Characteristics of Marquesan Natives—Mixed Creeds—Temao and Mendos—Queen Vaekehu

IT may strike one as rather overdrawn that a girl of Waylao’s age should interrogate a priest, or worry about religion at all. But the maids of southern climes must not be judged in the same way as the maids of our own lands. From infancy a child in the South Seas hears wild discussions on creeds. Ere the dummy is cast altogether from their lips they see the big, tattooed chief pass down the forest track swearing against the fates that brought the white man to his demesne. Yes, with his old tappa blanket wrapped about him, he shouts and yells his defiance to the missionary, or to anyone who would speak disparagingly about his race. Half-caste girls and youths (children of the settlers) lived in a world of perpetual change. For those isles, where I found myself as a boy, were not only populated by fearless shellbacks who drifted in on the tide.

Tai-o-hae at that time was surrounded by wild scenery and mountain-guarded glooms. Those glooms were haunted by handsome, tattooed native men and picturesquely robed girls. By night one could hear their songs from afar, chants in a strange tongue, as they flitted soft-footed through the moonlit forest.

In cleared spaces of those wild valleys nestled villages full of the hubbub of native life. I spent days in those tiny pagan cities, and so got a good insight into the native ways.

Through the influence of emigrant missionaries, their arguments, hopes and ambitions seemed to be based on the subject of creeds. Natives who one day had embraced Catholicism, or Protestantism, or had become sun-worshippers, Mormons, Buddhists and Mohammedans, to-morrow cast the faith aside and re-embraced some other creed that appeared to give greater hope of earthly happiness. These changes were chiefly caused by some apparent miracle performed by a native who had gone over to a new creed. He would rush into the village and tell the excited mob of his success; probably some scheme had met with sudden triumph. I myself have heard a native chief shout in this wise:

“What ams ze goods of a creed that promise me heaven to-mollow, when me allee samee have heaven to-day?”

His prayers had evidently been answered. His neighbour’s chickens were missing, or the adulterously inclined wife of the high chief Grimbo had fallen into his arms—at last.

Withal, they were a fine race. I have seen dethroned kings and stately, tattooed chiefs stalk into the grog shanties for a drink. They still retained something of their erstwhile majesty as they flung the coin (just begged from some white man) carelessly on the bar. Even the well-seasoned shellbacks looked up from their drinks as one old king of other days stalked into the white man’s gin palace. Their oaths were hushed as they saw that handsome, god-like figure with the atmosphere of past barbarian splendour wrapped about him. About his loins was flung a decorated, tasselled loin-cloth. It was drawn down and tied in a bow in true native cavalier fashion at one tawny knee. His handsome, chestnut-brown physique was artistically tattooed with the armorial bearings of his tribe. No laugh or gibe escaped the lips of the white men as he stood there, looking scornfully at them as they sat in rows, and poured the last dregs of the fiery rum down his wrinkled throat. Then that remnant of the past splendour of the South Sea Rome gave us all a glance of defiance and stalked out of the bar door, followed by his obsequious retinue—namely, a mangy dog, three scraggy (once handsome) women and two nude children. To see such fine men and to realise the true independence of their natures made me think of the lost potentialities of the never-to-be South Sea Empire. What would their race have become had their blue sky-lines been adamant crystal walls, whereon ships bringing the reformers from civilised lands would have dashed and been smashed to atoms?

I have often thought what sparkling, terraced cities of heathen beauty might not have arisen on those sunny isles, enshrined by those horizons of mythological stars that shine in the heathen’s poetic imagination.

Yes, they were wonderful lands, more wonderful than romance.

Chiefs would come into the grog shanty and for a drink tell one of the most exciting events of Marquesan history. True enough, they were wont to exaggerate, but a close observer could easily sift the truth from fiction.

I recall Temao. He was a regular travelling volume of Marquesan lore, romance, mythology and breezy barbarian crime.

Temao would stalk into Ranjo’s store and entertain Uncle Sam, Grimes and all the rest with the history of Marquesan royalty for a period of about forty years. As the white men filled him with rum, his eyes would flash with grateful eloquence, and he would tell such tales that even those seasoned shellbacks gasped.

Much that was told me first-hand of the terrors of those heathen times I heard from a white man, one called Mendos, an old-time beachcomber. He, I am sure, was one of the most wonderful characters that ever roamed those Southern Seas. I have heard a lot about Bully Hayes, a South Sea character, but to my mind Mendos stood far from the ruck of the ordinary type of trader, for such he had been. He was well advanced in years and intellectually superior to any man I met in those days. From him I heard much about Queen Vaekehu. Indeed I believe that he was the only white man who had once been the barbarian queen’s lover. But it’s not my intention to dwell here on Mendos and his adventures.

As Queen Vaekehu was one of the most romantic royal personages of her time, I feel that it would be interesting to give a brief account of her, based on hearsay and also my own intimate reminiscences. This I will attempt in another chapter.