Not content with this, when one man wished to abuse another in a particularly offensive way he would use some expression referring to this degraded condition of the women, such as “mayst thou be baked as food for thy mother.”  Young children were deliberately taught to disregard their mother, the father encouraging them in their insults and violence (205).  Cook (220) found that Tahitian women were often treated with a degree of harshness, or rather “brutality,” which one would scarcely suppose a man would bestow on an object for whom he had the least affection.  Nothing, however, is more common than “to see the men beat them without mercy” (II., 220).  They killed more female than male infants, because, as they said, the females were useless for war, the fisheries, or the service of the temple.  For the sick they had no sympathy; at times they murdered them or buried them alive. (Ellis, I., 340; II., 281.) In battle they gave no quarter, even to women or children. (Hawkesworth, II., 244.)

“Every horrid torture was practised.  The females experienced brutality and murder, and the tenderest infants were perhaps transfixed to the mother’s heart by a ruthless weapon—­caught up by ruffian hands, and dashed against the rocks or the trees—­or wantonly thrown up into the air, and caught on the point of the warrior’s spear, where it writhed in agony, and died, ... some having two or three infants hanging on the spear they bore across their shoulders” (I., 235-36).  The bodies of females slain in war were treated with “a degree of brutality as inconceivable as it was detestable.”

TWO STORIES OF TAHITIAN INFATUATION

While ferocity, cruelty, habitual wantonness and general coarseness are fatal obstacles to sentimental love, they may be accompanied, as we have seen, by the violent sensual infatuation which is so often mistaken for love.  Unsuccessful Tahitian suitors have been known to commit suicide under the influence of revenge and despair, as is stated by Ellis (I., 209), who also notes two instances of violent individual preference.

The chief of Eimeo, twenty years old, of a mild disposition, became attached to a Huahine girl and tendered proposals of marriage.  She was a niece of the principal roatira in the island, but though her family was willing, she declined all his proposals.  He discontinued his ordinary occupations, and repaired to the habitation of the individual whose favor he was so anxious to obtain.  Here he appeared subject to the deepest melancholy, and from morning to night, day after day, he attended his mistress, performing humiliating offices with apparent satisfaction.  His disappointment finally became the topic of general conversation.  At length the girl was induced to accept him.  They were publicly married and lived very comfortably together for a few months, when the wife died.