CHAPTER XX

A journey to Taaoa; Kahuiti, the cannibal chief, and his story of an old war caused by an unfaithful woman.

It was a chance remark from Mouth of God that led me to take a journey over the hills to the valley of Taaoa, south of Atuona. Malicious Gossip and her husband, squatting one evening on my mats in the light of the stars, spoke of the Marquesan custom in naming children.

"When a babe is born," said Mouth of God, "all the intimates of his parents, their relatives and friends, bestow a name upon the infant. All these names refer to experiences of the child's ancestors, or of the namers, or of their ancestors. My wife's names--a few of them--are Tavahi Teikimoetetua Tehaupiimouna. These words are separate, having no relation one to another, and they mean Malicious Gossip, She Sleeps with God, The Golden Dews of the Mountain.

"My first three names are Vahatetua Heeafia Timeteo. Vahatetua is Mouth of God; Heeafia, One Who Looks About, and Timeteo is Marquesan for Timothee, the Bible writer.

"My uncle, the Catechist, is Tioakoekoe, Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted on a Stick, and his brother is called Pootuhatuha, meaning Sliced and Distributed. That is because their father, Tufetu, was killed at the Stinking Springs in Taaoa, and was cooked and sent all over that valley. You should see that man who killed him, Kahuiti! He is a great man, and strong still, though old. He likes the 'long pig' still, also. It is not long since he dug up the corpse of one buried, and ate it in the forest."

When I said that I should indeed like to see that man, Mouth of God said that he would send a word of introduction that should insure for me the friendliness of the chief who had devoured his grandfather. Mouth of God bore the diner no ill-will. The eating was a thing accomplished in the past; the teachings of that stern Calvinist, his mother, forbade that he should eat Kahuiti in retaliation, therefore their relations were amicable.

The following morning, attended by the faithful Exploding Eggs, I set out toward Taaoa Valley. The way was all up and down, five miles, wading through marshy places and streams, parting the jungle, caught by the thorns and dripping with sweat. Miles of it was through cocoanut forests owned by the mission.

The road followed the sea and climbed over a lofty little cape, Otupoto, from which the coast of Hiva-oa, as it curves eastward, was unrolled, the valleys mysterious caverns in the torn, convulsed panorama, gloomy gullies suggestive of the old bloody days. Above them the mountains caught the light and shone green or black under the cloudless blue sky. Seven valleys we counted, the distant ones mere faint shadows in the expanse of varied green, divided by the rocky headlands. To the right, as we faced the sea, was the point of Teaehoa jutting out into the great blue plain of the ocean, and landward we looked down on the Valley of Taaoa.

This was the middle place, the scene of Tufetu's violent end. A great splotch of red gleamed as a blot of blood on the green floor of the hollow.

"Vai piau!" said Exploding Eggs. He made a sign of lifting water in his hands, of tasting and spitting it out. The Stinking Springs where Tufetu was slain!

They were in a fantastic gorge, through which ran a road blasted from solid rock, stained brown and blue by the minerals in the water that bubbled there and had carved the stone in eccentric patterns. Bicarbonate of soda and sulphur thickened the heavy air and encrusted the edges of the spring with yellow scum. A fitting scene for a deadly battle, amid smells of sulphur and brimstone! But it was no place in which to linger on a tropic day.

Taaoa Valley was narrow and deep, buried in perpetual gloom by the shadows of the mountains. Perhaps thirty houses lined the banks of a swift and rocky torrent. As we approached them we were met by a sturdy Taaoan, bare save for the pareu and handsomely tattooed. His name, he said, was Strong in Battle, and I, a stranger, must see first of all a tree of wonder that lay in the forest nearby.

Through brush and swamp we searched for it, past scores of ruined paepaes, homes of the long-dead thousands. We found it at length, a mighty tree felled to the earth and lying half-buried in vine and shrub.

"This tree is older than our people," said Strong in Battle, mournfully regarding its prostrate length. "No man ever remembered its beginning. It was like a house upon a hill, so high and big. Our forefathers worshipped their gods under it. The white men cut it to make planks. That was fifty years ago, but the wood never dies. There is no wood like it in the Marquesas. The wise men say that it will endure till the last of our race is gone."

I felt the end of the great trunk, where the marks of the axe and saw still showed, and struck it with my fist. The wood did indeed seem hard as iron, though it seemed not to be petrified. So far as I could ascertain from the fallen trunk, it was of a species I had never seen.

