On Some Little-Known Polynesian Settlements in the Neighbourhood of the : Discussion Author(s): Basil Thomson, A. C. Haddon, C. G. Seligman, Charles M. Woodford and Sidney H. Ray Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Jul., 1916), pp. 49-54 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1779324 Accessed: 18-06-2016 12:09 UTC

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This content downloaded from 132.174.255.223 on Sat, 18 Jun 2016 12:09:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. 49

between this form of spear and one which I presented some years ago to the British Museum, and which came from the Polynesian island of Tau'u or Mortlock Island, which seems to be adapted to the method of fencing warfare suggested. Undoubtedly the most interesting weapon used by the Rennell and Bellona natives is the stone-headed mace (a figure of one of these maces appears in Man, 191o, Art. 70), a specimen of which I am also able to exhibit to-night. The only thing at all like it from any other part of the Pacific that I know of is a stone-headed mace obtained by Vancouver at about I790-95, and figured by Sir Hercules Read in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. 21, Plate x., Fig. 3. These natives also use the wooden sleeping rest or pillow, to prevent the disarrangement of the hair, of a similar type to those met with in and . A specimen I obtained at Rennell is now in the British Museum. I was fortunately able to obtain drawings of both male and female tattooing at Rennell. The round-headed fish motif which I noticed at is again in evidence. Although situated at such a short distance from the main islands of the Solomon Group, Rennell and Bellona can never have had any connec- tion with them in any recent geological period, as they are separated from it by water of most profound depth. A sounding of 3762 fathoms was obtained by the German surveying ship Planat between Rennell and San Cristoval (see notice in Geogr. Jour., 191I, p. 321). It is to be therefore expected that when the island becomes better known further interesting discoveries both zoological and botanical may be expected. During my short visit I obtained one most singular bird which has been described as a new genus and species under the name of Wood- fordia superciliosa. A description and plate of this bird have recently been published in the Ibis (Ibis, January I916). At Rennell I -also noticed the Black-headed Ibis (Ibis strictipennis, Gould), a bird which during a thirty years' experience of the Solomons I have never seen there, nor has it been recorded by others. An orchid which I discovered at the same landing-place and which I forwarded to Kew, was also de- scribed as a new species.

Before the paper the PRESIDENT said: The paper to be read to-night is on some little-known Polynesian Settlements in the Solomon Islands. Mr. Woodford, who is going to read it, is not a stranger to us. He reminds me that he read a paper here about the year 1889. He has since then held high appointments in the Western Pacific, and can speak with authority on the present condition of that part of the world. I will now ask him to read his paper.

(Mr. Woodford then read the fpaper printed above and a discussion followed.) Mr. BASIL THOMSON: I think that we have all been struck by the singular power which the reader of the paper has in identification. I feel it perhaps more than most people because some years ago when I was editing the E

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.223 on Sat, 18 Jun 2016 12:09:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 50 ON SOME LITTLE-KNOWN POLYNESIAN SETTLEMENTS

Spanish manuscripts of the discovery of the Solomon Islands Lord Amherst and I had the benefit of Mr. Woodford's notes, and I do not think anybody has had the same flair for identification since Buache, who, in I78I, identified Bougainville's discovery as the Solomon Islands. All that was known of them was that they were " islands of gold," and as a matter of fact in the early charts they were dotted about at intervals of I5oo miles all over the Pacific. It was a very remarkable identification. He did the whole thing from the internal evidence of the manuscript, and finally established that Mendafia's discovery was the Solomon Islands. I was very much struck in editing these manu- scripts with Mr. Woodford's notes. I do not think in any case he failed to make an absolutely correct identification, and in the paper he has read to-night we should notice that every island mentioned in these Polynesian' settlements in the Pacific was identified on what I believe to be certain evidence. I do not know that these Polynesian settlements in the Solomons bring us very much nearer to the debated question as to how the came into the Pacific. It is admitted that they came from Asia; but lately a very remark- able book has appeared on the by Dr. Rivers, which no doubt a good many of you have read. It brings a new mind to bear upon this question as to how the Polynesians entered the eastern part of the Pacific from the west, leaving the Melanesians in the occupation of all the islands to the west. I think that these settlements are not backwaters left by the Polynesian emigra- tion eastward, but that they are drifts. There is one point which I should like to suggest in criticism of Mr. Woodford's paper. I think the reason that the Tongans are supposed to have conquered so many islands is a very simple one. Up to 1777 or I778, when Cook visited Tonga, the Tongans made all their voyages in a very crude double canoe. I happen to know, because, in I890, the late King George carved one for me, and the interesting part of it is this- whereas all the other double sailing canoes of the Pacific are double-ended, that is to say, the bow becomes the stern when they tack, the Tongan canoe could not do this; the mast was fixed. Those of you who understand sailing will realize that if a canoe's sail is bearing out on one tack and is suddenly reversed, it forms pockets, and the canoe cannot beat against the wind. The result was, in 1788 the Tongans took to going down to Fiji and joining one or other of the warring parties, and there they exchanged their clumsy Tongiaki for one of the Fijian craft. In many cases they missed Fiji, and then they came right away west until they were lost at sea, or struck one or other of the islands, and they very often succeeded in conquering it. I think this is an explanation as to why the Tongans were always the offenders in these piratical expeditions. I do not think we shall ever really get to the bottom of Poly- nesian emigration until we get to work with the spade. All the early unwritten history of the world has been secured with the spade in civilized countries; whereas in the Pacific nobody has ever explored the caves nor done any digging, which in Europe has thrown so much light on early history. I re- member when reading Dr. Rivers's book that it throws great stress on culture. It talks about the Kava people and the Betel-nut people, because I think only in one island do the people use both of these stimulants. I think Mr. Wood- ford's paper shows that you may lay too much stress on culture. As an indica- tion of origin we get this Polynesian settlement in the Solomons using betel-nut and the loom. I was much struck in looking at the photographs of Ongtong Java. The people are certainly very Polynesian in type. But the Rennell Island people appear to be very much more mixed. They are not of a Polynesian type, especially in the hair. There is one other point I might refer to, and that is the

