RECLAMATION FROM THE SWAMP
The Rewa province is composed entirely of the alluvial flats in the delta of the great river. Over a large portion of these flats the land is broken up into little plots, surrounded by ditches, in which growviaandtaro, while the higher ground included by them is covered with fruit-trees, and yams or plantains. Each of these plots has an owner; but the owners of contiguous ground are not usually men of the same tribe. We found it quite impossible to set a boundary to the land of any particular tribe, for the holdings of the individuals were scattered about the country, among the holdings of other tribes, in hopeless confusion. To explain this remarkablemorcellement, which is unknown in any other part of the colony which has yet been investigated, we must turn to tradition, and to the peculiar political constitution of the Rewa people. The first settlers who came to the delta from the higher reaches of the river were the ancestors of the people of Nandoi, driven down by internal commotion among the tribes that inhabited the mountains. They found, at first, no land fit to grow yams or plantains, but the little islands inthe mangrove swamp were excellently adapted for defence, and they planted swampviaandtaro, digging for the purpose trenches with banks on either side. The floods came and filled the trenches with silt. The process was repeated, until by degrees the ancient trenches and ridges were obliterated, and the whole country was converted into a rich alluvial flat, raised above the influence of the tide, but not beyond the fertilizing action of the highest floods. It was at this period that individual began to take the place of communal ownership. Considerable labour had to be expended before a supply of food could be grown. The wide circular trench must be dug, and the earth built up in the middle to make a bed for yams and plantains, while the trench was suitable for taro. This work was not severe enough to be beyond the power of a single family, and no call was therefore made upon the labours of the community, as in the case of public works of greater magnitude. Thus, as the Nandoi people came to regard these valueless swamps as their peculiar property, individual families appropriated portions of their common land, upon the undeniable claim of having expended labour upon them. Once appropriated, the land followed the customary law of the inheritance of chattel property—that is to say, it descended to the eldest surviving son, or, failing a son, to the eldest surviving brother. In default of a male heir, it passed to the clan, to be appropriated by an individual. It was like appropriation ofnkelein other districts, only the appropriation was more complete, inasmuch as the labour expended on the property had been more severe.
In Rewa, moreover, the idea of communal ownership of land has died down, since the whole of it has been appropriated, and there is none left to be held in common.
While this explanation suffices to account for the existence of individual tenure, it fails to explain the curiously scattered location of the holdings. This, we thought, could only have been produced by an organized system of conveying land from tribe to tribe, and we were therefore at pains to trace the history of a number of these holdings, in order to formulate a customary law, by which such questions were governed.The result of our inquiries may be summarized as follows:—There are nine distinct customs under which land may be transferred:
This was land given by the family of a bride as her dowry. In the ceremony of conveyance they said, "We give this land that Nambutu's child may eat of it, since he is our child as well as his." The husband, as long as he lived with his wife, had the control of the land, and it descended to her male children, but if she died without male issue it reverted to the donors at the second generation. In this case it was redeemed by the ceremony ofvakalutu(making to fall back). Until it was so redeemed, the husband or his representatives could till or lease the land, but not dispose of it. Cases have occurred in which the donors have so long neglected to redeem their property that the circumstances of the original transfer have been forgotten, and the tenants have repudiated the demands for restitution. If there were a direct line of male descendants of the original grantee, the land never reverted, and it may be assumed that after land has been held for four or five generations, the failure of the male line would not lead to the restoration of the property to the original donors. There was no actual customary law of limitation, but the grantees would decline to accept the offerings of thevakalutu, and would be upheld in their refusal by public opinion.
There was another form of dowry, calledai-solisoli-i-tamana(the gift to the father), which was a plot of land given as a personal present to the bride's father, with which his sept or tribe had nothing to do. Such land could never be redeemed, but this form of dowry was rare, being confined to the marriage of daughters of high chiefs, whose families were large landowners.
THE CHILD'S INTRODUCTION
This is land seized as a punishment for adultery.
