The Diversions of a Prime Minister
I. — The Borderland of Myth
I.
The Borderland of Myth.
Seeing that the past is the key to the present, I was at some pains to learn the history of Tonga. This tiny kingdom of 20,000 people, inhabiting widely scattered islands, but speaking the same language, intermarrying, and obeying the same Government, boasted so complicated a social polity that its history, as an illustration of the growth of human institutions, is worthy of study for its own sake.
Until the introduction of Christianity swept away the old beliefs and the institutions that depended on them, there were in Tonga a spiritual and a temporal king. The former—the Tui Tonga—was lord of the soil, and enjoyed divine honours in virtue of his immortal origin; but he had an ever-diminishing share in the government, and he could take no part in any civil quarrel. His sole duty page 291 page 292was to absolve his subjects from the penalties of the broken tabu, and to take the good things provided for him without descending into the arena of political strife: he was, in fact, the heaven-appointed sovereign in a limited monarchy. The temporal king—the Tui Kano-Kubolu — was the irresponsible sovereign of the people, wielding absolute power of life and death over his subjects, and was charged with the burden of the civil government and the ordering of the tribute due to the gods and their earthly representative, the Tui Tonga. None but the son or grandson of a Tui Tonga could succeed to that dignity, and his mother must be the daughter of the Tui Kanokubolu. The temporal king was therefore always grandfather or uncle of the Tui Tonga. Thus was the blood kept pure.
Although the Tui Tonga had no executive functions, yet, as representative on earth of the immortals, he was environed with the most rigid tabu. As it would be inconvenient to multiply personages of such transcendent rank, his wife was always taken from him after having borne him two children. Her son was the heir, but her daughter attained an even higher rank than her father or brother. She was the Tui Tonga fefine (female Tui Tonga), and even her father must bow to her for absolution of the tabu. No mortal might aspire to marriage with her, but she might, without loss of dignity, have children, and her daughter, if she had one, became the Tamaha—the highest earthly dignity. Neither her mother nor her grandfather, to whom all others paid homage, could eat in her presence, nor neglect to per-page 293form the moëmoë1 by embracing her feet when they left her.
These higher dignities, however, were a superstructure built of the high estimation in which women were held upon the fundamental idea of the divine affinity of the Tui Tonga. The key to this belief is to be found in the epic of Kau-ulu-fonua, from whose reign Tongan history may be said to date.2 The following is an unworthy prose version of the story:—
1 A salute paid to the highest chief present. The person performing it sits cross-legged before him, and bows the head until the forehead touches the sole of the chief's foot, and then brushes the foot first with the palm and then with the back of each hand. After touching a chief's person the moëmoë must be performed on pain of the liver swelling up and causing death. As they are subject to scrofulous diseases, which they attribute to an unwitting breach of the tabu, they used to perform the moëmoë frequently from motives of caution, without reference to any special tabu they had broken.
2 Circa 1535. There are fragmentary traditions of an earlier time when the Tongans were in a lower social state, and cannibalism was practised. A colony from Tonga founded a powerful clan in Mangaia (Cook Islands) before the end of the fifteenth century, and it is probable that Pylstaart was peopled from Tonga before the sixteenth century; but the names of the kings before Kau-ulu-fonua are unreliable (vide Appendix I.), and the traditions are too disconnected to be classed in their proper sequence. The old men who stored up these traditions have passed away, and it cannot now be hoped that the records of the dim past will ever be rescued from oblivion.
3 Vava'u.
4 Boscawen Island.
5 Keppel's Island.
1 Wallis Island.
2 Hoorn Island.
3 Samoa.
4 Gilbert Islands.
5 At the time of Tasman's visit in 1643 there seem to have been no villages. The land was highly cultivated and fenced, and each family lived in its own plantation. It is more probable that the Fanogonogo Tokoto referred to this than that the population was ever much greater than at present.
Now there came a day when the Tui Tonga sent his fishermen, bidding them return with fish, for he hungered for them. But the chief of the fishermen hesitated, saying that the weather was too stormy for their nets, whereat the Tui Tonga grew very wroth, and swore that unless he had fish that day the chief fisherman should die. So they went out into the bay and tried to cast their nets, but each cast was spoiled by the wind and waves, which twisted the net and drove the floats under. And towards evening the chief said. "Let us at least try Ata: perchance the water is smoother there. Let us cast but once, and if we fail, page 296then let us return and face the anger of the Tui Tonga, for only the gods could catch fish in this weather."
"Where are your fish?" the king asked.
page 297"The gods themselves could not take fish in such a sea. Pardon thy servants, for we have toiled as never man toiled before."
"Did I not say that unless you brought me fish you should die? Have ye ever known me to lie? Bring bamboos and the trough, and cut him in pieces."
So they brought the great trough and the bamboo knives, and bound him with vines, unresisting. But when the king's cooks took the knives to cut his flesh he cried out, "Let me speak one word to the Tui Tonga. If I must die I must. I do not ask for a life that is of no value to my chief; but I know something that will never be known unless I tell it before I die."
