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* T A Y L O R O L O G Y *
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* A Continuing Exploration of the Life and Death of William Desmond Taylor *
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* *
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* Issue 75 -- March 1999 Editor: Bruce Long bruce@asu.edu *
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* TAYLOROLOGY may be freely distributed *
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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE:
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Errors in "Fallen Angels"
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Capt. Edward A. Salisbury
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What is TAYLOROLOGY?
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TAYLOROLOGY is a newsletter focusing on the life and death of William Desmond
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Taylor, a top Paramount film director in early Hollywood who was shot to
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death on February 1, 1922. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major
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scandals. This newsletter will deal with: (a) The facts of Taylor's life;
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(b) The facts and rumors of Taylor's murder; (c) The impact of the Taylor
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murder on Hollywood and the nation; (d) Taylor's associates and the Hollywood
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silent film industry in which Taylor worked. Primary emphasis will be given
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toward reprinting, referencing and analyzing source material, and sifting it
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for accuracy.
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Errors in "Fallen Angels"
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We recently came across a recap of the Taylor case published in 1986, in
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FALLEN ANGELS: CHRONICLES OF L. A. CRIME AND MYSTERY, by Marvin Wolf and
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Katherine Mader (Facts [sic] on File Publications, 1986). While not as bad
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as many recaps we have seen, that book's chapter ("Enigma: The Unsolved
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Murder of William Desmond Taylor") does contain many errors. Ignoring the
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many unverified and dubious rumors, here are some of the factual errors in
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the book:
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1. It is erroneously stated that Taylor first acted in films in 1910.
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2. It is erroneously stated that Taylor first directed films in 1919.
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3. It is erroneously stated that Taylor directed "Anne of Green Gables" and
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"The Top of New York" prior to directing Mary Pickford.
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4. It is erroneously stated that Taylor was president of the Director's
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Guild.
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5. It is erroneously stated that Taylor brought Sands to Hollywood.
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6. It is erroneously stated that Minter was 20 at the time of Taylor's
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death.
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7. It is erroneously stated that Minter's mother was Charlotte "Selby".
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8. It is erroneously stated that Faith MacLean was "peering out the window"
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at the man she saw that evening.
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9. It is erroneously stated that Edna Purviance telephoned Mary Miles
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Minter and notified her that Taylor was dead.
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10. It is erroneously stated that Peavey telephoned Taylor's doctor.
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11. It is erroneously stated that Taylor's doctor telephoned Charles Eyton.
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12. It is erroneously stated that Mabel Normand was at the murder scene on
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the morning the body was found.
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13. It is erroneously stated that the coroner arrived before the police.
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14. It is erroneously stated that there was an "exit wound" in Taylor's
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back.
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15. It is erroneously stated that Taylor had been shot through the heart.
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16. It is erroneously stated that the coroner called the police.
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17. It is erroneously stated that Mary's mother was at the murder scene on
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the morning the body was found.
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18. It is erroneously stated that "upstairs in plain sight was almost $1,000
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in cash."
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19. It is erroneously stated that Taylor's ex-wife had tracked him down and
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confronted him in Hollywood.
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20. It is erroneously stated that Taylor was sending monthly child support
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payments to his wife.
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21. It is erroneously stated that Minter was at Taylor's funeral.
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22. It is erroneously stated that Minter and her mother did not reconcile
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until after Charlotte returned from Europe.
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Capt. Edward A. Salisbury
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There were many rumors that William Desmond Taylor was fighting drug
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gangsters at the time of his death, but the only such report which came from
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an actual associate of Taylor's was made by Capt. Edward A. Salisbury (see
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TAYLOROLOGY 72), who reportedly also stated "I knew Taylor ever since he came
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to California." (NEW YORK SUN, February 13, 1922). Salisbury was a noted
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explorer and documentary filmmaker. The following are two other Taylor-case
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press items on Salisbury, followed by items pertaining to Salisbury's
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expeditions between 1917-1923. Taylor did not accompany Salisbury on his
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expeditions; the "Taylor" referred to as crewmember was someone else.
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Another member of his crew was Merian C. Cooper, who would eventually film
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"King Kong."
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Some of the ethnic views expressed by Salisbury seem offensive or
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insensitive by today's standards, but are reflective of the time and culture
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in which they were written. They are reproduced as originally published, for
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historical purposes.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 14, 1922
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NEW YORK WORLD
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Thinks Taylor Was Killed By Some One in "Drug Ring"
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"Billy Taylor threatened to make an example of the drug peddlers at
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Hollywood, but they evidently 'got him' first," said Capt. E. A. Salisbury,
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an intimate of William Desmond Taylor, at the Waldorf yesterday.
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"Just five days before he was killed I had a long chat with him, and he
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told of the activities of a drug ring," continued Capt. Salisbury, formerly
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of the Ordnance Department of the Army, who recently returned from a trip
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around the world.
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"If my theory is right Taylor sacrificed himself to save a popular movie
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star from sinking deeper from the use of narcotics. She confessed to Taylor
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that she was addicted to the drug habit and told where she got her supply.
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In my opinion he was slain by some one whose enmity he incurred in his effort
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to cut off the drug supply of the actress."
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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February 14, 1922
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NEW YORK CALL
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Taylor Slain Because He Bothered Drug Ring, Salisbury Says
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Capt. E. A. Salisbury, traveler, soldier and author, an intimate friend
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and admirer of the late William Desmond Taylor believes Taylor was shot
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because he interfered with the machinations of a drug ring which had enslaved
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a well known film beauty in whom Taylor took a friendly interest. The woman
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meant by Salisbury has been mentioned in the case several times.
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Captain Salisbury, who said he will turn over to the Metropolitan Museum
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a collection of curios from the Island of Borneo and from Africa, asserted
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yesterday that Taylor recently was very angry because drug peddlers were
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selling narcotics to the young woman. Taylor told Salisbury he would "make
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it hot for these people."
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Captain Salisbury's home is in Hollywood, Cal, and his observation of
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Taylor, he said, enabled him to say that Taylor was not a member of the very
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fast set whose parties have become notorious since the Arbuckle case became
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prominent. Taylor, he insisted, was not the man to take advantage of the
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fact that he possessed a certain strong charm for beautiful women.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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March 10, 1917
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PICTURES AND PICTUREGOER
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"The Devil's Eye" in the Tropics
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Twelve thousand miles in a little motor-propelled yacht is surely a
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record! In order to obtain unusual film pictures in and about South and
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Central America, the cruise and travel, which occupied nearly fifteen months,
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were made by the well-known naturalist, hunter, and photographer, Edward A.
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Salisbury. For several months Rex Beach, the famous author and hunter, was a
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member of the party.
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A few weeks ago Mr. Salisbury arrived back in New York, and has since
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told many interesting stories of his film-work and adventures. He brought
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back with him as much as 65,000 feet of film, at least 25,000 feet of which
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he anticipates will be of exceptional quality and of extraordinary interest.
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Owing to the special precautions adopted, the negative, he declares, is
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in better condition than any tropical stuff he has seen. The film was
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carried in a large thermos bottle containing an electric-light. When the
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cover was lifted to remove the film the light would be switched on, and then
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switched off again when the cover was replaced. By this means all moisture
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was eliminated and fungus, which grows so quickly in the tropics, was
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entirely prevented.
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"In the Talamanc country," says Mr. Salisbury, "we found Indians
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descended from the original Incas of Central America. We studied their
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habits and took pictures of them. Did they balk at the camera? Yes, they
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did at first. They called the lens the devil's eye and the box his abiding-
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place. But we prevailed on the chief to distribute presents, which he did
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judiciously, and we had no further trouble.
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"We had a similar experience with the San Blas Indians. At Colon we had
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been informed on our arrival in February that the canal probably would not be
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opened until the middle of April, and consequently we would be compelled to
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remain on the eastern side of the continent for some time. We went down to
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the Windward and Leeward Islands, visited several tribes of Indians and
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looked into the pearl fisheries.
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"We took some wonderful scenes of tarpon fishing. Many shots were
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photographed in narrow streams, where the dense foliage lapped over the
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water. The fish jumped so high at times that they touched the trees.
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"In a trip into the interior with Indians as guides we indulged in
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hunting. Among the tapir we shot, the largest weighed 1,000 lbs. Then, too,
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we got specimens of jaguar, mountain lion, ant, bear, and sloth. The ants,
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of which we found many different kinds, were very interesting. Many pictures
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of these, including the umbrella ant, were taken for scientific purposes.
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"These San Blas Indians are strong on seamanship. They have enormous
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canoes, all carved out of mahogany, and probably the best in the world.
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Their boats are not classified by the number of men they may hold, but
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according to the coconuts that may be stowed in them. We saw some large
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enough to carry two thousand nuts each.
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"One of the finest sets of pictures I obtained will show a canoe race
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which I staged myself. I induced fifty of the Indians to race around one of
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the islands. It was understood that at the word 'Go' they should hoist their
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sails and get away. The mix-up was too amusing for words, but finally it was
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straightened out. Everything went along finely until they reached the head
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of the island, when I noticed the leaders stopping. As the last boat caught
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up with the party they cut loose and came down on the camera all fifty
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abreast. And you may take my word for it, it was a real spectacle. When I
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inquired as to why they had halted I was informed they were waiting for the
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others to catch up! It's a new idea of racing about which they knew nothing,
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but it made a novel picture.
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"We found the San Blas Indians of unusual interest. They are scattered
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over 365 islands, which for 120 miles dot the coast, and perhaps are the
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least known of any Indians in the two Americas. They were the only
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continental Indians ever visited by Columbus--for they are to be found on the
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mainland, too--who discovered them on his third voyage. So far as is known
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they are practically the same today as they were then. They have never mixed
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with any other race. Up to the time we visited them they had never been
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photographed. They were very much averse to the camera, but we became very
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friendly and remained with then several weeks.
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"We took many film-pictures of the homes on the different islands, and
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the gems in these, I think, will be the babies. Youngsters of two, three,
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and four years old venture out in canoes--and mahogany canoes, mind you--
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4 ft. in length. If the waves come aboard the little fellows slide into the
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bottom of the craft, turn over on their stomachs, and literally kick out the
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water, then, reversing their positions, assume the upright and paddle off as
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if nothing had happened to disturb their voyage.
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"We got some fine pictures of sharks of varying lengths up to twenty
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feet (they are plentiful in these waters), and some splendid films of the
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turtle-fisheries. Of Central American birds we made many photographs. And
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butterflies! Down there are to be found some of the most beautiful in the
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world. It is my intention to have these films printed in colours.
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"While we were in Costa Rica we photographed from a mountain and also
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from the seacoast a total eclipse of the sun. The picture we took from the
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latter position came out wonderfully well--fine and clear. It is probably
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the first time it has been done. The conditions in the mountains were not so
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good, as we were bothered by clouds. Nevertheless, the spectacle of the
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fleecy masses crossing the sun may to some enhance the beauty of the unusual
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subject.
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"In the Ucuatan channel we obtained some unusual storm-pictures. The
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little 'Wisdom' battled in waves that were big enough to cause one of the
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fruit-steamers to turn back. We came through without a scratch, and we have
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many good scenes of the water breaking over our boat.
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"In Columbia we captured crocodiles. Wanting a little action, Mr. Beach
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suggested that we should rope one of them and give him a ride. At the word
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the bonds were loosed, the crocodile started for the water, and Mr. Beach
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tried to keep his 'saddle.' He had a number of spills, but we got the
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'action' all right. He's a man who will take a chance on anything. He is in
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most of the pictures we took. No stunt seemed too foolhardy for him to
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attempt. He supplied action. He has nerve in abundance--I know no one with
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any more of it.
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"Our last jump was from Corinto, Nicaragua, straight to Los Angeles, a
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distance of 2,600 miles. The reason we made this long trip without touching
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at a Mexican port was on account of a tip we got from a commander of a United
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States cruiser that there might be trouble with Mexico, so we put well out to
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sea."
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One of the constant drawbacks, in spite of which good pictures were
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obtained, was the rain, which Mr. Salisbury declares was "eternal." In the
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jungle, he said, there was not only darkness, but water as well.