"Twenty years ago I brought a man of Peretane (England) here to see this tree, and he cut off a piece to take away. No white man has looked on it since that time," said Strong in Battle. He brought an axe from a man who was dubbing out a canoe from a breadfruit log, and hacked away a chip for me.

We returned to the village and entered an enclosure in which a group of women were squatting around a popoi bowl.

"What does the Menike seek?" they asked.

"He wants to see the footprint of Hoouiti," said my guide.

On one of the stones of the paepae was a footprint, perfect from heel to toe, and evidently not artificially made.

"Hoouiti stood here when he hurled his spear across the island," said Strong in Battle. "He was not a big man, as you see by his foot's mark."

"Fifteen kilometers! A long hurling of a spear," said I.

"Aue! he was very strong. He lived on this paepae. These whom you see are his children's children. Would you like to meet my wife's father-in-law, Kahuiti? He has eaten many people. He talks well."

Eo! Would I! I vowed that I would be honored by the acquaintance of any of the relatives of my host, and specially I desired to converse with old, wise men of good taste.

"That man, Kahauiti, has seen life," said Strong in Battle. "I am married to the sister of Great Night Moth, who was a very brave and active man, but now foolish. But Kahauiti! O! O! O! Ai! Ai! Ai! There he is."

I never solved the puzzle of my informant's relation to the man who was his wife's father-in-law, for suddenly I saw the man himself, and knew that I was meeting a personage. Kahauiti was on the veranda of a small hut, sitting Turk fashion, and chatting with another old man. Both of them were striking-looking, but, all in all, I thought Kahauiti the most distinguished man in appearance that I had seen, be it in New York or Cairo, London or Pekin.

He had that indefinable, yet certain, air of superiority, of assured position and knowledge, that stamps a few men in the world--a Yuan Shih Kai, Rabindranath Tagore, Sitting Bull, and Porfirio Diaz. He wore only a pareu, and was tattooed from toenails to hair-roots. A solid mass of coloring extended from his neck to the hip on the left side, as though he wore half of a blue shirt. The tahuna who had done the work seemed to have drawn outlines and then blocked in the half of his torso. But remembering that every pin-point of color had meant the thrust of a bone needle propelled by the blow of a mallet, I realized that Kahauiti had endured much for his decorations. No iron or Victoria Cross could cost more suffering.

The bare half of his bosom, cooperish-red, contrasted with this cobalt, and his face was striped alternately with this natural color and with blue. Two inches of the ama ink ran across the eyes from ear to ear, covering every inch of lid and eyebrow, and from this seeming bandage his eyes gleamed with quick and alert intelligence. Other stripes crossed the face from temple to chin, the lowest joining the field of blue that stretched to his waist.

His beard, long, heavy, and snow-white, swept downward over the indigo flesh and was gathered into a knot on his massive chest. It was the beard of a prophet or a seer, and when Kahauiti rose to his full height, six feet and a half, he was as majestic as a man in diadem and royal robes. He had a giant form, like one of Buonarroti's ancients, muscular and supple, graceful and erect.

When I was presented as a Menike who loved the Marquesans and who, having heard of Kahauiti, would drink of his fountain of recollections, the old man looked at me intently. His eyes twinkled and he opened his mouth in a broad smile, showing all his teeth, sound and white. His smile was kindly, disarming, of a real sweetness that conquered me immediately, so that, foolishly perhaps, I would have trusted him if he had suggested a stroll in the jungle.

He took my extended hand, but did not shake it. So new is handshaking and so foreign to their ideas of greeting, that they merely touch fingers, with the pressure a rich man gives a poor relation, or a king, a commoner. His affability was that of a monarch to a courtier, but when he began to talk he soon became simple and merry.

Motioning me to a seat on the mat before him, he squatted again in a dignified manner, and resumed his task of plaiting a rope of faufee bark, a rope an inch thick and perfectly made.

"Mouth of God, of the family of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick, has told me of the slaying of Tufetu, their ancestor," I ventured, to steer our bark of conversation into the channel I sought.

At the names of the first three, Kahauiti smiled, but when Tufetu was mentioned, he broke into a roar. I had evidently recalled proud memories. On his haunches, he slid nearer to me.

"Afu! Afu! Afu!" he said, the sound that in his tongue means the groan of the dying. "You came by the Fatueki?".

"I tasted the water and smelled the smell," I answered.

"It was there that Tufetu died," he observed. "I struck the blow, and I ate his arm, his right arm, for he was brave and strong. That was a war!"

"What caused that war?" I asked the merry cannibal.

