THE FEMALE SEX--POLYGAMY--MODES OF BURIAL, ETC.
THE position of the female sex amongst the natives of the eastern islands of the Solomon Group would appear to differ but little from the position which it holds amongst races in a similar savage state. The women are without doubt the drudges of the men, and pitiable examples of this often came under my observation. On one occasion, when I was returning to the coast from an excursion into the interior of St. Christoval, I was accompanied by some half-a-dozen natives of both sexes who were bringing down yams to sell to the traders on the beach. The men were content with carrying their tomahawks; whilst the women followed up with heavy loads of yams on their heads. When a feast is in preparation, it is the work of the women to bring in the yams and taro from the “patches,” which may be one or two miles away. In my excursions, I frequently used to see at work in their “patches” these poor creatures, whom drudgery had prematurely deprived of all their comeliness.
Women are excluded from the tambu-house. They are not permitted to remain in the presence of a chief at his meal; and even the wife after preparing her husband’s meal leaves her lord alone, returning to partake of what remains after he has finished his repast. In the island of Santa Catalina we found that we had temporarily received the rank of chief when a bevy of young girls, who had been following us all the morning, walked solemnly away as we began our lunch; but no sooner had we lit our pipes than back came the little troop with smiling faces. In Ugi, a man will never, if he can help it, pass under a tree that has fallen across the path, for the reason that a woman may have stepped over it before him. On one occasion, in the village of Sapuna, in Santa Anna, I saw a man, whilst lighting his pipe, throw the piece of smouldering wood contemptuously on the ground, when a woman, in order to light her own pipe, stretched out her hand to take it from him.
The custom of infanticide throws a shade over not a few of these islands. During my frequent walks over the island of Ugi, where one may pass through a village without seeing a single child in arms, I often experienced a feeling of relief in leaving behind such a village where the prattle of children is but rarely heard. In Ugi, infanticide is the prevailing custom. When a man needs assistance in his declining years, his props are not his own sons but youths obtained by purchase from the St. Christoval natives, who, as they attain to manhood, acquire a virtual independence, passing almost beyond the control of their original owner. It is from this cause that but a small proportion of the Ugi natives have been born on the island, three-fourths of them having been brought as youths to supply the place of offspring killed in infancy. Yet some bright experiences, brighter, perhaps, in the contrast, recur to my mind. In the small island of Orika (Santa Catalina) the visitor will be followed about by a little train of children, of both sexes, with smiling, intelligent faces, and clad only in the garb which nature gave them. Whilst having an evening pipe in front of the house of Haununo, the young chief, Mr. W. Macdonald and I were surrounded by a varied throng of the natives of the village, both old and young. Numerous young children, from babes in arms to those three or four years old, formed no inconsiderable proportion of the number around us. Bright-looking lads, eight or nine years of age, stood smoking their pipes as gravely as Haununo himself; and even the smallest babe in its father’s arms caught hold of his pipe and began to suck instinctively. The chief’s son, a little shapeless mass of flesh, a few months old, was handed about from man to man with as much care as if he had been composed of something brittle. It would have taken many shiploads of “trade,” as Mr. Macdonald remarked to me, to have purchased the hopeful heir of the chief of Orika.