Often when Tanoa returned to Mbau from his murderous raids children yet alive were to be seen suspended by an ankle or wrist from the yardarm of this canoe, and so common was this practise that such were called in derision Mianu-manu-ni-latha (birds of the sail).
The later years of this inhuman monster were disturbed by dissentions and by the rebellions of his sons. Yet when he came to die he smiled with his last breath when told that five of his wives were to be strangled to accompany him into the world beyond.
Throughout his reign, Rewa and Mbau were almost constantly at war, but every now and then Tanoa would command the Rewa chiefs to come to Mbau to beg pardon for their temerity, which they always did, even if victorious.
Tanoa lived to be nearly if not quite eighty years of age, a rare occurrence in Fiji, for they believed that as they were at the time of death so would they be in the world to come. Thus doubly did they dread the infirmities of age, and people who passed middle life commonly requested their nearest relative and friends to strangle or bury them alive. Thus died the great chief Tuithakau (king of the reefs) of Somo somo, an event of which the missionary Williams gives a detailed and graphic description. Tuithakau was described by Commodore Wilkes as
In August, 1845, this old aristocrat became feeble after prolonged illness, and one day he announced to those around him that the time of his death had come. Two of his wives were then adorned in gala attire and strangled by their kindred, while the old king was covered with charcoal pigment, the chieftain's turban of masi placed upon his head, and a string of whale's teeth around his neck. Then the chief priest blew two blasts upon his triton shell, and after an interval turning to the old king's son he said "True the sun of one king has set, but our king yet lives." Then the aged man was carried out through an opening torn through the wall of the house, as is the custom to-day at Fijian funerals, and they placed him upon the bodies of his two dead wives who lay upon the mats within the grave, and as the earth was thrown over him he was heard to cough beneath the ground. Sixty of his subjects then cut off their little fingers, fastened them upon reeds and thrust them into the thatch along the eaves of the dead chief's house. So respected was this custom of burying the aged that for a whole year at Somo Somo the missionaries heard of but one natural death of an adult, and Wilkes says that among over 200 natives at Savu Savu he saw not one over forty years of age.
(To he continued)
