CHAPTER X

The Aborigines of the Pacific

¹

55.

The Tahitians

²

As to the people, they are of the largest size of Europeans. The men are tall, strong, well-limbed, and finely shaped. The tallest that we saw was a man upon a neighboring island, called Huahine, who measured six feet, three inches and a half. The women of the superior rank are also above our middle stature, but those of the inferior class are rather below it, and some of them are very small. . . . Their complexion is that kind of clear olive, or brunette, which many people in Europe prefer to the finest white and red. . . . The shape of the face is comely, the cheekbones are not high, neither are the eyes hollow, nor the brow prominent; the only feature that does not correspond with our ideas of beauty is the nose, which is somewhat flat; but the eyes, especially those of the women, are full of expression, sometimes sparkling with fire and sometimes melting with softness; the teeth, also, are most beautifully even and white, and the breath without taint.

Their hair is black and rather coarse: the men have beards, which they wear in many fashions, always, however, plucking out a great part of them and keeping the rest perfectly clean and neat. . . . In their motions there is at once vigor and ease; their walk is graceful, their bearing easy, and their behavior to strangers and to each other affable and courteous. In their dispositions, also, they seemed to be brave, open, and candid, without either suspicion or treachery, cruelty or revenge; so that we placed the same confidence in them as in our best friends. They were, however, all thieves; and when that is admitted, they need not much fear competition with any other people upon earth. . . .

They have a custom of staining their bodies . . . which they call tattooing.¹ They prick the skin, so as just not to fetch blood, with a small instrument, something in the form of a hoe. That part of the instrument which answers to the blade is made of a bone or shell, scraped very thin; the edge is cut into sharp teeth or points, from the number of three to twenty, according to its size. When tattooing is to be done, they first dip the teeth into a mixture of lampblack, formed of the smoke that rises from an oily nut which they burn instead of candles, and water. The teeth, thus prepared, are then placed upon the skin, and the handle to which they are fastened being struck by quick, smart blows, they pierce it, and at the same time carry into the puncture the black composition, which leaves an indelible stain. The operation is painful, and it is some days before the wounds are healed. Tattooing is performed upon the youth of both sexes when they are about twelve or fourteen years of age, on several parts of the body, and in various figures, according to the fancy of the parents or perhaps the rank of the party. . . .

Their dress consists of cloth or matting of different kinds. The cloth which will not bear wetting they wear in dry weather, and the matting when it rains. Their clothing is put on in many different ways, just as their fancy leads them; for in their garments nothing is cut into shape, nor are any two pieces sewed together. . . . In the heat of the day they appear almost naked, the women having only a scanty petticoat, and the men nothing but the sash that is passed between their legs and fastened round the waist. . . . Upon their legs and feet they wear no covering; but they shade their faces from the sun with little bonnets, either of matting or of coconut leaves, which they make in a few minutes. . . . Their personal ornaments, besides flowers, are few; both sexes wear earrings, but these are placed only on one side. When we came their ornaments consisted of small pieces of shell, stone, berries, red peas, or some small pearls, three in a string; but our beads very soon supplanted them all. . . .

The houses of the Tahitians are all built in the woods between the sea and the mountains. No more ground is cleared for each house than is just sufficient to prevent the dropping of the branches from rotting the thatch with which they are covered; from the house, therefore, the inhabitant steps immediately under the shade . . . of bread-fruit trees and coconut trees. . . . Nothing can be more grateful than this shade in so warm a climate, nor anything more beautiful than these walks. As there is no underwood, the shade cools without impeding the air; and the houses, having no walls, receive the gale from whatever point it blows. . . .

The roof of a Tahitian house is thatched with palm-leaves, and the floor is covered, several inches deep, with soft hay; over this are laid mats, so that the whole is one cushion, upon which they sit in the day and sleep at night. In some houses, however, there is one stool, which is reserved for the master of the family; besides this stool, they have no furniture, except a few little blocks of wood, the upper side of which is hollowed into a curve. These wooden blocks serve them for pillows. The house is principally used as a dormitory; unless it rains, they eat in the open air, under the shade of the nearest tree. The clothes that they wear in the day provide them with covering in the night; the floor is the common bed of the whole household, and is not divided by any partition. . . .

Of the food eaten here the greater part consists of vegetables. There are no tame animals except hogs, dogs, and poultry, and these are by no means plentiful. . . . I cannot much commend the flavor of their fowls; but we all agreed that a South-Sea dog was little inferior to an English lamb. . . . The sea affords them a great variety of fish. The smaller fish, when they catch any, are generally eaten raw, as we eat osyters; and nothing that the sea produces comes amiss to them. . . . Of the many vegetables that serve them for food, the principal is the bread-fruit, to procure which costs them no trouble or labor but climbing a tree. Bread-fruit trees do not, indeed, shoot up spontaneously; but if a man plants ten of them in his lifetime, which he may do in about an hour, he will as completely fulfill his duty to his own and future generations as the natives of our less temperate climate can do by ploughing in the cold of winter and reaping in the summer’s heat, as often as these seasons return. . . . It is true that the bread-fruit is not always in season; but coconuts, bananas, plantains, and other fruits supply the deficiency. . . .

