Among Fiji Cannibals: James Calvert
“/’“CANNIBALS” is a term that expresses or indicates the idea of human beings reduced to the lowest conceivable depth of degradation. It is an idea from which persons of civilization and refinement recoil with disgust and horror. For generations the thought of cannibalism has been linked with the thought of direst peril and abominations to which Christian missionaries have been exposed in their unselfish endeavors to bear the gospel to the needy in the South Sea Islands.
It was this idea which gave point to the coarse witticism of the Rev. Sydney Smith when, in bidding good-bye to a missionary who was going to the South Sea Islands, he expressed the hope that he would “agree with the man who ate him.” It was also this idea that added solemnity to the earnest words of the man of God in Connecticut when, in a sermon preached on the occasion of the going out of the first missionary to the islands in the Pacific, he reminded them of the fate of former explorers at the hands of cannibals, which the missionaries must now face, and which God must be trusted to shield them from.
But cannibalism is primarily a religious rite, and not a mere act of foul gluttony and of savage loathsomeness. Those who are sure that God loves even such sinners as the most debased and debasing cannibals, and would have his children reflect his love in striving to win them to better views and practices, have been glad to perceive the better thought of which the cannibal idea is a perversion. It is indeed well that some Christian missionaries have recognized the better aspect or inner germ of cannibalism as a starting-point with the heathen mind, when they would win these benighted souls to fuller light in Christ.
Blood-drinking and flesh-eating have been counted a means of fuller, better life to the partaker, and a most acceptable offering, in the very act, to the God, or to the gods, worshipped by him who is the triumphant actor in the performance. The student of history and of primitive life finds ample evidence of this among many peoples. In the Bible there are not lacking references to this, and even the most sacred rite of Holy Communion is a telling witness to it. Before the Christian era Herodotus tells us that the Scythians believed that by drinking the blood of a hero they absorbed and incorporated his life. And so among other peoples.
There is a seeming reference or allusion to this common thought of men in the words of Jesus, when he said in Capernaum, a year before he instituted the Lord’s Supper, “He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life” (John 6:54). Modern missionaries among cannibals have observed the religious aspect of the custom, or the rite, and it has helped them in their efforts to come into touch with those whom they were seeking to win and uplift. In the first address which I heard from the missionary hero John G. Paton, I heard him give expression to this view of cannibalism in the New Hebrides.
But even before this I had read the explicit testimony of Williams and Calvert, missionaries of the English Wesleyan Missionary Society, as to the cannibals of their charge in the Fiji Islands. I was peculiarly interested in this matter when I first read their testimony, inasmuch as I was at that time engaged in my researches while preparing a volume on “The Blood Covenant: A Primitive Rite, and Its Bearings on Scripture.” But on other accounts I was interested in the story of the labors of Williams and Calvert, for they were noble men, and they had done a noble work in what seemed a difificult and dangerous and most unpromising field.
The Fiji Islands were long known as the “Cannibal Islands.” They were thought of as the home of hopeless and almost worthless savages. They extended over about 40,000 square miles of the South Pacific, and formed a connecting link between the abodes of the Malayan and the Papuan races of Polynesia. They were discovered by Tasman, the Dutch navigator, in 1643, but they were not visited again until the days of Captain Cook in the latter third of the eighteenth century. In the early years of the nineteenth century they were visited by traders to procure sandal-wood to burn before Chinese idols — another illustration of the importance of religious worship, whether true or false, as affecting trade and commerce and as quickening exploration. About this time some English convicts from New South Wales settled on these islands, and their introduction of European vices lowered the moral standard of the Fiji cannibals and brought new terror to their lives by the murderous use of iirearms.
There are more than two hundred islands in the Fiji group, some eighty of which are inhabited. Their characteristics and relations were little known to the world until they were explored and defined by Admiral Wilkes and his party in the United States Exploration Expedition in 1842. It was in connection with the Reports of that Expedition that I first had an interest in that part of the world, as I well knew Dr. James D. Dana, a prominent member of that Expedition, and had special pleasure in examining the published voluminous Reports.
Dangers and difficulties in a needy field and the unpromising nature of a field for Christian labor have never deterred devoted missionaries of Christ from faithful and persistent service there. The question they ask is not. What encouragement or return shall we have if we go there and work? but it ever is, What is the need of souls there? and, What would Christ have us do? Hence the new call for missionary service, coming in the fresh intelligence as to the Fiji Islands and the Fiji people in the first half of the nineteenth century, was met by the Wesleyan Missionary Society of Great Britain in the sending out faithful missionaries of Christ to that important field.
That was a faithful illustration and evidence of the passion for souls and of zeal in his life-work that was given by John Waterhouse, the superintendent of
Wesleyan Missions in the South Sea Islands, in his dying hour. He had been at work in this cause for years, when he went out to visit personally every station in his great field. He spent all his strength in this work, and when he had visited the last of the stations he lay down to die on March 30, 1842, crying out in his soul longing, with his latest breath, “Missionaries! Missionaries I Missionaries!” And that dying call was heeded. Two of his own sons went out to the field, and other sons of God followed.
