Bau Fijians

David Routledge

Kubuna, Mbau

The name "Bau" was originally that of a house site ([n]yavu/n]) at Kubuna on the Wainibuka River in the interior of Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji. Since migration to the east coast, "Bau" usually has been used to refer to the small offshore islet, home of the paramount chiefs, and "Kubuna" is used for those who claim kinship with the chiefly families, or those who "go with" Bau in the wider politics of all Fiji. The Kubuna moved down the Wainibuka and then the Wailevu (Rewa) river valleys to occupy the northeastern coast of the Rewa Delta and the Kaba Peninsula of Viti Levu before making a home for their chiefs on the small islet of Bau, which is no more than eight hectares in extent and fifteen meters above sea level at the highest point.

When the Bau polity was at the height of its power, the population on the islet is said to have been 4,000. The paucity of available data permits no more than a guess as to the number of its supporters. Mid-nineteenth century estimates varied between 100,000 and 300,000 for all of Fiji, of whom perhaps half supported Bau, but traditions tell of disastrous epidemics associated with the earlier arrival of Europeans ravaging the population, reducing it by as much as forty percent. The 1986 census revealed Fijians in the provinces that "go with" Bau totaling 175,000. In 2017 the population of the Bau district of Taivelu province was 30,965.

The language is one of 300 “communalects” (dialects largely confined to one community) that exist among the contemporary population of Fiji. In the early nineteenth century, a lingua franca based on the communalects of Bau and Rewa was used by Fijians from different parts of the islands when they wished to communicate, and European missionaries chose Bau for translation of the Bible. Europeanized Bauan, sometimes also called Old High Bauan, has now become the basis for Standard Fijian, which is in the Oceanic Branch of Austronesian languages.

Although Fiji has been inhabited for at least 3,500 years, much intervening history has been lost to memory. All of the great chiefdoms of eastern Viti Levu trace their founding ancestors to the Nakauvadra Mountains near the north coast, but existing genealogical information cannot be held to relate to earlier than the sixteenth century. The Bau had two great chiefly lines: that of the Roko Tui Bau, the sacred chiefs; and the Vunivalu, war chiefs and executive chiefs. After moving to the islet, the Bau began extending their influence. The Vunivalu Naulivou exploited musket­ bearing European beachcombers to such effect that at the time of his death in 1829, Bau seemed well on the way to establishing a Fiji-wide hegemony. Rebellion in 1832 halted this rise and relations between Bau and other chiefdoms, as well as between Fijians and Europeans, became increasingly complex as the century advanced. During the period of its rise to power, Bau struggled with Rewa for control of the Rewa River delta, and sought to impose a tributary relationship on those they conquered. Missionaries arrived in 1839. Their progress was limited during the early stages of the war between Bau and Rewa, which dominated Fiji's politics during the middle years of the century, but in 1854 the Vunivalu Cakobau converted to Christianity and the climactic battle of Kaba in 1855 took on the character of a struggle between pagan and Christian power in Fiji. Thereafter, European influence increased. Fiji was ceded to Great Britain in 1874, with Cakobau signing the deed as King of Fiji. The British colonial administration adopted a fairly benign paternalism towards all Fijians. Alienation of land was stopped, but the evolution of Fijian society and adaptation to change were severely limited. The old chiefdoms, including Bau, became relatively insignificant, although some chiefs were involved in colonial administration. With independence in 1970, and even more so after the military coups of 1987, chiefly confederations have once again come to the fore.

Although the focus of the chiefdom was Bau Island, there were many tributary towns and villages, each with their own territory up and down the Tailevu coast, along the north coast of the Rewa Delta, and on nearby islands in the Koro Sea. In traditional times, family units spread widely over the land, cultivating and collecting. During the period of greatest turbulence, villages were elaborately defended. Those in the swamplands of the delta, in particular, were surrounded with formidable barriers of fences and ditches with concealed spikes. Special structures included: the temple to the ancestral god of the paramount chiefs and the house sites of the most important families, which were built on stepped platforms with stone facings; and the stone-walled canoe docks, representing political supremacy. In order to provide more land, terraces were built and foreshore reclaimed, and a bridge was built to connect the islet with the mainland more than a kilometer away. During the time of friendship with Rewa, a two-kilometer canal was dug linking adjacent channels of the Rewa River to provide easier access between the two centers of power.

