CHAPTER VIITHE NOBLE SAVAGE
The morning after our motion-picture show on the beach at Malekula found us anchored off Vao. We got our luggage ashore as quickly as possible and then turned in to make up for lost sleep. We had slept little during our eight days in the village of Nagapate. We had been in such constant fear of treachery that the thud of a falling coconut or the sound of a branch crackling in the jungle would set our nerves atingle and keep us awake for hours. Now we felt safe. We knew that the four hundred savages of Vao, though at heart as fierce and as cruel as any of the Malekula tribes, lived in wholesome fear of the British gunboat; so we slept well and long.
The next morning we said good-bye to Paul Mazouyer and he chugged away to Santo in the little schooner that for two weeks had been our home. Osa and I were alone on Vao. We turned back to our bungalow to make things comfortable, for we did not know how many days it would be before Mr. King, who had promised to call for us, would appear.
As we walked slowly up from the beach, we hearda shout. We turned and saw a savage running toward us. He was a man of about forty; yet he was little larger than a child and as naked as when he was born. From his almost unintelligiblebêche-de-mer, we gathered that he wanted to be our servant. We could scarcely believe our ears. Here was a man who wanted to work! We wondered how he came to have a desire so contrary to Vao nature, until we discovered, after a little further conversation inbêche-de-mer, that he was half-witted! Since we were in need of native help, we decided not to let his mental deficiencies stand in his way and we hired him on the spot. Then came the first hitch. We could not find out his name. Over and over, we asked him, “What name belong you?” but with no result. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. Finally, Osa pointed to the tracks he had left in the sand. They led down to the shore and vanished at the water’s edge. “His name is Friday,” she said triumphantly. And so we called him.
From that moment, Friday was a member of our household. We gave him a singlet and alava-lava, or loin-cloth, of red calico, and from somewhere he dug up an ancient derby hat. Some mornings he presented himself dressed in nothing but the hat. Hewas always on hand bright and early, begging for work, but, unfortunately, there was nothing that he could do. We tried him at washing clothes, and they appeared on the line dirtier than they had been before he touched them. We tried him at carrying water, but he brought us liquid mud, with sticks and leaves floating on the top. The only thing he was good for was digging bait and paddling the canoe gently to keep it from drifting while Osa fished.
That was, indeed, a service of some value; for Osa was an indefatigable fisherwoman. Every day, she went out and brought back from ten to thirty one- and two-pound fish, and one day she caught two great fish that must have weighed ten pounds each. It took the combined efforts of Friday and herself to land them.
I am convinced that, for bright color and strange markings, there are no fish in the world like those of Vao. Osa called them Impossible Fish. There were seldom two of the same color or shape in her day’s catch. They were orange and red and green and silver, and sometimes varicolored. But the most noticeable were little blue fish about the size of sardines which went in schools of thousands through the still sea, coloring it with streaks of the most brilliantshimmering blue you can imagine. In addition to the Impossible Fish, there were many octopi, which measured about three feet from tentacle to tentacle, and there were shellfish by the thousand. On the opposite side of the island from that on which we lived, oysters grew on the roots of mangrove trees at the water’s edge, and at low tide we used to walk along and pick them off as if they had been fruit.
We worked hard for the first week or so after our return to Vao, for we had about a hundred and fifty plates and nearly two hundred kodak films to develop. Previous to this trip, I had been forced to develop motion-picture films, as well as kodak films and plates, as I went along. Like most photographers, I had depended upon a formalin solution to harden the gelatin films and keep them from melting in the heat. Though such a solution aids in the preservation of the film, it interferes considerably with the quality of the picture, which often is harsh in outline as a result of the thickening of the film, and it is not a guarantee against mildew or against the “fogging” of negatives. Before starting for the New Hebrides, however, I had worked out a method of treating films that did not affect the quality of the picture, and yet made it possible to develop films successfullyat a temperature much higher than 65°. Still better, it permitted me to seal my film after exposure and await a favorable opportunity for developing. Only lately I have developed in a New York workshop films that were exposed nineteen months ago in the New Hebrides and that were carried about for several months under the blaze of a tropical sun. They are among the best pictures I have ever taken.
Any one who has tried motion-picture photography in the tropics will realize what it means to be freed from the burden of developing all films on the spot. To work from three o’clock until sunrise, after a day of hard work in enervating heat, is usually sheer agony. Many a time I have gone through with the experience only to see the entire result of my work ruined by an accident. I have hung up a film to dry (in the humid atmosphere of the tropics drying often requires forty-eight hours instead of half as many minutes) and found it covered with tiny insects or bits of sand or pollen blown against it by the wind and embedded deep in the gelatin. I have covered it with mosquito-net in an effort to avoid a repetition of the tragedy and the mosquito-net has shut off the air and caused the gelatin to melt. I have had films mildew and thicken and cloud and spot, in spite of every effortto care for them. On this trip, though even so simple an operation as the changing of motion-picture film and the sealing of negatives was an arduous task when it had to be performed in cramped quarters, it was a great relief to be able to seal up my film and forget it after exposure. The plates that I used in my small camera had to be promptly attended to, however, for to have treated them as I treated the motion-picture film would have meant adding considerably to the bulk and weight of the equipment we were forced to carry about with us.