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It is the photographer's intention to select from five to seven thousand
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feet of the best of his pictures for public exhibition, and cut up the rest
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for scientific bodies and educational institutions.
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His vessel, the "Wisdom," is now undergoing repairs in readiness for a
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trip to the South Sea Islands.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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August 1922
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ASIA
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Cruising in Coral Seas
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by Edward A. Salisbury
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In 1920 I sailed from east to west straight across the South Pacific in
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an 80-ton auxiliary yacht. This boat, the "Wisdom II," had been made into a
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motion-picture laboratory, for I purposed to try to catch and hold for
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history a photographic record of the fast dying races of the South Seas
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islands.
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We spent eighteen months at the work. It was not all passed in
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photographing the carefree, entrancing life of the Polynesians of the Society
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Islands. That, after all, was the least difficult part of our task. There
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is a strangely different panorama as one sails steadily westward from the
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laughter-loving, sensuous Polynesian races of the Marquessas, Tahiti and
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Samoa to the blacker, less kindly mixed breeds of the Fijis, then on to the
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headhunters of the Solomons and the near-savages of the New Hebrides and New
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Guinea. It is as if nature had drawn a mathematical graph of descending
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values--shown in no way more clearly than in the position of women.
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In the eastern islands, woman is a child of pleasure. Man is not her
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master, but her eternal lover. In Samoa, she is still free and happy, but
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more of the wife with household labors, less of the mistress. In the Fijis,
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she is looked upon as a worker for the man. And in the New Hebrides and the
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Solomons, she is a slave--something to be exchanged for a pig, traded by
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father to husband, often beaten, sometimes tortured, a beast of burden, an
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animal less valued than a sow. There are islands on which, when a sow dies,
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the woman must cease to suckle--must sometimes even kill her female
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children--and take to her breasts the dead swine's offspring.
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But the white races push onward, bringing with them the powerful forces
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of steam, powder, electricity, and the black magic of the white man's
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diseases. And as the white man masters, the native dies.
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On the twenty-second evening after the "Wisdom II," with a crew composed
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mostly of college boys, had slipped into the channel outward bound from Los
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Angeles, star sights showed us that we had made 2,700 miles and were 75 miles
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off Hiva-oa, the easternmost island of the Marquesas. At dawn we saw, dead
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ahead, a mountain jutting up out of the sea, gray in the early morning light.
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As we approached, the sun swooped up, the sea turned from black to purple,
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the gray mass ahead hardened into a series of mountain tops with sloping
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walls of dark green foliage. I thought of the hundred romantic tales I had
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heard of these islands from boyhood--Bougainville, Porter, the mutiny of the
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"Bounty." I pictured the island girls swimming out and swarming over the
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rails of Melville's ship, clinging to their shrouds, laughing, their long,
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heavy black hair only half covering perfectly formed naked bodies. Then we
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dropped anchor in a little. half-moon bay on the north coast--a gem of
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emerald beauty, tranquil, unspoiled. My crew of undergraduates crowded the
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forward rails, waiting for the canoes full of joyous natives, for the
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swimming girls with their flower-decked hair.
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On the shore, no sign of life. Half an hour we waited. Then we saw a
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single little outrigger canoe heading toward us. It floated against the
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yacht's side. Three brown faces, sickly and drawn, one smallpox scarred,
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stared up at us. The legs of the man steering were hideously swollen.
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Elephantiasis.
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"What place is this?" we asked in French. The bloated man lifted his
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face listlessly.
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"A leper village," he replied.
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The village of Atuona, the capital of Hiva-oa, is a small group of
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wooden shacks with galvanized iron roofs. Its population is made up of some
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three hundred natives, a few half-breeds and Chinese, the French governor,
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gendarmerie and a priest. It lies on a little bay at the bottom of a great
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half crater of a volcano, the other half having broken away ages ago and slid
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into the sea. On the inner side of the crater a lovely garden of green,
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splashed with multitudinous gorgeous flowers and huge boulders, has grown up.
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Everywhere coconut, mango, breadfruit and orange trees and innumerable
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waterfalls make the scene strangely beautiful.
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But something has been twisted out of shape in nature's scheme.
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At every turn I saw rotting thatched roofs, villages not dying, but dead.
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Occasionally girls and men would pass with something of the ancient beauty of
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the race, but most of them were thin and sickly. The Marquesan race has
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dwindled from over a hundred thousand to less than two thousand in a century.
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There was no doubt of what I had so often been told. In another few years it
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will have disappeared.
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"And then," I asked myself, "what will become of these magnificent
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islands? Will they turn into deserted gardens of loveliness?" I thought of
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the slums of great cities, children by thousands, hollow-cheeked, starved for
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air and sunshine. Why could they not be carried here? But all too clearly
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it came to me than in these seductive islands no white man has ever done hand
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labor. He may become a master, and, failing that, a beach-comber--but a
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worker, never. This is not a white man's land.
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I came to the outskirts of Atuona, where, on marshy ground, a group of a
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dozen shacks sprawled--the Chinese colony. I stopped in the tiny trading
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store of Chang, an old Chinese who had lived long in San Francisco, to ask a
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drink of water. In the rear room I heard the clatter of pans where his
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native wife was at work.
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"Chang," I asked, "do you like it here?"
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"Yes, Atuona good," he said.
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"And your children?"
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Gravely he walked to the door. He pointed out toward the coconut
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groves. "My sons half-Chinese. THEY no play. THEY like 'um work like
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hell!" he said.
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That was the answer to the problem. The Chinese! Bred to labor,
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immunized by a hundred epidemics from the diseases whose lightest touch is
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fatal to the Marquesans, these tremendously vital Chinese have imparted to
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their half-Asiatic sons the capacity to work industriously in a land where
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the natives have played through all time.
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Among sailormen the world over the subject of whether a shark will
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attack a man is always one for heated argument. I thought at first that the
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Marquesans would swim in shark-infested water anywhere. But I learned
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otherwise.
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One day in the "Wisdom's" launch, accompanied by two of my college men,
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McNeil and Taylor, and a native boy, I skirted Hiva-oa on a goat hunt. Up
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the coast, where low bluffs rose abruptly from the sea, we began to catch
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sight of goats jumping from rock to rock. Occasionally we saw groups of wild
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horses, probably descendants of animals brought by the early whites. These
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horses are scarcely more than pony size and seem to decrease in stature with
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each generation that they remain in the wild.
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Finally we saw three goats silhouetted from the top of a bluff, offering
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an excellent mark. I determined to pick off the he-goat, and, as I thought
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the goat would drop into the water when hit, I told the native boy to strip
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and get ready to jump in and haul him out. To my surprise the boy became
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panic-stricken.
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"No, no, I no go in water here. Bad, very bad," he said, shrinking down
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in the bottom of the boat and refusing to budge.
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From his explanation, mostly made by gestures, I gathered that goats
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fighting on the bluffs often fell into the water and were eaten by sharks.
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McNeil grinned skeptically and offered to go over the side after the animal
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if I killed him. But argument was cut short by the activity of the goats.
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They began to move away and I quickly lined my sights on the old whiskered
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chap and fired. He leaped upward and fell straight down sixty feet into the
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water, striking it a few yards from our boat. He rose, struggling, wounded.
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Then a streak of a fin crossed the water, there was one agonized bleat from
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the boat, and he disappeared from view. I peered over the side and through
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the clear water saw a dark, writhing mass going down.
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McNeil wiped his forehead. "Who said sharks wouldn't bite?" he asked.
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Louis, fat, jolly, half-Portuguese, half-Tahitian, and Philip, lean,
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quarter-breed Frenchman, two rival traders, and I were sitting under a rude
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canvas awning on the deck of Louis's 80-foot trading schooner. The boat was
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|
abominably dirty. Cockroaches and copra-bugs swarmed everywhere. But the
|
|
two trading captains, undisturbed and happy, bragged to each other of how
|
|
each had warned chiefs against the other as a cheating scoundrel. I think
|
|
both spoke the truth.
|
|
Then said Philip: "Why don't you sail for Papeete, Louis? You have
|
|
plenty of copra aboard."
|
|
"My engineer's mother--she die Thursday. I wait for her to die," he
|
|
answered.
|
|
Philip nodded his head comprehendingly. But I thought a moment. "This
|
|
is Monday, Louis," I said. "How do you know she is going to die on
|
|
Thursday?"
|
|
Louis explained that natives seem to see death coming from afar off.
|
|
One day a woman will appear quite well. Then she will announced that on a
|
|
certain day, perhaps a week or more later on, she will die--and die she does.
|
|
Superstition, self-hypnotism, call it what you will--she dies.
|
|
But I was skeptical, and on Thursday, with most of my crew, at Louis's
|
|
invitation, I went to the woman's village. The grave was dug, the relatives
|
|
and friends were all there--and the woman who was to die was walking calmly
|
|
among them. She insisted that the burial feast be held anyhow. The meal was
|
|
cooked in a large, home-made fireless cooker--a pit some five feet in
|
|
diameter by two feet deep, dug in the earth near a stream. The women had
|
|
been to the mouth of the stream with nets and had brought back baskets of
|
|
fresh shrimps. A half-dozen pigs had been killed. A number of chickens had
|
|
been put to death in the peculiar way of the islands. A woman pulls out one
|
|
of the large feathers from the fowl that is to die and thrusts it sharply
|
|
into the back of the chicken's neck. The luckless chickens had been cooked
|
|
over separate fires, and their meat shredded away from the bones. Green taro
|
|
leaves were cut up, mixed with the chicken meat and laid in baskets of green
|
|
banana leaves. On these baskets was squeezed the milk of coconuts. Then
|
|
breadfruit was peeled with a conch-shell and the shrimps were enfolded in
|
|
leaf baskets.
|
|
All these delicacies--pigs, shrimps and chicken--were laid on a grate
|
|
made of stalks from green coconut leaves, which had been placed on the hot
|
|
rocks in the bottom of the pit. This layer was then covered first with
|
|
banana leaves, next with mats of burau leaves, and finally with damp earth.
|
|
Every hole which emitted a jet of escaping steam was carefully plugged.
|
|
In an hour the earth was taken off, and a delicious meal served us on leaf
|
|
dishes. By each plate was a self-filled cup made by cutting away the top of
|
|
a green coconut.
|
|
First the men ate; then the women; then the dogs; and finally the pigs.
|
|
All stuffed to the utmost. And over the entire funeral feast presided the
|
|
woman who was to have died that day! We thanked her, as hostess, and went
|
|
away on the path leading past her open grave.
|
|
She died the following Monday.
|
|
|
|
One night at a dinner at Papeete, the capital of the Society Islands,
|
|
I was seated beside a beautiful woman. Gown, slippers, manners seemed to
|
|
mark her as a French woman of delicate training. She was a Tahitian, the
|
|
Princess Tekau, direct descendant of the old Tahitian kings.
|
|
A week later, I sailed with the princess, her cousin and Warren Wood,
|
|
a former California yachtsman, and his mother, for Morea, an island near
|
|
Tahiti. Here, to the natives, this princess, though divested of all power by
|
|
the French, was still their queen. At her order, a hundred girls and men
|
|
danced the hula-hula and a great feast was prepared--raw fish in lime-juice
|
|
sauce, steamed crawfish, breadfruit with coco-cream sauce, barbecued young
|
|
pig, baked taro and bananas, and a pudding made of arrowroot and dried
|
|
bananas. But the greatest of all the delicacies was heart-of-palm salad,
|
|
called the "thousand-dollar salad", because made from the heart of the leaf-
|
|
cluster of a coconut-tree eight years old. To get it the tree must be
|
|
destroyed.
|
|
At dinner in town the week before, the princess was a perfect European.
|
|
Today, she was a princess among her own people--thoroughly loyal to them,
|
|
thoroughly proud of them. She stuffed her fingers in her mouth with the food
|
|
and drew them out with a loud, sucking noise; then looked at me and laughed.
|
|
"Make lots of noise, Captain," she bantered commandingly. "They won't
|
|
think you are enjoying yourself, unless you do." I obeyed.