For drink, they have in general nothing but water, or the juice of the coconut; the art of producing intoxicating liquor being happily unknown among them; neither have they any narcotic which they chew, as the natives of some other countries chew opium, betel-root, and tobacco. . . .

Table they have none; but their apparatus for eating is set out with great neatness, though the articles are too simple and too few to allow anything for show. They commonly eat alone; but when a stranger happens to visit them, he sometimes makes a second in their mess. . . .

After meals, and in the heat of the day, the middle-aged people of the better sort generally sleep; they are, indeed, extremely indolent; and sleeping and eating is almost all that they do. Those that are older are less drowsy, and the boys and girls are kept awake by the natural activity and sprightliness of their age.

Their amusements include music, dancing, wrestling, and shooting with the bow; they also sometimes vie with each other in throwing a lance. . . . Their only musical instruments are flutes and drums. The flute is made of a hollow bamboo about a foot long, . . . the drum consists of a hollow block of wood, of cylindrical form, solid at one end and covered at the other with shark’s skin. They beat the drum, not with sticks, but with their hands. . . .

To these instruments they sing . . . couplets when they are alone or with their families, especially after it is dark; for though they need no fires, they are not without the comfort of artificial light between sunset and bedtime. Their candles are made of the kernels of a kind of oily nut, which they stick one over another upon a skewer that is thrust through the middle of them. After the upper one is lighted, it burns down to the second, at the same time consuming that part of the skewer which goes through it; the second taking fire, burns in the same manner down to the third, and so of the rest. Some of these candles will burn a considerable time and give a very tolerable light. They do not often sit up above an hour after it is dark. . . .

I must not conclude my account of the domestic life of these people without mentioning their personal cleanliness. . . . The natives of Tahiti, both men and women, constantly wash their whole bodies in running water three times every day; once as soon as they rise in the morning, once at noon, and again before they sleep at night, whether the sea or river is near them or at a distance. They wash not only the mouth but the hands at their meals, almost between every morsel; and their clothes, as well as their persons, are kept without spot or stain. . . .

There are many instances both of ingenuity and labor among these people, which, considering the want of metal for tools, do them great credit. Their principal manufacture is their cloth. . . . This is of three kinds, and is made of the bark of three different trees, the Chinese paper mulberry, the bread-fruit tree, and the tree which resembles the wild fig tree of the West Indies. . . . They are also very dexterous in making baskets and wicker work; their baskets are of a thousand different patterns, many of them exceedingly neat; and the making them is an art that every one practices, both men and women.

They build and carve their boats with great skill. Perhaps to fabricate one of their principal vessels with their implements is as great a work as to build a British man-of-war with our iron tons. They have an adze of stone; a chisel or gouge of bone, generally that of a man’s arm between the wrist and elbow; a rasp of coral; and the skin of a sting-ray, with coral sand as a file or polisher. This is a complete catalogue of their tools; and with these they build houses, construct canoes, hew stone, and fell, cleave, carve, and polish timber. . . .

Their greatest exploit, to which these tools are less equal than to any other, is felling a tree: this requires many hands and the constant labor of several days. When the tree is down, they split it with the grain into planks from three to four inches thick, the whole length and breadth of the tree. . . . They smooth a plank very expeditiously and dexterously with their adzes, and can take off a thin coat from a whole plank without missing a stroke. As they have not the art of warping a plank, every part of the canoe, whether hollow or flat, is shaped by hand. . . .

As connected with the navigation of these people, I shall mention their wonderful sagacity in foretelling the weather, at least the quarter from which the wind will blow at a future time. . . . In their longer voyages they steer by the sun during the day, and at night by the stars. The latter the Tahitians distinguish by names and know in what part of the heavens they will appear in any of the months during which they are visible in the horizon. The natives also know the time of their annual appearing and disappearing with more precision than will easily be believed by a European astronomer.

We were not able to acquire a perfect idea of the Tahitian method of dividing time; but observed that, in speaking of it, they never used any term but malama, which signifies moon. Of these moons they count thirteen, and then begin again; which is a demonstration that they have a notion of the solar year; but how they compute their months so that thirteen of them shall be commensurate with the year, we could not discover. . . . Every day is subdivided into twelve parts, each of two hours, of which six belong to the day and six to the night. At these divisions they guess pretty nearly by the height of the sun while it is above the horizon; but there are a few persons who can guess at them, when the sun is below the horizon, by the stars.

In numeration they proceed from one to ten, the number of fingers on both hands; and though they have for each number a different name, they generally take hold of their fingers one by one, shifting from one hand to the other till they come to the number they want to express. And in other instances we observed that, when they were conversing with each other, they joined signs to their words, which were so expressive that a stranger might easily learn their meaning. . . . In measuring distance they are much more deficient than in computing numbers, having but one term, which answers to fathom. When they speak of distances from place to place, they express it, like the Asiatics, by the time that is required to pass it.

¹ . 2 vols. London, 1853–1854. John Tallis and Company.

² , bk. i, chs. 17–19

¹ A word of Polynesian origin; Tahitian tatu.