It is a well-known fact that the resistance and health of a native depend on auto-suggestion more even than is the case with ourselves, though new developments in psychotherapy seem to indicate that medicine has up till now largely underrated the general influence of this factor. Even the old ethnographic observers, more in Polynesia perhaps than anywhere else, have reported clear, unmistakable instances in which the loss of interest in life and the determination to die brought about death without any other cause. My own experience, though I have no one very striking case to cite, bears this out fully from all sorts of corroborating types of evidence. It is therefore not going beyond what is fully granted by facts, to maintain that a general loss of interest in life, of the joie de vivre, the cutting of all the bonds of intense interest, which bind members of a human community to existence, will result in their giving up the desire to live altogether, and that therefore they will fall an easy prey to any disease, as well as fail to multiply.
A wise administration of natives would, on the one hand, try to govern through the chief, using his authority along the lines of old law, usage, and custom; on the other hand it would try to maintain all which really makes life worth living for the natives, for it is the most precious inheritance, which they have from the past ages, and it is no good to try to substitute other interests for those lost. It is easy to hand over one’s vices to a man racially and culturally different; but nothing is as difficult to impart as a keen interest in the sports and amusements of other people. Even from one European nation to another, the last stronghold of national peculiarity can be found in its traditional diversions, and without diversion and amusement a culture and a race cannot survive. The application of a heavy, indeed, crushing machinery of European law and moral regulations, with their various sanctions, simply destroys the whole delicate fabric of tribal authority, eradicating good and bad alike, and leaves nothing but anarchy, bewilderment and ill will.1
With a mere show of his former authority, therefore, poor old To’uluwa arrived with a handful of followers at Sinaketa. He still keeps to all the strict observances and onerous duties with which his exalted position was weighted in olden days. Thus, he may not partake of ever so many kinds of food, considered to be unclean for the members of the sub-clan of Tabalu. He may not even touch any defiled objects, that have been in contact with unclean food; he may not eat from dishes or drink out of vessels which have been used previously by other people. When he goes to Sinaketa, for instance, where even the highest chiefs do not keep the taboos, he remains almost on starvation diet; he can only eat the food which has been brought from his own village, or drink and eat green coco-nut. Of the honours attaching to his position, not many are observed. In olden days, on his approach to a village, a runner would enter first, and in a loud voice cry out “O Guya’u,” whereupon all the people would stand in readiness, and at the chief’s approach the commoners would throw themselves on the ground, the headman would squat down, and men of rank would bend their heads. Even now, no commoner in the Trobriands would stand erect in the presence of To’uluwa. But he no more announces his arrival in such a loud and proud manner, and he takes his dues as they are given, not demanding them with any show of authority.
II
On that occasion in Sinaketa, I met him again after about two years interval since the time when I lived as his neighbour in Omarakana for some eight months, my tent pitched side by side with his lisiga (chief’s man’s abode). I found him changed and aged, his tall figure more bent, his large face, with its expression half of benevolence and half of cunning, wrinkled and clouded over. He had some grievances to tell about the offhand treatment which had been given to him in Sinaketa, where he had received no necklaces at all, although a few days before the Sinaketans had carried from Kiriwina over 150 pairs of armshells. Indeed, the