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.223 on Sat, 18 Jun 2016 12:09:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. 5I question of monoliths, because it is very suggestive. Mr. Woodford mentioned that in one of the islands a monolith was erected in wood or stone to dead chiefs. Every one knows the idol which stands in the porch of the British Museum. It came from . It is only one of some hundreds of monoliths to be found in Easter Island, and these were generally regarded as peculiar to that island. But we have them here, and my theory is that it has always been a practice among the Polynesians to put up this kind of memorial to dead chiefs; but it was very much easier to put up these things in the form of trunks of trees roughly carved as an image of the deceased. When they got to Easter Island there' was no timber, and the easiest material to use was stone. Here you have them both in stone and wood. It is very suggestive. I do not think I have anything else to say, except that this question of Polynesian settle- ment in Melanesia has been very much neglected. Even in these days you still have the Polynesian religion in its purest form, practically untouched in the first half of the twentieth century. I am afraid anthropologists have not taken advantage of it. What is wanted is some one to settle in Rennell Island with a knowledge of the Polynesian language and customs, and really study the thing. I should like to thank Mr. Woodford for his most interesting and admirably written paper. Dr. A. C. HADDON: Mr. Woodford is one of the few Englishmen who has published anything about the Solomon Islands, and as he knows them better than anybody else the paper he has given us this evening is especially welcome. Ethnologists might very well lament that the Polynesians had been civilized too soon, and that the early missionaries and other people who went there did not study them sufficiently closely. It is satisfactory therefore to find that in Melanesia, where one would hardly expect to find them, there are at the present day colonies of Polynesians, and that we can have the opportunity to study them thoroughly and so supply some of the deficiencies of our know- ledge about the Polynesians in itself. Dr. Rivers has made a very interesting study along with Mr. Durrad, a missionary friend, of the inhabitants of , another of the Polynesian settlements in Melanesia, and I heartily endorse what Mr. Thomson said, that all such islands ought to be investigated immediately, before the people get spoilt or vulgarized by the white man, as natives almost invariably are. I agree with Mr. Thomson that the Rennell islanders, from the photographs we have just seen, are a mixed population, and that is also borne out by the photograph of the club which Mr. Woodford showed us. As there must have been a considerable amount of mixture here, some of the other islands mentioned by Mr. Woodford would probably be more favourable for investigating Polynesian characteristics. But I do not at all agree with what Mr. Thomson said about the evidence from culture being of an unsatisfactory nature. It is one of the few means we have of studying the affinities and migrations of people. The whole subject is intricate, and I would like to suggest to Mr. Woodford that he should give us a series of maps show- ing the distribution of as many customs and objects 'as he can, and also the absence of certain customs or objects should be noted. Our knowledge of the distribution of different forms of social structure, customs, and beliefs, and also of implements and weapons in the Solomon Islands is extremely imperfect, and there is no one in this world, I imagine, more competent to rectify this deficiency than Mr. Woodford. If he would put together all his knowledge and look up authorities, and make maps of distribution, it would be of great value to ethnologists, and give us the data for accurate generalizations. It is not, however, a mere collection of facts at which we are aiming; we want to get at the signi-

