Category Archives: Indigenous Cultures

NIUE ISLAND

#12 Traditions of Niue
     (Edwin M. Loeb, 1926)

A very proud race, the Niueans were prone to commit suicide upon slight provocation. It was customary for the party defeated in war to jump off the cliffs, and not uncommon for the nearest relatives of a deceased person to kill themselves out of excess of grief. It is related that a father of a family having been drowned while fishing, his two sons waited until morning, and then jumped off the cliffs. Another story tells that the wife of a man named Tufonua died. His love for his wife was still strong, and he therefore determined to die so he climbed up a fetau tree thirty fathoms high. He leaped from the top, but landed unhurt on his feet. Tufonua thought that he had been saved by the interception of the gods, and he therefore went away in peace.

Shame was a common cause of suicide. Three women once made a suicide pact. One because she conceived out of wedlock, another because she was lame, and the third simply because she lived alone in the house of her brother. A young man committed suicide by eating fish which he knew to be poisonous. He did this merely because he had been “turned down” by some pretty girls. Suicide is rare at the present day.

It was a custom in the olden days to abandon the old in the bush. A temporary shelter was erected, and a small supply of food was left for the infirm person. This custom doubtless arose from the bitter necessities of warfare. This, however, is unusual. Nowadays, the old and sick are either cared for by their relatives or placed in the Governments hospital.

The Niue term for death is mate. The people usually say mate-popo (popo indicating putrefaction) since the word mate also indicates illness due to an accident or to warfare. The word gaogao also indicates sickness resulting from disease.

The mourning rites were held in a temporary house, called a fale-tulu. At the time of death all the relatives came together. This was called the putu. The relatives then held a tagi, or lamenting, which might last from fifty to one hundred days if the person lamented was of sufficient importance. During this time the relations from a distance came in and fought with the relatives close at hand.

In former times there was intense wailing and the singing of dirges and the men shaved off their long hair with a shark’s tooth. Nowadays the women have the long hair, and they often shave it off at time of mourning. Self immolation was never a custom but the people committed suicide through grief, as shown by the following story:

A man by the name of Ikihemata, in the olden days, had as wife Ligitoa. Once the man went fishing in the sea while his wife sought for snails on the reef. In the course of his fishing the husband caught a small fish [the telekihi]. This he brought up to his mouth in order to bite its head and thus kill it before placing it in his basket. But the fish managed to jump down the man’s throat, and commenced choking him to death. At this both the man and his wife lighted all their torches and attempted to relieve the situation. They were not able to do anything, and presently the husband breathed his last. Ligitoa was sorely grieved by the death of her husband, and she implored all her relatives to kill her, that she might die with her husband. Then her relatives killed her, and laid her beside her husband. It was thus that the woman showed the height of her devotion to her husband.

[#12] Edwin M. Loeb, History and Traditions of Niue. Honolulu, Hawaii, The Museum, 1926.

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TONGA

#11 The Love-Sick of Vavau
     (Basil Thomson, 1886-91, 1894)

Another, Tuabaji, after resisting for years the teachings of the missionaries, brought about that dramatic conversion of the whole island to Christianity that seemed to the missionaries so striking an instance of divine interposition. The line was not extinct. Though Manase was governor under the king, a Finau Ulukalala lived in the person of an unwieldy man of thirty, a nobele of the House of Lords, it is true, and the king’s aide-de-camp, but in all other respects ignored by the Government. He was not a man of high moral elevation, nor could the missionaries point to him as a cheering instance of the efficacy of their work. He swore fluently in both German and English, and had a cultivated taste for strong waters. Finau was a ne’er-do-weel, but perhaps a scapegrace of the kind that is not past reform if intrusted with responsibility. There was no doubt about his being the hereditary ruler of the place: one might see that from the manner of the old men as he rode through the country. Surrounded by rowdy young boon-companions, holding no post that gave him a vestige of authority, he yet could not enter a village without holding an informal leree of all the inhabitants, while Manase the Governor might pass unnoticed. Possessed of such inherent influence, he was certainly worthy of trial as Manase’s successor if the king could be induced to dismiss so ardent a Free Churchman, and to appoint in his place the descendant of the chiefs whom he had dispossessed. Perhaps guessing my sentiments, Finau attached himself to me throughout this visit. He offered to escort me to the Liku, and as I could best enjoy the scenery of this weird place alone, I was at some pains to give him the slip. But though I rod fast Finau rode faster, and caught me up at that strange white burying-ground, hung between sky and sea at the precipice’s edge. He led me along the cliff to the open plain, whence, looking backward, one may see the hundred isles of Haafulu Hao spread out like a map. Leaving our horses, we crept together along the razor-edge that still connected a rocky pinnacle with the cliff from which it jutted. Clinging to the roots of a starving screw-pine, we knelt and felt the shaft twang as the great seas boomed into the caverns at the cliff’s base. We tried to shout against the roar of the trade-wind sweeping along the face of the rock-wall, but could not distinguish a word.