We worked at the developing several hours a day, and between times we explored the island, learning what we could of native life. Arree, the boy who acted as our maid-of-all-work, supplied me with native words until I had a fairly respectable vocabulary, but, when I tried to use it, I made the interesting discovery that the old men and the young men spoke different tongues. Language changes rapidly among savage tribes. No one troubles to get the correct pronunciation of a word. The younger generation adopt abbreviations or new words at will and incorporate into their speech strange corruptions of English or French words learned from the whites. Some of the words I learned from Arree were absolutelyunintelligible to many of the older men. I found, too, that the language varied considerably from village to village, and though many of the Vao men were refugees from Malekula, it was very different from that of any of the tribes on the big island. I once estimated the number of languages spoken in the South Seas at four hundred. I am now convinced that as many as that are used by the black races alone.
As we poked about Vao, we decided that the island would be a good place in which to maroon the people who have the romantic illusion that savages lead a beautiful life. We had long ago lost that illusion, but even for us Vao had some surprises. One day, I made a picture of an old, blind man, so feeble that he could scarcely walk. He was one of the few really old savages about, and I gathered that he must have been a powerful chief in his day, or otherwise he would not have escaped the ordinary penalty of age—being buried alive. But on the day after I had taken his picture, when I went to his hut to speak to him, I was informed that “he stop along ground” and I was shown a small hut, in which was a freshly dug grave. My notice of the old man had drawn him into the limelight. The chiefs had held a conferenceand decided that he was a nuisance. A grave was dug for him, he was put into it, a flat stone was placed over his face so that he could breathe (!), and the hole was filled with earth. Now a devil-devil man was squatting near the grave to be on hand in case the old man asked for something. There was no conscious cruelty in the act, simply a relentless logic. The old man had outlived his usefulness. He was no good to himself or to the community. Therefore, he might as well “stop along ground.”
Only a few days later, as we approached a village, we heard, at intervals, the long-drawn-out wail of a woman in pain. In the clearing we discovered a group of men laughing and jeering at something that was lying on the ground. That something was a writhing, screaming young girl. The cause of her agony was apparent. In the flesh back of her knee, two great holes had been burned. I could have put both hands in either of them.
“One fellow man, him name belong Nowdi, he ketchem plenty coconuts, he ketchem plenty pigs, he ketchem plenty Mary,” said Arree, and he went on to explain that the “Mary” on the ground was the newest wife of Nowdi, whom he pointed out to us among the amused spectators. The savage had paidtwenty pigs for her—a good price for a wife in the New Hebrides—but he had made a bad bargain; for the girl did not like him. Four times she ran away from him and was caught and brought back. The last time, nearly six months had elapsed before she was found, hiding in the jungle of the mainland. The day before we saw the girl, the men of the village had gathered in judgment. A stone was heated white-hot. Then four men held the girl while a fifth placed the stone in the hollow of her knee, drew her leg back until the heel touched the thigh, and bound it there. For an hour they watched her anguish as the stone slowly burned into her flesh. Then they turned her loose. Thenceforth she would always have to hobble, like an old woman, with the aid of a stick. She would never run away again.
We turned aside, half sick. It was hard for me to keep my hands off the brutes that stood laughing around the girl. Only the knowledge that to touch them would be suicide for me and death or worse for Osa held me back. But as we returned to the bungalow, I gradually cooled down. I realized that it was not quite fair to judge these savages—still in the stage of development passed by our own ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago—according tothe standards of civilized society. And I remembered how beastly even men of my own kind sometimes are when they are released from the restraints of civilization.
The next morning, after our morning swim, Osa and I sat on the beach and watched the commuters set off for Malekula. In some fifty canoes, “manned” by women, the entire female population went to the big island every day to gather firewood and fruit and vegetables. For the small island of Vao could not support its four hundred inhabitants, and the native women had accordingly made their gardens on the big island. This morning, as usual, the women were accompanied by an armed guard; for although the bush natives of Malekula were supposed to be friendly, the Vao men did not take any chances when it came to a question of losing their women. Late in the evening the canoes came back again. The women had worked all day, many of them with children strapped to their backs; the men had lounged on the beach, doing nothing. But it was the women who paddled the canoes home. There was a stiff sea and it took nearly three hours to paddle across the mile-wide channel. But the men never lifted a finger to help. When the boats were safelybeached, the women shouldered their big bundles of vegetables and firewood and trudged wearily toward their villages, the men bringing up the rear, with nothing to carry except their precious guns. Among the poor female slaves—they were little more—we saw five who hobbled along with the aid of sticks. They were women who had tried to run away.