|
|
|
|
The women of Tahiti, lovely and easily loving, have long been famed as
|
|
the sirens of sailors. I found them in no way changed. I landed at Papeete
|
|
with my crew intact. When I sailed away six weeks later, I was short two
|
|
mates, an engineer and a third of my sailors. Some of them were ill, but
|
|
most had succumbed to the lure of the island. As I write, I catch a glimpse
|
|
of laughing girls, barefooted, dressed in gay pareus, with flowers in their
|
|
hair, going down a Pepeete street, hand in hand with my two bull-necked
|
|
Swedish mates, Chris and John. They were both honest sailors, but that was
|
|
the last I saw of them. The "coconut girls" of Papeete figured in my moving
|
|
pictures. It is true that all Tahitians innately love a lover, which is by
|
|
no means to say, however, that social lines are not drawn sharply in Papeete
|
|
society. These "coconut girls" are a class of their own. They have come to
|
|
Tahiti from many neighboring islands, brought by fair promises or the lure of
|
|
the "city," and left by the men they came with. They live up among the
|
|
coconut groves behind the town and are a happy, carefree lot, quite content
|
|
with the gift of a seat at the "movies", if from one they like. When the
|
|
fancy strikes them or they want a new pareu, they may wait on table at the
|
|
hotels. My film-taking was a great lark for them. They pictured splendidly
|
|
on the film, but my difficulty was to keep them in one place long enough to
|
|
finish a reel. San Francisco brewers who established breweries in Tahiti
|
|
when prohibition came into force in the United States, made my work no
|
|
easier. I would take down to the beach two automobiles filled with girls,
|
|
laughing and shouting at every pedestrian, but when the cameras were set up
|
|
and I was ready to begin work, too often half the girls and most of my
|
|
assistants had disappeared. So when I sailed from Papeete, I left steamer
|
|
tickets for the missing members of the crew. When I arrived in America over
|
|
a year later, a friend showed me a newspaper headline something like this:
|
|
"Returned Crew Says Salisbury Reincarnated Wolf Larsen." Wolf Larsen would
|
|
have murdered more than one man if he had had a crew ashore at Tahiti.
|
|
|
|
Daylight of May 17 found the "Wisdom II" in sight of seven islands--the
|
|
first of the two hundred of the Fijis, where Polynesian and Melanesian races
|
|
have fused into a strong, hardy people. The thing I remembered principally
|
|
about the Fijians was that a generation ago they had been the fiercest
|
|
cannibals of the South Seas.
|
|
We sailed past Taviuni, Garden of the Fijis. The next morning we stood
|
|
into Suva Harbor on the island of Viti Levu. A 15,000-ton steamer and also
|
|
two smaller ships were alongside stout concrete docks on which worked gangs
|
|
of Fijians--tall, dark, strongly made, their masses of busy black hair
|
|
impossible for any style of hat. Near them were swarms of turbaned Hindus,
|
|
imported from India for labor. Ashore, automobiles rolled merrily along well-
|
|
paved streets, lined with concrete stores. At each important street
|
|
intersection were bareheaded, barefooted, khaki-clad Fiji traffic policemen.
|
|
On the slope of the hill back of the town were numbers of fine residences
|
|
surrounded by gardens or small parks. And we dined that night at an ultra-
|
|
modern hotel, the best in the South Seas, among men and women in conventional
|
|
evening clothes. A Carnegie library on the man street completed the picture.
|
|
We had come to wild, cannibal Fiji.
|
|
|
|
A tall Fijian stood at the steering-wheel of the old cabin launch.
|
|
He held the lower spokes of the wheel gripped firmly with his feet and moved
|
|
it dexterously as he stared over the launch-house. We were going--Taylor,
|
|
McNeil, one of the camera-men and myself, with our host, Mr. Davis, a Suva
|
|
merchant of lifelong residence in the Fijis--to the island of Mbau, the
|
|
former stronghold of Thakombau, most famous of the old cannibal kings, once
|
|
master of most of this part of the Fijis. As we came close to the island, we
|
|
could see on its lee side great slabs of stone, placed upright, making a
|
|
protecting wall. At fifty-foot intervals, there were openings into which war
|
|
canoes once were hauled after raids. As Davis stepped out at one of these
|
|
openings, he stretched his arms lazily and said, "About time for a drink."
|
|
A huge, handsome, black Fijian, dressed in knickerbockers and a shirt,
|
|
but barefooted, stepped forward and speaking in a cultured English drawl
|
|
said, "Really, you know, I think that would be an excellent idea." It was
|
|
Ratu Pope Epeli Senilola, grandson of King Thakombau. A few minutes later as
|
|
we sat in his house, a frame building of hand-hewn timbers set on a
|
|
rectangular stone base, with sides of woven reeds and a thatched roof of
|
|
coconut leaves, he told us of the part he and his people had played in the
|
|
world war.
|
|
"We are a race of warriors," he said. "And so when England--to which my
|
|
father's father ceded the Fijis by signing a paper on that very table there--
|
|
went to war with her enemies, I raised a regiment of my people. When we came
|
|
to France, my warriors were astounded to find that instead of fighting we
|
|
were to do servant duty. However, the Fijians are people obedient to their
|
|
chiefs, and when I, their King, played the flunkey cheerfully, they could not
|
|
complain.
|
|
"But though I acted as a servant there, I am not here, as you will see,"
|
|
he said. He called out sharply. A man entered, squatted on one of the mats
|
|
covering the coral-pebbled floor, several feet from the King, and clapped his
|
|
hands softly three times, the Fijian sign of obeisance to a chief. With a
|
|
curt nod, the young Fijian monarch gave him permission to rise. Though shorn
|
|
by the English of much of his forefathers' power, Pope held to his privileges
|
|
of rank. Also he played the part of father to his people. While the
|
|
influenza was sweeping the Fijis some time before, he had gone fearlessly
|
|
among his people, personally attending the sick, until he himself was
|
|
stricken. According to Fijian law, he owned no land nor personal property,
|
|
but he had lala rights over the services and possessions of all his subjects.
|
|
While his villages were at work preparing for our entertainment, he
|
|
showed us his immediate domain. In the middle of the village he pointed out
|
|
the remains of an old pagan temple, the foundations of which are still
|
|
intact. Against one of its corner-stones only a comparatively few years ago,
|
|
his grandfather, before being converted to Christianity, had had knocked out
|
|
the brain of every male captive and of many a female. It was one of the
|
|
killing methods before cooking for the feast. It also had the religious
|
|
significance of a sacrifice. The victim's hands and feet were grasped by
|
|
four stalwart executioners who swung the captive back with a long swing, then
|
|
rammed him forward with four-man power, the head smashing against the
|
|
execution rock.
|
|
Near this spot stands a small stone church, built by the father of the
|
|
present King in commemoration of King Thakombau's conversion to Christianity.
|
|
The royal builder of the monument had a hollow scooped out in the old
|
|
beheading stone, which he placed in the church as a receptacle for holy
|
|
water. But the horrified missionaries quickly removed it. The rock still
|
|
remains in one corner of the church, however.
|
|
In the afternoon, for our benefit, a canoe race was held, in which we
|
|
rode as passengers. Only in one place on the New Guinea coast have I seen
|
|
canoes rigged like these of this part of Fiji. They were outrigger dugouts,
|
|
whale-backed, some thirty feet long. In the center of each canoe was a
|
|
single mast, to which was attached the upper end of a large sail of pandanus
|
|
matting. This sail was fastened on a reversible sprit. The boat was brought
|
|
about by the simple expedient of shifting the bottom end of the matting from
|
|
one end of the canoe to the other. At either end were sockets to hold it in
|
|
place. The canoes were steered by big nine-foot paddles.
|
|
To a sailor these canoes were one of the most interesting objects
|
|
imaginable. One small craft had a lone man for crew. It was a wonder of
|
|
trick seamanship to see him bring his canoe about simply by grabbing the big
|
|
paddle and the lower end of the sail and rushing to the other end of the
|
|
boat. Sailing to the leeward, the canoes skidded the outriggers so that they
|
|
barely touched water and were occasionally lifted high in the air.
|
|
At nightfall a feast was to be served in our house. Clean mats were
|
|
first brought in. Then the King entered and seated himself cross-legged,
|
|
facing the door. Thereafter no native entered without first falling on his
|
|
or her hands and knees before the King and Queen, as well as the rest of the
|
|
guests. A girl of twenty took a seat in the center of the mat. She was the
|
|
King's cousin. She acted as mistress of ceremonies. Other girls, bringing
|
|
in the dishes, handed them all to her, and she served us. I had eaten at
|
|
three o'clock and told the King that I was afraid I should be unable to
|
|
swallow a morsel. But he insisted that I try the first course, a clear fish
|
|
soup, served in a polished half coconut-shell. I ate that, then two more
|
|
bowls, and then everything else that was served. It was the most delicious
|
|
meal I had in the South Seas. Little black fish, which can be eaten by no
|
|
one but the King and his guests, were served in three forms, roasted in
|
|
leaves, boiled and crisply grilled. Then followed turtle meat, roasted
|
|
chicken, yams, breadfruit, and taro leaves steamed in coconut milk. There
|
|
was only one Europeanism--coffee was served in cups.
|
|
Dinner over, fifteen girls, their coarse hair brushed astoundingly erect
|
|
and made even blacker than natural, if possible, by a preparation of soot,
|
|
took their places in a semicircle for a sitting meke, one of the native
|
|
dances. While they moved their bodies back and forth and waved their arms in
|
|
undulations of the dance, they sang, keeping time to the music by tapping
|
|
their feet on the floor. One girl, almost a child, with a high soprano
|
|
voice, would chant the first few notes of each verse. Then the others would
|
|
join in, the movements of their bodies illustrating the words of the song,
|
|
which usually was a tale of native life--of hunting, fishing, war, love.
|
|
The tunes were chanted in a high minor key, but they bore a suspicious
|
|
resemblance to certain familiar missionary hymns.
|
|
As the girls sang, their songs grew more stirring, and one by one old
|
|
warriors of the young King's father grouped themselves about the door.
|
|
Suddenly in the midst of a war-song, one of these old men, without a word,
|
|
threw up his hands and pitched across the threshold--dead. His heart had
|
|
given out under the passion stirred by old remembrances. The King
|
|
accompanied the body to the dead man's hut, comforted the widow and children
|
|
and then returned to tell us with great regret that, because of the four-day
|
|
period of mourning to follow, he would be unable to continue the festivities
|
|
in our honor.
|
|
|
|
The Fijians are controlled by a combination political theory that to my
|
|
western mind was almost pure communism, paradoxically including government by
|
|
a chief with wide powers, who owes fealty to the King-Emperor. There is no
|
|
private ownership of property. If a man wishes anything from another, he
|
|
asks for it and according to Fijian custom, his neighbor must give it up--
|
|
whether it be pig, sulu (the native single garment that hangs from the waist)
|
|
or spear. It would appear that, under this system, the most industrious
|
|
beggar must necessarily be the richest man, and that the only reward for a
|
|
hard worker is to be able to have more to give away than his fellows. The
|
|
first part of my assumption is partially true--practically every Fijian is an
|
|
industrious beggar. But his begging is limited, for no mans looks farther
|
|
ahead than the immediate present. If he has food for the day, he is content.
|
|
I found, on the other hand, that my fear that the man who labors hard might
|
|
be robbed of the fruits of his toil by his fellow tribesman, was not
|
|
warranted--for no man in Fiji labors as an individual. All work is done in
|
|
common, and the result of the work divided equally among all. If an man's
|
|
house has been burned, he reports to his chief that he needs a new one and
|
|
the chief assigns a certain number of men to build it. Thus, literally, no
|
|
man can be richer than his fellows, and for that reason in the Fijis there is
|
|
none of the jealousy of wealth that exists in more sophisticated communities.
|
|
The tribal chief in these communistic governments theoretically owns no
|
|
personal property. But he is considered to own the bodies of all members of
|
|
his tribe and all their possessions. Formerly he had the power of life and
|
|
death. Now, though the British have done away with this, he still controls
|
|
his people's property and labor and is their judge and administrator. The
|
|
British make him directly responsible to them, and when the British resident
|
|
agent wishes men or work, he simply gives an order to the native king or
|
|
chief of the district. I saw some three hundred of Pope's men clearing a
|
|
government road through the brush and was surprised to find them working
|
|
industriously, without overseers. This was the more amazing as I had had
|
|
ample proof of the indolence of the average Fijian.
