r their private
deity, and to demonstrate their faith in the new religion they had a
quantity of the fish caught, cooked, and served up in the presence of a
large party of friends and relations. There, with trembling hearts, they
partook of the once sacred morsel; but, their fears getting the better
of them, they immediately retired from the feast and swallowed a
powerful emetic, lest the divine fish should lie heavy on their stomachs
and devour their vitals.[82] As nothing particular happened after these
daring innovations, the people took heart of grace, and concerted
further plans for the destruction of their ancient deities. Among these
was a certain Papo, who was nothing more or less than a piece of old
rotten matting, about three yards long and four inches wide; but being a
god of war and, in that capacity, always attached to the canoe of the
leader when they went forth to battle, he was regarded with great
veneration by the people. At the assembly convoked to decide on his
fate, the first proposal was to throw him into the fire. But the idea
was too shocking to the general sense of the community, and by way of
making death as little painful as possible to the deity, they decided to
take him out to sea in a canoe and there consign him to a watery grave.
Even from this mitigated doom Papo was rescued by the efforts of the
missionaries, and he now adorns a museum.[83]

[82] J. Williams, _op. cit._ pp. 373 _sq._

[83] J. Williams, _op. cit._ p. 375.

But even when the career of one of these animal gods was not prematurely
cut short by being killed, cooked, and eaten, he was still liable to die
in the course of nature; and when his dead body was discovered, great
was the sorrow of his worshippers. If, for example, the god of a village
was an owl, and a dead owl was found lying beside a road or under a
tree, it would be reverently covered up with a white cloth by the person
who discovered it, and all the villagers would assemble round the dead
god and burn their bodies with firebrands and beat their foreheads with
stones till the blood flowed. Then the corpse of the feathered deity
would be wrapped up and buried with as much care and ceremony as if it
were a human body. However, that was not the death of the god. He was
supposed to be yet alive and incarnate in all the owls in existence.[84]

[84] G. Turner, _Samoa_, pp. 21, 26, 60 _sq._ Compare
W. T. Pritchard, _Polynesian Reminiscences_, pp. 110 _s