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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES
NUMBER SIXTEEN
ISLAND PEOPLES of the WESTERN PACIFIC
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA
By HERBERT W. KRIEGER
•• HAWAII
V GILBERT IS. /
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( PUBLICATION 3737)
CITY OF WASHINGTON
PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
SEPTEMBER 15, 1943
<£{$$ Jiorfc Q^afttmote (Preset
BALTIMORE, MO., U. S. A.
CONTENTS
Page
The South Seas 1
Discovery and early history 7
Micronesia 12
Geography 12
Patterns of culture 21
The Pelew (Palau) Islands 32
The Mariana Islands 33
The Caroline Islands 36
The Marshall Islands 38
The Gilbert Islands 39
The Ellice Islands 41
Melanesia 42
Geography 42
Patterns of culture 47
New Guinea and its island satellites 61
Bismarck Archipelago 65
The Admiralty Islands 65
New Britain and New Ireland 66
The Solomon Islands 72
The Santa Cruz Islands 80
The New Hebrides and Banks Islands 83
New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands 87
The Fiji (Viti) Islands and the Polynesian fringe 93
Micronesian and Melanesian prospects 99
Selected bibliography 102
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
Page
1 . Fengal village at Port Lottiu, island of Kusaie, Carolines 1
2. Upper, Agana, the capital of Guam 4
Lower, A typical village house of Guam 4
3. Upper, Woman of Fengal village, Carolines, weaving a narrow fabric on
hand loom 4
Lower, Woman of Fengal village twisting bark into thread 4
4. Upper, Kiti Harbor of Ron Kiti village, island of Ponape, eastern Carolines. 4 Lower, Stone money and village council house, Yap, Carolines 4
5. Left, Fighting man of Moen Island, Carolines 4
Right, "Nobleman" of Ponape, eastern Carolines 4
6. Left, Girls in native dress, Taritari atoll, Gilbert Islands 20
Right, Men in native dress, Taritari atoll, Gilbert Islands 20
7. Upper, Marshall Islanders in outrigger canoe 20
Lower, Detail of outrigger housing 20
iii
IV ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
8. Upper, Native house, mother, and children, Rongelab atoll, Marshall
Islands 20
Lower, House and family of Chief Nakirora, Kiwa village, Taritari atoll,
Gilbert Islands 20
9. Upper, Typical house, Ellice Islands 20
Lower, Women and children of Fongafale village, Funafuti atoll, Ellice
islands 20
10. Upper, "Flying foxes," a species of destructive fruit bat 36
Lower, The breadfruit tree • 36
11. Left, Food carriers in Melanesian New Guinea 36
Right, Water carrier, Port Moresby, New Guinea 36
12. Upper, Native footbridge near Buna, New Guinea 36
Lower, Dugout outrigger canoe of St. Matthias, Bismarck Archipelago. ... 36
13. Upper, Dugout canoe with built-up plank prow and stern, Malaita Island. 36 Lower, War canoe of the island of New Georgia, central Solomons 36
14. Village scene in Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands 52
15. Left, A girl about 15 years old, Malaita, Solomon Islands 52
Right, Youth of Malaita playing the Panpipes 52
16. Left, A young man of Florida, Solomon Islands 52
Right, A man of Malaita, Solomon Islands 52
17. Upper, Fighting men of Grasiosa Bay, Santa Cruz Islands 52
Lower, Dancing group, Ugi, Solomon Islands 52
18. Fighting men of the Melanesian Santa Cruz Islands 68
19- Upper, Women of Ontong Java 68
Lower, Man, children, and habitation, Ontong Java 68
20. Upper, Village of Mbau, Fiji 68
Lower, Footbridge, Navuso, Ruva River, Fiji 68
21. Left, Woman of Kambara Island, Fiji . . . . 68
Right, Woman of Tokalau village, Kambara Island, Fiji 68
TEXT FIGURES
Page
1. Map of Oceania 4
2. Map of Melanesia 43
ISLAND PEOPLES OF THE WESTERN PACIFIC MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA
By HERBERT W. KRIEGER
Curator, Division of Ethnology, U. S. National Museum (With 21 Plates)
THE SOUTH SEAS
American interest in insular geography waxes and wanes with the economic tides. The distant South Pacific islands, almost forgotten since the days of the whaler and the guano ships, have again suddenly been brought into sharp focus. Before 1941, by steamship folder, motion picture, and travelog, we had been made aware of the existence of South Sea coral islands where coconut trees swayed in the balmy breezes of the southeastern trade winds, and dusky maidens cast languishing glances at tourists and beachcombers. The South Seas had become the locale of literary escape from the reality of modern American everyday life. We enjoyed reading Stevenson, O'Brien, Nordhoff and Hall.
