IV

I incline to the opinion that the Germans set themselves deliberately to offset certain influences of the Protestant missions. Dr. Schultz, I have been told by old residents of Samoa, was himself tattooed in native style, as were certain of his officials, including the Collector of Customs. It is reasonable to suppose that this judge, administrator, and collator of Samoan proverbs at least had some ulterior and altruistic purpose in view in undergoing a very painful operation. And it is satisfactory then to record that, despite the attempted prohibitions of the missions, tattooing is again practically universal; the native pastors being almost the sole exception.

A Samoan who is not tattooed—it extends almost solid from the hips to the knees—it has been remarked, appears naked beside one who is; and in no way can the custom be considered disfiguring. Indeed, it enhances the appearance of a Samoan. The missionaries—with the exception of the Catholics—hated it, and still hate it, as a relic of "heathenism." It matters nothing apparently to them that, while the custom stands, it militates against immature mating; and that it is the one test in these islands, where life is so easy, that the youth has to go through. That the native still lived in his "cool and lovely thatched hut" we have to thank his own good sense. As I have shown, the London Mission tried to convert him to plaster houses. Trousers seem never in Samoa, for all the efforts of the Mission, to have caught on; and tattooing fortunately contends against the wearing of that particular article of clothing. Certain obscene pastimes, it is true, were abolished by the missions, which was no doubt beneficial. But so also were a number of those that were harmless interdicted. According to the Earl of Pembroke, writing in 1873, pigeon-catching—the sport of page 86the chiefs—had recently been forbidden: because "smell-fungus" thought it undesirable to have Strephon and Chloe wander together in the woods. (Tamed birds, as mentioned by La Pèrouse, are in consequence no longer to be found among the Samoans.) It would seem that a nasty outlook on sex, the spirit of spying and pimping, and a hatred of beauty and joie-de-vivre, underlay the majority of the Protestant missionary prohibitions.