§ 8. The Soul, Death, and Funeral Customs

Like most savages, the Marquesans thought that they possessed souls which could quit their bodies and wander far away in dreams. Thus a young girl once related how, the night before, she had sailed in a splendid canoe to Tiburones, a mythical paradise to the west of Nukahiva; there she had seen beautiful things such as do not exist here on earth. "There," said she, "the trees are very tall, and the people very handsome; there they sing songs to music sweeter than ours. Ah! when shall I be able to return to Tiburones?" On another occasion a woman's soul appeared to a priest to inform him that she had committed the heinous crime of eating a fowl, but that she would expiate the sacrilege by an early death. The French authorities summoned both the priest and the woman to the bar of justice. There the priest stuck to it that he had received the revelation, and the woman expressed her regret for the escapade of which her soul had been guilty without her knowledge. It was necessary to reassure her on the subject of her soul's rash act and melancholy prediction, otherwise she might have fulfilled the prophecy by refusing food and dying outright.[82]

At death the soul was supposed to depart from the body by the mouth or the nose; hence in order to delay its departure and so to prolong the life of its owner, affectionate relatives used to stop his mouth and nostrils, thus accelerating the event which they wished to retard.[83]

The Marquesans have, or used to have, a sovereign contempt for death, and do not fear its approach. When a native felt that he must die, he took it calmly and ordered his coffin, which he caused to be brought to the house while he was still in life. The coffin is hollowed out of a single log and resembles a canoe. If the sick man after all recovered, the coffin was kept in a corner of the house till it was wanted. No attempt was made to hide it or to disguise its purpose. Should a stranger ask, "What is that?" he would be told, "It is So-and-so's coffin"; though So-and-so might be present and within hearing.[84] Nevertheless, when it was clear that a serious illness was about to terminate fatally, and that all the efforts of the priestly physician or sorcerer to avert the inevitable end were fruitless, the house would be filled by wailing women, who danced naked round the mat of the dying man, cutting themselves with sharp stones or shark's teeth as in a frenzy, and uttering the most piercing lamentations. This lasted till the moment of death, when all united in a terrific and prolonged howl.[85] Similar demonstrations of sorrow were continued or renewed after the decease. If the departed was a married man and his widow survived him, she would bruise her flesh with a stone, scratch it with her nails, and cut her forehead, cheeks, and breast with shark's teeth or splinters of bamboo till the blood trickled down.[86] Captain Porter saw a woman with deep wounds still unhealed, which she had inflicted on her neck, breast, and arms for the loss of her husband, who had been devoured by a shark.[87] After the death, too, the widow would place herself in front of the corpse, and three or four girls would surround her; whereupon they would all engage in a lascivious dance, with outstretched arms, tripping in cadence to the accompaniment of a funeral hymn or lamentation, which was chanted by a choir in honour of the dead. After executing the dance, which would seem to have been intended to attract the attention of the deceased and recall his wandering spirit, they would stoop over the corpse, and cry, "He has not stirred! He stirs not. Alas! alas! he is no more." It was only after they had thus practised their seductions in vain on the dead man that the widow gave way to her frantic outburst of sorrow by mauling herself with a sort of saw.[88] This funeral dance a widow was apparently expected to renew in public at every festival for months after the death. At a festival, which he called the Feast of Calabashes, Melville saw four or five old women, stark naked, holding themselves erect and leaping stiffly into the air, with their arms pressed close to their sides, like sticks bobbing up and down in water. They preserved the utmost gravity of countenance, and continued their strange movements without a single moment's cessation, though they did not appear to attract the observation of the crowd around them. The American was told that these dancing or leaping figures "were bereaved widows, whose partners had been slain in battle many moons previously; and who, at every festival, gave public evidence in this manner of their calamities."[89] When the deceased was a chief, the lamentations and the dances went on day and night for some time. A priestess or sorceress, in festal costume, led the choir of female mourners and vaunted the exploits of the dead warrior, recalling his mighty deeds and the incidents of his life. The dances were accompanied by the music of drums. The crowd of spectators, in their best array, ate and drank to repletion, and, flushed with liquor, abandoned themselves to excesses which transformed the mortuary chamber, lit up at night by smoky torches, into a scene of low debauchery. From time to time remarks of a gross nature were addressed to the dead man on the helpless condition to which he was reduced; and now and then the women would slash their faces and breasts with splinters of bamboo in the usual fashion. The orgy went on till the provisions were completely exhausted, which might not be for a considerable time, since hecatombs of pigs were sometimes slaughtered for the purpose of celebrating the obsequies of a chief in a manner worthy of his rank.[90]