We, as a people, did not know of the realistic medical work of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation whose benefi- cent activities are centered at Suva, the capital of the Fiji Islands, and cover much of the British Melanesian island world. Neither were we concerned with the missionary activities of the several branches of the Christian church in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, which have brought enlightenment and a degree of protection to fear-ridden island peoples of the southwest Pacific. Equally unknown to most Americans is the degree of penetration of civilized law and the extent of its enforcement by Australian district officers throughout the controlled areas of New Guinea, New Britain, and New Ireland among peoples who have but recently been persuaded to discontinue interclan warfare and cannibalism.
Social scientists have noted with interest and have profited through the activities of the Australian National Research Council in furthering cultural studies of native Melanesians. The cooperation of the Rockefeller
Plate 1
Fengal village at Port Lottiu on the island of Kusaie, the most easterly high island of the Caroline Archipelago.
1
2 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
Foundation since 1926 with the Research Council in a plan of anthro- pological research was based primarily on the recommendation of the Pan -Pacific Science Congress of 1923. Intensive studies of native daily life, conducted in New Guinea, Papua, New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomons, and other islands of Melanesia under the auspices of the Research Council, have treated food resources, living conditions, ritual, warfare, the role of the headman, effects of contact with the white race, and other phases of social anthropology. Linguistic studies, anthropo- metric work, and studies related to the physical structure of native peoples were conducted by the same workers only incidentally to their primary sociological interest.
With the exception of the British Crown colony, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, for which we have the annual reports on the social and economic progress of their native peoples published by H. M. Stationery Office in London, little information is available on changing conditions of Micro- nesian native life other than that included in the annual reports on the South Sea islands (Nanyo) prepared for the League of Nations Mandate Commission and published by the Japanese in Tokyo. All foreigners have been excluded from the Japanese Mandate which includes altogether 623 islands of considerable size, together with 860 additional islets and reefs. For harbors and air bases, the largest islands are not necessarily the best. From bases in the Marshalls, Japan has attacked the Hawaiian Islands, and from Truk, in the Carolines, she has attacked the islands to the south.
In Melanesia we are dealing with an exclusively French, British, and Australian island area, while in Micronesia, within historic times, the Spanish have, in turn, been supplanted by the Germans and the Japanese. The strategic importance of the numerous island archipelagoes fanning out from Indonesia and the southeastern Asiatic coast was formerly as little appreciated by the British as by the Americans. It was only due to the fears aroused in Australia through the entry of the German Reich within the area near the close of the 1800's that Great Britain began to establish protectorates and to annex island archipelagoes as Crown colonies. The years immediately preceding the recent irruption of the Japanese from their mandated islands in Micronesia, north of the Equator, are marked by a growing consciousness of the strategic importance of the Melanesian islands. For this, Japan's patent desires for political expansion were not alone responsible. The development of aviation had been suddenly stimulated by the invention of instruments making exact flight possible. The plotting of long oversea air courses became an exact navi- gational procedure and led to the occupation of numerous hitherto
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 3
neglected and unoccupied coral islets and lagoons as refueling bases just as island coaling stations had been a requisite to the whaling fleet before the days of the oil-burning cargo vessel.