|
|
Pope's villages were typical Fijian communistic communities. The houses
|
|
were built in regular order, all almost exactly alike, rectangular-shaped and
|
|
thatched with straw. They were neatly kept and surrounded by well-clipped
|
|
grass lawns with no rubbish about. The interiors were bare except for food,
|
|
clean-looking sleeping-mats and a few spears, cooking utensils and fishing-
|
|
nets. I looked about particularly to see if any man appeared to have more
|
|
than his neighbors. As far as I could see, Pope's boast that no man was
|
|
richer than another in Fiji was correct. In some of the houses there may
|
|
have been a few more fish or coconuts than in others. But in thirty years'
|
|
wandering in many quarters of the globe I have never seen a more equitable
|
|
distribution of worldly goods.
|
|
As we returned from Mbau in our launch one day, Pope, who accompanied
|
|
us, overheard one of his underchiefs telling another of a large pearl he had
|
|
found. Without ado, Pope demanded it of the man, who immediately handed it
|
|
to his King.
|
|
"Will he not be angry with you?" I asked.
|
|
"Ah, no," replied Pope. "When we reach home, he will come to me and ask
|
|
a pig or two. And I must give them to him."
|
|
"But suppose you refuse?"
|
|
"We never refuse. That is the custom of our people, far more
|
|
unbreakable than any written law you have in the United States."
|
|
In Fiji, woman plays no part in government. She is simply a worker for
|
|
man. And, since a Fijian has only one wife as a rule, her duties are
|
|
arduous. The Fijian woman catches fish, gathers firewood, makes tapa-cloth
|
|
and mats, cooks and rears the children. She has no leisure except in her
|
|
girlhood. Her life is infinitely harder than that of the Polynesian women of
|
|
the Society Islands, and in direct contrast with these girls she is notably
|
|
chaste. But not so chaste as in former times. This is due in part to a
|
|
change in custom brought about by the missionaries. Formerly, men and women
|
|
were separated into different compounds at nightfall. Now they sleep
|
|
together in one large room of the Fijian house. This has caused much
|
|
immorality. This immorality has also greatly increased the practice of
|
|
abortion, which was always prevalent in the Fijis, perhaps more so than among
|
|
any other people of the world. Despite stringent laws, in nearly every
|
|
Fijian village there are one or more "wise women" who know certain savagely
|
|
efficient herbs for this purpose.
|
|
Because of the hard life which the Fijian woman has after marriage, she
|
|
is not anxious to marry young. In one village a chief told me that he had
|
|
become so worried over the failure of his young women to marry, that he had
|
|
arranged a betrothal dance. The young women were lined up on one side of the
|
|
dancing-ground and the young men, dressed in their gayest sulus, their bodies
|
|
glistening with oil, on the other. The young warriors danced a dance of
|
|
love, then at a signal stopped suddenly, and each rolled an orange across the
|
|
grass to the feet of one of the girls. According to the chief's plan, every
|
|
girl was to marry the man whose orange she picked up. Not a single girl
|
|
lifted the betrothal fruit from the ground.
|
|
The marriage of a high chief to the daughter of a chief of another
|
|
tribe, however, is an occasion of great rejoicing for the women of the tribe
|
|
as well as the men. As soon as the girl is established in her new home, her
|
|
husband, accompanied by all his clan, returns with her to her old home. The
|
|
visitors have the right to take everything they wish from the bride's
|
|
father's villages. And they usually make a clean sweep of it. But I was
|
|
told that the losers take their loss cheerfully, picturing the day when their
|
|
turn will come.
|
|
Before we left Mbau, the period of mourning was over, and a feast and a
|
|
dance were given in our honor. The celebration began with a kava ceremony.
|
|
Then we took places under the coconut-trees on the border of a large grassy
|
|
plot. Out came the men, led by a young chief, fantastically painted, oiled
|
|
and dragging on the ground behind him a long strip of tapa-cloth. Following
|
|
him, swinging their war-clubs high, were fifty warriors, dressed as the chief
|
|
except for the train. Then came fifty young girls, gay in many necklaces of
|
|
flowers and new sulus of tapa-cloth. After the dance the men and girls filed
|
|
before me, each placing a gift at my feet. The men gave turtles, most valued
|
|
food of the Fijis, and the women the sulus which they had worn in the dance.
|
|
The ceremony concluded when the King presented me with a whale's tooth, the
|
|
highest honor that can be paid a guest.
|
|
We left Mbau the next morning. With us went Pope and forty minor chiefs
|
|
who were going to Suva to present gifts and to hold a kava ceremony in honor
|
|
of the British Governor, who was shortly to leave for England. I found that
|
|
many of these chiefs could speak English. Some had been educated at
|
|
universities in Australia, as had Pope, and most were loyal to the British
|
|
government. It seemed hard to believe that they were leaders of a people
|
|
who, only a generation before, had been among the most feared of the savage
|
|
cannibals of the South Seas.
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
September 1922
|
|
ASIA
|
|
A Napoleon of The Solomons
|
|
|
|
by Edward A. Salisbury
|
|
|
|
Gau is not a big man. In fact, among the fierce warriors of his tribe,
|
|
with their hawklike Semitic features, his thick-set body, full lips and flat
|
|
nose give him the appearance of being squat and stupid. Yet Gau is the war-
|
|
leader of the most famous head-hunters of the South Seas.
|
|
It seems queer to find these people of Bella Lavella, the island over
|
|
which Gau rules, in the Solomons. On most of the islands live the smaller,
|
|
brown type of Malanesians. But the people of Vella Lavella approach the pure
|
|
Papuan--big, black and strong. And it is queerer still to find as their
|
|
leader in war this little man, Gau, plainly of strange blood, perhaps the
|
|
child of some woman brought back as a chief's captive from a distant raid.
|
|
At any rate he sprang from obscurity, as a young man made himself master of
|
|
Vella Lavella, leader of a thousand warriors, and within a few years swept
|
|
the western Solomons. He built dozens of war-canoes, each christened with
|
|
the blood of human sacrifice. He conquered and ate of the bodies of three
|
|
great chiefs, thereby joining the mana of their courage and cunning to his
|
|
own fierce spirit. The skull-houses of his warriors were filled with skulls.
|
|
For the first time the tribes of Vella Lavella were united under one head for
|
|
war. It seemed that he would extend his little empire widely--be a king
|
|
indeed.
|
|
And then off Vella Lavella appeared, one day, a great gray canoe with
|
|
guns that could kill a score of warriors with one bullet. The natives fled
|
|
into the hills. The white men had come. They landed and, with deliberation
|
|
and thoroughness, destroyed every war-canoe they could find. Gau's power was
|
|
broken.
|
|
The great chief had led his last head-hunt. He recognized the white man
|
|
as his master, and this master made a strange law: "Thou shalt not kill."
|
|
But a law to be obeyed. For down at the foot of the hill, behind the handful
|
|
of white, galvanized-roofed government bungalows at Tulagi, the tiny capital
|
|
of the white chief, there is a tall wooden gallows, from which swing the
|
|
bodies of those who break this law. So Gau hunts heads no more.
|
|
We were sitting one July day last year under the awning spread over the
|
|
deck of my little yacht, "Wisdom II," on which I was making a tour of the
|
|
South Seas, to take motion-pictures. There were three of us: Captain Blake,
|
|
a big, "rangy" young Irishman, the British resident agent for the Solomons;
|
|
Nicholson, an Australian Methodist missionary, burned gaunt with a thousand
|
|
nights of fever; and I. Blake had lost his own boat a few weeks before, on
|
|
one of the numberless uncharted reefs of the islands, and was making his
|
|
inspection-tour in mine. Nicholson had come for supplies to Gizo, a tiny
|
|
trading post, where I had picked him up. We were speaking of my chances of
|
|
photographing a head-hunt.
|
|
"Nicholson's blacks would be the very men to turn the trick. Gau is
|
|
there, and he was the greatest head-hunter of them all," said Captain Blake.
|
|
"But I suppose it's no go. The beggar was killing off the tribes of every
|
|
island he could reach--and he and his warriors traveled incredibly far in
|
|
those big canoes of theirs. One of my predecessors had to burn the lot."
|
|
Nicholson looked up and smiled. "I'm not so sure of that, you know,"
|
|
he said. "I think that, if promised the canoes wouldn't be destroyed, they
|
|
might produce a few."
|
|
I was enthusiastic in a moment. But both Blake and the missionary were
|
|
dubious. They feared the effect; there was the possibility that the staging
|
|
of a head-hunt might arouse the sleeping passions of the natives. Finally
|
|
they yielded.
|
|
A month later I arrived at Vella Lavella to make the pictures. The
|
|
"Wisdom II" anchored off Nicholson's mission, a beautiful spot--a little
|
|
church by the side of a native village, sitting a hundred feet above the sea
|
|
on a small plateau. We landed on a wide beach, fringed with palm-trees, and
|
|
there the missionary met us. As we walked back through a coconut grove and
|
|
mounted rude wooden stairs to the plateau, he told me how he had first come
|
|
there thirteen years before.
|
|
He and his wife had arrived in Tulagi from Australia. There they heard
|
|
of the breaking of Gau's power, of his fierce lust for heads, of the terror
|
|
of his name in the Solomons. Young and eager, they volunteered to go to his
|
|
island, where never white folk had dwelt before. Their offer was accepted,
|
|
though it was thought they had chosen the death of martyrs.
|
|
The small boat from the trading schooner landed them with their few
|
|
bundles of baggage on the beach and then raced back to the ship. They looked
|
|
about. Above, on the plateau, they could see the thatched roofs of a
|
|
village, but neither man, woman nor child. Silence, but for the surf
|
|
breaking on the coral reefs, and the forest cries of birds. It was the kind
|
|
of silence that is more to be fear than the fierce shouts of the spear-rush--
|
|
a man-made silence.
|
|
The young Australian looked out toward the ship and swung up his arm, to
|
|
show that all was well. He and the woman silently watched the vessel sail
|
|
away, then turned and hand in hand walked up the rough path to the village.
|
|
Soon, as if by signal, appeared out of the jungle the people whom they had
|
|
come to teach the ways of the white man's God: naked black men, spear and
|
|
stone club in hand; women with babies on their bare hips or swung from bark-
|
|
cloth slings thrown over one shoulder; children huddling in the rear. The
|
|
white girl crept close to her husband, not daring to look at these fierce
|
|
head-hunters and cannibals. A little native boy walked boldly up to the
|
|
white man, who smiled down at him and patted him on the head. Then a squat
|
|
black man, decorated with many ornaments, made a sign--and the menacing
|
|
circle melted away. The young missionary's cool courage had won. The boy
|
|
was the favorite son of the great chief, and "the black with all the filigree-
|
|
work was Gau himself", finished Nicholson as we came to the door of his
|
|
bungalow.
|
|
I looked about wonderingly; for here was the spot where that scene had
|
|
taken place only a few years before. But now there was this neat bungalow,
|
|
through the open door of which I could see European furniture, and near by
|
|
stood a little wooden church, and stretching away from it long rows of neatly
|
|
kept thatched houses. The plateau itself was cleared, except for a splendid
|
|
coconut grove.
|
|
"Not bad," said Nicholson, as he saw my glance. "And all due to Gau.
|
|
He made me taboo. Without his protection our heads would have been among the
|
|
chief ornaments in the skull-house any time in the past dozen years."
|
|
But it was only the hundred-odd natives here who had become
|
|
Christianized. Not half a mile away was a village where Gau and most of his
|
|
tribe lived as had their forefathers. And the coast of all the island was
|
|
dotted with like villages.
|
|
In the cool of the afternoon, on the sand outside Nicholson's house,
|
|
I had my first meeting with Gau. Since Nicholson was down with one of his
|
|
frequent attacks of fever, the chief's son, who now lived as a "mission man",
|
|
acted as interpreter. As Gau squatted on the ground across from me,
|
|
I regarded with curiosity this chief whose powers as a leader had won him the
|
|
name of the terror of the Solomons. He was a man of fifty, I should say,
|
|
about five feet, five inches tall, strongly built and well-muscled, but fat.