This place has been a favourite point of departure for the love-sick of Vavau who would escape their misery. Finau said that the body of a girl of Halaufuli, Who leapt hence into eternity a few months before, never reached the water, but was sucked inwards by the cliff, and so dashed to pieces on the sharp rocks at its foot. Whether the attraction of the cliff would always do this or not, death would be certain in falling from such a height, even if the body struck the water only.

And here let me digress on the subject of suicide. The rough average rate of suicide in the Pacific—the figures dealt with are too insignificant for unvarying accuracy—is about equal to the rate for the United Kingdom, viz., .006 per mille of the population; but since most of the suicides in Europe are committed under the influence of mania or extreme misery,—conditions that are generally absent in these favoured isles,—we may assume that the Pacific islanders have a predisposition towards self-destruction. The usual causes are lovers’ quarrels, and the fear of being neglected in incurable illness. In the latter case suicide is a mere survival of the old custom that constrained a sick man to importune his relations to strangle or bury him alive,—itself an evolution from an earlier time when the existence of a family depended upon its having no disabled members to protect. The lovers’ quarrels that result in suicide are quite as trivial as those of civilized communities. On the sudden impulse of some slight misunderstanding the distressed lover resorts to the picturesque but inadequate method of climbing to the top of a cocoa-nut-palm and jumping off, with the usual result of a broken limb, a reconciliation with the beloved object, and permanent lameness. Of late years the cocoa-nut-tree has became less fashionable for men who are in earnest. These generally prefer a precipice, or if their despair be of the more deliberate kind, poison, which, being a mere infusion of bark or leaves, must be drunk in such large quantity that it more often produces vomiting than death. The ancient mode of execution in Tonga—putting the condemned adrift in leaky canoes—still occasionally survives as a method of suicide. In February a schooner, bound from Niuatoburabn to Nukualofa, picked up a derelict canoe floating unharmed, with her paddles and baler in her, and a crumpled letter which ran as follows:—

162 78982

     810 6126 74 m2 127216 m2 892 162 9812 74 m2 m274 b4 810 m2 892 16274
16m807850 892 270

1820 2m454 m8 232

The schooner’s crew connected their discovery with the disappearance of two girls from Niua a few days before; but, not knowing the cipher, tbey brought the letter to the capital and handed it to Kubu. Takuaho at once declared it to be written in a cipher known to most of the younger generation of Tongans, and called the Kandi Teja cipher. He made a table thus—

K A N E L I T O F U
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

and the letter then read—

162 78982
Kia Tofoa
810 6126 74 m2 127216 m2 892 162 9812 74 m2 m274
oku ikai   te ma kataki   ma ofa kia   Foka te ma mate

b4 810 m2 892 16274 16m807850 892 270
be oka ma ofa   kiate   kimoutolu   ofa atu

1820 2m454 m8 232
koau   amele mo ana.

Which being interpreted, ran—

To Tofoa.

We two cannot endure our love for Foka; we would rather die. We send our love to you all. Farewell.

Amele and Ana.

It was a suicide. The poor girls had stolen the canoe, and had paddled themselves out of sight of land, and then having scribbled their letter to their friend in cipher; they folded it, wrote the address on the back, and jumped overboard. I never heard what part Foka had played in the tragedy.

Persons intending suicide have also learned a lesson from the method of executions in Europe. Strangling with a cord of ngalu was common among the Polynesians of the olden time, but they seem never to have thought of hanging, and the idea at once struck them as picturesque. Moreover, a man cannot very well strangle himself without help. A pretence of hanging is much resorted to by people who imagine themselves to be misunderstood, or who wish to frighten their friends into making some concession, because a dramatic effect can be produced with the least possible personal inconvenience.