Politically, the future of each island archipelago will have to be con- sidered as a distinct unit. Loyalties of native island populations to the French in New Caledonia, to the British Crown in Fiji, to the American Republic in Guam and in American Samoa, have developed to a hitherto unexpected intensity. Such loyalties cannot rudely be ignored. Conversely, it must be noted that warring New Guinea native populations in their mountain fastnesses and secluded valleys do not look beyond their own limited economic sphere which is punctuated with local feuding and ritual prescriptions that continue to dominate their thought and action unen- lightened by Christian precept or national loyalties. In the more pro- gressive areas of Melanesia and Micronesia, the concept of a mandate over indigenous peoples as "wards of civilization" does not allow for the expression of loyalties keenly felt and manifested. The mandate system has failed to provide for a substitute set of symbols for tribal ritual and ceremony. The church, in certain islands, such as Fiji, has successfully substituted Christian religious ritual and belief for traditional magic, ritual, and primitive religious beliefs. Other islands, as Guadalcanal in the Solomons, are in a transitional stage. Native customs, observance of ritual taboos, and respect for the authority of the headmen, are soon lost when the white man enters the scene.
Along with native ownership of land, which has wisely been largely retained since native populations thereby remain economically satisfied, there has been developed a wage economy, notably in the gold mines of New Guinea, the chromite workings of New Caledonia, the great sugar plantations in Fiji, and in the coconut plantations in the Solomons and New Britain and New Ireland.. Low prices for copra in the depression years have made native Melanesian wages the lowest in the world. Ab- sorption of native land rights by great companies along with the intro- duction of foreign contract labor have on some islands been fatal to native populations.
The South Pacific island world, Melanesia, the dark islands of early geographers, because of the black or brown skin color of its native in- habitants, lies entirely south of the Equator, fringing continental Australia on the north and northeast. It extends from northwest to southeast as a gigantic island crescent, 3,300 miles long and 700 miles wide, and consists of coral reefs, islets, isolated volcanic islands, some of which are still in the process of formation, and closely grouped mountainous archi-
Plate 2
Upper: Agana, the capital of Guam, located on shallow Agaha Bay on the island's west coast. This bay is not to be confused with the Bay of Apra which lies to the south and shelters at its inner end the port of Apra.
Lower: A typical village house of Guam on the road from Piti to Agana. To be noted are the walls of plaited matting, the thatched roof, and, on the left, the native cart with wheels of hewn hardwood.
Plate 3
Upper: Woman of Fengal village, Port Lottiu, island of Kusaie, in the eastern Caroline Archi- pelago, weaving a narrow fabric on hand loom.
Lower: Woman of Fengal village twisting bark into thread by rubbing her hand over knee and thigh in lieu of a spinning wheel.
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Plate 4
Upper: Kiti Harbor of Ron Kiti village, island of Ponape, eastern Carolines. The dugout outrigger canoe in foreground is being paddled by boatman in characteristic dress.
Lower: Yap, the island of stone money, easternmost of the Caroline Islands. The disks of worked calcite precariously transported from the distant Pelew Islands are prized as evidence of wealth. The large structure in the background is the village council house.
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MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 5
pelagoes. Geographically included is New Guinea, the second largest island in the world. Melanesia also includes one of the smallest, most densely populated and self-contained marginal island civilizations known to man, that of Ticopia, where on an isolated volcanic island, 3 miles long and 2 miles wide, nearly 1,500 natives manage to maintain an entirely satisfactory existence uncontaminated by white man's commerce and in entire ignorance of the use of money.
The older map projections, such as the now obsolete Mercator's, por- trayed the great expanse of the Pacific as a flat surface, as wide in the far north, in the Aleutians and the waters of Alaska, as at the Equator. This distortion tended to minimize the great distances within equatorial Micronesia and Melanesia. On a modern global map, a degree of longi- tude at the Equator is the equivalent of 69 land miles, while a degree in the converging lines of longitude in the Aleutians, much farther north, is the equivalent of but 40 statute miles. Actually, therefore, the Micro- nesian and Melanesian islands, which lie almost astride the Equator and cover a segment of 48° of longitude, are extended over a distance of 3,300 statute miles, while the Aleutians, including the Soviet Komandorski Islands, in a shrinking subarctic latitude extend from east to west over 30° of longitude, a distance of but 1,200 miles.
The great marginal Melanesian island of New Guinea alone is 1,500 miles in length, almost the distance from New York City to Denver, while the Solomon Island archipelago from northwest to southeast stretches a total distance of 700 miles. If a map of the Melanesian Pacific area is superimposed on a map of the United States drawn to the same scale, the most easterly Melanesian island archipelago, the Fijis, coincides on the Atlantic coast with the Virginia capes; the most southerly Melanesian island, New Caledonia, covers northern Florida; while New Guinea at its western bird-shaped "head" lies out in the Pacific beyond the Cali- fornia coast line. New Ireland, the Admiralties, and the outlying islands of the Bismarck Archipelago extend to the Canadian border.
