The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of CustomThomson, Basil
History
The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of Custom
Thomson, Basil
Ethnology -- Fiji; Fijians
The prophet had fixed the day; the feasts were all prepared; threats
about what was to happen to church and state were being freely
exchanged, when the prophet was arrested. He then besought his guards
not to send him to Suva, and so defeat all the glorious miracles he was
about to work for the redemption of the race. Unless the twin gods
reappeared on earth the power of Ndengei, which is the Old Serpent,
would continue in the ascendant, for the twins were they of whom it was
foretold that they should bruise the head of the serpent. He was a
sooty-skinned, hairy little man of middle age, expansive enough with the
native warders in Suva gaol, but reticent when questioned about his
mission. He was deported to Rotuma, where he is still living, and the
outbreak was stamped out for the time.
In 1892 the heresy broke out afresh. One of his lieutenants, who had
been allowed to remain in the district, began to receive letters from
him. He would stand in the forest with a bayonet, and the magic letter
fluttered down from the sky and impaled itself on the point. This was
the more remarkable since Ndungumoi could not write. Holy water was
again distributed, there was more drilling, and the end of British rule
was again foretold. This time the Government decided to let the light
and air into Ndrauni-ivi, the fount of superstition; the people, lepers
and all, were deported in a body to Kandavu, and the very foundations of
the houses were rased to the ground.
These false prophets were not all self-deceived, nor were they wholly
deceivers. They were of that strange compound of hysterical credulity
and shrewd common-sense that is found only among the hereditary priests
of Fiji. They knew what strings to play upon in the native character.
The people are arrogant and conservative; they secretly despise
foreigners for their ignorance of ceremonial, while conforming to their
orders through timidity; their nature craves for the histrionic
excitement and the ceremonial proper to traffic with unseen powers. They
chafe secretly at the ordered regularity imposed upon them; at the
inexorable punctuality of the tax-collector, at the slow process of the
courts in redressing their grievances, at the laws which forbid them to
seize with a strong hand the property they covet. It would have been no
disgrace to them to yield allegiance to a conqueror, but the white men
never conquered them, and therefore the tribute which they pay annually
in the form of taxes is an ever-recurring dishonour. They pant for
change--for the coming of a time when the heroic stories that they have
heard from their fathers shall be realized, and their chiefs be again
lords paramount over their own lands. They have forgotten the curse of
war, the horror of the night attack, the tortures, the clubbings, the
ovens, the carrying into captivity, to which half at least of the tribes
would again be subject if their millennium came; for all the gifts which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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