Yet whenever confederates can be found to help, the South Sea Islander appears to prefer strangling to hanging. In Fiji a few years ago, when Australia was ringing with the achievements of the Kelly gang of bushrangers, a trader in Vanualevn, with the aid of a Sydney newspaper, was entertaining a gaping circle of Fijians by trying to make their flesh creep. In the minds of two of his listeners, youth from the neighbouring village, the seed fell upon a rich soil. Why should they be condemned to this life of spiritless toil in subjection to their chiefs and the Government, compelled to drudge in the fields and the tax-plantations, while the free, glorious bush lay behind them? If these foreigners, who could not exist without tinned meats, could live in the bush, how much more they who only wanted a wild yam or kaile roasted on the embers of an open fire? They could rob all the foreigners’ stores, and with the plunder tempt the girls of the village to come and join them, and they would eat tinned meats and turkeys and fowls every day without having to pay for them or work to make money. They discreetly opened their project to one of their friends, but when he understood the full daring of the scheme he modestly withdrew, in words that were translated by the magistrate who afterwards held the inquest as, “Pardon me, but this thing is beyond my capacity.” So the three went out into the bush alone. During the first week they robbed two stores, and stabbed an elderly German in the back escaping after each exploit into the impenetrable bush. They succeeded in establishing a real panic, so that none dared to leave the village alone; and the native police nightly thanked providence that they had not stumbled across them. When the magistrate reached the place a week or two later with a force of police, he found that the outrages had ceased, and that nothing had been heard of the daring bushrangers for more than ten days. Weeks passed, and the confidence of the villagers was so far restored that they ventured armed into their gardens believing that the bushrangers had gone to another part of the island. At last an old man, whose garden lay far afield, was drawn by the evidences of corruption to look into his yam-shed. Two bodies were there, decayed almost beyond recognition. One had a masi cord tied tightly round the neck, with both the ends free; the other had been strangled by a cord tied by one end to the upright post. Further search led to the discovery of a third body hanging by the neck from a tree. It was the poor trio, who had also found bushranging beyond their capacity. They got lonely, and longed for companionship to prop their failing courage; and when they could bear it no longer, and they had to choose between giving themselves up or suicide, they chose death by their own hands rather than by the unknown terrors of the law or the foreigners. So A and B put a noose round C’s neck in the old style, and pulled at the ends till he was dead. Then B tied the end of his malo to the post, wound it round his neck,

Tutawi The Hermit.

and gave the end to A to pull. And when A was left alone with none to help him, he climbed the nearest tree, tied his neck to a branch, and died like a foreigner. Their deaths were better planned than their lives.

To return to Vavau, from which I have strayed many degrees of longitude. Our ride now lay through the wild rocks, buried in flowering creepers that in 1810 were the home of Tutawi the hermit. At the beginning of the disturbances that followed the revolution of 1799, this man, weary of the violence of men and the perfidy of women, left his home secretly to live a solitary life communing with Nature and the spirits of the hauted Liku. The great war and the siege of Feletoa had raged within a few miles of his hiding-place unheeded by him.

[#11] Basil Thomson, Diversions of a Prime Minister (Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1894).

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SAMOA

#10 Who Will Go With Me?
     (George Turner, 1884)

. . . In encouraging each other, on going to battle, they said, “Well, if we die, we shall not have to die over again. It is only the death we should have to die some other day.” Suicide was common. In a fit of anger they jumped from the rocks into the ocean and were seen no more.

. . . On the neighbouring island of Aneiteum it was common, on the death of a chief, to strangle his wives, that they might accompany him to the regions of the departed. The custom has been found in various parts of the Pacific. The poor deluded woman rejoices in it, if she has any affection for her husband, and not only shows us the strength of her attachment, but also her firm belief in the reality of a future state. An old chief will say as he is dying, “Now, who will go with me?” and immediately one and another will reply, “I will.” On the island of Aneiteum this revolting custom has entirely fled before the light of Christianity. By the common consent of the chiefs and people all over the island it is strictly forbidden, but, strange to say, it has found a refuge and a resting-place still in the group on Tana. About twenty years ago they commenced there to strangle the wives of a departed chief, and the custom spread over the island—another proof of the downward tendency of heathenism, and of its usual development in the increase of human wretchedness.

[#10] George Turner, “Who Will Go With Me?” Samoa: A Hundred Years Ago and Long Before (London: Macmillan, 1884), pp. 305, 324-25.