"A woman, haa teketeka, an unfaithful woman, as always," replied Kahauiti. "Do you have trouble over women in your island? Yes. It is the same the world over. There was peace between Atuona and Taaoa before this trouble. When I was a boy we were good friends. We visited across the hills. Many children were adopted, and Taaoa men took women from Atuona, and Atuona men from here. Some of these women had two or three or five men. One husband was the father of her children in title and pride, though he might be no father at all. The others shared the mat with her at her will, but had no possession or happiness in the offspring.

"Now Pepehi (Beaten to Death) was of Taaoa, but lived in Atuona with a woman. He had followed her over the hills and lived in her house. He was father to her children. There was a man of Atuona, Kaheutahi, who was husband to her, but of lower rank. He was not father to her children. Therefore one night he swung his war-club upon the head of Beaten to Death, and later invited a number of friends to the feast."

Kahuiti smiled gently upon me. Take off his tattooing, make him white, and clothe him! With his masterful carriage, his soft, cultivated voice, and his attitude of absolutism, he might have been Leopold, King of the Belgians, a great ambassador, a man of power in finance. Nevertheless, I thought of the death by the Stinking Springs. How could one explain his benign, open-souled deportment and his cheery laugh, with such damnable appetites and actions? Yet generals send ten thousand men to certain and agonized death to gain a point toward a goal; that is the custom of generals, by which they gain honor among their people.

"Killed by the war-club of Kaheutahi and eaten by his friends, Beaten to Death was but a ghost, and Kaheutahi took his place and became father of the children of the house. He said they were his in fact, but men were ever boastful."

The other old man, who said nothing, but was all attention, lit a pipe and passed it to Kahuiti, who puffed it a moment and passed it to Strong in Battle. The tale lapsed for a smoking spell.

"Beaten to Death perished by the club? He was well named," said I. "His father was a prophet."

Kahuiti began to chant in a weird monotone.

"Va! Va! A tahi a ta! Va! A tahi va! A ua va! A tou va!" was his chant. "Thus said the war-club as it crashed on the skull of Beaten to Death. That is the speech of the war-club when it strikes. The bones of Beaten to Death were fishhooks before we knew of his death. All Taaoa was angry. The family of Beaten to Death demanded vengeance. The priest went into the High Place, and when he came out he ran all day up and down the valley, until he fell foaming. War was the cry of the gods, war against Atuona.

"But there was too much peace between us, too many men with Atuona women, too many Atuona children adopted by Taaoa women. The peace was happy, and there was no great warrior to urge."

"You had brave men and strong men then," I said, with a sigh for the things I had missed by coming late.

"Tuitui! You put weeds in my mouth!" exclaimed Kahuiti. "I cannot talk with your words. Ue te etau! By the great god of the dead! I am born before the French beached a canoe in the Marquesas. Our gods were gods then, but they turned to wood and stone when the tree-guns of the Farani roared and threw iron balls and fire into our valleys. The Christian god was greater than our gods, and a bigger killer of men."

"But Beaten to Death--?" I urged.

"Beaten to Death was in the stomachs of the men of Atuona, and they laughed at us. Our High Priest said that the Euututuki, the most private god of the priests, commanded us to avenge the eating of Beaten to Death. But the season of preserving the mei in pits was upon us. Also the women of Atuona among us said that there should be peace, and the women of Taaoa who had taken as their own many children from Atuona. Therefore we begged the most high gods to excuse us."

"Women had much power then," I said.

Kahuiti chuckled.

"The French god and the priests of the Farani have taken it from them," he commented. "I have known the day when women ruled. She had her husbands,--two, four, five. She commanded. She would send two to the fishing, one to gathering cocoanuts or wood, one she would keep to amuse her. They came and went as she said. That was mea pe! Sickening! Pee! There are not enough men to make a woman happy. Many brave men have died to please their woman, but--" He blew out his breath in contempt.

Strong in Battle said aside, in French:

"He was never second in the house. Kahauiti despised such men. He was first always."

"So the slaying of Beaten to Death was unavenged?" I asked.

"Epo! Do not drink the cocoanut till you have descended the tree! I have said the warriors were withheld by the women, and there was no great man to lead. Yet the drums beat at night, and the fighting men came. You know how the drums speak?"

His face clouded, and his eyes flashed against their foil of tattooing.

