the West, namely, Bauro (S. Christoval) in the Solomon Islands, and Bouro in the Malay Archipelago. Quiros heard of an Indian, "a great pilot," who had come from Bouro when he visited Taumaco in the Duff Group in 1606, and Mr. Hale, the philologist in Wilkes Expedition, tried to establish the identity of the Malay Bouro with the sacred island, by assuming that the "arrows tipped with silver," which Quiros says were in possession of this native, showed that there was communication between Taumaco and the Malay Islands. But, as Dr. Guppy points out (_The Solomon Islands_, p. 277), the Bouro there alluded to must have been S. Christoval, which was only 300 miles distant, and the silver arrows a relic of the Spanish expedition to that island forty years before. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that S. Christoval was named Bouro by emigrants from the Malay Island after their old home, and that S. Christoval was a halting-place of the race on their journey eastward.]

[Footnote 46: The disgrace of dying a natural death is so keenly felt that the bodies of the Tui Thakau of Somosomo, and the Rokovaka of Kandavu, who die naturally, are struck with a stone on the forehead or clubbed, to avert the contempt of the gods [Waterhouse].]

[Footnote 47: Thus the Fijians explain recovery from trance.]

[Footnote 48: An edible root related to the yam.]

[Footnote 49: There are many poems relating to the gods at Ndelakurukuru. They are all well known at Namata, where they are performed on great occasions, such as the feast made on the departure of the Thakaundrove chiefs.]

[Footnote 50: The Chief of Lakemba used to assure the missionaries that they could do him no greater favour than to give him a wooden coffin, that his body might not be trampled on [Williams].]

[Footnote 51: The indigenous fly is nearly extinct. He is larger than the European species that has supplanted him, and his buzz is louder.]

[Footnote 52: Williams, _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 21.]

[Footnote 53: _The Polynesian Race_, pp. 44, 167, 168.]

[Footnote 54: This was the Fijian deluge. There are traditions of great floods within historical times. One of them, about 1793, purged the land of the great Lila epidemic. The waters rose over the housetops; hundreds were swept away, and the silt left by the receding waters raised the alluvial flats of the Rewa river several feet, a statement that is borne out by the fact that a network of mangrove roots underlies the alluvial soil at a depth of four or five feet. This flood was preceded by a great cyclone. Traditions of great floods are preserved by almost every primitive people.]

[Footnote 55: Dengei was supposed to inhabit a cavern in Nakauvandra.]

[Footnote 56: _Oliva_ is the name of Captain Olive, formerly Commandant of the Armed Constabulary; _virimbaita_ is "to hedge in." The other words mean nothing.]

[Footnote 57: The alignments at Carnac in Brittany and Merivale on Dartmoor are suggestive of the rites of the Mbaki.]

[Footnote 58: _Journal Anthrop. Instit._, Vol. xiv, p. 29.]

[Footnote 59: _Internationales Archiv. fuer Ethnographie_, Bd. II, 1889.]

[Footnote 60: Probably Nemani Ndreu, whose career I have described.]

[Footnote 61: Williams's _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 224.]

[Footnote 62: Williams's _Fiji and the Fijians_, p. 224.]

[Footnote 63: Such a one was Kaikai of Singatoka, whose exploits as a prison-breaker were set forth in my _Indiscretions of Lady Asenath_.]

[Footnote 64: In 1902, under the flooring stones of a prehistoric kistvaen near the Sepulchral Circle on Pousson's Common, Dartmoor, two tresses of human hair were discovered, neatly coiled up. They were doubtless the record of witchcraft practised within the nineteenth century, on the same plan as that of the Fijians.]

[Footnote 65: _Nine Years at the Gold Coast_, by Rev. D. Kemp.]

[Footnote 66: _Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger_, by Lieut. Vandeleur.]

[Footnote 67: _East Africa_, by W. W. Fitzgerald.]