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CHUUK

#9 Group Rejection and Suicide
     (Thomas Gladwin and Seymour Bernard Sarason, 1953)

While the lineage or other kin group provides a large degree of economic and undoubtedly psychological security for the individual, the possibility of rejection by the members of such groups must be a source of very serious anxiety. We have seen this strongly implied in the marked desire for conformance to expected patterns of behavior and the suppression of any behavior which might result in a disruptive or hostile episode. This anxiety over being rejected by a kinsman reaches its most dramatic expression in suicide. The threat of suicide is often made in other situations and is frequently effective, as in the case of the thwarted lovers; Theodore finally forced acceptance of his resignation as chief by this means also. But in the four cases actually recorded (one of them observed) where a genuine attempt was made to commit suicide, the precipitating factor was always harsh and unkind words from a close relative. One man had a bitter argument with his wife, finally walked out of the house, down to the beach, and swam off into the open sea; this is a recognized means of suicide but at the same time appears to permit a maximum opportunity for rescue. In this case a “brother” and his wife’s father went out in a canoe and after a brief struggle hauled him aboard. A number of years ago my elderly informant was practicing fighting techniques with several of his “brothers” when another “brother” came up and asked to join in; he was told derisively that he did not know anything about it. He left abruptly, climbed a coconut tree, and jumped off, landing on a rock and breaking an arm and leg, although he did not die. In the remaining two cases the man climbed a coconut tree after a violent argument wit his parents; in the earlier of these episodes the would-be suicide landed on soft ground, barely missing several rocks, and was only slightly injured. The case observed involved Andy, who got into a trivial argument with his mother over the repair of a pillow. Voices rose and angry words were spoken; his father’s sister, Rachel, was present and accused him of being a bad son to his mother. With this he left the house with a look of almost hysterical desperation on his face; after picking up and dropping a steel bar he took a large stick and beat the side of the house a couple of times. Then he dropped the stick and ran quickly to the top of a fairly tall coconut tree, followed by my old informant who was distantly related. He was able to make Andy pause, but then Andy went on and reached out to swing himself onto a frond of the tree. At this point I abandoned my observer role and stood under the tree, a move I was justified in believing would prevent Andy from jumping. My informant withdrew and Andy remained for perhaps twenty minutes in the tree, sobbing openly, and was finally persuaded to come down by another older relative.

Although in none of these cases did the man die, there is little doubt that the effort, particularly on the part of those who jumped from coconut trees, was genuine. It is also interesting to note in respect to the relative security felt by men and women within their kin groups that all of these cases were by men; my informant, in fact, stated that women never respond by suicide to the harsh words of their relatives. The only possibility for suicide by a woman, then, is in company with her lover if they are refused permission to marry, and only one actual case of this could be remembered by any informant for all of Truk.

[#9] Thomas Gladwin and Seymour Bernard Sarason, Truk: Man in Paradise (New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1953).

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CHUUK

#8 Sea Spirit Spasms
     (Frank Joseph Mahony, 1950-1968, 1970)

One evening during my stay on Fano Island, another man was severely reprimanded by his mother on the suspicion that he had stolen some hoarded household funds and gambled them away. The noisy argument that ensued, which took place next door to my home on Fano, was the culmination of a long series of the mother’s complaints about what she felt was her son’s profligate behavior. On this occasion, after an exchange of shouting accusations, the young man stormed out of the house. Later that night he took a length of rope to the village church, and tried to hang himself from the rafters.

Fortunately he was cut down by a passerby shortly after, and his life was saved.

The following day three of the woman in the young man’s lineage, the only females with small babies, all arranged to have their infants treated with the medicine for “Sea spirit spasms.” Since the young man’s attempted suicide had frightened and upset the mothers, according to the theory, their children’s lives were endangered. By taking this action the members of his lineage were not only protecting the children; they were also informing the young man that he was not responsible to himself alone. His foolish action constituted a threat to the continuity of the entire lineage, and to the health and lives of its members.

When I talked to the young man about his suicide attempt a few days later, he observed that it had been a very stupid thing for him to do and indicated he would never do anything like that again in the future.

[#8] Frank Joseph Mahony, A Trukese Theory of MedicinePh. D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1969.

