_ Cruel and degraded as the Fijians are, they mark a considerable advance over the Australian savages. A further advance is to be noted as we come to the Samoans. Cannibalism was indulged in occasionally in more remote times, but not, as in Fiji, owing to a relish for human flesh, but merely as a climax of hatred and revenge. To speak of roasting a Samoan chief is a deadly insult and a cause for war (Turner, 108). Sympathy was a feeling known to Samoans; their treatment of the sick was invariably humane (141). And whereas in Australia, Borneo, and Fiji, it is just as honorable to slay a female as a male, Samoans consider it cowardly to kill a woman (196). Nor do they practise infanticide; but this abstinence is counterbalanced by the fact that the custom of destroying infants before birth prevailed to a melancholy extent.
Yet here as everywhere we discover that the sexual refinement on which the capacity for supersensual love depends comes last of the virtues. The Rev. George Turner, who had forty years of experience among the Polynesians, writes (125) that at their dances "all kinds of obscenity in looks, language, and gesture prevailed; and often they danced and revelled till daylight." The universal custom of tattooing was connected with immoral practices (90). During the wedding ceremonies of chiefs the friends of the bride
"took up stones and beat themselves until their heads
were bruised and bleeding. The ceremony to prove her
virginity which preceded this burst of feeling will not
bear the light of description.... Night dances and the
attendant immoralities wound up the ceremonies."
The same obscene ceremonies, he adds, were gone through, and this custom, he thinks, had some influence in cultivating chastity, especially among young women of rank who feared the disgrace and beating that was the lot of faithless brides. Presents were also given to those who had preserved their virtue; but the result of these efforts is thus summed up by Turner:
"Chastity was ostensibly cultivated by both sexes; but it
was more a name than a reality. From their childhood their
ears were familiar with the most obscene conversation; and
as a whole family, to some extent, herded together,
immorality was the natural and prevalent consequence. There
were exceptions, especially among the daughters of persons
of rank; but they were the exceptions, not the rule.
Adultery, too, was sadly prevalent, although often severely
punished by private revenge."
When a chief took a wife, the bride's uncle or other relative had to give up a daughter at the same time to be his concubine; to refuse this, would have been to displease the household god. A girl's consent was a matter of secondary importance: "She had to agree if her parents were in favor of the match." Many marriages were made chiefly for the sake of the attendant festivities, the bride being compelled to go whether or not she was willing. In this way a chief might in a short time get together a harem of a dozen wives; but most of them remained with him only a short time:
"If the marriages had been contracted merely for the
sake of the property and festivities of the occasion,
the wife was not likely to be more than a few days
or weeks with her husband." _