On the subject of skulls (last blog – crocodiles), from Lola Island we were given a tour of nearby tiny Skull Island. Solomon Islanders have a history of headhunting and cannibalism that dates back hundreds of years, continuing into the 1920s. War parties went raiding in highly decorated and carved war canoes each capable of carrying 30-40 fully armed men, bringing home the skulls (which they believed contained a person’s life force) with the belief that they would thus be enhanced by absorbing their victim’s personal power. Skull Island was a repository for these heads. The lesser warriors are tucked into rocky crevices, but the more powerful deceased chiefs are housed in the protection of a kind of triangular box, complete with door. Also on the tiny islet is a row of standing stones, good luck talismans for forays out to sea fishing or raiding. And lastly there are two stone crosses, the resting place of 20th century Christian converts, the prior owners of Skull Island.
Interestingly, in one province here the tradition of headhunting has created a matrilineal system of inheritance with land ownership passed down through the mother. Men victims of head hunters were generally killed but women, although captured and enslaved, generally were spared thus ensuring the survival of kastom ownership in the community.
The Solomons were a pretty hairy place until not very long ago, and as a result they were practically the last island group colonized in the world. A fair number of missionaries were cooked before making inroads with Christianity. I have been reading assorted books, including Jack London’s autobiographical The Cruise of the Snark which relates his meanders through the South Pacific on a 43′ sailboat, departing San Francisco in 1907 and voyaging to Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tahiti and Bora Bora, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) before finally abandoning the trip – done in by the Solomons. It was not the still murderous natives that discouraged him, but rather fever (malaria) and infection from the “poisonous airs” that finally forced him to head to Australia for six months of recuperation. And it is still certainly true that infection is easy to come by in the South Pacific where a small coral cut or a too vigorously scratched mosquito bite can turn into a raging staph infection (and I speak from personal prior experience).
I also read London’s South Sea Tales, a collection of fictional short stories. His chapter on our current location was titled The Terrible Solomons and written with tongue in cheek humor.
Written half a century later, Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific brings the World War II Pacific Theatre to life – that much more so as we travel to the locations mentioned in his short stores – Efate, Santo, Luganville, Munda, the Russells and more.