As soon as the offence became known, the friends of the injured man planted reeds (sau) on the land of the offender, or of his family, as a token of forfeiture. Reeds so planted were calledai-wau-tu-i-vu-ni-vundi(the club set in the banana patch). The family of the offender knew that they must either abandon the land or fight for it, but when by lapse of time the offence was forgotten, the land could be redeemed byvakalutu.
This was land given as a reward for defending the corpse of a fallen warrior from being seized by the enemy. If the disgrace of being spoiled of armour by the enemy led Hector to stake so much upon the rescue of Sarpedon's body, so much the more deserving of reward was the same action among the people who cooked and ate all bodies of fallen enemies.
This was land given to allies or to persons conspicuous for their bravery, for services in war. Land so given could be redeemed after a lapse of time.
This was land given by one friend to another to bind their friendship, but the tenure was temporary only, and the land was usually redeemed after the death of either the donor or the transferee.
The child of a high chief was taken immediately after birth into the houses of the inferior chiefs to be exhibited to them.Property of various kinds was given to it, but if there were insufficient chattels in the house, a plot of land was often formally presented. In such cases the tenure was not absolute, and the land reverted aftervakalutuhad been performed.
All these cases amounted to little more than the transfer of the usufruct of the land for life or for an uncertain period. The person enjoying the usufruct had the right to all the crops and timber grown upon the soil, but the fruit-trees remained the property of the donor. He might improve the land or let it go to waste, and in this respect his rights were superior to mere usufruct, but, as in the usufruct, he had no power to transfer or even to sublet. The reason for this was obvious. He would have been creating rights in the soil, which could not be redeemed by the original donor by the ceremony ofvakalutuperformed to him alone. It is worth noting that all these systems of transfer, though temporary, did not provide for the reversion of the land spontaneously as at any given time. Unless the donors in their own interest redeemed their property by the ceremony ofvakalutu, the transferees acquired an absolute title by prescription.
Under the following kinds of transfer land could never be redeemed—
This was land given by the family of a dead man to the family of his widow, who strangled herself in honour of her husband's memory. The custom of strangling wives is closely interwoven with the ancient beliefs regarding a future state. As has been explained already, the widow who did not court the strangling cord was assumed to have been unfaithful to her dead husband, and by following him along the path of the Shades she saved his memory as well as her own from dishonour, and her services thus deserved a recompense at the hands of his kinsmen.
[Page header: THE LOPPED FINGER]
Land given in this form of transfer could never be redeemed.But it must be remembered that the transferees belonged to a tribe very closely connected by the ties of marriage and vasu with the donors, and that land was therefore virtually a transfer within the limits of the tribe.
Under these two customs, the relations of a sick man brought a bale of native cloth in which to wrap his body when dead, or firewood with which to cook his food when too ill to go and get it for himself, and the dying man, unable to make other return, presented them with a piece of land. Land so transferred was never redeemed, but in these cases again it is to be remembered that it was a transfer within the limits of the tribe.
One of the chief forms of mourning for the dead was to lop off the little finger of one of the hands. Few of the older natives can be found who have the fingers of both hands intact; most of them, indeed, have lost both little fingers This act of mourning was confined to the relations of the deceased, unless he was one of the highest chiefs, and the transfer was therefore confined to the limits of the tribe. Like the other customs connected with death, the transfer was irrevocable.