"What does he know?" said the king: "if he knew the secret of the wind to make it fair at will, yet it should not save him."
And the men went to seize him again, but he cried, "It is well: let me die, since the chief cares not for a beautiful girl."
When he heard this the Tui Tonga cried, "Stop. Do not harm him. What is this he says about a girl? Let him tell us first: if he has fooled us then he shall die."
And the fisherman said, "What am I that I should lie to my chief? I know the fairest girl in all the world, and if the chief wills I can bring her here."
And the Tui Tonga said, "Loose him and make ready a canoe; but if he has lied to us, he shall be hewn in pieces with tortures."
So they prepared the canoe, and the chief of the fishermen called his men together and they set sail, and dragged their canoe ashore at Ata; and the chief fisherman bade page 298his men wait near the canoe, and he went up alone into the trees. There he saw two houses, the one closed and the other open, and he went in and found an old woman sitting on the mats. And he said, "I have come for the maiden to be the chief's handmaid."
But she feigned not to understand him, and said, "What maiden will you take? Only I and my husband live on Ata, and we have seen no maiden."
But he said, "You cannot hide her from me; for we are many, and you but two only. Come how, I will break down the door of the house if you do not show her to me."
And the old woman began to weep, crying for her only daughter; but he bade her be of good heart, for she ought rather to rejoice that her daughter was chosen to be the handmaid of the Tui Tonga. And she said, "Wait till I have prepared her for her lord; "and she took the girl and bathed her in the sea, and oiled her with scented oil, and bound flowering wreaths in her hair, weeping all the while, and took the finest mats of Haamoa, fringed with the precious scarlet feathers of the kula, and bound them round her slender waist, and brought her to the canoe. And the men who saw her were smitten with her beauty, for there had been no other woman born into the world so fair as she. And they set sail, leaving the woman weeping on the shore, and bore the girl away weeping for her fostermother's grief, and for fear of that which should befall her. And when they came near to Mua they saw a great crowd assembled at the landing-place, for the Tui Tonga in his impatience had left his house to watch for the return of the canoe; and he kept calling to them to ply their paddles with a stronger hand. When they drew page 299near he cried out to them to tell her name; and they replied, "Vae-lavea-mata" (The-foot-that-wounds-the-eye). And he took her to his house.
They toiled at the stone all day, sore at heart, for it was planting-time, and in the evening they sent to Tui Tonga, praying that he would suffer them first to plant their yams, and afterwards return to drag the stone, for that it would take many days, and the time for yamplanting was far spent. But he returned answer that they were idle and dishonoured his commands. And the people were afraid when they heard his answer, and gathered together to the stone before it was yet day. And the sun rose on their toil, but the stone was so heavy that when it was low in the west they had only reached the cave Anameama, on the Liku, where there is fresh water. Their throats were dried up with thirst, and they crowded one upon the other in their haste to drink; but so many were they that before they had all drunk the pool was dry, and they licked the mud, and cursed their king in their hearts.
Then one said, "How long shall we suffer this? He has other tasks in his mind for us, and who knows whether we shall live or die, and our wives be given to others? Shall we not take rest?"
So they conspired that night to kill the Tui Tonga, and in the morning two old men, Tamajia and Malofafa of Belehake, met him in the path as he went to bathe, and slew him there, and cut up the body so that none might know it, and hung the limbs in a tree.
And one of the king's women ran to Niutao, to tell the children that their father was dead. They were racing toy canoes in the shallow water; and Kau-ulu-fonua, the elder, now almost grown to manhood, was intent upon his canoe, and saw not that the sea was rising and falling page 302unnaturally, but his brother, Mounga-motua, saw it as he sat watching the game on the beach. And he cried, "Chief, the sea is strange." But the elder, thinking only of his game, told him roughly to be silent. Then the younger saw the sea turn to blood, and as he again cried out in fear, the woman came and sat down respectfully before her chief, therefore the place is called Faete (Crouching-place) to this day. She said, "I bring tidings (tala fo'ou)" (therefore the place is called Talafo'ou to this day). "The chief, your father, has been slain."
Kau-ulu-fonua leaped to his feet, and seizing the mast of a canoe, he broke it into three pieces, and gave them to his brothers and to his sister, saying, "Which of us knows our father? Only the child Lo-tawai has seen him." And Lo-tawai answered, "Yes, I shall know him."
So they went forth, led by the woman, and came to the wood called Vao-tabu (Sacred Grove) in which the king had been slain; and the woman led them to the tree in which their father's body hung in a basket. The place is called Tataünga-o-Tui-Tonga, because the body was cut up there. And Lo-tawai looked on it and said, "This is our father: I know the face for his face."1 And they buried their father there, and called the people to them to war against his murderers, who fled to Eua.
1 Penem etiam patris per granditatem mirabilem recognovit; cui quidem nomenproprium datum erat, "Ulie-hae-ā," scilicet "Anguis-qui-sepimenta-perrumpit."
