The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Page 69

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. 69

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already spoken of. But this was not the only way

in which they would inflict injuries upon themselves
in order to gratify their gods. Some islanders would
knock out their front teeth; others would cut off
a joint of their little fingers as an offering. In the
Friendly Islands scarcely a person could be found
who had not his hands mutilated in this way. By
successive offerings of this sort some lost both little
fingers entirely and, when out of joints, would
scratch the stump till it bled, as a new offering.
When we consider that this cutting was done with
a rough instrument of bone, a jagged flint, or piece
of shell, we may form some idea of their anxiety to
please their deities. The spirit of reverence and
self-sacrifice was in them, but was gone astray
through lack of light.

Besides these ancestors and idols and Tangaroa,
of whom they seldom made an image, there was an-
other class of sacred objects, called etus. An etu
was any animal or vegetable, stock or stone, into
which the spirit of an ancestor or of an idol was
supposed to have entered at any time. The object
and all objects of its kind were thus rendered tapued
or tabued, or sacred. So certain fish or certain
plants could not be eaten. As man was much holier
than woman, certain articles of food permissible to
men could not be eaten by women. Men and women
could not eat together. Moreover, there was a vast
and varied system of tabu rites and ceremonies to
be observed on special occasions, but too prolix and
complex to admit of detail here. Whoever infringed
the tabu was punished by death. The etus included
a great variety of objects, but chiefly fish, snakes,
and small quadrupeds.

Infanticide.

We close this chapter on the condition in which
the Gospel first found the South Sea Islanders by
mentioning one more practise to which they were
addicted, that of destroying their own children. The
extent to which this practise prevailed was truly
terrible. One mother confessed to a missionary

that she had destroyed sixteen children. At another
time, when this subject was referred to in the

presence of three mothers who had for some years
held the Christian faith, they confessed that they
were each guilty of this horrid crime. One had
destroyed nine children, another seven, and the
third five. : ;

Some mothers were forced, under the established
customs of the country, to destroy their babes.
Tf a woman married a man of lower rank than her-
self, the murder of her children was the penalty she

was expected to pay for her offense. But for the
most part the little children were offered as sacri-
fices, under the influences of a superstition which,
wherever the Gospel is not known, leads men to“acts
of self-affliction as atonement for their sins. The
dearest treasure of the heart was the offering most
pleasing to the gods.

Various methods of destroying the little inno-
cents were practised. It was very common to bury
the infant alive. Occasionally it was strangled out-
right; often a wet cloth was placed over the mouth,
and thus the child was suffocated. Another and
most brutal method was to break the first joints of
the fingers and toes as soon as the child was born.
Tf it survived this, the other finger and toe joints
were broken. If it still lived, all the joints of the
arms and legs were dislocated. This would end the
agony of the little sufferer.

‘We are glad to inform the reader that this ter-
rible practise is no more. The light of the Gospel
has reached the South Sea Islands. The habitations
of cruelty have become the homes of Christian love.
In nothing do the natives more rejoice, in: nothing
do they more recognize the benefits which Chris-
tianity has brought, than in delivering them from
rites so cruel and superstitious, so afflicting. Now,
when the children taught by the missionaries, at the
close of their schools, put on their best attire and
sing their songs and recite their speeches, as our
own dear children do at home, fathers and mothers
who have been but lately delivered “from their
heathen blindness and who had offered their own
children to false gods before the missionary came,
weep for their own murdered children, while they
rejoice in the happy change.

It was upon such an occasion and in the midst
of the proceeding that a venerable gray-haired chief,
overcome with his feelings, rose and said: “Let me
speak; I must speak. Oh, that I had known that
the Gospel was coming; oh, that I had known that
these blessings were in store for us! Then I should
have saved my children, and they would be among
this happy group, repeating these precious truths.
But, alas, I have destroyed them all, I have not one
left!” Then turning to the chairman, who was also.
a relative, he stretched out his arm and exclaimed:
“You, my brother, saw me kill child after child;
but you never seized this murderous hand and said,

. ‘Stay, brother, God is about to bless us; the Gospel

of salvation is coming to these shores!” Then he
cursed the gods which they formerly worshiped and
added: “It was you that infused this savage disposi-
tion into us, and now I shall die childless, although