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GUAM

#7 A Tale of Two Lovers Tying Their Hair Together
     (Freycinet, 1819)

The nobles were strictly forbidden not only to ally themselves with the mangatchang girls, but even to take them as concubines. Still, instances of the breaking of that rule are cited. In such a case, though, the matua who was guilty took great pains to conceal himself from his own family, who, if they knew of the situation, would have inflicted capital punishment on him. In reality, the delinquent noble had no alternative, if he wished to avert pursuit, but to renounce his rank and class and to join another group, as an atchaot. It is interesting, incidentally, that the lowborn girl received no punishment at all. We were told that, after the arrival of the Spanish on Guam, a certain matua of the village of Gnaton fell in love with a young and pretty mangatchang girl and fled with her. He found no asylum among another native group, however, as he refused to part with her. Pursued by his relatives, the young lovers wandered for some time in the most inaccessible woods and rocky areas; but so precarious and wretched an existence reduced them to despair. Determined to put an end to it, they built a tomb of stones and placed in it the infant that was the sad fruit of their love. Then, lost and distracted, they climbed to the very summit of a high, steep-sided peak beside the sea. Binding themselves together by the hair, and clasping one another, they cast themselves from that peak into the waves below. The cape in question has since been named, by the Spanish, Cabo de los Amantes (Lovers’ Cape).

Source

[#7] Freycinet, Louis-Claude de, trans. Glynn Barratt, [“A Tale of Two Lovers Tying their Hair Together”], An Account of the Corvette L’Uraine’s Sojourn at the Mariana Islands, 1819 (Saipan: N. M. I. Division of Historic Preservation and the RTF Micronesian Area Research Center University of Guam, 2003) pg. 126-127.

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PAPUA NEW GUINEA
KIRIWINA/THE TROBRIAND ISLANDS

#6 The Kaliai: Good Death, Bad Death
     (David R. Counts and Dorothy Ayers Counts, 1983-1984)

A good death—or a bad one—may be either voluntary or involuntary. Volition is not enough in itself to be definitive. Involuntary deaths, like those that have an external cause, may be either good or bad, while, with the exception of suicide, voluntary deaths are good ones. Widows who were ritually killed, for instance, died voluntarily and were considered to have had good deaths.

The quality of death is determined by the related conditions of whether the process of dying takes place slowly enough to permit the dying person and his or her kin to control the situation and prepare for the break, and of whether the death results in social disruption. Ideally, a person who perceives death approaching begins, in concert with kin and friends, to bring closure to the set of social relations that entangle him or her in the society of the living. The person has time to terminate ongoing business, to take leave of loved ones, and to withdraw from active participation in mundane life. He or she controls the beginning of the transition from the category of living being (iavava), to the category of recently dead ghost which may be seen by and interact with human beings (anunu), to the most remote category of spirit being, distant ancestors who may not be seen by humans and who seldom become involved in human affairs (antu). When a dying person does not have the opportunity to set in motion this process of withdrawal and transition, it must be done for him or her ritually by the survivors, and it is especially important that the termination of relationships with the living be completed through elaborate and dramatic mortuary ceremonies.

In general terms, for the Kaliai a good death is not socially disruptive. It is foreseen, there is time for the dying person and his or her kin to prepare for it and to publicly conclude any outstanding business, and there is public participation in the first stage of the transitional process that is death. If, however, the death is socially disruptive, the survivors suffer the agony of unanticipated parting, and they react with anger and a desire for vengeance. There is no peace either for the living or for the dead, for the spirit of the person who dies a bad death wanders and appears to his or her kin until the death is avenged. If the death was a suicide, the spirit never joins ghostly society but remains eternally separate and alone, perhaps to become the familiar of a conjuring sorcerer.. . . .  

. . .Obviously suicide is not a good death for the Kaliai. It is a death which permits neither the dead person nor his relatives peace, it is untimely and unforeseen by the community, it is socially disruptive, and it results in the eternal alienation of the suicide’s spirit from the society of the dead as well as of the living. Why, then, would a person voluntarily choose such a death?

There is no clear answer to this question. Kaliai informants almost always explained that a person who killed him or herself either had suffered intolerable shame or had been enchanted by sorcery. Another explanation given was that by controlling his or her death, the suicide re-establishes some control over the social environment. . . .

. . .It is recognized in anthropological literature that suicide may be committed to punish someone else. This kind of suicide, termed revenge suicide or samsonic suicide by Jeffreys, is part of the cultural pattern of Kaliai.