The soul of the dead was believed not to abandon the corpse definitely for two days after the death. In the interval it was thought to haunt the house, watching the conduct of the survivors, and ready to act as a friend or a foe according as the mourners behaved towards the deceased and his remains. Hence, to keep the ghost in good humour it was customary to offer him food, in the shape of breadfruit paste and other dainties, which were wrapped up in leaves, hung on the edge of the coffin, and frequently renewed.[91] On the third night after the death a priest, stepping out on the terrace in front of the house, implored the wandering soul of the deceased to depart; and by way of enforcing the request a band of men, armed with spears and other lethal weapons, went about in the outer darkness, beating the bushes and stabbing the thatched roofs of the houses in order to drive the lingering ghost away. If, roused by the clamour, the dogs began to bark, the priest would say, "The soul is departing."[92]

From the moment of death till the priests had completed the litany or songs chanted on such occasions, all the assembled people fasted, no one touched the provisions collected for the funeral feast, and no fire might be kindled within sight of the house.[93] The litany consisted in the mumbling of a long speech in an unintelligible language accompanied by the constant beating of drums.[94] Among the victuals provided for the funeral feast special importance appears to have been attached to the head of a pig, which was cut off and attached to the bier.[95] We are told that the professed intention was thereby "to propitiate the gods, and obtain for the deceased a safe and peaceable passage through the lower regions." But, in point of fact the priest took possession of the pig's head and devoured it secretly, leaving only a small piece of it under a stone.[96]

When death had taken place, the body was washed, neatly dressed in garments of new cloth, and laid on a bier constructed of bamboos or of spears and other warlike weapons, fastened together with wicker-work and spread with mats.[97] If the deceased was a chief and a warrior, his body would be arrayed in his finest ornaments, and his club, plumed helmet, necklaces of whale's teeth, and skulls of the enemies he had killed, would be laid beside him. Thus exposed, the corpse might be kept for weeks in the house, where, in spite of the stench, the family continued to eat, drink, and sleep beside it. Sometimes, however, and perhaps more usually, the body was transferred to a small house or shed adjoining the dwelling of the deceased, where it received the necessary attentions. Finally, it was removed to a little hut or shed, where the bier was supported on posts under a thatched roof. To be buried in the earth was a mark of ignominy reserved at most for a young girl of the lowest rank who had died childless. Beside the corpse food was hung for the use of the ghost, it might be fish, roast pork, or coco-nuts, and there it was allowed to remain till it rotted and fell to the ground; none but children would be greedy or impious enough to partake of the sacred victuals, and that only in the greatest secrecy. Often the house in which the death had taken place was tabooed and abandoned after the remains had been deposited in their last home.[98]

The bodies of the dead were regularly subjected to a kind of embalmment, which had the effect of preserving them for a longer or shorter time. As soon as decomposition appeared imminent, the corpse was stripped of its ornaments and placed in the usual canoe-shaped coffin, the trunk being propped up so as to facilitate the work of the embalmers. The task of embalming was entrusted to women, relations of the deceased, who rubbed the body daily with coco-nut oil and perfumes. They had no intercourse with the rest of the family, and took their meals apart without ever washing their hands. According to one account, the anointment was performed by night, while during the day the body was exposed to the sun on the stone platform of the house. The products of decomposition were carefully received in vessels and carried away to the place of sepulture; and the corpse was gradually eviscerated through the rectum. The friction was continued until the desiccated body was reduced to the state of a mummy, though sometimes, in spite of all precautions, it crumbled into dust. If the operation was successful, the mummy, wrapt in many bandages, was covered by a second canoe attached to the first, and was then placed on a scaffold in a morai or sanctuary specially consecrated to it. But sometimes the mummy was fastened up to the roof or wall of the house wherein the person had died; and it might be kept there even for years. When it was deposited in a morai, no woman was allowed to approach it under pain of death.[99] Sometimes the head was detached from the body and kept in the house, where it was treated with respect. Sometimes it was carried away and hidden in some almost inaccessible cave in the mountains or beside the sea. This was done as a precaution to save the skulls from falling into the hands of enemies, who were eager to bear them off as trophies.[100]