Until recently Melanesia was to most Americans an area in which they were decidedly not interested. No active contacts were maintained politically, or by traders or missionaries. Recent world developments have aroused our curiosity as to the Melanesian way of living. It is as though a number of new neighbors from a foreign land had moved into our block.
Then, too, the people of the United States, surveying a bordering ocean, the great island-studded Pacific, 10,000 miles wide at its middle and extending all the way to China, are now definitely committed to an in- creasing interest in its island populations and coral atolls. Many of
6 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
these islands great and small are potential naval bases of possible use to the foe if not to a friend, since the radius of fleet action for surface ships remains limited despite recent developments in aviation and air transport.
The term "Oceania" as applied to the islands of the Pacific Ocean is contrasted with the term "Indonesia" which applies to the several archi- pelagoes lying off the Asiatic coast including Formosa, the Philippine Islands, and the Dutch East Indies. So vast is the expanse of the Pacific that within Oceania several well-defined island areas are recognized. Among the Polynesian volcanic and coral island groups of the eastern and mid-Pacific, the best known to Americans is Hawaii, which has been an organized Territory of the United States since 1900. Samoa, in the South Pacific, is much more remote from the United States but nearer the Melanesian islands of Fiji and has been under partial American pro- tection since 1889 and, in part, a United States possession under the administration of the Navy Department since 1898.
Dotting the vast expanse of the central and western Pacific north of the Equator lie the thousands of small volcanic islands and coral atolls of Micronesia, a term derived from the Greek mikros (small), and nesos (island) . The American volcanic island of Guam, in the Marianas, and the Japanese storm center, the Truk archipelago (Hogolu), in the Caroline Island group, are typical small Micronesian islands. Other Micronesian groups from east to west are the Ellice (inhabited by Polynesians), the Marshall, Gilbert, Mariana, Pelew or Palau, and the Japanese Bonin islands, the latter facing Japan and at one time under United States control. South of the Equator in the western Pacific lies the third great division of Oceania — Melanesia, from the Greek melanos (black), and nesos (island), or the black islands, the inhabitants of which are not all black but range in skin color from jet black to saddle brown.
In establishing the boundary between the Japanese Micronesian and the Australian Melanesian mandates at the Equator, the League of Nations has made the first extensive use of that imaginary line as a political boundary. The Australians have scrupulously refrained from setting up armaments within the area mandated. Japan, on the other hand, has fortified the coral atolls of its Micronesian mandate. The Solomon Islands, a British protectorate of earlier standing than World War I, have become a frontier against Japanese aggression through Micronesia. They have long been a British frontier for Australian shipping and trading interests, for the coconut planter, and for missionaries sent by English church bodies.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 7
DISCOVERY AND EARLY HISTORY
Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese in the service of the King of Spain, discovered the Marianas, a Micronesian island archipelago, 1,300 miles east of the Philippines, March 7, 1521, while sailing across the broad Pacific in quest of the Spice Islands. After passing through the tortuous straits that bear his name, at the southern tip of South America, he sailed for 4 months across a barren ocean without sighting an inhabited island. His ships finally anchored at Apra, a harbor on the island of Guam, the largest of the Marianas. There his crew obtained fresh water and food — coconuts, yams, and rice.
An early Spanish estimate of the native population of Guam as 50,000 is probably too high. Here, for the first time, the Spanish saw the out- rigger canoe with its pointed mat sail. There were so many of these boats that Magellan named the islands the Isles of the Lateen Sails. However, after suffering the loss of a ship's boat and other annoying thefts, Magellan renamed the islands Los Ladrones— Isles of Thieves. In 1668 a Jesuit, Padre de Sanvi tores, established a mission on the Ladrones. This was the first Christian mission station in Oceania. Op- position in China and Japan to the entrance of Spanish missionaries, also the abandonment of Mindanao in the Philippines as a mission field, led to this undertaking. Filipino catechists were landed at Guam and were at first favorably received. Land was provided for the mission at Agadna (Agana) by native chiefs known as chamorri. Later this name was applied by the Spanish to the entire native population. Hence, we now speak of the natives of the Marianas as the Chamorros.