. . .While suicide is not an everyday happening, it has great emotional impact on the community when and where it occurs. It is also a recurrent theme in the oral literature of northwest New Britain. Whether it takes place in story or in fact, the pattern is the same. Both men and women kill themselves during a period of strife between sexual partners or cowives, or directly following an episode in which they were shamed or abused by their affines. The act follows known rules and can be expected to have predictable results within the community where it happens. Customarily, suicides choose one of two methods; they either hang themselves or drink tuva, ‘fish poison’ made from the derris plant. When the Kaliai speak of self-killing they say ipamatei ‘he killed himself’; they describe the method by which death was caused (he hanged himself; he drank tuva); or they attribute responsibility for the death—tipamate eai ngani posanga “they killed him with talk.”

A person who contemplates suicide has the reasonable expectation that his or her kin and neighbors will respond to this act in certain predictable ways. The phrase “they killed him with talk,” and the cry of Agnes’s father “why did you kill my child?” are evidence that the Kaliai consider self-killing to be a form of homicide, an act for which another party is culpable. A person may expect kin and friends to hold someone else responsible for his or her death. The suicide places on his or her kin the obligation to avenge the person, and they expect that his or her spirit will continue to appear to them (as does the spirit of any victim on homicide or sorcery) until the obligation is met. There is no notion that the spirit itself has any malevolent power. In death, as in life, the suicide must wait for others to act on his or her behalf.

Revenge suicide is a political strategy available to otherwise powerless persons because of the element of culpability associated with it. The suicide makes certain that others know why he or she has taken his life and who is to be held responsible for the unbearable situation. Once they are apprised of these facts, the suicide may expect that his or her shamed, grieving, angry kin will avenge the death upon the tormentor. Note that the kin of the suicide are themselves shamed by the death. . . .

Source

[#6] David R. Counts and Dorothy Ayers Counts, “The Kaliai: Good Death, Bad Death”, “Aspects of Dying in Northwest New Britain,” Omega 14(2), 1983-84, pp. 101-110.

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PAPUA NEW GUINEA
KIRIWINA/THE TROBRIAND ISLANDS

#5 Suicide as an Act of Justice; Expiation and Insult: Jumping from a Palm
     (Bronislaw Malinowski, 1916, 1926)

Suicide as an Act of Justice

There are three classes—death as the result of evil magic, death by poison, and death in warfare. There are also three roads leading to Tuma, and Topileta indicates the proper road according to the form of death suffered. There is no special virtue attached to any of these roads, though my informants were unanimous in saying that death in war was a “good death,” that by poison not so good, while death by sorcery is the worst. These qualifications meant that a man would prefer to die one death rather than another; and though they did not imply any moral attribute attached to any of these forms, a certain glamour attached to death in war, and the dread of sorcery and sickness seem certainly to cause those preferences.

With death in warfare is classed one form of suicide, that in which a man climbs a tree and throws himself down (native name, lo’u). This is one of the two forms of suicide extant in Kiriwina, and it is practised by both men and women. Suicide seems to be very common. It is performed as an act of justice, not upon oneself, but upon some person of near kindred who has caused offence. As such it is one of the most important legal institutions among these natives. . .

 

Expiation and Insult: Jumping from a Palm

. . .One day an outbreak of wailing and a great commotion told me that a death had occurred somewhere in the neighbourhood. I was informed that Kima’i, a young lad of my acquaintance, of sixteen or so, had fallen from a coco-nut palm and killed himself.. . .

I hastened to the next village . . .I found that another youth had been severely wounded by some mysterious coincidence. And at the funeral there was obviously a general feeling of hostility between the village where the boy died and that into which his body was carried for burial.

Only much later was I able to discover the real meaning of these events: the boy had committed suicide. The truth was that he had broken the rules of exogamy, the partner in his crime being his maternal cousin, the daughter of his mother’s sister. This had been known and generally disapproved of, but nothing was done until the girl’s discarded lover, who had wanted to marry her and who felt personally injured, took the initiative. This rival threatened first to use black magic against the guilty youth, but this had not much effect. Then one evening he insulted the culprit in public—accusing him in the hearing of the whole community of incest and hurling at him certain expressions intolerable to a native.

For this there was only one remedy; only one means of escape remained to the unfortunate youth. Next morning he put on festive attire and ornamentation, climbed a coco-nut palm and addressed the community, speaking from among the palm leaves and bidding them farewell. He explained the reasons for his desperate deed and also launched forth a veiled accusation against the man who had driven him to his death, upon which it became the duty of his clansmen to avenge him. Then he wailed aloud, as is the custom, jumped from a palm some sixty feet high and was killed on the spot. There followed a fight within the village in which the rival was wounded; and a quarrel was repeated during the funeral.

