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Updated: June 19, 2025
His furniture and tools were carried off, and the poor missionary was glad to return to his colleagues, and to share the protection of the tapu which Ruatara had placed upon their settlement. Barren as Te Puna might be, it was a safe refuge, and so long as the missionaries stayed there they suffered nothing worse from the natives than a little pilfering and an occasional threat.
The chief of Atuona sent a messenger who was tapu in all valleys, to count the people of this valley who were in Hana-menu and to warn them to return in a band, armed with spears. Meanwhile the priest went to the High Place and spoke to the gods, and after two days and nights he returned and said that the danger was at the pass between the valleys; that a demon had seized the people there.
He has charge of the "Kizila," the "Chigella" of Merolla and the "Quistilla" of James Barbot Anglice putting things in fetish, which corresponds with the Tahitian tapu or taboo. The African idea is, that he who touches the article, for instance, gold on the eastern coast of Guinea, will inevitably come to grief.
It was fifty feet long and said to be even deeper, though no living Marquesan had ever tasted its stores, or never would unless dire famine compelled. It was tapu to the memory of the dead. All over the valley the filling of the pits for reserve against need was in progress.
Or, perhaps, we should understand the idea of the hidden tapu otherwise, as a politic device to spread uneasiness and extort confessions: so that, when a man is ailing, he shall ransack his brain for any possible offence, and send at once for any proprietor whose rights he has invaded.
On the 4th of July a feast had been made, and the king, at the suggestion of the whites, had raised the tapu against liquor. There is a proverb about horses; it scarce applies to the superior animal, of whom it may be rather said, that any one can start him drinking, not any twenty can prevail on him to stop.
The ground was tapu. In the angle, by the mouth of the path, stood a deserted maniap'. Near by there had been a house before our coming, which was now transported and figured for the moment in Equator Town. It had been, and it would be again when we departed, the residence of the guardian and wizard of the spot Tamaiti.
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. Tapu encircled women upon all hands. Many things were forbidden to men; to women we may say that few were permitted.
"And their hearts were consumed with flame when they looked on this girl. It was evil of them, for it was against the will of the gods. She was of their own clan, and the priests had made her tapu until she had reached a certain age. Her brother was the servant of the priests, and she was consecrated to the gods. She was guarded by most sacred custom. It was forbidden to touch her or her food.
It is the habit of the islanders to cook the turtle in its carapace; we had been promised the shells, and we asked a tapu on this foolish practice. The face of Tembinok' darkened and he answered nothing. So that even here, in full despotism, public opinion has weight; even here, in the midst of slavery, freedom has a corner.
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