It is to be noticed, therefore, that the only irrevocable transfers were confined to the limits of the tribe. Transfers from tribe to tribe could be redeemed by the ceremony ofvakalutu. It often happened, therefore, that the male line of succession did not fail for several generations, and in such cases the original circumstances were forgotten, and the transfer became absolute by prescription. The ceremony ofvakalutuwas as follows: On a date agreed upon by both parties the original donors came to the house of the transfereeor his heir, and formally presented him with a whale's tooth and perhaps a quantity of native goods in addition, saying, "We have come to make the land (naming it) fall back to us. Akesa ate from it and her children, but now she is dead, and they are dead, and there are none of them left to eat from it. Therefore we would have it fall back." If the representatives of the transferee accepted the tooth, the redemption was complete, but if on the other hand they refused to accept it, the question remained in abeyance until one or other of the parties had brought it before a joint council of the tribe. Under very exceptional circumstances it might even become acasus belli, but as a rule the ground for refusal was, that the property presented was inadequate. For in Fiji, as in Europe, land, like all other commodities, has a commercial value estimable in chattels. The ceremony ofvakalutuabove described varied to some extent in different districts. In Vatulele and Tailevu, for instance, the symbol of transfer is a basket of earth, and the symbol of usufruct a leaf or a bunch of plantains.
HOW RENT AROSE
These holdings were not necessarily farmed by the persons to whom they were granted. There is throughout the Rewa province a remarkable custom of subject tenure known asthokovaki. This tenure is sometimes communal, sometimes individual. It is found throughout the Rewa delta from the Nakelo to the sea, thus including a portion of Tailevu. In the eastern end of Kandavu it reappears again in the form of rent paid by tenants calleduraura-ni-vanua. Properly to understand the system it is necessary to glance at the history and political situation of the Rewa people. After the arrival of the Nandoi people already referred to, other tribes came down from the mountains into the delta. Principal among these were the Kai Rewa proper. They settled at first at Mburembasanga, where the land was naturally elevated above the mangrove swamp. They were warriors descended from an older branch of the first Melanesian immigrants, andthey naturally signalized their coming by preying upon the agricultural settlers below them. In this way they imposed upon them the task of contributing to the feasts on ceremonial occasions, and in course of time tradition has it that the Kai Nandoi themselves invited them to cross the river and settle on their lands, so as to spare them the irksome necessity of ferrying quantities of food across the river. By this time there had been intermarriage between the tribes, and land had been transferred to the new-comers under the form of transfer described as dowry. They did not cross the river for nothing. We find the Nandoi lands spread in a deferential semicircle round the holdings of the chief families, showing that the former had been despoiled of all their lands in the neighbourhood of the new settlement. Then the usual process of aggression began. The chief family was strong enough to protect fugitives, and fugitives came to them accepting at once, in return for their lives, the status of kitchen men (adscripti glebæ). Thus probably the most servile form ofthokovakioriginated. The chief also began to acquire holdings further afield. Like his peers on the highlands of the island, he ordered his newly-conquered vassals to plant him gardens on their own lands, and in process of time as the crops oftaroandviasucceeded each other in the same soil, the land came to be regarded as set aside for the chief, and as claiming the expenditure of annual labour for the chief's support. Succeeding generations did not stop to inquire how this came about. They had to cultivate year by year a certain plot of land for the chief, subject to their occupation. Another, perhaps the commonest, origin ofthokovakitenure is to be found in reclamation. The swamp was valueless and belonged to every one, but as no stranger could be allowed to settle upon it, the tribe, if they thought of it at all, thought of it as their communal property. The chief had a lien upon the labours of his vassals, provided that he paid them in food, and so it came about that the chief was the author of most of the reclamation. Of the land thus reclaimed he was regarded as overlord, and he could put whom he would upon it as his tenant. We found one piece of land in the very process oftransition. A reach of soil near Mburembasanga was reclaimed by order of the former Roko-tui-ndreketi, and planted regularly by his vassals. In Mburembasanga there was a difference of opinion whether this land wasthokovaki, or whether it belonged to the tenants in fee simple. The chief left the question to the tenants, and they immediately chose to have it regarded as a subject tenure,thokovaki. Another origin ofthokovakimay be found in the transfer calledkete-ni-alewa(forfeiture for adultery). The chief seized the land and allowed the former owners to cultivate it under a subject tenure.
The small coastal islands, being unoccupied for agriculture, were also regarded as the property of the chiefs. These are sometimes found to be tenanted by vassals who tend the chief's pigs or gather his cocoanuts, and this is in a sensethokovakitenure.