The Jesuits renamed the islands the Marianas in honor of the widow of a Spanish king. Forced baptizing of children against the wishes of their parents led to quarreling on several of the islands and the Spanish were obliged to fortify Agaha, their capital. The Spanish policy of colonial government gradually became more exacting and conversion was at the point of the sword. Entire islands in the Mariana group became de- populated through slaughter of the native population, or its concentration on the island of Guam. Disease, such as introduced smallpox and Asiatic cholera, increased the rate of depopulation. The explorer Dampier, who touched at Guam in 1686, stated that where the Spaniards had found 30,000 people, there were not above 100 natives remaining. A half century later, the population had again increased on the island of Guam, but with the exception of the island of Rota, where a few Chamorro natives survived, the population of all other islands of the Mariana archipelago had vanished. Colonization, mostly of Tagalogs from Luzon,
8 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
in the Philippines, was encouraged. The native Chamorro stock had become almost extinct.
The heated rivalry between Spain and Portugal for positions of vantage in their trade with the Indies led indirectly to the European discovery of Melanesia. As early as the year 1527, the Portuguese, Jorge de Meneses, came upon the north coast of New Guinea. Meneses, to be sure, was sailing in Spanish waters east of the meridian designated by Pope Alexander VI as the boundary line of island territory to be acquired by Portugal. He paused long enough to name the island Papua, a name that survives to the present day as applied to the southeastern fourth of the island. Papua is a Malay word meaning "curly haired." The north coast of New Guinea was later rediscovered over and over again by Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English navigators, all of whom agreed that this was the north coast of Terra Australis, the great southern con- tinent that in the days of Pliny, the Roman geographer, supposedly in- cluded even the continent of Africa. After much of its supposed area had been found by later exploration to be nonexistent or distinct islands, what remains of Terra Australis is applied to the not inconsiderable land mass of continental Australia. The inhospitable Papuan coast, which had few harbors and which was inhabited by comparatively naked cannibals, did not appeal to the European explorers in search of gold, spices, and the precious gems of India. It was only as late as the year 1700 that the English Captain Dampier systematically explored and charted the north coast of New Guinea, and 67 years later still that another Englishman, Carteret, was able to recognize the insularity of New Guinea and of the large island of New Britain near its northeast coast. The east coast of Australia itself was first discovered by Captain Cook in 1770. Cook's discoveries in Melanesia, like those of the French Bougainville and d'Entrecasteaux, were not immediately utilized. It was only in the nine- teenth century that a systematic exploration of New Guinea was under- taken by Dumont d'Urville, Owen Stanley, the Russian, Miklucho- Maclay, and the Germans, von Schleinitz, Finsch, and others. The names of most of these explorers are perpetuated in Melanesia in numerous place names.
In 1546 the Spaniard, Ortiz de Retus, renamed Papua Nueva Guinea because of the striking resemblance of the natives to the Negroes of the Guinea coast of West Africa. Although the enterprising explorers of the early post-Columbian days did look at most of the islands of the South Seas with greedy eyes, their objectives were limited. The rivalry between Spain and Portugal, which led to the occupation of the Moluccas
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 9
by the Portuguese and of the Philippines by the Spanish and the later conquest of the great and little Sundas by the Netherlands, may be traced directly to one economic and political motive, namely, the acquisition of the riches of the Indies. The desire to spread Christianity was a conscious secondary motivation on the part of the clerical element among the early Spanish explorers. One finds nothing of this type of incentive in the appropriation of colonies by the great powers during the latter decades of the nineteenth century.
