396 MYSTIC ISLES 



ship of the gods, the makers and masters of the taboo, 

 and when war or other necessity called them from pleas- 

 ure or rehgion, the leaders in action and battle. 



The ending of the celebrated order came about 

 through the work of English Christian missionaries and 

 the commercialized conditions accompanying the intro- 

 duction among the Tahitians of European standards, in- 

 ventions, customs, and prohibitions. The institution 

 was of great age, without written chronicles, and, like 

 all Polynesian history, obscured by the superstitions 

 bred of oral descent. 



"The Arioi have been in Tahiti as long as the Tahi- 

 tians," said the old men to the first whites. 



Of all the marvels of the South Seas unfolded by 

 their discovery to Europeans, and their scrutiny by ad- 

 venturers and scientists, none seems so striking and so 

 provocative of curiosity as the finding in Tahiti of a 

 sect thoroughly communistic in character, with many 

 elements of refinement and genius, which obliterated 

 the taboos against women, and though nominally for 

 the worship of the generative powers of nature, mixed 

 murder and minstrelsy in its rites and observance. For 

 what wrote red the records of this society in the jour- 

 nals of the discoverers, missionaries, and early Euro- 

 pean dwellers in Tahiti, was the Arioi primary plank 

 of membership — that no member should permit his or 

 her child to live after birth. As at one time the Arioi 

 society embraced a fifth of the population, and had un- 

 bounded influence and power, this stern rule of infanti- 

 cide had to do with the dejiopulation of the island, or, 

 rather, the prevention of overpopulation. Yet while the 