One of the most remarkable features aboutthokovakitenure is that the tenants themselves disclaim the actual ownership of the land they cultivate. The chiefs seldom know where their land is. Before the Native Lands Commission the Roko Tui, or some other chief, often asked his tenants for the names and boundaries of the lands over which he was overlord, and if the tenant denied that a particular piece of land wasthokovakithe chief asked the commissioners to accept the statement. It happened more than once that tenants gave the name of land for registration in their own name, saying, "We hold the land only onthokovakitenancy, but the chief has favoured us and says that he will make it over to us absolutely."
RENT ALWAYS PAID IN PRODUCE
It must not be understood thatthokovakirents are paid only to the superior chiefs. Persons of almost equal rank are found in the position of overlord and tenant. In the case of Nalea and Nambuli the Kai Nalea were the principal heathen chiefs before what I must call the Reformation, and the fact of their being extensive lords ofthokovakilands is an instance of the natural disposition of all ecclesiastical bodies to acquire landed interests. I may add that the Reformation which reduced Notho to unimportance occurred early in thiscentury. The assumptions of the priesthood had grown so intolerable that they threatened the prestige of even the chiefs themselves. At last the chiefs and people together determined to destroy the privileges of these upstart priests who were originally people of no birth. They therefore deprived them of their offices, and put in chiefs of rank in their place. The success of this experiment of a state church was never put to the proof, for Christianity came and swept away priests and gods alike. Of the six great clans known as the Sauturanga we find that persons of one are often in the relation of overlord to persons of another, though they are of almost the same rank.
The rent paid underthokovakitenure was variously calledndrawe-ni-vanua,ura-ura-ni-vanua, etc. It varied according to the produce of the land itself. It might even take the form of manufactured property, but with the inexactitude of all primitive people, neither the amount nor the time for yielding it seems ever to have been fixed. Among the fishing tribes on the coast, who might easily have paid their rent in fish, we find that the fish is bartered first for produce and that the produce is then carried to the landlord. We may therefore assume that the rent must always in some sort be in the form of produce capable of being grown upon the land. Thus sinnet is permitted, because the fibre composing it may have been husked from cocoanuts growing on the land; mats, because the land grows the rushes used in their manufacture; baskets, because the osiers could be cut upon the land. The time for paying rent was fixed by the necessities of the landlord. If he had a feast to make or contribute to, he sent to his tenants, apportioning among them the total amount he required of the supply. It might happen that he made only one call upon them in a single year, while in another he might demand more than half their crops. But the safeguard against excessive demands lay in the fact that the tenant had always the power of deserting the land and offering himself as a tenant to a rival chief. In practice, therefore, no overlord dared to make excessive levies upon his tenants.
THE CRIME OF FISH-SCARING
The most striking example ofthokovakitenure is to be found in the tribe of Notho. From the myths which concern the origin of this tribe, we can gather that they are an offshoot of the tribe that now inhabits the distant island of Nayau, with which it istauvu, that is, it worships the same gods and has a common ancestress. Tradition says that their ancestress when bathing was swallowed by a gigantic shark and was carried to the mangrove swamp where now stands the village of Nambundrau, where she was ejected by the fish and attended by the natives of the place. As a proof of this tradition the natives point to the fact that their ancient god is a shark, but it is scarcely necessary to observe that in this case, as in many others, the romantic history has been woven round the totem of the tribe and incorporated into the folklore. Seven generations ago, that is about 1750, the ancestor of the present chief moved to Nambundrau. At that time the only dry ground was a narrow island in the mangrove swamp. The chief was followed by the septs related to his family, and by two tribes that were tributary to him. They immediately began the work of reclamation, until year by year the island grew. Causeways were put forward into the swamp surrounding the moat so as to form fish-ponds. Sites were built for six other villages, which formed the nucleus of reclamation, until at the present day the whole area is composed of a network of causeways, gardens and fish-ponds. For the first fifty years of this