"'Ohe te pepe! Ohe te pepe! Ohe te pepe!' said the drum called Peepee. 'Titiutiuti! Titiutiuti!' said the drum called Umi. Aue! Then the warriors came! They stood in the High Place at the head of the valley. Mehitete, the chief, spoke to them. He said that they should go to Atuona, and bring back bodies for feasting. Many nights the drums beat, and the chief talked much, but there was no war.

"The High Priest went to the Pekia again, and when he came away he ran without stopping for two days and a night, till he fell without breath, as one dead, and foam was on his mouth. The gods were angry. Still there was no war.

"Then came Tomefitu from Vait-hua. He was chief of that valley, having been adopted by a woman of Vait-hua, but his father and his mother were of Taaoa. He had heard of the slaying of Beaten to Death, his kinsman, and he was hot in the bowels. Aue! The thunder of the heavens was as the voice of Tomefitu when angered. The earth groaned where he walked. He knew the Farani and their tricks. He had guns from the whalers, and he was afraid of nothing save the Ghost Woman of the Night. Again the warriors came to the High Place, and now there were many drums."

Kahuiti sprang to his feet. He struck the corner post of the hut with his fist. His eyes burned.

"'Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Tuti! Tuti! Tutuituiti!"

"That was what the war drums said. The sound of them rolled from the Pekia, and every man who could throw a spear or hold a war-club came to their call."

Kahuiti's soul was rapt in the story. His voice had the deep tone of the violoncello, powerful, vibrant, and colorful. He had lived in that strange past, and the things he recalled were precious memories.

The sound of the drums, as he echoed them in the curious tone-words of Marquesan, thrilled me through. I heard the booming of the ten-foot war-drums, their profound and far-reaching call like the roaring of lions in the jungle. I saw the warriors with their spears of cocoanut-wood and their deadly clubs of ironwood carved and shining with oil, their baskets of polished stones slung about their waists, and their slings of fiber, dancing in the sacred grove of the Pekia, its shadows lighted by the blaze of the flickering candlenuts and the scented sandalwood.

"'I am The Wind That Lays Low The Mighty Tree. I am The Wave That Fills The Canoe and Delivers The People To The Sharks!' said Tomefitu. 'The flesh of my kinsman fills the bellies of the men of Atuona, and the gods say war!

"'There is war!' said Tomefitu. 'We must bring offerings to the gods. Five men will go with me to Otoputo and bring back the gifts. I will bring back to you the bodies of six of the Atuona pigs. Prepare! When we have eaten, the chiefs of Atuona will come to Taaoa, and then you will fight!

"'Make ready with dancing. Polish spears and gather stones for the slings. Koe, who is my man, will be obeyed while I am gone. I have spoken,' said Tomefitu. That night Tomefitu and I, with four others, went silently to Otoputo, the dividing rock that looks down on the right into the valley of Taaoa and on the left into Atuona. There we lay among rocks and bushes and spied upon the feet of the enemy. That man who separated himself from others and came our way to seek food, or to visit at the house of a friend, him we secretly fell upon, and slew.

"Thus we did to the six named by Tomefitu, and as we killed them, we sent them back by others to the High Place. There the warriors feasted upon them and gained strength for battle.

"Then, missing so many of their clan, the head men of Atuona came to Otoputo, and shouted to us to give word of the absent. We shouted back, saying that those men had been roasted upon the fire and eaten, and that thus we would do to all men of Atuona. And we laughed at them."

Kahuiti emitted a hearty guffaw at thought of the trick played upon those devoured enemies.

"But Tufetu, the grandfather of my friend Mouth of God?" I persisted.

"Epo! There was war. The men of Atuona gathered at Otupoto, and rushed down upon us. We met them at the Stinking Springs, and there I killed Tufetu, uncle of Sliced and Distributed and Man Whose Entrails Were Roasted On A Stick. I pierced him through with my spear at a cocoanut-tree's length away. I was the best spear-thrower of Taaoa. We drove the Atuonans through the gorge of the Stinking Springs and over the divide, and I ate the right arm of Tufetu that had wielded the war-club. That gives a man the strength of his enemy."

He turned again to plaiting the rope of faufee.

"O ia aneihe, I have finished," he said. "Will you drink kava?"

"No, I will not drink kava," I said sternly. "Kahuiti, is it not good that the eating of men is stopped?"

The majestic chief looked at me, his deep brown eyes looking child-like in their band of blue ink. For ten seconds he stared at me fixedly, and then smiled uncertainly, as may have Peter the fisherman when he was chided for cutting off the ear of one of Judas' soldiers. He was of the old order, and the new had left him unchanged. He did not reply to my question, but sipped his bowl of kava.