Bau Fijians were subsistence horticulturists, raising root crops such as taro and cassava on a swidden basis on the drier Tailevu coastal lands, and planting swamp taro in carefully mounded and ditched plots in the Rewa Delta. Fishing and collecting the resources of mangroves and the nearby reefs provided important additional food. Trading with Europeans began when they discovered stands of sandalwood on the northern island of Vanua Levu in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and it greatly intensified when technology for drying sea cucumbers was brought to Fiji from China in the 1820s. The chiefs of Bau deployed their supporters in order to acquire the cash they needed to buy guns, ammunition, and, in the case of the Vunivalu Cakobau of Bau, a schooner for his personal use. By the 1990s, sixty percent of the total population lived in villages, largely still with a subsistence economy and the continued obligations of communal life, but a rural-urban divide was creating problems. Fijians increasingly work for wages and seek employment in towns, resulting in a lack of housing, employment and educational opportunities, and reductions in the resources of the villages. Since the coups of 1987, the Fijian-dominated government has sought to redress imbalances that it perceives between Fijians and Indians originally brought to the country by the colonial administration in 1878 to work in the plantation sugar industry that eventually became the basis of the colonial economy.

Traditional crafts of Fiji included the making of pots, woven mats, and fine bark cloth by the women, and, by the men, the carving of whalebone ivory (sometimes inlaid with pearl shell) and a wide variety of wooden artifacts, including spears and clubs, bowls for the ceremonial drinking of kava, and the great seagoing double-hulled canoes that permitted speedy passage between the Islands of Fiji, and to Samoa and Tonga to the east.

Bauan power rested on the ability to maintain a wide network of tributary relationships provisioning it with all necessary resources from land and sea, including finished craft products. Europeans were integrated into the system whenever possible, particularly during the first half of the nineteenth century.

The division of labor was according to both age and sex. Men produced a far greater proportion of the family's food, for agriculture was and remains the domain of men. Young girls might collect taro leaves, but otherwise they would not go to the gardens. Fishing by line or net and the collection of molluscs and other products of the reef are women's work, as is the fetching of water, most cooking, and the care of house and children. Young children of eight or nine might help their parents, but lack of responsibility usually lasts until fourteen or so. The heavier tasks fall on the younger men and women. The domestic seniority system serves to organize household production; this arrangement was especially true of the traditional extended family.

Land was held by the "family," which was defined more or less inclusively in different parts of Fiji. The colonial government defined principles of land tenure retrospectively, creating homogeneity in place of a system built on dynamism and change, basing their system at least in part on Bauan norms.

Fijian society is organized into a hierarchy of kinship groups of increasing orders of inclusiveness. At Bau, the chiefly clan (yavusa)was divided into four patricians: two chiefly mataqali, a warrior clan, and a herald clan divided into two subclans associated with each of the chiefly lines. With the revival of the political importance of the chiefly confederations since the 1987 coups, clan relationships at the individual level are becoming more important once again.

The system is of the Iroquois type, with some special features. There is the usual sharp distinction between cross and parallel relatives, but bifurcate merging occurs in all but the second descending generation, in which kinship reckoning is simply generational. Among the chiefly families of Bau, the vasu relationship between ego and mother's brother was used to cement ties with other chiefdoms. The vasu was able to make particular demands on the material wealth of his maternal uncle's kin group, frequently doing so in the interests of his own chiefdom.

Traditionally, the preferred marriage alliance was between cross cousins; marriage between tribes was possible only after a formal request. Patrilocal residence was the norm, and divorce could be effected easily by either party. Marriage ceremonial was more or less elaborate depending on the rank of the participants. Non-sororal polygyny was practiced, and a man's status was defined by the number of his wives. The great chiefs married many times, usually in the interests of extending political power. This meant that all of the chiefly families of Fiji were closely related, often many times over in succeeding generations. In such situations, the status of the first wife was distinctly superior. The title of the principal wife of the Roko Tui Bau was titled Radi Bau, and the principal wife of the Vunivalu was called the Radi Levuka.

The traditional extended family consisted of several married pairs and their children, inhabiting separate dwellings but sharing and cooperating in one cook house. Typically, men of the family would be closely related to the paternal line, but a daughter and her husband might also belong. The senior male would use the ancestral house site.