process the swamp was regarded as exclusively the property of the chief. But as sufficient villages were formed under the leadership of one of his relations the swamp came to be looked upon as the property of the chief upon whose lands it bordered. The property rights of the chief in the swamp were of course of a negative order. He could only exercise them by refusing to others the right to reclaim it; but as no reclamation could be undertaken except under his directions, the land as it grew became the property of the chiefs. In Notho alone in all Fiji do the overlords not draw tribute from their own dependants, but gather it haphazard from tenants not their hereditary subjects. As each reclamation was completed the chief chose from his followers a tenant.The tenancy descended from father to son, but at any moment the tenant was free to throw up his holding and become the tenant of a chief more to his liking. The chief, too, for sufficient cause, had a right of eviction, and might offer the holding to any person of whatever sept, so long as he belonged to the aggregation of tribes known as Notho. So much was this liberty recognized, that now when a child is born in a family of tenants, the father and mother choose to which of the chiefs he should become client. Of a family of four boys the eldest would succeed his father in the tenancy, but the other three would each become tenants of a different chief. It will thus be seen that theclientèleof the minor chiefs have no common tie of blood, and therefore the position of the overlord approaches far more nearly that of the landlord in Europe than is usually to be found in primitive communities.
The property of Notho consists oftarobeds, cocoanuts and fish-ponds, and the rent therefore differs slightly from that paid in other districts. There are, besides, special offences. It was a penal offence to walk on a causeway bordering on another's fish-pond, and stamp on it so as to make the fish jump out.
This offence was often committed for the purpose of theft, but sometimes also out of pure mischief. These little fish are often given to the landlord as rent for the pond from which they were drawn. It will thus be seen that Notho cannot be said to be divided intomatankalis. The only way to describe their social status is to say that the villagers of Nakuroiwai and Nathuru are all chiefs, and that the commoners in the remaining four villages are apportioned out among these chiefs individually, as tenants of their lands. The first-named villages own all the land, and the others are mere agricultural tenants, removable at will. But even in Notho, where the chief's rights in the soil most nearly approach to the absolute, it may well be doubted whether he could sell his lands to any European without violating the sense of justice of the whole district.
The tenures of land in Tailevu vary with the status of the tribe occupying them. They may be classified as follows—
(1) Land which is admitted by the occupiers to be the absolute property of the Mbau chiefs subject only to their occupation on the condition of paying regular tribute in the form oflalaof food and labour.
Instances of this tenure are to be found in Kamba and Nambua. The people do not claim any rights in the soil, but represent that they are only occupying at the will of the chiefs, who have the absolute disposal of it. They are subject to levies of food whenever a large feast is to be made at Mbau, but they plant no special gardens for the chiefs, and they are unstinted in the use of the cocoanuts and other fruit. The tribute is calleddrawe ni vanua, perhaps the nearest equivalent for the word "rent" that can be found in the language of any primitive people. The people account for their position by stating that they formerly lived with the chiefs as their servants, and that when the chiefs removed from Kamba they were left upon the land to cultivate it under the present conditions of tenure.
Roko Tui Tailevu asked that the land should be registered in the name of the tenants subject to his rights as overlord.
(2) Land which is the joint property of the chiefs and their tributaries, who both plant gardens for their superiors and pay regular tribute in food to the chiefs to whom they are attached.
This form of tenure is to be found in the lands occupied by the people of Namuka, Nakoroiwau and Natila. These tribes hold a peculiar position. In former times they did nottamaka[108]any but the chief of the Vusarandave, and at the death of a Vunivalu they alone could prepare the body for burial. This may be accounted for by the tradition that theyoriginally formed part of the Tui Kamba family, and that they were left behind to occupy the tribal lands when the Mbau chiefs moved to their island.
THE OVERLORD
(3) Lands of which the occupiers, thoughnkali(tributary), claim to be the proprietors, acknowledging only the overlordship of the chief at Mbau, to whom on that account they are subject tolala.