Each family had its own morai or burial-place, where the mouldering bones or mummies were finally deposited and left to decay.[101] Such family cemeteries were scattered about the valleys; the choice of a site seems to have been determined by no special rule.[102] The morai or burial-place of ordinary people was near their houses, and not far from it was a taboo-house, where the men feasted on the flesh of pigs.[103] But the cemeteries of chiefs were situated in the interior of the valleys, often so deeply imbedded in dense foliage that it was not easy to find them without the guidance of a native.[104] Similarly we are told that the cemeteries (morais) of priests lay quite apart from all dwellings.[105]

The ordinary form of a Marquesan morai or burial-place seems to have been a thatched shed erected on a square or oblong platform of stones, exactly resembling the stone platforms on which the Marquesan houses were regularly built. Thus Vincendon-Dumoulin and Desgraz say that "the morais, funeral monuments where the bodies are deposited, are erected on a stone platform, the base of all Nukahivan edifices."[106] Again, describing what he calls "a picturesque morai," Radiguet observes, "Four posts, erected on a platform, supported a small plank covered with a roof of leaves. Under this roof could be seen the remains of a skeleton, perhaps that of the daughter-in-law of the neighbouring house.... At the two ends of the platform two upright stones, about ten feet high, and resembling the Breton menhirs, formed an exceptional ornament to this morai, which the bushes were in course of invading and the storms of demolishing."[107] Again, Stewart describes as follows what he calls "a depository of the dead": "It stands in the midst of a beautiful clump of trees, and consists of a platform of heavy stone work, twenty feet or more square and four or five high, surmounted in the centre by eight or ten posts arranged in the shape of a grave, and supporting at a height of six or seven feet a long and narrow roof of thatch. Close beneath this was the body enclosed in a coffin."[108] Again, in the island of Tahuata (Santa Christina), Bennett describes a chief's burial-place as follows: "A low but extensive stone platform, beneath the shade of a venerable fau-tree, marks the more consecrated ground; and on this is erected a wooden hut, containing an elevated trough, shaped as a canoe, and holding the perfect skeleton of the late chief. In front of the sepulchre are two hideous wooden idols, and several bundles of coco-nut leaves."[109] The shed, which was erected on the stone platform, and under which the body rested on a bier, seems to have consisted for the most part simply of a thatched roof supported on wooden posts.[110] Sometimes, however, instead of a simple shed, open on all sides, a small house resembling the ordinary houses of the natives appears to have been erected for the reception of the corpse or mummy. Thus in the island of Tahuata (Santa Christina) Bennett describes a burial-place as follows: "The most picturesque mausoleum we noticed was that which contained the corpse of one of Eutiti's children. It was placed on the summit of an isolated hill, rising from the bosom of a well-wooded savannah, and was covered entirely with the leaves of the fan-palm. The posterior, or tallest wall, was twelve feet high, the anterior was low, closed by a mat, and decorated with six wooden pillars, covered with stained cinnet and white cloth. Strips of tapa [bark-cloth], fixed to a wand, fluttered on the roof, to denote that the spot was tabooed; and for the same purpose, a row of globular stones, each the size of a football, and whitened with coral lime, occupied the top of a low but broad stone wall which encircled the building. The interior contained nothing but the bier on which the corpse was laid."[111] From the sketch which Bennett gives of this particular mausoleum, as he calls it, we gather that the sepulchral hut containing the body was not raised on a stone platform, but built on the flat.

There seems to be no evidence that the stone platforms on which the sepulchral sheds or huts of the Marquesans were erected ever took the shape of stepped or terraced pyramids like the massive stone pyramids of Tahiti and Tonga. So far as the mortuary platforms of the Marquesans are described, they appear to have been quadrangular piles of stone, with upright sides, not stepped or terraced. Megalithic monuments in the form of stepped or terraced pyramids seem to have been very rare in the Marquesas Islands; indeed, it is doubtful whether they existed at all. With regard to the island of Tahuata (Santa Christina), it is positively affirmed by Bennett that none of the valleys contain "any morais or other buildings devoted to religious purposes, nor any public idols";[112] and by morais he probably means stepped pyramids like those of Tahiti and Tonga. However, in the valley of Taipii (Typee), in Nukahiva, a megalithic monument, built in terraces, was seen by Melville in 1842. He describes it as follows:

