Aristocratic Type of Public Life

An essential part, if not the very nucleus of the state, must be sought in societies, embracing the greatest number of the freemen in the bond of common interests or the practice of a kind of freemasonry. With their secret influence and their public festive gatherings, they are one of the most significant features in the life of these races, especially the Melanesians. Their objects are of a partly political, partly economic kind, and the religious pretext is often solid, but often also threadbare. In the Banks Islands and New Hebrides members of the leagues called supwe or suque hold quite the place of the chiefs. Their importance is in inverse ratio to the strength of the constitution; and at the same time the influence which each one exercises is measured by his rank or class. Those at the top decide who shall, after due payment, rise into another class; who shall be excluded, and, so on; the essential distinction between them and the chiefs being all the less from the fact that in other islands the chiefship is often elective and limited by a council of elders.

Paddles (chiefs insignia) from New Zealand - length approx. 800mm. - (Christy collection.)

In the popular tales, the poor orphan boy, favoured by fortune, who elsewhere would marry the king's daughter, here attains the highest rank in the suque. Thus in different ways a powerful bias to aristocracy makes itself felt. The best-known society of this kind was the Ehri or Areoi of Tahiti, who formed a league traced back to the foundation of a god. A grand master presided over each of the twelve classes, the seven grades of which were distinguished by their tattooing; and all were bound in a close comradeship. Being warriors, they must remain celibate; and if they should have children, these must be killed. Their lands are tended by slaves. Even the first Europeans found the league degenerated; it went about like a dramatic troupe, an example of low immorality.

Every race of Micronesia is broken up into closely united societies. Among the nobles this takes the character of a retinue; and one may occasionally recognise in it some connection with inheritance in the female line. Thus in the Ralick Islands the ruling chiefs belong to one clan, their sons to another; the chief must marry into the clan of his sons, and descent is reckoned by the mother. The Micronesian bais, both of freemen and bondmen, appear at the same time as phalansteries, with the object of organising labour. These have been compared with regiments, and the obligation to enter them with compulsory service. All boys must be entered in their fifth or sixth year. One union, however, never comprises more than from thirty-five to forty individuals practically of the same age, so that an older man belongs to three or four bais. If any one gets a rise in rank, he must pay a sum of money to each person belonging to the same. There is also a women's union; but they have no house of their own.

Chief of Tae in the Mortlocks. (Godeffroy Album.)

This arrangement recurs in a similar form in Melanesia. We find its earliest forms in the West: New Britain has its Duk-duk; New Guinea and New Caledonia something akin. Everywhere some kind of ghost business comes in; it is even implied in the names. The masquerades are said to represent ghosts; and the strange noises that proceed from the strictly unapproachable holy places have a terrifying effect. The suque became at last a social and public institution, but formerly it was said to secure for its members a life in a beautiful place, while the souls of non-members remained hanging to the trees like flying-foxes. The initiated learn nothing beyond dances and songs, and how to mask them-selves and how to behave. Less indecency than rumour whispered seems to have prevailed in these conventicles. Women and children are excluded; only in the nangas of Fiji are women admitted, as is natural. In the tamata of the Banks Islands what we may call a lively club-life has been developed. Formerly hard tests involving physical pain were attached to admission; but now everything seems to have become much gentler and more cheerful. In the Duk-duk of New Britain a secret society assumed the character of a "Vehme," and at last exercised a real reign of terror with its extortions and executions.

Chief among the institutions which are independent of, and work counter to, the systems known as hapu, veve, kema, etc., stands the family. In Micronesia it recognises one head as the common centre of all the widely-scattered members, each of whom is named after his place of abode. This is managed by the eldest like an entailed property, attached to his name and title, and inherited by the next eldest. The chiefs tutelary god is conceived to be attached to this house, so that it often receives more veneration than the chief himself. While he is alive he has another house built for his wife and children, since after his death they have to make way for his eldest brother, or the eldest son of some former head of the family.

As regards the distribution of property, the Pacific Islands offer a picture of great variety. Between common possession and private ownership lies the curious apportionment of real property, which under "mother-right" devolves jointly, even to the crude form existing among the Kemas of Florida, who on the death of a member devour all his goods. In general, here as elsewhere, Melanesia offers the simplest conditions; in Polynesia the transforming forces of the political development in the direction of monarchy, and the husband's power of independent acquisition, have had their effect, and that again more in the east and north than in the south. Even before the inroads of Europeans the feeling for ownership had brought about distinctions; thus in small districts like the Gilbert Islands, the laws of individual property and inheritance are not very different from ours, allowing for the encroachment of adoption, while social position is essentially determined by property in land. But there are a number of institutions which tend to level the differences, as admission by purchase into the higher grades of the secret societies, the yearly suspension of all rights of property during the great festivals, or, in Samoa, the parties of pleasure among friends and relations, at which the sucking-pig plays an important part, and which resulted in so much extravagance, leading to insolvency, that in 1888 King Tamasese found it necessary to put a stop to them.¹

¹ [For an account of these malanga, see Stevenson, A Footnote to History, p. 2. He says nothing about any prohibition on Tamasese's part. Perhaps it extended only to the districts owning that puppet-monarch's authority.]