Emosi

Famous Old-time Warrior Who Became Notable Christian

By “Cognitur.”

THE recent death of Emosi, an old Samoan, in the native village of Raki Raki, Ra, Fiji, where he had lived for many years with the Fijian wife who predeceased him, brought to a close a life full of interesting and picturesque adven tures.

When he was only a lad, in Samoa, 60 or 70 years ago, a friendly visiting party of Tongans were returning to their coun try in a large ocean-going (war) canoe.

Practically the whole of the Samoan vil lagers were out to bid farewell to their departing guests. Emosi was very inti mate with the young members of the Tongan party, so he and one other Samoan youth detached themselves from the crowd on the beach, and followed the Tongans to their boat, wading waist-high in the water.

The Tongans were all aboard. With eyes a little misty, the two Samoan lads extended their hands in adieu, when, to their bewiliderment, powerful arms jerked them both aboard. There they found themselves held firmly. “Be not anxious about these two,” they heard the Tongans call to those ashore as the vessel, with sail up, slowly gathered speed to sea; “they will be well taken care of in Tonga.”

Realising now that the incident was by no means a joke, the two lads begged that they be allowed to swim ashore. The Tongans were unheeding, but assured them of a grand time in Tonga, in return for the courtesy and entertainment re ceived in Samoa.

To thwart attempts to leap overboard while land was in sight, the two lads were comfortably kept down hatch, with their friendly captors singing or relating the splendour of Tonga, to help ease their youthful sorrows. The following day they were freed aboard, but Samoa had disappeared from sight. Emosi never saw his native country again.

He was a muscular lad, and he grew up in Tonga to be a man of great strength and courage. The life there was con genial, and he found little time for sor row.

When the famed Tongan chief, Maafu, invaded Fiji with large fighting forces, Emosi was one of his leading warriors.

Their exploits in Fiji, so very interesting, do not find space here.

Emosi’s character may best be judged by the following incident. On the way over to Fiji, Maafu—a man demanding obedience—was in an unfavourable mood.

“That man there!” he bawled out, point ing to Emosi, “Come here!” With no attempt at moving, Emosi retorted, “Maa fu, when you need me, call me by name!”

Those about the deck were astounded, but no one more than Maafu himself.

“Have you no fear of me?” thundered the Tongan war lord, incredulously. “We are both humans. What has one human to fear of another?” came the reply.

Great and discerning warrior that he was, Maafu recognised the fearlessness of the man, devoid of mere insolence. With a change of temper, though still loud of voice, Maafu commented: “Emosi, you are a courageous Samoan, a man after my own heart! Were it not for that, you would be fed to the sharks this very day!”

Long after, when Maafu had somewhat cooled down from his warring activities in Fiji, Emosi joined an expedition of Bauans, sent by the great Fijian monarch Cakobau to punish a tribe up in the Nor thern interior, who had massacred a small party of Bau natives.

Toward dusk, off the Ra coast, a sharp squall drove the last canoe, in which were Emosi and his Fijian companions, onto a reef. Finding themselves precariously situated, they swam for shore. The next day, the Fijian members rejoined the main punitive forces, but Emosi elected to re main in the chief village of the Ra coast.

Perhaps the reason was not uncon nected with a young belle, Merani by name, whom he later married. From that marriage there was a daughter, now the wife of the present Tui (king) Neviti Levu, of the new generation.

It was in that village, shortly after the maritime mishap, that Emosi was present on the last occasion on which human flesh was consumed in that part of the coast.

While in the old Tui’s dwelling one even ing a basket of alleged “delicacy” was brought by natives from a nearby island, Malake, as their offering to their Ra (paramount chief). The Tui had recently embraced Christianity—but why let this

baked human thigh be wastefully dis carded? So he “fell to,” after Emosi had politely declined to join him. Emosi avers that as far as odour was concerned, the offering was disgustingly pork-like in its roasted spiciness.

Some time later, when his marital ven ture had perhaps lost its glamour, Emosi again felt the urge to further adventure.

At Levuka, then the Fiji capital, he em barked on a schooner specialising in the hazardous trade of recruiting savage labour from the coastal villages of the Solomon Islands. After many months of this recruiting of wild labour in the broadest term, and only after he had narrowly missed being killed by Solo monese—who valued him more as food than for his standing as a recruiter—he decided to rejoin his wife.

Then a sugar mill was erected a few miles from the village. There, during crushing seasons, he found prosaic em ployment, sewing and repairing tarpau lins for the company’s sugar punts.

Though a quiet village life was his lot, he could not reconcile himself to inac tivity. When he was not employed at the mill, he was to be found at his large plantation of food-stuff, which, for its very size, was a source of wonderment to

the Fijians for such solitary indefatigable energy and enterprise were rare. This activity he maintained right on into his old age.

Having become an ardent Wesleyan after his return from the Solomons, and speaking the Ra dialect fluently, he was soon made the deacon, which duties called for his attention on Sundays.

On week days, he was either toiling at the mill or at his plantation.

As was the practice with the Wesleyan faith, the deacons were sent out to out lying villages, other than their own, to preach on Sundays. Thus Emosi, once the powerful fighting warrior, became the peaceful toiler for Christ, trudging enthusiastically from four to seven miles each Sunday morning to preach the gospel of peace and goodwill to his Fijian congre

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A few years ago Emosi was visited and urged by relatives from his own country —they having found him at long last—to return to the home of his childhood and his race. But he bade them, a little regretfully to return without him as he must fulfil his mission in Ra to his last day. And so it eventuated. His was an unpretentious, yet a very noble life.