Dwelling houses are allocated by the family head and remain under his control, as do garden plots and other family property such as canoes. At his death, his surviving senior sibling determines the disposition of the house if the deceased has no mature sons. In the case of the great chiefs, the council of the whole tribe (yavusa) would determine succession and with it all rights to property.

The rigor and principles of family ranking are a microcosm of larger kin groups and communities. Children are subordinate to their parents, but they are also ranked relative to each other by birth order. Aboriginally, they were ranked first by order of marriage of their mothers and then between full siblings by birth order. The first child has a special status. Obedience and respect are demanded of the child by the father; after infancy the child is constantly taking orders. Punishment by the father is the main disciplinary mechanism, and the mother is more indulgent than the father, particularly towards boys and young men of the family.

The social organization of the chiefdom was extraordinarily complex, with all aspects of its existence ringed with ceremony. Each individual identified with a hierarchy of increasingly inclusive groups: extended family, subclan, clan, federation of clans, and political confederation (matanitu). The focus of the chiefdom was the chiefly clan, which was supported and defended by two groups of hereditary fishers who also had the role of defending the chiefs from attack by land or sea.

As head of the political confederation, the chiefly clan of Bau sought to maintain a network of tributary relationships through its subclans. This arrangement implied a degree of political instability, and, indeed, the history of the first half of the nineteenth century was one of a ceaseless struggle for power. Warrior subclans were spread as a shield along the north coast of the Rewa Delta and at the base of the Kaba Peninsula, separating Bau and Rewa. More distant ties were based on acknowledged ancestral kin relationships. As such, they needed to be constantly reinforced in accordance with the political landscape. The colonial administrative system and that of the immediate post-independence period divided the old chiefdom of Bau between several new administrative units, but in post-coup Fiji the chiefly confederations are again assuming political significance.

Gossip, ostracism and social withdrawal have always been important forms of social control, reflecting a preference for avoiding direct confrontation. Fear of divine retribution was and remains a powerful sanction at both the individual and the community level. The colonial government made Fijians subject to its judicial system, but since the 1987 coups there has been an attempt to reincorporate traditional principles into the legal system.

There were ceremonial ways of asking forgiveness where there was a wish for reconciliation, ending with the drinking of kava. The vasu (mother’s brother) could also defuse potential conflict, being able effectively to represent the female side in a patrilineal society.

In traditional times, religious belief centered on the deified founders of clans, frequently worshipped in animal form. In addition, each group had its own set of animal and plant totems, deemed to be inhabited by ancestral spirits. The missionaries succeeded in driving ancient beliefs underground, but they surfaced several times at the end of the nineteenth century, usually in the form of atavistic cults as vehicles for anticolonial opposition. By the 1990s, Methodism claimed the support of most Fijians, although there was also an important Roman Catholic minority.

Traditionally, priests formed hereditary clans, exercising important divinatory and healing roles and acting as the voice of the ancestral gods.

Ceremonies mainly were concerned with life cycles and intergroup relationships. Traditionally, there was a ceremony of first fruits, when the various tributaries of Bau brought offerings of food to the Roko Tui Bau (sacred chief) and subsequently to the Vunivalu (war and executive chief), usually delicacies for which particular groups were well known.

Singing and chanting, dancing, and joke-telling were the traditional arts. The sexes never danced together and had quite different dances. Both men and women danced standing and sitting. The women used delicate hand movements, while the men often danced with fan and spear or club, or with sticks.

Disease was understood as deriving from malevolence of the spirits, particularly after the violation of taboos. Women collected and compounded herbal cures, while men applied them—a reflection of the belief that men possessed heavenly power (mana) whereas the strength of women came from the earth. Massage was also an important healing technique, but women massaged only women, and men only men.

The ceremony associated with death was extremely elaborate, particularly when the status of the deceased was high, reflecting its importance in traditional belief. Tributary groups would come to pay homage to the corpse and to the bereaved family, cementing ties in the process. After the burial of a high chief, a taboo was laid on the waters around Bau and the women, having kept vigil over the corpse for four to ten days, would cut their hair; only after a hundred nights of mourning would the taboos be lifted. Wives were strangled to go with their husbands into the spirit world, for on the way lurked Ravuyalo, who killed the spirits of those who failed to accompany their spouses. The unmarried were buried with a club for their own defense.

This culture summary is from the article "Bau" by David Routledge, in the Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 2, Oceania, Terence E. Hays, ed. Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall & Co. 1991. Leon G. Doyon updated the population figures in March, 2020.

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