Forty Years On The Pacific/Polynesian Pastimes

CRICKET is as popular in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga as it was in pre-war days in Australia and England. In those paradises of peace and plenty, where the actual necessaries of life (anyway, enough to satisfy the average native) are obtainable without the smallest amount of labor, there is ample time for indulgence in the pastime. So in many places they play cricket every day, and, inasmuch as practice makes perfect, are skilful with bat and ball. Cricket is elsewhere a summer game, but it being practically perpetual summer in the tropics, is played there all the year round.

There are several European clubs in Fiji, at Suva and Levuka, and in connection with the several sugar mills in various parts of the group. When a man-of-war is berthed in Suva, which is often the case, daily contests take place between the naval men and the local eleven, and the latter invariably comes off victorious. But it is particularly concerning cricket as played by the natives that I wish to write. The Fijians are fine, stalwart fellows, and are passionately fond of the game. In the field they are as agile as monkeys.' They are vigorous, plucky batsmen, and swift but not tricky bowlers. They wear no protection for their bare legs or seminude bodies while batting, and appear to take as little notice of being struck by a hard ball as we are of being hit by a soft one. Inter-tribal matches are often arranged and all the adults and youths of each tribe play on these occasions, so that the teams often number as many as fifty or sixty a side. Such matches last for the best part of a week, and if at all closely contested, the excitement runs high. Few villages can boast of the possession of a proper bat, so they use a wooden club instead; and I have seen them using stones and small cocoanuts when they could not manage to get even a ball. Under such conditions, the game resembles "shinny." Anyone who can play cricket well can reckon upon having a right royal time in the native villages. One who excels at athletics, and particularly at cricket, immediately commands the respect and admiration of the Fijians.

Cricket was even more popular among Samoans in the nineties than it is at the present time. In those days the natives became infatuated with the game, and would at times have up to one hundred on a side. A victorious team would go from village to village around the islands by boat, and where successful would commandeer all the portable property, such as clubs, spears, pigs and girls, they could get into their boats. Besides the players, the umpires are a numerous body, for nearly every one who is not taking part in it is an umpire.

The game was introduced into Tonga by officers of the British Navy. Natives brought fruit daily to the players, who, upon leaving, presented the natives with their bats, balls, stumps, etc. Thereupon the natives ceased work and started playing cricket matches which sometimes lasted a month, with sixty men on a side. When supplies of balls ran out, they would use unripe oranges. They, too, played for pigs, girls, cocoanuts, and so on. A few years ago, the Tongan Government legislated on the subject of cricket, and limited the number of days on which the game may be played to two a week. Before this law was passed, the Tongans sacrificed nearly all their time to the pastime and their families suffered in consequence.

Baseball is very popular at Pago Pago, American Samoa, among white men and natives. I have met rooters at Pago who boasted of their League, and pointed out that the New York Giants and Boston Red Sox took care to give the Pago players a wide berth when they made their tour of the world. Some American governors have been so fond of baseball that they have issued proclamations declaring holidays at Pago twice a week, so that all the inhabitants might attend the ball games. This, of course, necessitated the closing of business places, including department stores.

Football, too, has come into vogue within the last few years in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga; and some of the players, more particularly the half-castes, give promise of developing into good players.

Of the other diversions of the islanders, dancing occupies a front place, and playing cards is a very common form of amusement at the present day. The favorite entertainment in Samoa in the old days used to be known as the "Po-ula." This means a "night of pleasure." It was an obscene night dance, a variety of antics and buffoonery forming a prelude to the closing saturnalia. In the "Siva," another popular dance, each performer blew a pipe or flute of bamboo while dancing, and the dancing consisted for the most part of throwing the arms and legs into strange attitudes, leaping up and down and turning round, clapping of the hands being an accompaniment incidental to such occasions. The Samoan girls at the dances in Apia and Pago Pago like to "trip the light fantastic toe" in bare feet, and I am told in the whirl of excitement they throw off as much clothing as decency permits.

The Samoans and the Tongans are very fond of singing; but nearly all their singing is in a minor key. Children sing at play, the girls sing at their dances, and boatmen keep time to the dipping of their cars with songs that strike the tourist as being the strangest and most weird that he ever heard. But, I must confess, the monotony of the songs soon becomes wearisome.

Boxing matches, foot races, wrestling and canoe sailing are other favorite pastimes. In the old days in Samoa, club fights and kicking matches were considered to be fine, manly sports. In the kicking matches the combatants endeavored U kick each other down—about as foolish a pastime as were the club fights. In the latter, broken heads were frequent.

Story-telling has always been a popular amusement through the islands. It seems strange that a person's death should be made the occasion for revelry, but so it was. There are many things which the Samoans do which are difficult for more civilized people to understand. Formerly the death of a chief was celebrated by a feast, but there has been an improvement since then, and now when a person of rank feels he is about to die he sends word round for his relatives and friends to gather and feast with him. A feast is a very important matter over a man's death, and the man himself, seeing he is the principal one concerned, arranges for it to take place beforehand, so that he may get some satisfaction out of it.

One of the strangest pastimes, if it can be included under this head, is that of fire-walking. The performance consists of walking barefooted through a great shallow pit filled with super-heated stones which under ordinary circumstances would burn the soles of the feet at once, but which for some reason do not have this effect upon the performers. Only a few natives here and there possess the singular power. The most celebrated of the fire-walkers are the tribesmen of Mbengha Island in Fiji, whose performances, given from time to time, greatly astonish the large number of visitors that they attract. No European has, so far as I am aware, been able to solve the mystery that surrounds this well-preserved tribal secret, although many clever people have been permitted every facility by the fire-walkers to discover it.

It is claimed that Professor J. F. Langley solved it. He stated that they walk on volcanic stones that are good radiators but poor conductors of heat, so the surfaces cool quickly, while much heat remains within the stones.

I have not had the good fortune to see fire-walking myself, but it must be very exciting as many eye-witnesses have often described it to me. A great circular excavation, the bottom of which is paved with stones, is made and filled with logs of wood. These are set alight and kept burning for ten or twelve hours, additional supplies of wood being thrown in as the pile burns down. Finally, the stones forming the pavement of the excavation become hot and when the embers have been removed, and the surface made fairly level, the performers, after repeating an incantation, walk through the fiery furnace, deliberately stepping from stone to stone. They are not burned in any way. Their feet are not even blistered, nor do they show the slightest symptom of distress. The same feat is done in some parts of Tahiti and the Cook Islands. I have heard that a European, who believed that the stones were really not so hot as they looked, followed the natives on one occasion and got very badly burned.

A few years ago, Dr. Irwin took five male and two female Tahitians to America to give exhibitions of fire-walking. He had to deposit a large sum with the French authorities as security for their return, and put up a guarantee with the United States Government regarding their health. He experienced great difficulty in securing natives whose blood condition would permit them to enter the United States. After all the trouble, the enterprise was not a success.