72 



NATURE 



[September 17, 1914 



thought and acted only for his own personal interests. 

 It is true that he was to a certain extent kind (as 

 we might call it) to the people of his own small com- 

 munity, and possibly still more kind to such of the 

 community as seemed to him more immediately of 

 his own kindred. But this kindness was little more 

 than instinctive — little more than a way of attracting 

 further service. It is also true that on the occasions, 

 which must have been very rare till a late period in 

 the Melanesian occupation of Fiji, when strangers — • 

 i.e. persons of whom he had not even dreamed — came, 

 so surprisingly, into his purview, he was sometimes 

 civil or even hospitable to those strangers (it should 

 not be forgotten that to him these were souls 

 embodied by separable accident in material forms) ; 

 but this would have been only on occasions on which 

 he knew, or suspected, that these visitors were 

 stronger than himself, and able to injure or benefit 

 him. 



Another point of great significance in the character 

 of this primitive man was that he had no conception 

 of ownership of property. To him all that we should 

 class as goods and chattels, his land, or even his own 

 body, was his only so long as he could retain it. He 

 might if he could and would take any such property 

 from another entirely without impropriety ; nor would 

 he resist, or even wish to resist, the taking from 

 himself of any such property by any one who could 

 and would take It. 



Again, the primitive man must have been far less 

 sensitive to pain, and far less subject to fear, than 

 the normal civilised man. I do not mean that the 

 primitive Fijian was without the ordinary animal 

 shrinking from physical pain, but that he cannot have 

 been nearly as sensitive even to physical pain as is 

 the more sophisticated man ; nor had he the same 

 mental pain, the same anticipation and fear of pain, 

 that the civilised man has. 



Having thus dealt with some of the more important 

 points in the character of the primitive Fijian, I 

 propose next to consider how far these suffice to 

 account for some of the more "savage" conditions 

 under which these islanders when first seen were 

 living. 



Cannibalism claims the first mention, in that, 

 though the practice has been recorded from many 

 other parts of the world, it is commonly supposed to 

 have been carried further in Fiji than elsewhere. 



Here, however, it is at once necessary to point out 

 that the outbreak of cannibalism in Fiji in the first 

 half of the last century was not due to any innate and 

 depraved taste on the part of the Fijians, and that the 

 practice to the degree and after the fashion of which 

 the story-books tell was not natural to the Fijian, 

 whether of Melanesian or Polynesian stock. 



It is probable, even perhaps certain, that all the 

 Fiji islanders occasionally ate human ilesh before the 

 coming of white men to the islands ; but it was only 

 after the arrival of the newcomers that this practice, 

 formerly only occasional and hardly more than cere- 

 monial, developed into the abominable orgies of the 

 first half of the last century. The first Europeans to 

 set foot — about 1800 — and to remain in the Islands for 

 any time were the so-called "beachcombers." At first, 

 at least, these renegades from civilisation, to secure 

 their own precarious position and safety, contrived to 

 put themselves under the patronage of some one or 

 other of the great native chiefs, who would be Poly- 

 nesians, and assisted and egged on these chiefs in 

 their then main occupation of fighting other great 

 rival chiefs, also Polynesians, and raiding the less 

 advanced Melaneslans of the surrounding districts. 

 The guns and ammunition which the beachcombers. 

 In some cases at least, brought with them or managed 



NO. 2342, VOL. 94] 



to procure, and the superior craft which they had 

 imbibed from civilisation, greatly assisted them in this 

 immoral purpose. Consequently a habit of cruelty, 

 new to the Fijian, was implanted and developed, 

 especially in the Polynesian chiefs. It became more 

 and more a fashion for the greatest native warriors, 

 thus egged on, to vie with each other in the numbei* 

 of their victims and in the reckless cruelty with which 

 these were killed. Doubtless at first the victims were 

 opponents killed in fight, sometimes great rival chiefs 

 and sometimes mere hoi polloi who had been led out • 

 to fight, probably not very reluctantly, for their chiefs. 

 Incidentally more and more people were killed; and 

 the bodies of the slain were conveniently disposed of 

 in the ovens. A taste for this food was thus developed 

 in the chiefs — though this seems, for a time at least, 

 to have been confined to the great chiefs, most of 

 those of lower status, and all women, refusing to 

 partake, at any rate until a later period. Before long, 

 when the number of the killed ran short, the deficiency 

 was made up by clubbing more and more even of 

 their own people, until eventually the great native 

 warrior took pride in the mere number of those he 

 had killed and eaten. 



It seems probable that even the coming of the 

 missionaries, who first reached Fiji thirty or forty 

 years after the earliest beachcombers, and at once 

 began almost heroic efforts to stop cannibalism, 

 thereby to some extent temporarily even aggravated 

 the evil. For the chiefs, in their characteristic temper 

 of gasconade, killed and ate more and more unre- 

 strainedly, in mockery of the missionaries and to show 

 what fine fellows they thought themselves to be. 



To return from this digression Into a somewhat 

 distasteful subject, cannibalism as practised by the 

 Fijians before the coming of white man was very 

 different, and, from the Fijian point of view — If I 

 may say so without fear of being misunderstood — 

 not altogether indefensible. It must be remembered 

 that there was, as it were, no killing In our sense of 

 the word involved, merely a setting free from the 

 non-essential body of the essential soul, which soul 

 survived just as well without the body as with It. 



Note that the soul must have been considered as 

 In some way and for a time still associated with its 

 late body If, as Is commonly and perhaps rightly held, 

 the slayer sometimes ate some part of the body of the 

 slain In order to acquire some of the qualities of the 

 slain. 



Again, there can be little doubt that men were some- 

 times killed for sacrificial purposes, the material bodies 

 of the victims being placed at some spot (perhaps the 

 tomb) considered to be frequented by the disembodied 

 spirit of some ancestor for whom It was desired to 

 provide a spirit attendant. It may be noted that this 

 sacrificial use of the body might be combined with an- 

 eating of the same body when once it had served Its 

 first purpose of attributing the spirit which had been 

 in it to the service of the honoured ancestor. 



It has been laid to the charge of the Fijians (as to 

 that of many other folk of savage and even of civilised 

 culture) that they habitually killed strangers, especially 

 such as had been washed or drifted to the Islands by 

 the sea — who, In early times at least, must have been 

 almost the only strangers to arrive. The charge, like 

 that of cannibalism, has been exaggerated, and the- 

 facts — as far as there were any — on which this charge 

 was founded have been misunderstood. 



Here, again, the attitude of the Fijian In this 

 respect was scarcely different from that of the lower 

 animals In similar circumstances. The Fijian 

 knew of no reason to be glad of the arrival of 

 strangers, unless these could. In one way or another, 

 be useful to him ; and, as has already been explained. 



