year A.D. 1400. 10 The inhabitants have made hundreds of high but very rude stone images with human faces, of a very friable trachyte lava, and have set them up throughout the island, perhaps in memory of the dead.9 They also built great stone terraces which recall the Morai of the other Polynesians. Lastly, ruins have been found of spacious buildings of stone slabs, which though now in a dilapidated condition, must have been inhabited within 150 years, for on their walls are pictures in white, red, and black, representing sheep, horses, and ships with their rigging, and Roggeween was the first seafarer to open intercourse with the inhabitants in 1727. On 2/ good grounds it has been conjectured that a civilized people, now extinct, were in possession of Easter Island before the arrival of the present Polynesian inhabitants, but as yet these suppositions have received no confirmation. On the other hand, the present inhabitants confirm the experience that when a handful of people stray into an ocean solitude, and live there without the incitement of intercourse with others, they gradually lose the accomplishments and capacities which they possessed before their separation. Though the other Polynesians now erect only wooden buildings, yet the remains of ancient stone edifices have been found on various islands of the South Seas." Ponaje, nel E. end of Caroline Andup. Names of islands and of places in the Samoan group (Sevaii, Upulu, Lefuka), reoccur in the Sandwich Islands in the forms Hawaii, Upolu, and Lehua. Yet the first settlers of the Sandwich Islands did not come directly from the Samoan group, even if their original home was there. Islands of the Marquesas archipelago, such as Noukahiva and Taowatte, are mentioned in their old songs, Meinicke, in the Zeitschrift für Erdkunde. 1871. 9 According to the prints in the Revue maritime et coloniale, and photographs which we have received, these sculptures strongly resemble the well known wooden Tiki images of New Zealand. See Hanny's Precis de Pal. Hume 10 Palmer, Visit to Easter Island in the Journal of the Royal Geographical 28 Society, vol. xl. 1870. p. 67. Priak ire.xiv, p. 108. Dan's or Easter Blank "Waitz (Anthropologie, vol, v.) gives a list of these remains. */ J. Linton Palmer. Breed of fit. & Phil. Sex. & Liverport, as is also Tahiti. 12 As the dialect of the Kanaks or Hawaians is closely allied to that of the Marquesas Islanders, Horatio Hale considers it to have come from the latter, while its legends and proverbs even point back to Tahiti. 13 The lists of kings contain sixty-seven names, but of these at least twenty-two must be rejected as fabulous, so that, allowing an average of twenty years for each reign, we must place the colonization of the group in the middle of the tenth century. 14 It was only after the emigration of the Kanaks that the important discovery was made in Tahiti and in the Marquesas Islands that bread-fruit may be preserved for a long time if allowed to ferment, for the practice was unknown in the Sandwich Islands.15 Here again we perceive how unfavourably local separation, which hinders the spread of useful discoveries, affected remote islands. The first visitors from over the sea landed considerably earlier in the Marquesas group, in the dialects of which Tongan and Tahitian peculiarities reappear, from which circumstance it may be inferred that it was colonized from the Society and the Friendly Islands. It was from Vavau, or one of the Friendly Islands, that the Noukahivian chief Gattanewa, or more correctly Keatanui, led the first inhabitants to the group which became their home, and the names of no less than eighty-eight other rulers might be enumerated. 16 This would take us back to the first centuries of our era, unless we must make allowance here also for fabulous personages at the beginning of the list. There are no traditions respecting the first colonization of the Low Archipelago; the local vocabulary contains an extraordinary number of peculiarities, whereas the syntax agrees with that of the Tahitian dialect, so that an immigration from the Society Islands probably took place." The traditions of the Maori of 12 1844. J. J. Jarves, History of the Hawaian or Sandwich Islands. Boston, 13 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. v. 14 H. Hale assumes thirty years as the duration of a reign. If this is preferred the above calculation can be altered. 18 New Zealand are, on the contrary, vivid, for they profess to know the number and names of their ships, and the points on the shore at which their forefathers landed. The northern island was first reached from the east, yet the Maori call their early home Hawaiki, thus pointing to the Samoan group, although Hawaiki subsequently came to mean a far off land of bliss, the home to which departed souls were destined to return. The Maori did not bring with them the domestic animals of their native land, yet their language has retained the Polynesian word for pig, puaka.19 Their forefathers must have known the cocoa-nut palm, for the Polynesian word for the nut occurs in the Maori language, although only applied to an implement used in soothsaying. The list of the New Zealand chiefs extends backwards for eighteen or twenty generations, so that scarcely 400 years can have elapsed since the first colonization. Stragglers are moreover said to have arrived from Hawaiki about a century ago, and to have brought the Kumara, or sweet potato, to New Zealand.21 20 Earlier or later colonizations of the smaller groups of islands have been proved; and even if no great weight can be attributed to the calculations given