An instance of this tenure is to be found in Mokani. The people account for the difference in their status from that of the othernkalitribes by saying that they were given their lands by the Ndravo people, to whom they are related. In this case the land was registered in the name of the people, endorsing the register with a statement of the usual tribute due to the overlord.
It should here be noted that it is only in these cases that theturanga-i-taukei, provided for in the Regulation of 1883 as the recipient of forty per cent. of the rents for lease moneys, can be said to exist, and as a measure of justice to the people, the Regulation should be so amended as to allow ninety per cent. to be divided among the people in all cases in which the Native Lands Commissioners certify that there is noturanga-i-taukei(overlord).
(4) Lands which are owned by the tribes independently of Mbau, and are subject only to the overlordship of their own local chief.
Namata may be cited as an instance of this kind of tenure. The clan wasmbatito Mbau, and therefore subject only to military service. As a consequence the Mbau chiefs have no power to levy food or personal service from Namata.
(5) Land of which the local chief claims to be the absolute owner.
The only instance we have found of this tenure is in Nakelo, which was a very powerful tribe until the introduction of firearms by Charles Savage about 1802-7 enabled Mbau to reduce it.
In spite, however, of the assertion of Tui Nakelo it is doubtful whether the chief's rights could ever have been exercised without the assent of his own tribe. In these daysat any rate, they could not be so exercised without shocking native opinion.
(6) Lands owned by the commune without the overlordship of any chief either local or central.
Nausori and Kuku afford instances of this tenure. It is the natural result of their geographical situation between thembati(borders) of two rival confederations, Mbau and Rewa—of being in fact a "buffer state."
In these communes there is a difference between waste and cultivated land. Theyavu(house foundation) is held by the individual and is inherited by his heirs. Theteiteiornkele(cleared and cultivated land) is also regarded as the individual property of the occupier; the waste lands are held in common, and may be appropriated, cleared and cultivated by any member of the tribe with the consent of the rest. A man thus owns individually neither more nor less than he can keep in cultivation.
(7) Lands owned by a commune who have been fugitives from a distant part of the country, and have been placed on their lands by the chiefs under whose protection they have placed themselves. Until their position was assured they paid tribute both to their protector and to any other neighbouring chief strong enough to annoy them. An instance of this form of tenure is to be found in the Kai Naimbosa, who came from the Vungalei country, and for some time paid tribute both to the chiefs of Mbau and Namata.
RIGHTS OF FISHER TRIBES IGNORED
Among all the coast tribes are to be found small communities of fishermen, who by the nature of their occupation are debarred from cultivating the soil. As might be expected, therefore, their tenure of land is quite different from the tribes surrounding them. In Mbau there are two of these tribes Lasakau and Soso; in the Rewa province the Kai Naselai and the Kai Vutia. The Kai Soso claim all the shallow shore reefs from Kamba Point to Uthui Kumi. They use fences only, a kind of fishing that cannot be carried on unless the right of a reef is exclusive. The Kai Lasakau are fishermen using both traps and nets, but not fences. They claim the exclusive right to fish on all the deeper reefs from Waikeliain Sawakasa to the Suva Point, including those near Moturiki. There is a clear understanding between them and the Rewa fishermen of Naselai and Vutia that they shall not interfere with the shallow reefs on the Rewa coast. The members of this clan live almost entirely by their skill. As soon as a man returns from the reef, his wife takes the fish and hawks them from house to house, in exchange for yams ortaro. Failing to dispose of them in Mbau, she takes them to the villages on the mainland. This system of barter has greatly taken the place of the old system, under which the fishermen were fed by the chiefs to whom they owed allegiance, that is, they were a continual tax upon the chief's tenants. The Kai Soso have acquired a plot of land by right of occupation, and their claim is not disputed. The Kai Naselai used in return for their fish to be allowed the run of the plantations. They would go and take whatever food they required, provided they confined themselves to the gardens of those who had received fish from them. Now, however, they have acquired land in right of occupation. The Government here encounters another difficulty. At the cession all the reefs were declared the property of the Crown, and unless the fishermen were made a charge upon the lands registered as the property of the natives they would have no means of subsistence. They must either be given land belonging to other people, or the reefs belonging to the Crown must be handed over to them. It is to be feared that the Government will adopt a middle course, that of giving them a right to fish upon the Crown reefs and withholding that right from others. But this is a course that will inevitably lead to trouble in the future. If rights are to be defined, now is the time to define them, before holders have had time to acquire property by prescription.
