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Updated: June 14, 2025
At length, as if continuing the conversation, I said: "Yes, I suppose life must be somewhat adventurous and dangerous among savage people like the Samoans, Tongans, and Fijians?" "Indeed, then," she replied decisively, "you are not to suppose anything of the kind. The danger is not alone for the white people."
Now the initiatory development of this aboriginal instinct was very humble, and if we wish to know what our direct ancestors once were, we need only consult the record of anthropological research among such savages as the Fijians or Tonga Islanders. The shape assumed by religion amongst such people was most probably ancestor or ghost worship.
The canoes of the Fijians are superior to those in use among any other of the South Sea islanders. Their chief feature is that they are twin-canoes, joined together by cross-beams, which support a platform of from twelve to fifteen feet broad. Of the two canoes, one is smaller than the other, and the smaller serves by way of an outrigger.
The sail is triangular, and made of matting. When set, the base is up, and the apex down, quite the reverse of what we see in some other islands. The mat sails, however, are giving place to cloth ones, made in the form of European boat-sails. Some two or three generations back the Samoans built large double canoes like the Fijians.
The Samoiedes have a custom of drinking the blood of warm animals. Those of the Fijians who were cannibals drank the warm blood of their victims. Among the Amaponda Kaffirs there are horrible accounts of kindred savage customs. Spencer quotes: "It is usual for the ruling chief on his accession to be washed in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who is put to death for the occasion."
And therefore the oppression of the oppressed always goes on growing up to the furthest limit, beyond which it cannot go without killing the goose with the golden eggs. And if the goose lays no more eggs, like the American Indians, negroes, and Fijians, then it is killed in spite of the sincere protests of philanthropists.
Masirewa, was a character, and evidently had no respect for chiefs and princes, etc., as he treated all the "Bulis" as his equals, which was very different from the generally cringing attitude of the Fijians to their chiefs. Even the high and mighty "Buli" of Nabukaluku seemed to like his cheek.
One Australian tribe buries its dead with their faces to the east; the Fijians are buried with the head and feet to the west, and many of the North American Indians follow the same custom. Others in South America double up the corpse, turning the face to the east. The Peruvians place their mummies in a sitting position, looking to the west; the natives of Jesso also turn the head to the west.
+454+. In Melanesia the food restrictions connected with animal patrons or friends of clans are less definite than in Australia. Here, also, there are local differences of usage. The Fijians refrain from eating their tribal sacred animals. The food restrictions in Borneo and Sumatra are not definitely totemic.
The other suggestion is this: Is it likely that Nature has placed the Fijians exactly in the same meridian with Greenwich, which in some measure may be called the meridian of civilization, for nothing? is it likely that all the solar and cosmic influences which must result from this fact have really left the Fijian in that state of hyper-brutality which you think is proved by his menage?
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