|
|
He was naked, except for a loin-cloth made of tapa-bark. His nose was full-
|
|
nostriled, and his short bush hair curly and still black. His face was puffy
|
|
and stolid. Only his deep-set eyes showed his remarkable intelligence.
|
|
About his neck were three necklaces of shell money, and attached to cords
|
|
made of native vine, a beautiful tortoise-shell circular pendant, two inches
|
|
in diameter, on which were hung three rows of human teeth. Around each arm
|
|
above the elbow were ten shell armlets. Fastened just above his right eye
|
|
was his sign of chieftainship, a really magnificent thing. It was a flat
|
|
piece of shell, four inches in diameter, as exactly rounded as if machine-
|
|
made, and beautifully inlaid with tortoise-shell in curious and delicate
|
|
designs.
|
|
At the beginning of our talk, I presented him with a knife and a
|
|
hatchet, which he accepted gravely. Gift-making is customary in the
|
|
Solomons, but a man rarely ever accepts without making a return present.
|
|
I received yams, chickens and bananas aboard ship from Gau the next day.
|
|
He understood well enough my wish to see a head-hunt and told me he would
|
|
call in his warriors from all parts of this island, but I could not make him
|
|
comprehend what motion-pictures are. There was no combination of words in
|
|
the comparatively few guttural sounds of his language which could convey the
|
|
meaning. I finally resorted to superstition. I told him I had a magic eye,
|
|
which could always see again anything it had ever beheld, and that what my
|
|
magic eye saw, my followers who looked into it when I returned home, could
|
|
see also. Then I said my warriors had heard of the fighting ability of his
|
|
men, and I wished my magic eye to see for them, that they might learn.
|
|
He solemnly assented to all that, and I gave him presents of knives and
|
|
trinkets to send to his under-chiefs.
|
|
While awaiting the arrival of the tribes, I investigated the customs and
|
|
lives of the natives; for I realized that, if my pictures were to be life-
|
|
size and exact, I must learn, before the head-hunt was photographed,
|
|
something of the people themselves. Like all Solomon Islanders, they are
|
|
deeply religious, or superstitious. There are hundreds of taboos, which no
|
|
native dare disobey, for fear of the "devil-devils", to employ the beche-de-
|
|
mer term. There are multitudes of these spirits, dread powers which punish
|
|
cruelly the breaking of a taboo.
|
|
An understanding of the deeply superstitious nature of the natives
|
|
enabled me to comprehend the reasons for their head-hunting and cannibalism.
|
|
Wolves pull down a moose for food; white men shoot game for like cause, or
|
|
for love of the chase; but the Solomon Islanders hunt for a spiritual reason.
|
|
It has to do with mana, a mysterious spirit of power, which dwells in both
|
|
men and things in a thousand different forms. By virtue of this power, and
|
|
not by his own intelligence or strength, a man becomes a great chief or
|
|
famous warrior. If he is killed, it is because his enemy's mana is greater
|
|
than his own. If a canoe has its bottom torn out on a reef, it is because it
|
|
has no wonderful mana to protect it. If it carries its warriors safely, it
|
|
is because its mana is great. A certain stone or reef may have a mana that
|
|
will keep an entire tribe healthy or make a coconut grove fruitful. All
|
|
successes, all happiness, is due to mana. Solomon Islanders believe that the
|
|
more heads a man takes the greater his mana. For a powerful chief it is
|
|
imperative that his canoe-house be adorned with hundreds of skulls. Then the
|
|
mana which belonged to his victims becomes the property of himself and his
|
|
people. And when the bodies of dead warriors are eaten, their mana becomes
|
|
even more directly a possession of the feasters. Moreover, there are certain
|
|
ceremonies that require human sacrifice. A war-canoe is thought to be
|
|
without mana unless it is sprinkled with human blood and the skull of the
|
|
sacrifice is kept in the canoe-house. Or if a great sickness falls on a
|
|
tribe, there must be human sacrifice to appease the angry spirits.
|
|
Frequently I am asked how much the missionaries have been able to do
|
|
toward Christianizing the savages of the Solomons. Little, I am afraid.
|
|
It seems to me that the chief thing the natives have learned from the
|
|
missionaries is to play. Life in the wild villages of Vella Lavella is
|
|
simply a matter of existence. To get food, eat it, sleep and have children--
|
|
that is life. The mission natives are, I believe, happier. The mission
|
|
women are surely better off, for they are comparatively free. In their
|
|
primitive life the women are the property of men and do all the hard labor.
|
|
A girl is bought and sold without regard to her personal preference. She
|
|
goes to the highest bidder. I took a picture representing such a marriage.
|
|
At the beginning it was impossible to make the natives carry through their
|
|
parts. First I was forced to play each role myself--be the bride, groom,
|
|
dissatisfied suitor and father. I found, too, great difficulty in obtaining
|
|
my stars. Most of the pretty girls were stupid or afraid. But at last I
|
|
found one young girl who responded readily to instruction. She was
|
|
vivacious, and after her fashion charming--a savage Mary Pickford. We staged
|
|
the scene, as in life, outside her father's house. One suitor brought his
|
|
gifts of shell money and ornaments, but the second threw in a pig, and the
|
|
father, not able to resist this temptation, touched the second young man's
|
|
offering, a sign that he had accepted the bargain. The bridegroom gripped
|
|
his girl by the wrist and led her off unresisting. He was happy--or would
|
|
have been, had the scene been real--if she was not, for wives mean wealth.
|
|
They can make ornaments and shell money (and it is interesting that these
|
|
savage people use money) and cultivate land. When a wife has done enough
|
|
work, then with the products of her labor a man is able to buy a second wife.
|
|
When he has two wives, he can more quickly purchase a third and so on. When
|
|
a Vella Lavella man dies, his wives are killed also, for they are considered
|
|
responsible for their husband's health, and his death is therefore due to
|
|
their neglect. Nicholson told me he had done all in his power to change
|
|
this. At the mission are a number of women who fled to safety there at the
|
|
time of the death of their husbands. In some villages the natives have
|
|
submitted in part to the missionary's demands, and now, instead of killing
|
|
widows, they only require the poor women to disfigure themselves and to give
|
|
up all ornaments and forbid them the privilege of washing.
|
|
Neither men nor women are passionate. I was told that there is a mating-
|
|
season, when they breed like animals. Unmarried girls are, I believe,
|
|
chaste, principally because they are bought when very young. Women are the
|
|
cause of trouble on Vella Lavella as in our civilization. Petty wars between
|
|
tribes are brought about by the stealing of women. Also, women provide an
|
|
incentive to the young men to work. A poor man will hire himself out to work
|
|
on a plantation on some other island for three years in order to obtain
|
|
enough wealth to buy a wife. When he returns, however, his ditty-box is
|
|
usually emptied of its contents by his relatives or tribesmen; each one
|
|
taking a present, and he is almost as poor as when he started. Strangely
|
|
enough, he does not resent this.
|
|
The natives of Vella Lavella are good sportsmen. As fishermen they are
|
|
wonderful, but they find little to hunt. The only dangerous animal is the
|
|
alligator, but it is never molested by the natives, either because they have
|
|
no weapons with which to kill it or because it is taboo. Because of the fear
|
|
of alligators, villages are never built directly on streams. The woods are
|
|
full of bird-life. I made a trip across the island to visit a young chief,
|
|
Osopo. As we trudged along the jungle trails, I could hear on every side the
|
|
screeching of cockatoo and parakeet. Osopo would occasionally dart off to
|
|
shoot pigeons and doves with his small bow and arrows.
|
|
At Osopo's village I had a chance to see the natives in their primitive
|
|
state. The small, thatch-roofed huts had no windows, and the only openings
|
|
for light and air were doors about two and a half feet high and two feet
|
|
wide. The sole furnishings were grass mats. Everybody was dirty. Vermin
|
|
abounded. The natives lived from day to day. There was no reserve supply of
|
|
food, except a few bundles of coconut in each hut. There was only one meal a
|
|
day, which seemed to be eaten at any time, and at which all gorged
|
|
themselves. For this meal the women gathered taro, yams and nuts and brought
|
|
in shell-fish at low tide. The men went on pig hunts to get meat for their
|
|
feasts.
|
|
I accompanied them on one of these hunts. They stretched a net about a
|
|
hundred feet long and three feet high, made of tough vines, across a
|
|
clearing. Then some twenty men armed with spears slipped silently into the
|
|
woods. I took a station behind the net and waited. Soon I heard loud
|
|
shouting, and three pigs with the hunters after them came bursting forth from
|
|
the underbrush. The pigs rushed straight into the net, which, being only
|
|
loosely laid, dropped down, entangling them in its meshes. The savages fell
|
|
on them gleefully, tied their legs and carried them back to the village.
|
|
There their squeals were hushed by handfuls of banana leaves held tightly
|
|
over their snouts until they smothered to death. They were then cut open and
|
|
their entrails were pulled out. These were thrown into the fire for a few
|
|
moments, and then every man grabbed some and began to eat gluttonously, but I
|
|
made no attempt to swallow the morsels that Osopo handed me. In a trice the
|
|
hair had been scraped off the pigs, and they were placed on red hot rocks in
|
|
the center of the fire. Long before they were roasted, they were torn apart
|
|
and eaten almost raw.
|
|
Meanwhile the preparations for the head-hunt were being made. From
|
|
hidden places far back in the jungle, war-canoes that had been saved from the
|
|
British punitive expedition were brought out. These were magnificent pieces
|
|
of workmanship, 35 to 50 feet long, holding from 40 to 100 men, and though
|
|
without outriggers, seaworthy. They were made with three planks on each side
|
|
and two narrow planks forming a flat bottom. All the boards had beveled
|
|
edges and were sewed together by cords made from stems of vines. The seams
|
|
were calked with a material something like rosin, obtained from a jungle
|
|
tree. The sides of the canoes were beautifully inlaid with pearl-shells in
|
|
fantastic designs. At both stem and stern were twelve-foot beaks decorated
|
|
with conch-shells. At the bow, just below the line of shells and close to
|
|
the water, were heads carved of wood, which were supposed to watch for hidden
|
|
reefs. Nearly all the paddles had rotted away and new ones were made out of
|
|
hard wood.
|
|
When I came ashore on the day set for the head-hunt, hundreds of natives
|
|
were already lying about in the coconut grove and on the beach. They had
|
|
come in from the villages, overland, with their women carrying provisions for
|
|
the stay, or by canoe, and were now camped out in the open, their quarters
|
|
during the week I spent in photographing them. As I walked among the men and
|
|
they closed around me, staring curiously, I thought I had never seen a
|
|
hardier type of fighting-men. They were taller and blacker than most of the
|
|
Solomon Islanders I have seen and more frank and fearless in expression, and
|
|
they all had teeth stained fiercely dark from betel-nut chewing. They were
|
|
fully armed for battle. Most of them had carved spears eight feet long, made
|
|
of hard palm-wood and decorated with bands of colored hemp. When Gau joined
|
|
me, I asked him through Nicholson what kind of bones the spear-points were
|
|
made of. He reached down and touched his shin, indicating that his was made
|
|
from a man's shin-bone. In addition to spears, a number of the warriors
|
|
carried the stone clubs, which are called tomahawks by the traders. These
|
|
clubs had three-foot straight handles, inlaid with pearl-shells. All the men
|
|
carried light shields about two and a half feet long by ten inches wide, made
|
|
of reeds fastened together by native hemp. They had streaked their faces and
|
|
the upper part of their bodies with a paint made of white lime, so that in
|
|
the dark or in the heat of attack they might easily recognize one another.
|
|
All were bareheaded, but a few wore curious sunshades woven of fiber. Every
|
|
man had on all the ornaments he possessed: tortoise-shell belts, necklaces
|
|
and armlets. Each chief had his inlaid circular shell disc fastened either
|
|
directly between his eyes or over one eye. The Solomon Islander always wears
|
|
ornaments in war, because he is a firm believer in ghosts, and thinks that
|
|
his ghost will have the use of all his most valued trinkets if they are kept
|
|
with his skull. If he is killed, these treasures are never stolen. The
|
|
natives believe that, if the dead man's ornaments are taken away, his ghost
|
|
will haunt the thief.