Under the pressure of European land customs the Fijian conception of land has begun to break up. Owning two-thirds of the land of their islands, it was impossible that they should be left in useless possession, and though they may not sell an acre of it they have been encouraged to lease to planters at a fair rent all that they do not require for their own support. As soon as they understood that they were tohave the spending of the rent, land, to which they had hitherto attached little value, became their most precious possession, and their natural earth-hunger was keenly whetted. In some instances the proprietary unit had dwindled to a few individuals of low birth, and these men, contrary to all custom, found themselves courted by powerful neighbours on account of their wealth. This sudden acquisition of money without effort has been demoralizing, but it has quickened the growth of new tastes and new wants, which is the first step towards material progress. On the other hand, it is fostering a spirit of lying and cheating in every transaction concerned with the ownership of land. Happily it has not led to one form of demoralization—that of drinking—thanks to the rigid enforcement of the liquor law, which forbids the sale of alcohol to natives under heavy penalties.
FOOTNOTES:[106]The divisions of Tailevu and Rewa are—(1)Matanitu—Tribe or Confederation.(2)Matankali—Clan.(3)Tokatoka ni matankali—Sept.(4)Mbatilovo(lit."brink of the same pit-oven")—Joint-family.[107]Williams'sReal Property.[108]Shout the cry of respect.
[106]The divisions of Tailevu and Rewa are—(1)Matanitu—Tribe or Confederation.(2)Matankali—Clan.(3)Tokatoka ni matankali—Sept.(4)Mbatilovo(lit."brink of the same pit-oven")—Joint-family.
[106]The divisions of Tailevu and Rewa are—
(1)Matanitu—Tribe or Confederation.
(2)Matankali—Clan.
(3)Tokatoka ni matankali—Sept.
(4)Mbatilovo(lit."brink of the same pit-oven")—Joint-family.
[107]Williams'sReal Property.
[107]Williams'sReal Property.
[108]Shout the cry of respect.
[108]Shout the cry of respect.
It has been too readily assumed that the ancient system of the Fijians was wholly evil. The disposition of early explorers and missionaries is to describe the races with whom they came in contact as living in a state of savage anarchy, the motive of travellers being to excuse their own rapacity and cruelty; and of missionaries to vindicate their iconoclasm and to magnify their courage and self-sacrifice. "Nothing," says McClennan, "is more common in these old narratives than to find the peoples who were being sacrificed to European cupidity described as living in a purely animal state, without government, laws, or religion, and yet the student will sometimes be able to spell out from these very narratives themselves that the peoples so described were intensely religious, and that they dwelt under the constant pressure of a rigid body of customary law, and what we would call a highly developed system of constitutional government."[109]
It was so with the Fijians. In seeing how admirably adapted many of the old superstitions and tabus were for securing sanitation and moral and physical cleanliness, one is led to wonder whether they were survivals of a code brought by their ancestors from the land of their origin; the work of some forgotten law-giver, or merely a gradual evolution from experience coloured by superstition. So admirably were they suited to the haphazard and indolent character of the people who obeyed them, that we can scarcely hope that any European system will take their place until the character itself is regenerated.
Let us consider three instances. What could better secure the sanitation of villages than the fear ofndrau-ni-kau, which taught the people to destroy or bury all offal and excreta for fear of affording an instrument for witchcraft to a secret enemy? The villages are no longer swept clean, for Christianity threatens the people with no immediate punishment for being dirty, and they have not yet come to believe that dirt produces the germs of disease.
