第17章 CHIEFS AND TAPUS(2)

And so the old,legitimate cannibal must ride over the mountains to do it for him;and the respectable official in white clothes could but look on and envy.At about the same time,though in a different manner,Kooamua established a forest law.It was observed the cocoa-palms were suffering,for the plucking of green nuts impoverishes and at last endangers the tree.Now Kooamua could tapu the reef,which was public property,but he could not tapu other people's palms;and the expedient adopted was interesting.He tapu'd his own trees,and his example was imitated over all Hatiheu and Anaho.I fear Taipi might have tapu'd all that he possessed and found none to follow him.So much for the esteem in which the dignity of an appointed chief is held by others;a single circumstance will show what he thinks of it himself.I never met one,but he took an early opportunity to explain his situation.True,he was only an appointed chief when Ibeheld him;but somewhere else,perhaps upon some other isle,he was a chieftain by descent:upon which ground,he asked me (so to say it)to excuse his mushroom honours.

It will be observed with surprise that both these tapus are for thoroughly sensible ends.With surprise,I say,because the nature of that institution is much misunderstood in Europe.It is taken usually in the sense of a meaningless or wanton prohibition,such as that which to-day prevents women in some countries from smoking,or yesterday prevented any one in Scotland from taking a walk on Sunday.The error is no less natural than it is unjust.The Polynesians have not been trained in the bracing,practical thought of ancient Rome;with them the idea of law has not been disengaged from that of morals or propriety;so that tapu has to cover the whole field,and implies indifferently that an act is criminal,immoral,against sound public policy,unbecoming or (as we say)'not in good form.'Many tapus were in consequence absurd enough,such as those which deleted words out of the language,and particularly those which related to women.Tapu encircled women upon all hands.Many things were forbidden to men;to women we may say that few were permitted.They must not sit on the paepae;they must not go up to it by the stair;they must not eat pork;they must not approach a boat;they must not cook at a fire which any male had kindled.The other day,after the roads were made,it was observed the women plunged along margin through the bush,and when they came to a bridge waded through the water:roads and bridges were the work of men's hands,and tapu for the foot of women.Even a man's saddle,if the man be native,is a thing no self-respecting lady dares to use.Thus on the Anaho side of the island,only two white men,Mr.Regler and the gendarme,M.Aussel,possess saddles;and when a woman has a journey to make she must borrow from one or other.It will be noticed that these prohibitions tend,most of them,to an increased reserve between the sexes.Regard for female chastity is the usual excuse for these disabilities that men delight to lay upon their wives and mothers.Here the regard is absent;and behold the women still bound hand and foot with meaningless proprieties!The women themselves,who are survivors of the old regimen,admit that in those days life was not worth living.And yet even then there were exceptions.There were female chiefs and (I am assured)priestesses besides;nice customs curtseyed to great dames,and in the most sacred enclosure of a High Place,Father Simeon Delmar was shown a stone,and told it was the throne of some well-descended lady.How exactly parallel is this with European practice,when princesses were suffered to penetrate the strictest cloister,and women could rule over a land in which they were denied the control of their own children.

But the tapu is more often the instrument of wise and needful restrictions.We have seen it as the organ of paternal government.