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.223 on Sat, 18 Jun 2016 12:09:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 52 ON SOME LITTLE-KNOWN POLYNESIAN SETTLEMENTS ficance of those facts. As a matter of fact, the culture of every part of the world is extremely complex, and what is now needed is to dissect out the different culture layers and trace their distribution. This can only be done satisfactorily by a series of maps and after careful study in the field. Some years ago Graebner published a very interesting paper on the culture complexes of the Pacific; but many of us think he was too eclectic in his choice of the elements belonging to the respective complexes, and he had never been in Oceania. Friederici, who has travelled considerably, has also made some valuable suggestions, mainly from the linguistic side, as to the cultural drifts from Indonesia into Melanesia and Polynesia. Rivers, in his monumental work, 'The History of Melanesian Society,' has proceeded on more scientific lines than earlier investigators. If we could get more accurate knowledge of the Solomon Islands from this point of view, it would go a long way to clearing up the problems of the Pacific. I hope Mr. Woodford will be able to do this service for science. Dr. C. G. SELIGMAN : I think one of the things we must do to-night is to congratulate Mr. Woodford on his paper as having made a valuable addition to our knowledge of Melanesia. For years it has been a scandal how little we have known about these islands and their significance from the point of view of the Polynesian migrations. While on this aspect of the question I should like to say how heartily I agree with Mr. Thomson as to the necessity for archaeo- logical evidence. As a matter of fact we have a small amount of spade evi- dence from New Guinea; there you have miners prospecting for gold in the northern district whose accidental discoveries have done a good deal to make clear one part at least of the route by which the Polynesians reached the Pacific. Typical Polynesian stone food-pounders have turned up on the northern coast of New Guinea. There has also been found a most extraordinary implement, an obsidian axe of superb workmanship, which is like nothing whatever except the obsidian or pitch-stone axe or adze heads of Easter Island, so that with what we know about the light-skinned, long-haired people of Matty Island off the coast of what used to be German New Guinea we can already deduce a good deal from the very small amount of archaeological evidence that has come to hand. With regard to cultural evidence I agree with Dr. Haddon that perhaps Mr. Woodford has not laid quite enough stress on it. I think the fact that he showed us a picture of natives using a lime-gourd from the island that had more Melanesian blood in it than any other, is an extraordinary example of how physical and cultural characters generally point in the same direction. What Mr. Woodford said about the loom was extremely interesting: I suppose it must be assumed to have drifted from Asia, and I should like to ask him if he got evidence anywhere of any process of cremation or burning. Mr. WOODFORD : The Polynesians do not cremate at all and very few of the Melanesians, but in certain parts of the Solomon Islands, in , chiefs and people of higher rank are cremated. The commoner people are either buried or put into the sea. Dr. SELIGMAN: Do you know whether the distribution of cremation is con- nected with that of the loom ? Mr. WOODFORD: Not at all. I think there is very little doubt that the use of the loom was introduced from the Carolines, where it is known. It extends to the Mortlock group, Ongtong Java, Nugaria, Sikaiana, the , and the main land of Santa Cruz, and nowhere else. Dr. SELIGMAN: The traces of Asiatic influence passing out into the Pacific may have been lost, but it seems to me that cremation in the Shortlands may possibly have reference to Asia, as also the distribution of the loom. It only