How could the proper nourishment of young children in a country destitute of milk and farinaceous diet be provided for than by the fear that intercourse between the parents during lactation would impoverish the mother's milk and injure the child? In these days the custom of abstinence is decaying, and the mother is again pregnant before her child is fit to assimilate solid food, and she must either continue to nourish the child within her and the child at the breast, to the injury of both, or prematurely wean the latter to the certain injury of its health.
How could the sexual morality of the people be better guarded than by shutting up all the unmarried men at nightfall within thembure-ni-sa, and placing all the girls under the protection of their parents; by training the young men in the emulation of arms and seamanship until they were old enough to marry; by making death the penalty of loss of virtue; by constituting the absence of virginity in a bride a sufficient cause for withholding the dowry, or even by holding up an unchaste bride to the ridicule of the community through the mutilation of the cooked pig presented by the bridegroom's people at the feast given after the marriage? But thembure-ni-sawas a heathen institution, and boys and girls are now thrown together as they are in civilized communities; there is no more war or other spur to emulation among the young men, who now seek their excitement in sensuality, and the loss of virtue if discovered entails only consequences that can be borne with equanimity, so far at least as the men are concerned.
EVILS OF THE TRANSITION STAGE
It would be unjust to blame the missionaries for the mutilation of the social system, for by the time they gained afoothold in 1840, the native civilization—for such it is fair to call it—had been so marred by the influence of worthless Europeans and the introduction of firearms that the people groaned under a system of continual war, barbarity and oppression under which no people could increase. The ancient social system was mutilated; part of it was already broken down. During the first twenty years of the last century whole provinces had been swept by the powerful tribes fortunate enough to possess firearms, and their internal affairs were dislocated by the oppression of their conquerors. The early missionaries were no more far-sighted than others of their class, and their zeal was as narrow as the zeal of proselytizers is apt to be. They looked not for hidden causes of the customs they found. It was enough for them that they were in someway connected with heathen superstition; though often they were not incompatible with the acceptance of Christianity their existence interfered with mission work, and their discontinuance established a convenient line of demarcation between the Christian and the heathen. It would have been impossible to graft the principles, the refinements or the arts of modern civilization upon the ancient customs. Some of them had to go, and the criticism that occurs to the unbiassed historian is that the missionaries either destroyed too many of the ancient customs or not enough.
For the transition stage we now have is undoubtedly worse than what it has displaced. The Fijians have been slow to adopt foreign habits, and for more than a generation they have been crawling upon the stumps of their old customs propped by ragged fragments of European innovations. Civilized sentiments have not taken the place once filled by customary law. The Fijian, at all times the creature of circumstance has in the passing of things a pleasant feeling of lack of permanence which affects his whole family life and blunts his sense of responsibility for his children's welfare.
The apathy and indolence of the Fijians arise from their climate, their diet and their communal institutions. The climate is too kind to stimulate them to exertion, their food imparts no staying power. The soil gives the means ofexistence for every man without effort, and the communal institutions destroy the instinct of accumulation. As Sir Henry Maine said of the native policy of the government of India, those responsible for guiding native races in Fiji, as elsewhere, are "like men bound to make their watches keep true time in two longitudes at once. Nevertheless the paradoxical explanation must be accepted. If they are too slow, there will be no improvement; if they are too fast, there will be no security." There is no reason to despair of the ultimate arrival of the Fijians at some degree of physical and moral prosperity. Our own forefathers in the time of Cicero seemed to the Romans no less unpromising, for, writing to his friend Atticus, the orator recommends him not to procure his slaves from Britain, "because they are so stupid and utterly incapable of being taught that they are unfit to form a part of the household of Atticus."
FOOTNOTES:[109]Studies in Ancient History.London, 1896.
[109]Studies in Ancient History.London, 1896.
[109]Studies in Ancient History.London, 1896.