age, and they may easily have misunderstood their
informants. Perhaps the only person in the islands who was exempt from
the necessity of occasionally submitting to the painful sacrifice was
the divine chief Tooitonga, who, as he ranked above everybody, even
above the king, could have no superior relation for whom to amputate a
finger-joint. Certainly we know that Tooitonga had not, like the rest of
his countrymen, to undergo the painful operations of tattooing and
circumcision; if he desired to be tattooed or circumcised, he was
obliged to go to other islands, particularly to Samoa, for the
purpose.[81] Perhaps, though this is not mentioned by our authorities,
it would have been deemed impious to shed his sacred blood in his native
land.

[78] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, i. 438 _sq._, ii. 210-212;
Captain James Wilson, _Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific
Ocean_, pp. 239, 278; John Williams, _Narrative of Missionary
Enterprises in the South Sea Islands_, pp. 470 _sq._; Jerome
Grange, in _Annales de la Propagation de la Foi_, xvii. (1845)
pp. 12, 26; Sarah S. Farmer, _Tonga and the Friendly Islands_,
p. 128.

[79] Captain James Cook, _Voyages_, iii. 204, v. 421 _sq._
However, in a footnote to the latter passage Captain Cook gives
the correct explanation of the custom on the authority of
Captain King: "It is common for the inferior people to cut off a
joint of their little finger, on account of the sickness of the
chiefs to whom they belong."

[80] Labillardiere, _Relation du Voyage a la recherche de la
Perouse_ (Paris, 1800), ii. 151.

[81] W. Mariner, _Tonga Islands_, ii. 79, 268.

But sacrifices to the gods for the recovery of the sick were not limited
to the amputation of finger-joints. Not uncommonly children were
strangled for this purpose.[82] Thus when Finow the king was grievously
sick and seemed likely to die, the prince, his son, and a young chief
went out to procure one of the king's own children by a female
attendant to sacrifice it as a vicarious offering to the gods, that
their anger might be appeased and the health of its father restored.
They found the child sleeping in its mother's lap in a neighbouring
house; they took it away by force, and retiring with it behind an
adjacent burial-ground (_fytoca_) they strangled it with a band of
bark-cloth. Then they carried it before two consecrated houses and a
grave, at each place gabb