…Let us now pass to suicide. Though by no means a purely juridical institution, suicide possesses incidentally a distinct legal aspect. It is practised by two serious methods lo’u (jumping off a palm top) and the taking of irremediable poison from the gall bladder of a globefish (soka); and by the milder method of partaking of some of the vegetable poison tuva, used for stunning fish. . . .

The two fatal forms of suicide are used as means of escape from situations without an issue and the underlying mental attitude is somewhat complex, embracing the desire of self-punishment, revenge, re-habilitation, and sentimental grievance. . . .

. . .Two motives must be registered in the psychology of suicide: first, there is always some sin, crime or passionate outburst to expiate, whether a breach of exogamous rules, or adultery, or an unjust injury done, or an attempt to escape one’s obligations; secondly, there is a protest against those who have brought this trespass to light, insulted the culprit in public, forced him into an unbearable situation. One of these two motives may be at times more prominent than the other, but as a rule there is a mixture of both in equal proportions. The person publicly accused admits his or her guilt, takes all the consequences, carries out the punishment upon his own person, but at the same time declares that he has been badly treated, appeals to the sentiment of those who have driven him to the extreme if they are his friends or relatives, or if they are his enemies appeals to the solidarity of his kinsmen, asking them to carry on a vendetta (lugwa).

Suicide is certainly not a means of administering justice, but it affords the accused and oppressed one—whether he be guilty or innocent—a means of escape and rehabilitation. It looms large in the psychology of the natives, is a permanent damper on any violence of language or behaviour, on any deviation from custom or tradition, which might hurt or offend another. Thus suicide, like sorcery, is a means of keeping the natives to the strict observance of the law, a means of preventing people from extreme and unusual types of behaviour. Both are pronounced conservative influences and as such are strong supports of law and order.

Source

[#5] Bronislaw Malinowski, “Suicide as an Act of Justice,” in “Baloma; the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 46 (London: 1916). Republished by Forgotten Books, 2008, pp. 9-10; “Expiation and Insult: Jumping from a Palm,” Crime and Custom in Savage Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1926), pp. 77-78, 94-98.

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SOLOMON ISLANDS

#4 Tikopian Attitudes Towards Suicide
     (Raymond Firth, 1967)

Tikopia attitudes toward suicide are closely connected with their attitudes toward death in general. Summarily stated, these attitudes express regret concerning death rather than fear of it; . . .the timing of the moment of cessation of bodily functioning is not necessarily treated as a matter of critical importance. To take one’s own life is merely to anticipate the inevitable end. In some circumstances, death has an aesthetic attraction. . . .[T]he normal Tikopia ways of committing suicide are three, differentiated broadly according to age and sex; hanging (mainly by middle-aged and elderly people); swimming out to sea (women only, especially young women); putting off to sea by canoe (men only, especially young men). Hanging (noa na, tying the neck) is usually fatal.. . . . . .In swimming out to sea (kau ki moana), the women, though good swimmers, soon seem to be overcome by heavy seas or by sharks that are common off the coast, and mortality from such suicide attempts appears frequent. … the fate of many unmarried young women. . . .But resort to putting off to sea in a canoe (forau) is more difficult to interpret. The Tikopia term in general indicates a sea voyage, and any canoe voyage from Tikopia is a hazardous undertaking. Tikopia is a mere dot in 40,000 square miles of ocean, with the nearest land, Anuta, equally isolated—only half a mile across and 70 miles away; larger land is more than 100 miles away and in some directions many hundreds of miles. With the alternation of storm and calm, especially in the monsoon season, to try to make landfall from Tikopia is a great risk. . . .In many cases it is difficult to separate an attempt to escape from Tikopia to see the world, with a serious chance of not surviving, from an attempt to escape from Tikopia society with an intent to perish or an attitude of not caring whether one perishes or not.

