Des relations qui existent entre les divers peuples ou entre la fédération de peuples d’espèce malai

CHAP. 22: > Of the relations that exist between the diverse peoples or between the federation of peoples of the Malay species. — Of the influence of their social organization on the nature of these relations. — Of the causes and results of their wars.

In no country does the influence that the social organization of a people exercises on neighboring peoples manifest itself with more energy than in the archipelagos of the great Ocean situated between the tropics. Among these peoples, the cadets of the family have no share in the succession of their fathers, as has been seen; they can therefore live only on the food that their elders give them, if they remain in the family, or on what the subjugated population can give them, if they enter the military association of the Arreoys. But, whichever of these two courses they take, they cannot hope to perpetuate their race; the powerlessness to transmit any property to their children, and to maintain them in the rank into which they are born, is doubtless what has made it a law for them to suffocate them [594].

They have a means, however, of escaping the state in which they find themselves and of placing themselves on the same rank as their elders: it is the destruction of the great possessors of lands of the other States. Thus, in each country, the most numerous and most energetic part of the aristocratic class is pushed, by the very desire that nature has given to all species to preserve themselves, toward the destruction of the aristocratic classes that exist among neighboring peoples; and, as the same order of things is established everywhere, and as nowhere do there exist industrious classes at whose expense the cadets of the aristocracy can enrich themselves, the eldest sons exclude them from the paternal inheritance only on the condition that all the cadets of the other States will arm themselves against them to exterminate them. The same passions that push toward war the individuals who have no other means of perpetuating their race, also push their king toward it; for as the former acquire lands, the latter multiplies the number of his great vassals [595].The peoples of these archipelagos are therefore always in a state of war with one another, and the animosity they bring to it is in proportion to the power of the cause that excites them to it, and to the calamities that are reserved for the vanquished [596]. The war having for its goal only the aggrandizement or the multiplication of the sons of the lords of the land, the sun, and the firmament, on both sides, it is preluded by the sacrifice of human victims, always chosen from the inferior ranks, from among the descendants of the men who were formerly vanquished. In this sacrifice, the customs that are practiced at the funerals of the great are followed, and particularly that which is called the chief's treat. Some travelers have thought that the inhabitants of the Society Islands, the Friendly Islands, and the Sandwich Islands, devoured their prisoners [597]; but it has not been possible to acquire certainty of this, and the movement of astonishment and horror manifested by one of these islanders upon seeing an inhabitant of New Zealand devour the remains of a human body, seems to prove that this custom is not admitted among them [598]. But, if they do not feed on their prisoners, they make them perish in torment; they rush upon the corpses of their vanquished enemies and tear them with their teeth [599]. These are, as will soon be seen, the least barbarous of the noble warriors of these islands.

When the attacked peoples cannot prevent the enemy from penetrating into the country, they withdraw as far as they can, carrying away everything it is possible for them to remove from him. If the conqueror fears he cannot maintain himself in his conquest, he acts in the Roman manner: he destroys the dwellings, the canals, the trees, the harvests, the animals, in short, everything that is the work of human industry; misery and famine then carry off the vanquished and sometimes even the victors [600]. But, if he remains master of the country, he divides the lands among his noble companions; the latter then leave the military body of the Arreoys, are no longer obliged to suffocate their children, and give birth to other cadets who, like them, will have to exterminate new peoples, or cause their own children to perish as soon as they see the light of day [601].

The war having for its object to seize the lands they covet, the conquest has for its result the destruction of the noble possessors. If, therefore, victory makes them masters of a country, they exterminate the entire male part of the population, fathers, children, the elderly, and probably also the women whom they judge unworthy of being raised to the rank of their wives. If they do not massacre their prisoners on the spot, it is to make them perish in torture, and to savor more at their ease the pleasures of vengeance. The refinements they bring to cruelty are analogous to those put into practice by the natives of the north of America. One finds in their traditions and in their language, proofs that their ancestors once devoured their prisoners [602]; and the names that their chiefs take of tomb of men, of thieves of canoes [603], attest to the honor they attach to murder and brigandage.

These wars, whose principal object is to give means of existence to the disinherited cadets of the great, are so destructive that sometimes a few years have been sufficient to plunge the most flourishing islands into misery, and to reap the greater part of the population [604].