|
|
Nicholson was down with fever, but, using Gau's son as interpreter,
|
|
I prepared to begin my pictures immediately. The natives entered into the
|
|
spirit of the game. But first I gave them small presents and a feast of
|
|
canned salmon and dog-biscuit, a meal they vastly preferred to native food.
|
|
And I promised them further presents and feasts if all went well. Food was
|
|
my best card.
|
|
The chief difficulty was to prevent the savages from staring into the
|
|
camera. That "magic eye" fascinated them. But by saying that to look at it
|
|
was taboo and that its mysterious spirit would bring down terrible punishment
|
|
on whosoever stared into it, I was soon able to induce them to go ahead as if
|
|
the camera were not there. As the picture progressed, things became easier.
|
|
The hunt ceased to be acting. I am sure that, if the savages had not all
|
|
been under Gau's influence, my screen production would have ended in an
|
|
actual battle with heavy casualties. The likelihood of such an outcome
|
|
became so apparent that, before the fighting began, we had all the bone barbs
|
|
removed from the spears. What Gau proposed to do was merely to feign a
|
|
repetition of his last famous raid on Choiseul Island, from which he had
|
|
brought home over two hundred heads.
|
|
He called his under-chiefs into conference, and, as they squatted in a
|
|
circle on the sand, talking earnestly, the women prepared food for the
|
|
voyage, which, if actually made, would have been a hundred and fifty miles.
|
|
Gau and his chiefs decided on a plan of attack. Then Gau addressed his
|
|
warriors. It was a wonderful scene, but many feet of film were spoiled,
|
|
because the mission men, dressed in shirts and breeches and unarmed, were so
|
|
stirred by the sight of their great chief making a war-speech that they crept
|
|
in among the savage warriors to listen to him. I had to stop the cameras and
|
|
drive them away. When Gau had finished, the young chiefs spoke, working
|
|
themselves into a frenzy, dancing up and down and waving their spears. The
|
|
warriors answered their enthusiasm with savage cries and gesticulations.
|
|
Finally, at a word from Gau, all rushed down to the canoes and in a second
|
|
were making for an opening in the reef. The women and children followed to
|
|
the water's edge, waving excited good-byes. The dozen men who had been left
|
|
behind as guards remained silent. They stood on the beach and stared grimly
|
|
and sadly at the rapidly disappearing canoes. And the mission men, downcast
|
|
and miserable, huddled together--outcasts from the wonder and glory of the
|
|
hunt for heads.
|
|
The handling of the canoes was marvelous. The men sat double-banked on
|
|
thwarts, with the exception of the chiefs, who stood. In the stern of each
|
|
boat was a stern-man equipped with a big paddle, which he handled with both
|
|
hands and feet, and in the bow was the stroke-maker, a warrior picked for
|
|
strength and skill. The men kept perfect time, the paddles rising and
|
|
falling rhythmically, in time with a wild chant which they sang in a high,
|
|
minor key. The stroke was about fifty to the minute, but every fifteen
|
|
minutes they would change it, make a rapid short spurt and then drop back
|
|
into the regular time. Occasionally all the canoes would stop. During the
|
|
few minutes' rest every man chewed betel-nut. And always I could see Gau's
|
|
squat, immovable figure as he stood in the stern of the canoe in the lead.
|
|
Gau had chosen one of his own villages, ten miles up the coast, as a
|
|
place to be attacked. Around the houses were built three stone walls, two
|
|
feet thick and five feet high, about fifty feet apart. From behind these
|
|
walls the village men could hurl their spears at the unprotected enemy
|
|
without great danger to themselves. A guard was usually stationed at the
|
|
outer wall, and an enemy making a surprise attack would have to fight his way
|
|
over two walls before arriving at the main body of defenders, who had had
|
|
time, on account of these obstructions, to get their weapons and make ready
|
|
for the battle. It was a system of defense devised by Gau himself.
|
|
When the canoes neared the village, Gau directed Kavi, one of the older
|
|
chiefs, with a hundred men, to separate from the main party and land on the
|
|
far side of the village. I went ahead in my launch and had the camera-men
|
|
ready.
|
|
We came upon an idyllic scene. Women were cooking around open fires in
|
|
front of the huts or hunting shellfish in the shallows of the blue lagoon;
|
|
children were playing about; a few men were gathering coconuts, climbing the
|
|
trees with monkey-like agility. Then, of a sudden, the war-canoes shot into
|
|
sight from behind a nearby curve in the coast. I could scarcely see the
|
|
paddles flash and dip--so rapid was the stroke. One of the women who were
|
|
fishing looked up and saw them. She screamed loudly and ran for the village.
|
|
In a second there was the wildest disorder. Women and children scampered
|
|
pell-mell for the woods, crying and howling. The village men all vanished
|
|
into the houses, but appeared again on the instant, waving spears and clubs.
|
|
All had been informed that it was only play, but the sight of those war-
|
|
canoes filled with yelling warriors was too much.
|
|
It was then that Kavi's warriors came pouring out of the woods, cutting
|
|
off escape and Gau's men, with the old chief at their head, beached their
|
|
canoes with a rush and ran across the sand like mad. From behind the outer
|
|
wall the village men met them with a volley of spears. Gau's warriors poured
|
|
over the first wall, thrusting with their spears and swinging their tomahawks
|
|
at the outnumbered villagers, who retreated. Then both sides lost their
|
|
heads. They jabbed and hammered at one another in deadly earnest, while Gau,
|
|
perched on top of the wall, jumped up and down, waving spear and shield,
|
|
cheering his men on. The villagers made a determined stand before the last
|
|
wall, but were overwhelmed. Then Gau and I rushed in, separating the
|
|
struggling mob. When order was finally brought about, many of the savages
|
|
were bleeding from wounds. It was the most realistic screen-fight I have
|
|
ever seen.
|
|
Gau took back a number of captives with him. It had always been the
|
|
custom to take prisoners, if possible, breaking their legs if they attempted
|
|
to escape. Captives were considered necessary, so that human sacrifices
|
|
might be ready whenever the spirits demanded. The life of a prisoner in the
|
|
Solomons was far different from what it was in most other lands; he was
|
|
allowed to live freely with his captors, sometimes for years, until his fatal
|
|
day came when a head was necessary--then he was killed without compunction.
|
|
I shall never forget the sight of the home-coming of the head-hunters.
|
|
As the canoes appeared in the far distance, the women and children came down
|
|
to the shore, waving their arms in greeting. As the canoes drew near land,
|
|
the men began to paddle very slowly, lifting the paddles high out of the
|
|
water with each stroke and singing a wild, mournful melody, as if for their
|
|
dead. Then, at the end, they broke into a pean of triumph and dashed the
|
|
canoes almost up to the beach with terrific speed. Gau had had a number of
|
|
skulls of his former victims brought down from his skull-house in the
|
|
mountains, and these, wrapped in coconut leaves, were brought ashore by the
|
|
warriors. As they stalked up the beach between the lines of admiring women,
|
|
skulls held high, one would have thought from their proud appearance that
|
|
they hat brought home real trophies of war. A great fire was built on the
|
|
beach by the women, and into this the heads would have been cast, if they had
|
|
been newly taken spoils, and left there until the flesh had been burned away.
|
|
Around the fire the fighting-men danced, singing, while the women sat about
|
|
and watched, their bodies swaying to the music. Then the skulls were placed
|
|
in coconut leaf baskets and thrust on the top of four-foot poles set at
|
|
regular intervals along the beach. Around these once more the wild dance
|
|
swirled.
|
|
And standing outside the circle, leaning on his spear, watching, his
|
|
face expressionless, was Gau, greatest of the head-hunters, dreaming, perhaps
|
|
of the hundred times that all this had been reality, or, it may be, of a time
|
|
when it would become real again.
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
June 15, 1923
|
|
NEW YORK TIMES
|
|
Finds a 'Dry' Tribe of Island Pygmies
|
|
|
|
"The white man's days in the East are numbered; fifty years will see
|
|
Sumatra, India and the Philippines all under native rule," is the prediction
|
|
made by Captain Edward A. Salisbury, who arrived yesterday aboard the Conte
|
|
Rosso, completing a tour of the world made in the interest of the
|
|
Southwestern Museum of California. "The one topic of conversation among
|
|
white colonists in the East, whether they be Dutch, English, French or
|
|
German," he said, "is, how long can it last?"
|
|
Captain Salisbury and his companions made the greater portion of the
|
|
voyage in an eighty-three ton sailing yacht. They visited the South Sea
|
|
Islands, Marquesas, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, New Hebrides, New Guinea, Bali,
|
|
Timor, Java, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Andaman Islands, Ceylon, Sokotra,
|
|
French Somililand, and Abyssinia. At Moka, in the Arabian Sea, the yacht was
|
|
wrecked. It was salvaged and brought to Italy where it went up in flames as
|
|
the result of an explosion. The fire destroyed many valuable gifts received
|
|
by the party from native chiefs they had visited during the course of the
|
|
journey.
|
|
Among many interesting explorations was that of the Andaman Island.
|
|
Little has been known hitherto of the natives of this group, and Captain
|
|
Salisbury believes that his party was the first to study their lives and
|
|
customs. He describes these islanders as the only people on earth who really
|
|
enjoy the blessings of prohibition. They are a race of nomadic pigmies,
|
|
living in jungles. Neither tobacco nor intoxicants are known to them, and
|
|
their only form of punishment for criminals is the disdain of their fellow
|
|
tribesmen. Crime is almost unknown among them, Captain Salisbury says, and
|
|
such is the harmony which reigns that a domestic fight is considered an event
|
|
of great importance, and causes all the tribe to turn out.
|
|
For food these islanders rely on turtles, which are found in great
|
|
quantities near the shores of their islands. They hunt these turtles in
|
|
canoes paddled by the women. The game is speared by the men, who leap into
|
|
the water and drive their bone weapons through the turtle's shell.
|
|
The Andaman islanders also use bows which would do credit to the
|
|
strength of Ulysses, says Captain Salisbury. In spite of their size, he
|
|
says, they are able to bend these bows double, while the strongest members of
|
|
his party could scarcely draw them more than taut.
|
|
The only animals on these islands are a species of lizard which grows to
|
|
a length of eight feet or more and a huge coconut crab. These crabs, Captain
|
|
Salisbury says, are capable of crushing a coconut with their claws, of which
|
|
they have three sets. The crabs are shaped like lobsters, except that they
|
|
have very long legs and are adept at climbing trees. Some of them were
|
|
captured by the party before it left the islands and were placed in boxes.
|
|
One night during a hurricane in the Indian Ocean they ate through the wooden
|
|
boxes, Captain Salisbury says, and made an attack upon the party en masse.
|
|
Great difficulty was experienced before the crabs were finally driven from
|
|
the ship.
|
|
The lizards, he says, feed on turtle eggs which they dig from the sand.
|
|
In the morning, when the party first landed, they appeared in droves on the
|
|
beach, resembling huge alligators, and delaying the landing--somewhat.
|
|
One of the islands in the Indian Ocean the party found a colony of
|
|
10,000 murderers deported by the Indian Government. But the details of this
|
|
visit the Captain preferred to keep for use in a special article he is
|
|
preparing.
|
|
In the islands about Sumatra the party spent some time among the Karo-
|
|
Bataks, a tribe of which little is known. Observing that many women in the
|
|
tribe had their teeth chipped off, Captain Salisbury inquired why this was.
|
|
He was informed that it was the custom with all married women, and the party
|
|
was permitted to witness the process of chipping the teeth.
|
|
First a bowl made of a half coconut shell was filled with water.
|
|
In this were placed some leaves from the sacred trees which grown in the
|
|
tribal garden. Then came the victim, a girl of thirteen. The medicine man
|
|
took a big iron chisel and, with a stone for a mallet, chipped the teeth off
|
|
one by one. After this was done he procured a large file, like those used by
|
|
blacksmiths for filing horses' hoofs, and added the finishing touches. Not a
|
|
sign of a whimper escaped the girl. This, it was explained, would have
|
|
disqualified her for marriage. The object of the custom was to determine
|
|
whether the woman was capable of bearing brave sons as warriors for the
|
|
tribe.