This content downloaded from 132.174.255.223 on Sat, 18 Jun 2016 12:09:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. 53 remains for me to say how much people who have been in the Pacific will appreciate Mr. Woodford's paper. Mr. SIDNEY H. RAY: I am sure we have all listened this evening with very great pleasure to the interesting and instructive account which Mr. Woodford has given us of a very little-known and out-of-the-way region of the Pacific. Yet this region was not always out of the way. Indeed, if we are to believe those who have closely studied the problems of the Pacific there was a time when these Solomon Islands were very much in the way, and through them or by them there must have passed the various peoples which make up the present population of Oceania. How the Polynesians may be supposed to have entered the Pacific has been briefly alluded to by Mr. Woodford, but his main purpose has been to give us some fuller knowledge of these outliers of the Polynesian race who, according to some, are derelicts left by the original migration to the east, or according to others the wreckage washed back on the shores previously passed. A somewhat close comparison of the words recorded from these Polynesian Islands has led me to the conclusion that their occupation by Polynesians has been comparatively recent and is not due to the original migration of the Poly- nesians into the Pacific. Mr. Woodward has given us several instances of the westward passage of castaways to these Solomon Islands, and there are similar cases of drift towards the New Hebrides and the Loyalty Islands. The languages show no archaic Polynesian character as might be expected if they were remnants of an ancient migration. The majority of their words may be identified as Samoan or Maori, spoken as a mixed Polynesian jargon. The Polynesian language which they indicate is debased in comparison with the fuller speech in Eastern Polynesia and cannot be the ancient language which impressed itself on the populations of the Melanesian Islands. There seems very little evidence of borrowing from Melanesian languages, though there seems to be a residuum of words in each language which differs from the residual in each of the others, and may be representative of an earlier speech, which was neither Polynesian nor Melanesian nor ancient Polynesian. Of course, some words from other languages may have been introduced as well as modern Poly- nesian. I seem to find an instance in Mr. Woodford's account of the coconut toddy in Ongtong Java. The word used, arivi, seems to be the Mortlock, Caroline Islands, ari (atri), name for the same drink, and the ferment, arivi ini, is intelligible as the "mother" of the toddy (Mortlock, ari in) and the syrup as its "sweat" (Mortlock, moa). Mr. Woodford's references to the loom on these islands is interesting and curious. But so far as the names are concerned the Caroline terms are distinct from those used in these islands of the Solomon Group. I have not the full list in Santa Cruz, but the name for the loom differs from both the Caroline and Polynesian. In his interesting account of Quiros at Chicayana Mr. Woodford mentions several words as unidentified. Of these totofe is evidently the Samoan tofe, a shellfish, and the flesh eaten, canofe, is either the Samoan 'a'ano, flesh, or more likely a cognate of the Maori kanohi, eye, which the oyster in the shell resembles. Titiquilquil, as quoted by Mr. Woodford, is in one account futi- quilquil, pearl, which is explained by the words fatu, stone, and kilakila, shining. The crescentic tattooing on the buttocks, which Mr. Woodford tells me is called haka thajpa in Rennell Island, appears to be Maori haka, the causative, with rapa, tattooing on the buttock.

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I do not quite understand Mangana as meaning "large Ma" in contrast with Mangiki " Little Ma " for Bellona. The names given by Bishop Patteson and others show Mo-ngava and Mo-ngiki, and as ng in these languages represents , ngava and ngiki are the common words, lava, big; liki, little. Fonofono, suggested as a collective name for the Reef Islands, is really a small islet south of Nifilole. In conclusion, I must express my thanks to Mr. Woodford for his most interesting and instructive paper. The PRESIDENT: I must wind up the discussion with a very few words. To-night we have gone somewhat beyond our limits. We have, I fear, tres- passed at any rate on the confines of a kindred science, ethnology. That must often happen so long as geographers look upon the Earth not only in itself but also as the home of the human race. Ethnology, therefore, is our friend, and we are very happy to welcome it for a night in our precincts. Mr. Woodford has referred in his paper to 'The Voyage of the Novara.' It recalled to me a very old memory. When I was at Eton, in the only library open to boys, one of the few modern works besides Scott's Novels and the English Dramatists-the only book of travel-was the official record of the voyage of the Austrian frigate Novara in the South Seas. I am afraid I have not continued my studies so as to qualify me to add anything to the very interesting but highly technical discussion we have just listened to. The present generation are not reduced to such straits to learn about the South Seas. They have the fascinating writings and romances of Stevenson and Mr. Conrad. In many of these far-off islands isolated fragments of the human race still live almost as remote as if they were in another planet. We have to-night looked back rather than forward. I hoped we might have heard something as to the prospects of the future. What the future of the Pacific and South Sea Islands is to be is a matter of much interest. Will they be mainly colonized by energetic Japanese? Will these races, of whom we have seen on the screen interesting if unattractive specimens to-night, when they are no longer allowed to live in their isolation, succumb to civilization, or can they be preserved in the same way that the Maoris in have been ? I trust there may be a future for the native races of the Pacific. I hope France and England and Japan will be able to help to preserve them when the in- evitable spread of commerce and civilization stretches over the Ocean. I do not mention Germany, because she has been turned out of the Pacific, and I do not imagine that she will ever be allowed to return. Nor do I mention the United States, because its people seem reluctant to play the part of a great nation, to undertake duties and responsibilities outside their own territory. I trust what- ever the future of the Pacific may be the leading Powers of Europe will do their best to make it a happy one for its inhabitants. We are much indebted to Mr. Woodford for his paper. I fully appreciate what the value of it must be to the experts who are able to follow him into the details of the migrations and the distribution of the Melanesians and Polynesians. I desire to tender to Mr. Woodford the hearty thanks of the meeting.

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