"One day in returning from this spring by a circuitous path, I came upon a scene which reminded me of Stonehenge and the architectural labours of the Druids. At the base of one of the mountains, and surrounded on all sides by dense groves, a series of vast terraces of stone rises, step by step, for a considerable distance up the hillside. These terraces cannot be less than one hundred yards in length and twenty in width. Their magnitude, however, is less striking than the immense size of the blocks composing them. Some of the stones, of an oblong shape, are from ten to fifteen feet in length, and five or six feet thick. Their sides are quite smooth, but though square, and of pretty regular formation, they bear no mark of the chisel. They are laid together without cement, and here and there show gaps between. The topmost terrace and the lower one are somewhat peculiar in their construction. They have both a quadrangular depression in the centre, leaving the rest of the terrace elevated several feet above it. In the intervals of the stones immense trees have taken root, and their broad boughs, stretching far over and interlacing together, support a canopy almost impenetrable to the sun. Overgrowing the greater part of them, and climbing from one to another, is a wilderness of vines, in whose sinewy embrace many of the stones lie half-hidden, while in some places a thick growth of bushes entirely covers them. There is a wild pathway which obliquely crosses two of these terraces, and so profound is the shade, so dense the vegetation, that a stranger to the place might pass along it without being aware of their existence.

"These structures bear every indication of a very high antiquity, and Kory-Kory, who was my authority in all matters of scientific research, gave me to understand that they were coeval with the creation of the world; that the great gods themselves were the builders; and that they would endure until time shall be no more. Kory-Kory's prompt explanation, and his attributing the work to a divine origin, at once convinced me that neither he nor the rest of his countrymen knew anything about them."[113] Melville was accordingly disposed to attribute the erection of these remarkable terraces to an extinct and forgotten race.[114] The hypothesis is all the more probable because the monument appears to have been entirely abandoned and unused by the natives during the time when they have been known to Europeans. But it is doubtful whether the edifice was a pyramid; all that Melville's somewhat vague description implies is that it consisted of a series of terraces built one above the other on the hillside.

According to some accounts the remains of the dead, instead of being deposited in sheds or huts erected on stone platforms, were buried in the platforms themselves. Thus, according to William Crook, the first missionary to the Marquesans, "they have a morai in each district, where the dead are buried beneath a pavement of large stones."[115] Similarly, in Nukahiva two or three large quadrangular platforms (pi-pis), heavily flagged, enclosed with regular stone walls and almost hidden by the interlacing branches of enormous trees, were pointed out as burial-places to Melville, and he was told that the bodies "were deposited in rude vaults beneath the flagging, and were suffered to remain there without being disinterred. Although nothing could be more strange and gloomy than the aspect of these places, where the lofty trees threw their dark shadows over rude blocks of stone, a stranger looking at them would have discerned none of the ordinary evidences of a place of sepulture."[116] To the same effect, perhaps, Porter observes that, "when the flesh is mouldered from the bones, they are, as I have been informed, carefully cleansed: some are kept for relics, and some are deposited in the morais."[117] Again, Krusenstern says that twelve months after the death "the corpse is broken into pieces, and the bones are packed in a small box made of the wood of the bread-fruit tree, and carried to the morai or burial place, where no woman is allowed to approach under pain of death."[118] However, these statements do not necessarily imply that the bones were buried under the stones of the platform at the morai.

But whether deposited on biers or buried under the pavement, the remains of the dead were liable to be carried off in time of war by foes, who regarded such an exploit as a great deed of heroism. Hence when an invasion of the enemy in force was expected, the custom was to remove the bodies from the morai and bury them elsewhere.[119] The heads of enemies killed in battle were invariably kept and hung up as trophies of victory in the house of the conqueror. They seem to have been smoked in order to preserve them better.[120] It is said that they were used as cups to drink kava out of.[121]

After ten months or a year the obsequies were concluded by another funeral feast, which might last from eight to thirty days according to the rank of the deceased and the opulence of his family. At the same time offerings of food were presented afresh at the tomb, and the decorations were renewed, consisting of branches and leaves and strips of white bark-cloth, which waved like flags at the end of little white wands. At these anniversary feasts, to which, if the deceased was a man of quality, only chiefs were in many cases admitted, great quantities of pigs were consumed.[122] The intention of the feast is said to have been to thank the gods for having permitted the dead person to arrive safely in the other world.[123]