|
|
The religious customs of the Karo-Bataks are described as particularly
|
|
interesting. When a man died, in order to deceive the "death demon," the
|
|
people carve out a log in the shape of a man, wrap it in a cloth, hire a long
|
|
train of mourners and bury it with pomp. The "death demon" then goes to the
|
|
grave of the fictitious corpse, the natives believe, while the true corpse is
|
|
buried somewhere else. Nor is this the only precaution. A corpse is never
|
|
carried out through a door or window of the Karo-Batak houses, lest the demon
|
|
should learn the way in and return. Instead, the people cut a hole in the
|
|
wall of the house, and as soon as the corpse has been passed through, the
|
|
hole is closed. The houses are all built on bamboo stilts about six feet
|
|
above the ground.
|
|
The Karo-Bataks believe that Heaven is a neighboring mountain. Few of
|
|
them dare venture thither except the medicine men, who usually return with
|
|
weird tales of the dead who haunt those places.
|
|
"In dealing with natives," Captain Salisbury said, "the first thing we
|
|
impressed on them was that we didn't want their women; and then that we
|
|
didn't want their land. We tickled their vanity by telling them that our
|
|
country didn't have such great people as they were, and by asking that they
|
|
teach us how to be as great as they were. Always we gave them gifts. But we
|
|
never carried firearms. The one thing that will make a native commit murder
|
|
is the opportunity to obtain firearms."
|
|
The Karo-Bataks, he said, have all their money invested in earrings.
|
|
The earrings they wear of solid silver and weigh about three pounds each.
|
|
It is estimated that $2,500,000 in silver could be reclaimed from the Karo-
|
|
Batak earrings in Sumatra.
|
|
The expedition sailed from Los Angeles on Oct. 8, 1920. The first draw
|
|
was composed of college boys, most of whom took a homeward bound ship at the
|
|
first stop, as soon as they had seen that South Sea Islanders were not as
|
|
picturesque as usually described. Thereafter the crew consisted mostly of
|
|
natives. Edward Burghard, a Columbia University graduate; Merian C. Cooper,
|
|
a former Captain in the United States Air Service, and George MacNeil of Yale
|
|
and Captain Nelson Taylor of Los Angeles accompanied Captain Salisbury.
|
|
Captain Cooper joined the expedition at Singapore. In South America the
|
|
party met Mary Roberts Rinehart, Dr. Rinehart and Rex Beach.
|
|
The "Wisdom II," in which the trip was made, was destroyed by fire at
|
|
Savona, Italy. All the crew was ashore at the time. An Italian watchman
|
|
went into the hold of the vessel with a lantern. Workmen on the vessel had
|
|
cut into a gaspipe during the day, and gas had gathered in the bilge. The
|
|
explosion which followed destroyed the ship and a large number of valuable
|
|
presents which had been given the party. Other presents had been previously
|
|
shipped to the Southwestern Museum from Singapore.
|
|
Captain Salisbury was born in California. He has been engaged in
|
|
similar expeditions for many years.
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
September 1923
|
|
ASIA
|
|
Murderer's Island
|
|
|
|
by Edward A. Salisbury
|
|
|
|
In a New York club the other day I met a globe-trotter who said to me:
|
|
"A white man must live in a white man's country to be happy. Whites who
|
|
dwell in the lands of yellows and browns and blacks consider themselves
|
|
always as exiles. In their hearts they are never content."
|
|
"I'm not sure of that," I replied. "As contented white men as I have
|
|
ever known--and cultured white women, too--live in a land of all three colors-
|
|
-a lonely island in a lonely sea."
|
|
"Impossible," said he. "What place are you talking about?"
|
|
"Murderer's Island," I replied.
|
|
"Murderer's Island!" he exclaimed.
|
|
I looked him in the eyes so that he might know I was dealing neither in
|
|
jokes nor lies. "A lonely island with only one settlement; that settlement
|
|
composed of ten thousand convicted brown and yellow murderers; all the rest
|
|
of the island dense jungle in which roam naked coal-black savage dwarfs; and
|
|
ruling over the lot a half-hundred whites." Then I added firmly, "And the
|
|
whites are very happy there."
|
|
"Why?"
|
|
"Listen."
|
|
|
|
For two years I had been wandering up and down the world in my yacht,
|
|
"Wisdom II." Last January I was sailing north from Sumatra up the Bay of
|
|
Bengal. One hot dawn we sighted a group of low-lying hills, dark shadows in
|
|
a purple sea. Along the coasts of these island hills there were no signs of
|
|
life--no villages, no fisher-boats, no living beings. Only the dark jungle
|
|
which ran down to the silent sea.
|
|
But charts showed a harbor; and as the sun was coming up blazing red
|
|
against the cloudless sky, we sighted a break in the jungle. As we sailed
|
|
in, we saw that a tiny island hill, dotted with a score of red bungalows, lay
|
|
off the mainland. We swung in around this islet, and there, a quarter of a
|
|
mile away on the mainland, on a low, grass-covered hill in a clearing on the
|
|
edge of the jungle, stood a huge, square, forbidding pile of red brick.
|
|
I looked through my binoculars and saw that every window was iron-barred.
|
|
On the tower which crowned the stern structure, there were leaning motionless
|
|
on their rifles two bearded brown men in khaki, who wore the turbans of the
|
|
Sikhs. It was a prison. Around and about the prison, I could just make out
|
|
through the trees the thatched roofs of villages.
|
|
On the little island, a signal-flag fluttered up, telling us to anchor.
|
|
A rowboat came alongside, and a slow-speaking Scotchman, an officer of the
|
|
Indian marines, stepped on board. He was the Port Officer. Cooper and I
|
|
went ashore with him and walked over to a low bungalow at the water's edge.
|
|
This was the club. Breakfasting in its big central room was a one-armed
|
|
Major wearing on his tunic the ribbon of the D. S. O. As we were served with
|
|
cool drinks, the Major asked us our impressions of the Andaman Islands.
|
|
"We haven't had much of a chance to get any as yet," I told him and
|
|
asked what there was to see.
|
|
"Well, not much," he replied. "Only about ten thousand murderers. You
|
|
know Port Blair, this place, is where they send into exile the murderers from
|
|
all over India. We have 'em of all kinds here." He called, ""Boy". Some
|
|
one outside answered loudly and shrilly, "Sahib", and in trotted a bare-
|
|
footed Indian to replenish our glasses. The Major laughed. "That boy is a
|
|
murderer, too."
|
|
I thought to myself, "What a life!" And the Major apparently read my
|
|
thought from my expression. "Oh, it's not so bad as that," he said. "Wish I
|
|
could stay here, by Jove, but no such luck. I'm ordered back to Burma. Now
|
|
here comes a lucky man. He's been here twenty years." He pointed at a dry
|
|
little man in spectacles who came in, was introduced and passed on into
|
|
another room.
|
|
"That chap's a forester. Dane or something by birth, but he saved a
|
|
British ship. He was the engineer. The government asked him what he wanted
|
|
as a reward and he chose a permanent billet here. Lucky dog."
|
|
The Port Officer, who had gone out, came in to say that the Governor was
|
|
waiting to see us. As we plodded up the winding gravel road to the big
|
|
mansion on top of the hill, we passed a two-wheeled carriage. It had no
|
|
horses, but six sweating, half-naked natives were pulling heavily at the
|
|
shafts. By its side walked a Sikh guard. Half reclining in the carriage-
|
|
seat was a woman, her face almost as pale as her cool white linen dress.
|
|
It was the work of the tropical sun, that pallor. I had been long accustomed
|
|
to recognize its disastrous effect on the complexions of white women.
|
|
"A white woman living in the midst of ten thousand murderers,"
|
|
I murmured to myself. "Unhappy creature." But as I looked closely at her,
|
|
as she returned our bow, I could see no marks of discontent. Rather she had
|
|
the air of one to whom life has been good--very good.
|
|
At the door of the Governor's mansion, a great white parrot screamed an
|
|
unfriendly greeting. Several Indian servants met us and led us through a
|
|
long hall, hung with queer bows and arrows, to a library. Its windows
|
|
overlooked the great red prison across the little bay. I wondered what sort
|
|
of man ruled over this colony of turbulent convicts. I created a lionlike
|
|
figure with bold features and hard eyes. The door opened and, instead, there
|
|
came toward us a short, stooped, middle-aged man, the type one sees, book in
|
|
hand, wandering under the elms of a college campus. He said in the low voice
|
|
of the cultured Englishman, "Welcome to the Andamans, gentlemen."
|
|
This was Colonel Beadon, with almost despotic powers. With a handful of
|
|
whites and a company or so of soldiery, he rules over the thousands of
|
|
criminals, most of whom are allowed to live quite freely in villages of their
|
|
own. The prison across the bay was used only for the most desperate
|
|
characters and seditionists and new prisoners. This bookish Governor seemed
|
|
to take the convicts as a matter of course, but even he appeared gripped by
|
|
the mystery of a race of pigmies who inhabited the jungle. One tribe, he
|
|
said, roamed the forest only a few miles from the colony, but could not be
|
|
captured or hardly seen. The only sign the colony ever had of them was when
|
|
sometimes at night they crept out of the jungle, killed a few convicts and
|
|
escaped back into their impenetrable wilderness. When the Governor spoke of
|
|
these queer little jungle people, his voice lost a little of its tone of
|
|
semiboredom.
|
|
But I was much more interested just then in the life of these whites I
|
|
had seen walking unarmed among the murderer convicts. So I asked for more
|
|
information. "Are all these Indians walking around, apparently quite freely,
|
|
really murderers?"
|
|
He smiled. "Not quite all," he answered. "We have some famous dacoits
|
|
(bandits) and a few political prisoners, but the majority are murderers."
|
|
He pointed at the musty row of files which lined one side of the room.
|
|
"In those books," he said, "are the records of enough romances to keep a
|
|
dozen story-writers at work for life. But perhaps the editors might not
|
|
print the yarns; for they all have the same tragic climax--a killing and then
|
|
exile to this place."
|
|
"But if all these men are murderers, isn't there great danger for you
|
|
whites walking about unarmed?"
|
|
The Governor looked up as if a little surprised. "Why, no. There are a
|
|
few--er--accidents now and then, but no real danger. No."
|
|
The accidents to which he referred are of the kind that happened to a
|
|
Viceroy of India who visited the island one winter many years ago. It was a
|
|
Mahommedan convict who stabbed him to death in the midst of his retinue.
|
|
I found this same attitude among all the white rulers of this strange
|
|
place. This little group--not more than fifty in all--after the fashion of
|
|
the English took their bizarre surroundings as the most natural thing in the
|
|
world. Instead of worrying about either convicts or savages, they had built
|
|
themselves a club where we had met the Major--when half a dozen Englishmen
|
|
settle anywhere they must have a club.
|
|
This club was a delight, with card-, billiard- and lounging-rooms. Part
|
|
of the sea which washed up to its doors was fenced off from sharks to make an
|
|
enormous outdoor swimming-pool. A tennis-court was near by, and wonder of
|
|
wonders, a golf-course. These rulers lived in spacious bungalows on the
|
|
hills. Big windows opened on every side with the sea-breezes every blowing
|
|
through. They had literally swarms of servants. And the servants had one
|
|
peculiarity--they were all murderers.
|
|
This I did not know until one dark night Cooper and I went to dine with
|
|
an officer and his wife, who live on the mainland on a hill above the convict
|
|
villages. It was pitch-black when we landed, and we could just make out by
|
|
torchlight a carriage drawn by six brown fellows, naked except for loin-
|
|
cloths. We got in and our human horses started up a winding road. We could
|
|
see nothing but the glimmer of the lantern on the naked brown backs before
|
|
us. We stopped at last before a brilliantly lighted two-story bungalow-like
|
|
house. Half a dozen servants, dressed in bright colors, were drawn up at the
|
|
door. In front of these was standing our host.
|
|
After a dinner served by an Indian butler with numerous aides, as we
|
|
were sitting in the many-windowed drawing-room, having coffee, I remarked to
|
|
our hostess that she did not seem to be bothered by the servant problem.
|
|
"Well I do manage to get enough of them," she replied.
|
|
"All convicts, I suppose," said I.
|
|
"Yes, indeed," said she smiling.
|
|
"I don't suppose you ever take in any murderers," I remarked.