above, it is certain that the islands of the Pacific were gradually peopled from Samoa or Navigators' Islands, and since this may have happened at a period not very remote, traditions of an immigration have nowhere entirely died out. The Polynesians fished but did not hunt. 22 They lived also on the produce of the cocoa-nut groves, the bread-fruit, and a few tuberous plants, such as the Taro and the sweet potato. The dog and the pig were their domestic animals, the absence of which in New Zealand is probably due to the circumstance that during the long passage the live stock on board the vessels was eaten ; for in other respects the colonization of new islands was always well planned. The distribution of land and water in Southeastern Asia was of itself an inducement to seek for trans-oceanic 18 Schirren (Wandersagen der Neu Seeländer) and Hochstetter place Hawaiki in the lower world, and allow it only a legendary signification. Gerland, however, has skilfully vindicated the older opinion of H. Hale. 19 Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie, vol. v. 20 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 80. 21 Hale, Ethnographie. 22 See above, p. 184. Polynesian Habits. 353 abodes, for nowhere else in the world have former continents been resolved into islands of such various degrees of size. The low coral reefs are inadequately protected against storms and surf; atolls are occasionally destroyed, and their inhabitants obliged to seek a new home. The Polynesians, in common with all Malays, are clever seamen; they are indebted to their own ingenuity for the single or double outrigger which secures their narrow sailing craft from being upset by the rolling waves. Their manufactures are those of the age of polished but unpierced stone implements. The spear and club are the usual weapons of war. They are without earthen vessels, but cook their food by means of heated stones. Their dwellings consist of posts with roofs of leaves, and their clothing of bark of the paper mulberry tree, although the cotton plant grows wild in the the islands. The religious emotions of the Polynesians manifested themselves in worship of the forces of nature personified, whose deeds and conduct, interwoven with geological legends, are as cleverly and fancifully adorned with myths as is the Greek Olympus. The Maori of New Zealand, detestable as they are, on account of their cannibalism, yet possess beautiful legends of the Creation, according to which, thought, as the subtlest element, first germinated in the primordial night, and was followed by desire; or, according to a different version, thought arose first, then the spirit, and lastly, matter. 23 Beside the forces of nature, the chiefs after death also received divine honours,24 and oracles were instituted at their shrines. The priestly order was well versed in all the juggleries of Shamanism, but was held in far less respect than were the princes, who boasted of divine descent, and were certain of worship after death. Closely connected with this was their privilege of tabooing, a right which enabled them by touching a field to render it unlawful for others to set foot upon it, or to eat the produce of the harvest. Taboo, however, in some forms, could be inflicted by those of lower rank. It served also as a protection to property, and enforced the observance of useful police 23 Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie, vol. vi. regulations. 25 Any breach of this interdict was unheard of, for temporal and eternal punishments menaced the reprobate. Unconscious infraction of this institution led to sanguinary acts of vengeance on the part of the nations against the Europeans, and Captain Cook, although received by the Sandwich Islanders as a god both before and after his death, perished in expiation of breach of taboo. The misapprehension of this custom long blackened the character of the Polynesians. A Maori perhaps came to the house of a European settler and begged for a drink; after refreshing himself he would either break the glass or quietly carry it off, since it had been consecrated by contact with him, and was unfitted, therefore, for use by any other individual; but the person robbed ever after entertained a deep grudge against New Zealanders in general on account of this supposed act of base ingratitude. The difficulties caused in daily life by this strange institution were partly counterbalanced by the fact that slaves made prisoners in war were free from the regulations of taboo. The Polynesian communities were divided into princes, nobles, and plebeians. The forms of intercourse were adjusted according to these gradations, and the gratification of aristocratic vanity was amply provided for by rigid etiquette. In the Society Islands we moreover find the association of the Arreoi, a confraternity half social, half artistic, for the performance of dramatic dances. To this society, divided into seven grades distinguished by tattoo marks, belonged princes, nobles, and commons, men as well as women; the children of these last were killed as soon as born. The Arreoi wandered from island to island to perform their festal games, and were everywhere entertained with merrymakings. They have been justly praised in that, as cultivators of art, they have diffused higher culture and social polish.26 The Asiatic Malays, who remained nearer their original home, are still to be met with in the peninsula of Malacca, or it may be that they have returned to it again. They inhabit the large islands now under Dutch rule, the Philippines and even Formosa. It has 25 Langsdorff, Reise um die Welt, vol. i. |