A few days later, Arree asked us if we should like to attend a feast that was being held to celebrate the completion of a devil-devil, one of the crude, carved logs that are the only visible signs of religion among the savages. We did not see why that should be an event worth celebrating, for there were already some hundreds of devil-devils on the island, but we were glad to have the opportunity of witnessing one of the feasts of which Arree had so often told us.
NAGAPATE AMONG THE DEVIL-DEVILS
NAGAPATE AMONG THE DEVIL-DEVILS
NAGAPATE AMONG THE DEVIL-DEVILS
Feasting was about the only amusement of the natives of Vao. A birth or a death, the building of a house or a canoe, or the installation of a chief—any event in the least out of the ordinary furnished an excuse for an orgy of pig meat—usually “long.” The one we attended was typical. First the new devil-devil was carried into the clearing and, with scant ceremony, set up among the others. Then some of the men brought out about a hundred pigs and tied them to posts. Others piled hundreds of yams in the center of the clearing, and still others threw chickens, their legs tied together, in a squawking heap. When all was ready, the yams were divided among the older men, each of whom then untied a pig from a post and presented it solemnly to his neighbor, receiving in return another pig of about the same size. The savages broke one front and one hind leg of their pigs and threw the squealing little beasts on the ground beside the yams. Then they exchanged chickens and promptly broke the legs and wings of their fowls. I shall never forget the terrible crunching of bones and the screaming of the tortured pigs and chickens. When the exchange was completed, the men took their pigs to the center of the clearing, beat them over the head with sticks until they were nearly dead and threw them down to squeal and jerk their lives away.
When the exchange of food was completed, the men built little fires all around the clearing to cook the feast. Most of them were chiefs. It is a general rule throughout the region that no chief may eat food prepared by an inferior, or cooked over a fire built by an inferior. The rather doubtful honor of being his own cook is, indeed, practically the onlymark that distinguishes a chief. As a rule a chief has no real authority. He cannot command the least important boy in his village. Only his wives are at his beck and call—and they are forbidden by custom to cook for him!
Chieftainship is an empty honor on Vao. If the biggest chief on the island should start off on a hunting trip and forget his knife, he would know better than to ask the poorest boy in the party to go back for it, for he would know in advance that the answer would be most emphatic Vao equivalent for “go chase yourself!” Yet a chieftaincy is sufficiently flattering to the vanity of the incumbent to be worth many pigs. The pig is more important in the New Hebrides than anywhere else in the world. A man’s wealth is reckoned in pigs, and a woman’s beauty is rated according to the number of pigs she will bring. The greatest chiefs on Vao are those who have killed the most pigs. Even in that remote region there is political corruption, for some men are not above buying pigs in secret to add to their “bag” and their prestige. Tethlong, who, during our stay on the island, was the most important chief on Vao, bought five hundred porkers to be slaughtered for the feast that made him chief. All the natives knew he hadbought the pigs; but they hailed him solemnly, nevertheless, as the great pig-killer.
Tethlong had as fine a collection of pigs’ tusks as I have ever seen. These fierce-looking bits of ivory did not come off the wild pigs, however, but were carefully cultivated on the snouts of domesticated pigs. It is the custom throughout the New Hebrides to take young pigs and gouge out two upper teeth, so as to make room for the lower canine teeth to develop into tusks. The most valuable tusks are those that have grown up and curled around so as to form two complete circles. These, however, are very rare. The New Hebridean native considers himself well off if he has a single circlet to wear as a bracelet or nose ring and he takes pride in a collection of ordinary, crescent-shaped tusks.
Pigs’ tusks are the New Hebridean equivalent of money. For even among savages, there are rich and poor. The man of wealth is the one who has the largest number of pigs and wives and coconut trees and canoes, acquired by judicious swapping or by purchase, with pigs’ tusks, rare, orange-colored cowries, and stones of strange shape or coloring as currency. Most natives keep such treasures in “bokkus belong bell”—a Western-made box with a bell thatrings whenever the lid is lifted. But this burglar-alarm is utterly superfluous, for natives uncontaminated by civilization never steal.
Osa refused to watch the process of preparing the pigs and fowls for broiling. It was not a pretty sight. But it was speedily over. While the cooking was in progress, the dancing began. A group of men in the center of the clearing went through the motions of killing pigs and birds and men. Each tried to get across the footlights the idea that he was a great, strong man. And though the pantomime was crude, it was effective. The barbaric swing of the dancers, in time to the strange rhythm beaten out on the boo-boos—the hollowed logs that serve as drums—got into my blood, and I understood how the dances sometimes ended in an almost drunken frenzy.
When the first group of dancers were tired, the older men gathered in the center of the clearing and palavered excitedly. Then they retired to their fires and waited. So did we. But nothing happened save another dance. This was different in detail from the first. I never saw a native do exactly the same dance twice, though in essentials each is monotonously similar to the last. When the second dance was over,there was more palavering and then more dancing—and so on interminably. Osa and I grew sleepy and went back to the bungalow. But the tom-toms sounded until dawn.