|
|
"No murderers!" she answered in mock indignation. "I wouldn't have
|
|
anything else. You don't suppose I would tolerate a lot of thieves and
|
|
robbers running about my house. No indeed, give me a nice honest murderer
|
|
for a servant any time."
|
|
I thought a minute. "And those fellows who dragged us up the hill, are
|
|
they murderers, too?" I asked.
|
|
"She smiled again and nodded yes. And when it was time to say good
|
|
night, we rode down the hill through the night in the same rig with the same
|
|
team.
|
|
To me, those women of the Andamans will never seem quite real. They are
|
|
figures of a dream. There are only about a dozen in all. Each has her own
|
|
bodyguard, a great, bearded, uniformed brown Sikh, with gun and bayonet,
|
|
without whom she is never allowed to go out. When her husband is not at
|
|
home, which is the better part of the day, her bodyguard must stay near her.
|
|
Then, too, the Indian maid who dresses her hair each day may be a murderess
|
|
serving a life-sentence. Also, though she has the luxury of a private
|
|
carriage, there are no horses for it, and she uses the same kind of a team of
|
|
six murderers as the one which took us up the hill that night. That white-
|
|
faced woman, then, whom we had first seen with the contented look on her
|
|
face, had had a team of murderers! But soon we became so accustomed to
|
|
seeing these white women riding about to pay their calls, drawn by murderer
|
|
human horses, that we came to think little of it.
|
|
And these women "carry on" happily, as do their men. From four to six
|
|
each day is the time for sports, when, as the burning tropical sun begins to
|
|
seek the horizon, they play at tennis and golf. Afterward comes a plunge in
|
|
the ocean pool, and finally cool drinks in the room set aside for the ladies,
|
|
before going home to dress for the little dinners they delight in giving one
|
|
another.
|
|
But in contrast to the life of the white woman is that of the brown and
|
|
yellow and black-skinned women murderers I occasionally saw walking along the
|
|
sun-baked roads. If it is woman's chief desire to be desired by man, then
|
|
these women convict exiles should be the happiest of creatures. But I don't
|
|
think they are. They are only a few among ten thousand men, most of whom
|
|
have already killed because of love and jealousy. They are hot-blooded,
|
|
desperate men--these Indian killers. They are Orientals and to them women
|
|
are the beginning and the end of all human delights--better than the tinkle
|
|
of gold coins one against the other; better than the blood of an enemy on the
|
|
knife-blade. And here in exile these desperate men must forego the taste of
|
|
the honey of life.
|
|
However, a small percentage get women in a most peculiar way. When
|
|
women murderers are sent to the island, Colonel Beadon has them lined up on
|
|
Saturdays and put on the marriage-market. Then the exiles gather about in
|
|
fierce crowds and bid for the treasures. Only a dozen odd can be successful.
|
|
When these carry away their brides, they are followed by raging glares from
|
|
the disappointed suitors. Too often tragedy follows. When her husband is
|
|
away in the fields, the woman finds a hundred lovers ready to dare all for
|
|
one soft glance from her eye. Then comes a knife-thrust in the dark, or an
|
|
open killing of both woman and the lover and the end--with the hanging of the
|
|
husband. The hanging is sure. The mild-mannered, bookish man, with whom
|
|
Cooper used to play at chess, knows that the safety of all rests on swift
|
|
punishment. Only a few hours at most, and then up in the great red prison on
|
|
the hill the gallows-trap is sprung; there is a tolling of the bell, and all
|
|
of Murderers' Island knows that their soft-voiced Governor is still the
|
|
Master of Life and Death.
|
|
I saw this gallows once when I visited the prison, and learned to my
|
|
surprise that we were not the only Americans on the island. In the prison
|
|
was a man who, though he might not strictly be called an American, for he was
|
|
a Mexican half-breed, had come from the United States. He was a native of
|
|
southern Texas. He was the most hated, the most feared and the most despised
|
|
of all the prisoners. Men spat on the ground his feet touched, yet cringed
|
|
before him as if he had the evil eye. He was the official hangman. How he
|
|
came to be a life convict in this queer island prison on the other side of
|
|
the world I did not learn. But there he was, receiving ten rupees a head for
|
|
each man he hanged and some lesser sum for his work at the whipping-post.
|
|
There was in the prison also another man who had lived long in America.
|
|
He was a Sikh, who had been in California for many years. When we told him
|
|
good-by, his eyes seemed to look over the seas and see the orange groves and
|
|
smiling fields of that distant land, as he said to us: "You are going back
|
|
to America. Back to America. Oh, if I could only see it once more!" There
|
|
were tears in his eyes as we turned and went away.
|
|
In the prison, too, I remember one old, bowed convict who wore around
|
|
his neck the tag which showed he had three times made a break for liberty.
|
|
Nevermore would he see the light of day outside of prison-walls. Upon these
|
|
men who try to escape, the punishment is ruthless. They are put back into
|
|
the prison, and there they stay until the end. This old man, a Burmese, and
|
|
a woodsman who knew the stars, had braved the cyclone-swept Bay of Bengal in
|
|
a canoe he had burned out of a log. He was picked up three-quarters of the
|
|
way to safety, paddling gamely on, though half dead from exposure and thirst.
|
|
Indeed, few of the murderers ever escape, despite their freedom from guards
|
|
and prison-walls. If they try, the sea, an upturned canoe marks their end.
|
|
If they try the forest, they are usually found with an arrow in their backs.
|
|
But sometimes they are never heard of again, and only the jungle pigmies can
|
|
tell how they died.
|
|
In all the years the English have lived on the Andamans, they have never
|
|
been able to do anything with the Jawaras, as is called the tribe of the
|
|
Andamanese dwarfs on this prison island. These pigmies resist both force and
|
|
kindness. Just before we arrived, a punitive expedition had been out after
|
|
them, as the result of a raid, and had spent three miserable weeks in the
|
|
jungle without even coming in contact with them. Sometimes, however, Burmese
|
|
dacoits among the convicts are given long knives and a bag and turned loose
|
|
in the jungle. Once in a while they come back with a diminutive black head
|
|
in the bag and receive a reward of a few rupees, but more often they never
|
|
return.
|
|
I became tremendously interested in these pigmies, for I learned that
|
|
they were among the most primitive of all humans. If it is true, as some
|
|
anthropologists believe, that life first came into being in southern Asia,
|
|
then these little aborigines may be forerunners of mankind; for it is
|
|
probable that they inhabited this part of the world before the migrations
|
|
swept down from southern Asia and obliterated all traces of them except in
|
|
three remote localities. In two of these, one a wild spot in the
|
|
Philippines, and the other a district in the central part of the Malay
|
|
Peninsula, they have lost many of their original traits by contacts with
|
|
other peoples. On the Andaman Islands alone have they remained isolated.
|
|
Though no contact can be made with the Andamanese who live on the island
|
|
of Port Blair, occasionally some of the wild little fellows from some of the
|
|
other islands paddle up to a spot three miles from the prison, where the
|
|
British have had a hut erected for them. A few years ago, before the British
|
|
gave up in despair of ever civilizing them, the little forester, whom I had
|
|
met in the club, had been the officer charged with attempting negotiations.
|
|
With him I went to this hut, and was lucky enough to find several families.
|
|
A half-dozen were standing at the water's edge when our launch chugged up.
|
|
I thought at first that the reports of their smallness had been
|
|
exaggerated, but as we stepped ashore, I realized that they are indeed dwarfs-
|
|
-so perfectly formed, however, that it was not until I stood beside them that
|
|
I realized how small. One of the tiny women, not more than four feet, three
|
|
inches in height, caught my attention immediately. She had what appeared to
|
|
be a huge white ornament hanging about her neck. I went closer and almost
|
|
jumped with astonishment. The ornament was a ghastly human skull, white and
|
|
grinning against her bare black breasts.
|
|
The forester laughed. "The women wear the skulls of their dead husbands
|
|
as loving souvenirs," he said. And then he told us how, when a man dies, the
|
|
little people blow on his face to say good-by, bury him, and then desert the
|
|
camp in which they are living. After several months they come back, dig up
|
|
the bones and wash them in the sea. Finally they hold a dance in honor of
|
|
the dead man's skull, paint it with red ocher and white clay and give it and
|
|
the jaw-bones to the chief mourners, who wear them hung about their necks on
|
|
fiber strings, like huge stones on a necklace.
|
|
Another woman we saw squatting on the ground, apparently examining her
|
|
child's arm. But when we went forward to see her, she was cutting a row of
|
|
little cuts around it--the boy's body covered with rows of scars. The
|
|
Andamese believe that every child is born with evil spirits within him.
|
|
So the mother every two or three months lets the spirits escape through these
|
|
cuts. As a result, all the men and women have their entire bodies covered
|
|
with scars.
|
|
At the request of our forester, the Andamanese held a mock marriage
|
|
ceremony. Two who had recently been married acted as the bride and groom.
|
|
There was a dance; then the young man pretended to flee into the jungle. The
|
|
other men ran after him, bringing him back to where the bride was sitting on
|
|
the ground, surrounded by the women. With loud shouts, the men plumped the
|
|
lad down in the girl's lab, and all, men and women alike, threw themselves on
|
|
top of the bride and groom, like football players on a loose ball, weeping
|
|
and wailing as if in mortal grief. From fifty yards away, the bridal party
|
|
looked like a huge black ball.
|
|
Standing near this marriage ball was a girl, her body covered with long
|
|
zigzag designs in white. She refused to enter into the fun. The forester
|
|
explained that she was a debutante, as her paintings showed, and that
|
|
marriage was much too important an affair for her to enter into a sport about
|
|
it. She had but lately received her "flower name". Every pigmy girl must be
|
|
called after a flower when she matures into womanhood. She passes through an
|
|
elaborate three-day ceremony to receive this name, during which she is
|
|
neither allowed to eat nor sleep. At the end of that time a name is selected
|
|
for her after one of the jungle trees or plants in bloom at that time, to
|
|
show that the girl herself has bloomed into womanhood. Henceforth she is
|
|
never known by her childhood name. She is now a young lady of very few
|
|
social restrictions, and considerable influence.
|
|
But to my mind the strangest thing about these pigmy nomads is that they
|
|
know no way of making fire. Each family has a fire of their own, which they
|
|
keep always going. When they travel, they carry the fire with them, thinking
|
|
it a gift from the gods that, if once extinguished, they may never relight.
|
|
The Andamanese are the only human beings I have ever heard of who do not know
|
|
how to make fire.
|
|
|
|
When I had finished telling of this far-away island in a lonely sea, my
|
|
globe-trotter said to me: "Great--brown and yellow murderers and naked black
|
|
savages on a jungle island! You mean to tell me that white men are really
|
|
content to live there?" And he added with scorn, "And white women, too?"
|
|
Then, with a near-sneer, "Why?"
|
|
"The answer is simple," I replied. "We Anglo-Saxons will suffer
|
|
anything to stand on top of the dung-hill. And of all Anglo-Saxons, the
|
|
English gentleman has this spirit bred deepest. In India, he has already
|
|
begun to slide down the heap. Therefore India is becoming intolerable. But
|
|
Murderers' Island is the India of long ago. There at the present day the
|
|
white man is a god, his lady a goddess. Around them are nothing but dark-
|
|
skinned convict murderers and black aboriginal pigmies. Far above these
|
|
stand the lordly whites, looking from their eminence on the lesser beings
|
|
below. The whites are the caste. Therefore content."
|
|
|
|
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
|
|
|
|
[All of the above articles reprinted from ASIA were originally published with
|
|
many accompanying photographs. Additional articles by Salisbury appeared in
|
|
the October 1922, January 1924, and April 1924 issues of ASIA.]
|
|
*****************************************************************************
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|
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Back issues of Taylorology are available on the Web at any of the following:
|
|
http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology/
|
|
http://www.etext.org/Zines/ASCII/Taylorology/
|
|
http://www.silent-movies.com/Taylorology/
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Full text searches of back issues can be done at http://www.etext.org/Zines/
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or at http://www.silent-movies.com/search.html. For more information about
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Taylor, see
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|
WILLIAM DESMOND TAYLOR: A DOSSIER (Scarecrow Press, 1991)
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