. . .social factors are clearly apparent both in the choice of method and in the attendant circumstances. In suicide at sea, an almost complete sex differential is manifested: a woman swims to her death, a man takes a canoe. Yet Tikopia men in ordinary circumstances swim as well and as freely as do women. Again, by report a curious fastidiousness is sometimes displayed in committing suicide. A person dying by hanging, it is said, excretes freely. If the deed is committed without premeditation, the interior of the house is in a mess: in the person’s dying struggles mats and the interior of the house become covered with excrement. People coming to release him are disgusted, and before mourning begins women must clean up the disorder. For this reason, I was told, a person who is thinking of suicide by hanging may refrain from food for a day or so, in order “that his excrement may not be laughed at’. It may seem to us unnecessary to be so finicky about the manner of dying, yet this has a crude logic. If part of the reason for destroying the body is to preserve the social personality intact—by safeguarding it from disintegrating despair or shame—then the person does not want his reputation to suffer by his death. Suicide in Tikopia is thought to merit certain dignity.

Source

[#4] Raymond Firth, “Tikopian Attitudes Towards Suicide,” Tikopia Ritual and Belief (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 120-124.

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FIJI

#3 Deaths of the Old Chief and his Wives
     (Thomas Williams, 1858)

When a chief is either dead or dying, the fact is announced to his various connexions; and should he be of supreme power, the principal persons in his dominions come to pay their respects, and offer a present to him. . .I have heard the dead questioned in a style which has prevailed among every people where similar modes of lamentation have been observed. “Why did you die? Were you weary of us? We are around you now. Why do you close your eyes upon us?” Sometimes these wailings continue through the night, and their dreary, dismal effect cannot be imagined by any one who has not heard them. The tones are those of hopeless despair, and thrill through “nerve, and vein, and bone.”. . .

. . .The next step is the preparation of the loloku. This word expresses anything done out of respect for the dead, but especially the strangling of friends. This custom may have had a religious origin, but at present the victims are not sacrificed as offerings to the gods, but merely to propitiate and honour the manes of the departed. It is strengthened by misdirected affection, joined with wrong notions of a future life. The idea of a chieftain going into the world of spirits unattended, is most repugnant to the native mind. So strong is the feeling in favour of the loloku, that Christianity is disliked because it rigorously discountenances the cherished custom. When the Christian chief of Dama fell by the concealed musketry of the Nawathans, a stray shot entered the forehead of a young man at some distance from him, and killed him. The event was regarded by many of the nominal Christians as most fortunate, since it provided a companion for the spirit of the slain chief.

Ordinarily, the first victim for the loloku is the man’s wife, and more than one, if he has several. I have known the mother to be strangled too. In the case of a chief who has a confidential companion, this his right-hand man, in order to prevent a disruption in their intimacy, ought to die with his superior; and a neglect of this duty would lower him in public opinion. . . .

            Choosing to Die

…In the case of a chief drowned at sea, or slain and eaten in war, the loloku is carefully observed, as well as if the deceased had died naturally, and been buried in a strange land. But in these instances the grief of the survivors is more impassioned, and their desire to manifest it by dying is more enthusiastic.

When Ra Mbithi, the pride of Somosomo, was lost at sea, seventeen of his wives were destroyed. After the news of the massacre of the Namena people at Viwa in 1839, eighty women were strangled to accompany the spirits of their murdered husbands.

Before leaving this dark subject, it demands more full and explicit examination. It has been said that most of the women thus destroyed are sacrificed at their own insistence. There is truth in this statement; but unless other facts are taken into account, it produces an untruthful impression. Many are importunate to be killed, because they know that life would thenceforth be to them prolonged insult, neglect, and want. Very often, too, their resolution is grounded upon knowing that their friends or children have determined that they shall die. Some women have been known to carry to the grave the mats in which they and their dead husbands were to be shrouded, and, on their arrival, have helped to dig their own tomb. They then took farewell of their friends. . .

If the friends of the woman are not the most clamorous for her death, their indifference is construed into disrespect either for her late husband or his friends, and would be accordingly resented. Thus the friends and children of the woman are prompted to urge her death, more by self-interest than affection for her, and by fear of the survivors rather than respect for the dead. Another motive is to secure landed property belonging to the husband, to obtain which they are ready to sacrifice a daughter, a sister, or a mother. Many a poor widow has been urged by the force of such motives as these, more than by her own apparent ambition, to become the favourite wife in the abode of spirits.. . .

. . . As it affects the children, this dreadful custom is fearfully cruel, depriving them of the mother when, by ordinary or violent means, they have become fatherless. Natural deaths are reduced to a small number among heathen Fijians, by the prevalence of war and the various systems of murder which custom demands…

Source

[#3] Thomas Williams, “Deaths of the Old Chief and his Wives,” Fiji and the Fijians (London: Alexander Heylan, Vol. 1, 1858; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1870), pp. 160-176.

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