The Family - Birth

The family - Birth - Dedication - Education - Courtship and weddings - Position of women - Marriage - Mother-right - Tribal organisation - The state - Classes and ranks - Aristocratic type of public life - The prince and the nobles - Limitations of sovereign power - Court ceremonial - Warlike character - Casus belli - Military organisation - Modes of fighting - Sieges - Sea-fights - Treaties - The Malo - Respect for law - Laws of taboo - Punishment of those who violate taboo - Removal of taboo.

The Family - Birth

AMONG the Polynesian races, the birth of a child is accompanied by an invocation of the gods on the part of the husband or father; while the woman's mother, or one of her near relations, performs the duties of midwife. First, the family deity is called to aid; but if labour is protracted, the husband's or mother's own private god.

Dedicatory rites have already taken place during pregnancy. At the moment of parturition the names of all the gods are recited in succession, and the one whose name is uttered as the child comes into the world is regarded as his tutelary deity. Similarly the Tohungas of New Zealand, after aspersion, watch the movements of the child, and select as its secret name that word of their invocation which coincides with them. After the birth, the chief ceremony is the cutting of the cord. This is performed in Samoa, in the case of boys, upon a club, to make them brave; while for girls, one of the boards is used upon which the tapa is beaten, that she may be an industrious housewife. In Fiji the cord is solemnly buried. As in New Zealand, where children are purified and named eight days after birth, with invocation of the tutelary god, and sprinkling with water, the Morioris of Chatham Island give the name amid hymns from the priests, water being poured on at the same time; and they further plant a maheu-tree, in order that the child may grow like it and flourish. Among the Melanesians, simpler customs prevail.

Chief's wife of Papua, Samoa. - (From a photograph in the Godeffroy Album.)
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A hut is built for the lying-in woman, and some female relation suckles the infant. Continence and purification are enjoined upon the husband also. In Fiji and the New Hebrides neither of the couple eats flesh-meat or fish after the birth, for fear of making the baby ill; nor must the father, for a month after the birth of his first child, do any hard work. The couvade occurs distinctly in San Christoval, where "father-right" is the custom.

Infanticide is widespread, and abortion is extensively practised, often merely on account of pique, but often also from vanity - the woman not caring to have children until the third year of her marriage. In some parts of the Solomons and the New Hebrides all children even are killed at birth, and substitutes purchased. If the child is a girl, it has generally more prospect of being kept alive where inheritance goes in the female line, and where it will carry on the family succession. The birth of twins is not regarded as actually injurious, though there is a disposition to look upon them as uncanny.

If the children are once allowed to live, everything is done for them with due care. Not only the parents but the relations make them presents. Little children who are living after their parents' death are adopted by others; if they are older, natural ties, as well as the laws of inheritance, are honestly observed in the traditional way.

Consecration Into Adulthood

The most important epochs in life have their own religious consecration. God is closer to man than is always the case with us Christians. In Saa, and on the Leper's Island, toy bows are offered, a week or ten days after birth, on behalf of the boy, that he may be strong; mat-fibres for the girl, that she may be industrious. The participation in this of relations on the father's side is a significant infraction of mother-right, which in other respects is jealously guarded. In Hawaii, the child at weaning is brought from the mother-house, Noa, to the father-house, Mua, and thereby falls under the taboo to be presently mentioned. Thereupon the mother sacrifices a pig to her family god, while the father offers ava and implores health for the new scion.

At the entrance upon manhood their consecration is repeated in more severe forms, and attended by customs of a hardening nature. A general fast is held in the family. The grandfather, between whose soul and that of the next generation but one a closer affinity is deemed to exist, rouses the first-born grandson from his sleep, and initiates him, in a hut set apart for the purpose, into the mysteries handed down from past times; or the Tohungas of the tribe teach the rudiments of the traditions to such as show themselves of capacity, especially to the sons of Ariki or chiefs, dwelling meantime in the forest, in a house of leaves. The fasts are terminated by eating the pith of the toia-toia, in order "to cork up the secrets"; followed by a second aspersion. After this the youth is fit for marriage. Yet another consecration takes place later, when the youth, now ripe for his first campaign, stands naked by the riverside, and is sprinkled with water by the priests, calling upon Tu. Women and boys are not admitted.

Recognition of Children

In education the influence of the family is less than that of the village community or the tribe, as we may see if we consider the frightful extension of infanticide in pre-Christian times, at the bidding of these authorities. It was favoured by the ease with which marriages could be dissolved, and the exaggerated view taken of the devolution of the father's position upon the son. Immediately after birth the first-born boy is invested with his father's name and dignity and henceforth takes precedence of him. While the boy is in his minority, this produces no practical results, the father exercising all authority in his son's name.

But the child must sometimes be felt to be a burden; for which reason those freest of free people, the Ariis or Ehris of Tahiti, recognise no children. Connections cutting into and cutting up families contribute still more to cause estrangement between parents and children - adoption especially. In the Gilbert Islands the parents select the adoptive father or mother, who, when these are people of means, intrude themselves even before the child is born. It is the adoptive father who arranges the marriage of his fictitious offspring, and in whose house the young couple live. In this way complete transpositions take place within the family. It must, however, be said that in communities of lax morality adoption makes the descent of children more secure than the recognition of the true children, born under corrupt conjugal relations, can do.

The inequality of the sexes has a profound effect upon family life and the increase of the race. The reasons that have been assigned for the smaller number of women are the murder of female infants, and the greater mortality of the adult women by reason of too early child-bearing, overwork, and privation, the violence of the men, and licentiousness. The proportion is often quite abnormal: in Hawaii it reaches one woman to four or five men.