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
cocoanuts and plantains, rifling the yam stores, and slaughtering every
pig and fowl that did not escape by flight. They destroyed, indeed, far
more than the hold of their little vessel could contain, and they left
their dear brothers of the tauvu with nothing but complimentary speeches
to console them for the famine they would have to face.
Unlike the _vasu_, the _vei-tauvu_ was used reciprocally. The Notho clan
cherishes the intention of visiting Nayau, and exacting from their
brothers an eye for an eye. But the custom, like the tie of relationship
in which it is founded, is already in decay, being incompatible with the
growth of modern ideas of property. Had it been frequently exercised the
government would long ago have put a stop to it.
The Commission of 1893 recommended the government to encourage the
chiefs' tenants to commute the obligation of personal service. In Tonga,
on the abolition of the personal right of _lala_, the chiefs were
compensated by being made Lords of the Manor over large tracts of land
which yielded a fixed rental from every native occupying them, and from
every European settler to whom the landlord chose to lease land. The
Crown collected all rents and paid them over to the landlord, who,
however, had no right of eviction. The tenants held their land on
hereditary tenure, and default in payment of rent was visited with
distraint instead of eviction. This system was possible in Tonga,
because in ancient times the land there was regarded as the property of
the spiritual chief, the Tui Tonga, who could thus be made to grant
manors to his inferior chiefs without doing violence to native ideas:
but in Fiji, where the rights of the Crown have never been insisted on,
and the land is for the most part vested in the commune, such a scheme
would be impracticable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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