1 Hahafakamoa = beating like a cock's wings.
Now the murderers were old men and had no teeth, and when they were brought before kau-ulu-fonua, he ordered hard dry kava to be brought, and made them chew it before him, so that their mouths were filled with blood. And he bade them pour water into the bowl, and knead and strain the kava, and he drank the draught alone. Therefore was he named kau-ulu-fonua-fekai (Kau-ulu-fonua the savage); and he slew his father's murderers in Futuna and returned to Tonga.
1 When the Tongan matabule Kau Moala visited Futuna in 1808 he was spoiled of all his goods, and his canoe was broken up. On leaving he was presented with everything he required, but, despite his entreaties, not a single article of his own property was returned to him.
2 After I had left Tonga I asked an old native of Futuna whether he knew any legends of a Tongan invasion. He wrote down for me an old Saga describing an invasion by the King of Tonga, who cried, when wounded in the back, "The gods are fools!" The only difference in the two stories was that the Futuna account describes the utter rout of the Tongans with so great a slaughter that stacks were made of the dead bodies. Traditions so corroborated rise at once to the dignity of history.
Since that day, though there have been wars in Tonga, and chief has fought against chief, yet the Tui Tonga has passed unharmed through them all, for he was lord of the soil only and of the offerings.
And there came a Tui Haatakalaua, named Moungatonga, who took to wife a chief woman of Haamoa (Samoa), of the land of Safata in Upolu, named Tohu'ia. She bore him a son, Ngata (Snake), from whom the lords of Kanokubolu, the kings of Tonga, are descended. For Moungatonga saw that they did not honour the chief whom they obeyed, but only him to whom they gave the offerings; and he made his son Ngata lord over the people and his descendants, and called him Tui Kanokubolu, and he himself was content to receive the offerings only. From this Ngata, child of the woman of Haamoa, were all the Tui Kanokubolu sprung, even to Tubou, the king.
Such is the tradition of the origin of the curious political system of Tonga that so puzzled Captain Cook. It is easy to divest the story of its envelope of heroic fiction, and to find the kernel of sound history. The chiefs in Polynesia represent the blood of the original family in its purest form, and to ancestor-worshippers they naturally become the living embodiment of the ancestral spirit. As the tribe grows in numbers and importance, they begin to receive semi-divine honours: with the superstitious respect comes power, and with power the inclination to abuse it. The people are goaded into resistance, and the chief, to protect himself and his successors, delegates the page 306executive power to an inferior chief, and by thus placing a buffer between himself and his subjects, he secures not only his own safety from popular outbreak, but an increased reverence for the rigid tabu that begins to environ him. This evolution of a sacred line of chiefs is not peculiar to Tonga, but the system was there complicated by a repetition of the process by which the temporal sovereign again delegated his authority; and by the curious higher degrees of rank enjoyed by females of the spiritual chief's family, arising from the high estimation in which women were held.
As Tongan history may be said to begin with the reign of Kau-ulu-fonua, it is important to fix approximately the date of his exploits. In Appendix I. will be found a list of the Tui Tonga from Kau-ulu-fonua to the last holder of the office. Since the visit of Captain Cook in 1777 the frequent civil wars, and the introduction of Christianity, caused years to pass without the installation of a Tui Tonga, and the office was abolished on the death of Laufilitonga. There have therefore been only four since that date. From 1643 to 1777, a period of 134 years, five Tui Tonga reigned for an average of twenty-seven years each.1 By the same computation the four Tui Tonga who preceded Tasman's visit in 1643 would have covered 108 years, and Kau-ulu-fonua was Tui Tonga in the year 1535.
1 Captain Cook found that the natives remembered the circumstances of Tasman's visit in 1643, and were able to point out his anchorage, and to say correctly how many days he stayed. They gave the name of the Tui Tonga then reigning, and the names of five successors of the same dynasty.
The Tui Kanokubolu was not strictly a hereditary office, like that of the Tui Tonga. None but a member of the reigning family could succeed, and a custom seems to have grown up of choosing the successor alternately from the families of the Tui Haatakalaua and the Tui Kanokubolu; but it was always open to the principal chiefs, who formed the electoral college, to reject any aspirant to office who was physically, mentally, or morally unfit to reign. Two conditions weighed with them—the dying wishes of the late king, and the relative power and popularity of the candidates. The election took place immediately after the funeral ceremonies, when the entire nation was assembled; and the election of the most influential chief was a guarantee against civil disorder.
The Tongiaki,1 the canoe, now obsolete, in which the early voyages of the Tongans were made. (From a plate in the British Museum.)
1 Unlike the Fijian canoe, the Tongiaki had a fixed bow, and went about like the modern cutter. In tacking, the sail was unlaced from the yards and carried to leeward of the mast. It was entirely displaced by the more complicated Ndrua of Fiji about the beginning of this century. Both Schouten and Captain Cook give detailed descriptions, and I have an excellent model built for me under King George's directions.