James Calvert joined Thomas Williams after the latter had been three or four years in the field, and the two were for years zealous and efficient missionary co-workers. As in most such outlying fields one of the first and most important duties was the systematizing and perfecting the language and in giving the people the Bible in that language. In this service Mr. Calvert worked untiringly in the years that passed until its completion, and then he sailed for England to secure its printing and binding by the aid of the British and Foreign Bible Society. When in 1856 copies of the Bible in Fiji were at last being made ready for distribution, these islands so recently “in a state of almost incomprehensible barbarism” were already in a condition to receive the help and guidance of the Word of God.
Because the Fiji people were human, they were sinners in their barbarous way, as civilized and educated people are in their peculiar way. Lust, lying, treachery, foul ingratitude, murder, were common, and seemed almost universal. Infanticide was deemed the inaUenable right of a parent. It was a common thing to bury alive an infirm parent who could no longer be of service to his children. Wives of a husband were put to death when he died, in order that they might still minister to him. Similarly, a mother would be put to death when her son died. The taking of human life was deemed commendable, without regard to the person murdered or the manner of his murder.
Even when there seemed to exist some sentiment and affection, these did not secure regard for life. Thus a missionary tells of seeing a son show strong emotion when parting from his father for a brief season, and a father evidence honest pride in his eldest son who was to be the family representative. Yet that sensitive son afterwards buried his old father alive; and that proud father assisted in strangling his noble son. Among fierce barbarians as among the civihzed and educated, emotion is not principle, and neither civilization nor education secures firm or right principle.
“One of the first lessons taught the [Fiji] infant is to strike its mother, a neglect of which would beget a fear lest the child should grow up to be a coward. Moreover, children are trained to be malicious and vindictive and cruel, so that they may be haters of their enemies. Even their religion teaches them to commit foul crimes. As has been said, cannibalism is a religious rite. Chiefs eat the tongue and the heart of a person offered in sacrifice to the gods; common people can partake of less favored portions of the devoted body.” The missionaries say, “Cannibalism is a part of the Fijian religion, and the gods are described as delighting in human flesh....
Human flesh is still the most valued offering; and their ’ drink offerings of blood ’ are still the most acceptable.”
Yet with all these obstacles to the introduction of Christianity into the Fiji Islands, the missionaries were courageous and faith-filled. They persevered and were successful. About a score of years after the Fiji Mission was established, a volume was published in London, and republished in New York, entitled, “Fiji and the Fijians,” by Thomas Williams and James Calvert. The good missionaries told of the obstacles they had met in the strength of God, and of the success God had given to them in his service. They told especially of the rescued and converted Fijians who had been set to work as Christian preachers and teachers among their native brethren.
“It is not possible,” they said, “to set too high the value of such agents as are raised up among the people. While inferior in many important respects, they yet possess qualifications for the work which no foreign missionary can ever acquire. They are in no danger of suffering from the climate; they can reach places and mix with the people where a foreigner could scarcely find access; leading the same manner of life, and existing on the same food, as the rest of the people:... their command of language is perfect; above all, they occupy the same level of experience as those whom they teach; and the same sympathy which enables them to frame and present their instruction in the most effective way insures for those instructions a readier reception.”
The volume by Williams and Calvert came to my notice, as I have mentioned, in connection with my studies on “The Blood Covenant.” I was deeply interested, not merely in the recorded facts in the line of my special research, but in the proofs it gave of the zeal and faithfulness of the devoted missionaries and of their wonderful success in doing what God would have them do. Thomas Williams and James Calvert were thenceforward in my mind as peculiar missionary heroes in the war of light with darkness and in the loving efforts of those who love Christ and who love those whom Christ loves.
The Fijians had no written language when the missionaries went there; so in the truest sense they had no fixed language. Therefore the missionaries had to make a language for them. This was largely the work of James Calvert. He had to catch the sounds of the words as they fell from the lips of the natives and then write them down phonetically. This was slow work, beginning again at Babel and toiling towards Pentecost. But in James Calvert’s lifetime the Fiji language was reduced to system. Into that language the Bible was translated. A grammar and a lexicon were prepared and various books of value were added. Was not this good work for that people and for the world? Ought not James Calvert’s name to be honored?
One day, as I was going up the stairway from the Broadway entrance to the Methodist book rooms of that time, in New York City, I met comingdown a man who had evidently been at some of the church offices above. He asked in a pleasant voice, “Is this Mr. Thompson?” <’It i§ not,” I replied. “Excuse me,” he said. “I have been waiting some time to meet a gentleman, and I did not know but this was he.” “No,” I replied, “I am H. Clay Trumbull, and not the man you seek.” “And I am James Calvert,” he replied, courteously giving his name as I had given mine. At this I started with surprise, saying, “You are not James Calvert, the brother missionary to the Fijis with Thomas Williams, are you?” “Yes, I am,” he rejoined. In a moment the missionary hero of my admiring thoughts was a living reality before me, and I was glad and grateful that this was so.
Then I told him how much I had been interested in his life-work and his life-story, and, incidentally, of the value to me of the facts brought out as to the underlying thought of cannibalism as a religious rite among the Fijians. And as we talked together there of his mission-field and his mission-work, I had an added interest in all that he said because of my familiarity with the background of his story.
As I looked into that Christ-lighted face I saw the hero-scars on the form of the veteran soldier of the cross who had passed triumphantly through so many battles with Satan and his host on the island mission-field, while faithfully representing the great Captain of salvation and winning subjects to his divine Master. And I have ever since been glad to have that missionary face and form in grateful memory, as well as in my conscious and best thought out of his recorded story.