So vast is the expanse of the southern Pacific that this circumstance alone may account for the complete disappearance for a period of 200 years of an entire archipelago — the Solomon Islands, now known to be more than 600 miles in length. This archipelago, which its discoverer, the Spaniard Alvaro de Mendana de Neyra, named the Isles of Solomon, is, with the exception of the northern coast of New Guinea, the first Melanesian territory to be sighted by Europeans. The islands have not yet, after a lapse of 375 years, been completely explored. Mendana sailed from Callao, Peru, in November 1567, with the stated object of dis- covering the great southern continent Terra Australis. There was, how- ever, a more practical purpose which the expedition, consisting of two small ships — the Capitana and the Almirante — hoped to accomplish. Geographical research as understood today was far from a compelling motive to the great explorers of the "Age of Discovery." If it were not spices or gems that were sought, it was gold. The fact that Mendana named his discovery the Isles of Solomon did not, of course, indicate that he actually had found the gold which he sought.
Mendana's voyage from Callao to the Solomon Islands covered a distance of approximately 7,000 miles. On his voyage of discovery to the Solomons, Mendana sighted an island of the Ellice group 57 days after leaving Peru in November 1567. Seventeen days later, on February 1, he sighted another island, which proved to be the coral atoll now known as Ontong Java (Lord Howe Island), though known to its native population as Liueniua. Mendana named the first island of the Solomons where landing was made Santa Ysabel, a name the island still retains. Several other islands were visited and named, including Florida, San Cristoval, and Guadalcanal — names still applied to these several islands. The native name of Guadalcanal, however, is Sevo, while Florida, in Melanesian, is Nggela, and San Cristoval is Makira. The native name for the large island of Malaita is simply Mala, ita meaning "over there."
Quite aside from the mountainous character of the islands which suggested to the Spaniards that gold might be found, they observed the
10 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
native use of a club with a stone head embodying quantities of iron pyrites. The officers of the expedition knew this for what it was, but the crew remained unconvinced. Six months were spent in cruising among the islands and in charting the coast lines. Mendana did not mention the Solomon Islands in his report after again reaching the American continent in 1569. Perhaps he feared competition in the development of his fantastic discovery of the islands that were expected to bring him and his family the fabulous riches of the Solomons. He reembarked from Peru in 1595 with a small squadron consisting of 4 ships and 368 immigrants — men, women and children. After reaching the Santa Cruz islands, which lie only 200 miles east of the Solomons, disease, trouble with the natives, and internal dissension broke up the plans for coloniza- tion. The Solomons were not even reached. The course was changed for the Philippines.
In 1605 Quiros, who had accompanied Mendana on his second voyage as chief pilot, attempted again to reach the Solomons, but missed them entirely. His mutinous crew forced him to return, although an ac- companying ship under de Torres sailed on again, missing the Solomons, but reaching the narrow strait separating Australia from New Guinea, a shallow and island-studded body of water now bearing his name. The records of Mendana's two voyages and that of Quiros were not published although word of mouth accounts of the wonderful islands of Solomon located them on the map all over the western Pacific. Later explorations by the Dutch, English, and French had to discover the islands anew.
In 1767 Carteret sighted Malaita. Bougainville's discovery of the northern Solomons about the same time is perpetuated in his name which is still applied to the largest of the group. Two convict transports under Lieutenant Shortland sailing for Botany Bay, Australia, England's new outlet for exiled convicts after the American Revolution had closed the American outlet, rediscovered the Solomons and applied to them the new name, New Georgia, a term still retained as the name of one of the western islands of the archipelago. Shortland's name is perpetuated in the Shortland Islands. French squadrons under d'Entrecasteaux, La Perouse, and d'Urville also visited the area, the latter in 1838. The names of his two ships, the Astrolabe and Zelee, are perpetuated as geographical terms. Despite the sketchy character of these exploratory voyages, most of the coasts have been fairly well charted. The interiors of practically all the Solomon Islands are for the most part unknown.
Whalers and traders frequently visited the Solomons during the nineteenth century in search of stores and foodstuffs and to carry on
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 11
trade with the natives. Tortoise shell, sandalwood, trepang, and later coconuts were the chief objects sought in trade. The stealing of natives as slave labor on plantations elsewhere began in the 60's. At first they were kidnapped for work on the guano islands and later for work on the cotton plantations in Fiji. "Blackbirding" ships soon became notorious. Naive and curious natives were invited aboard and enticed to go below deck, when the hatch covers were closed and the ship would depart with its slave cargo aboard. A particularly inhuman method was to entice the natives in canoes to come alongside, when the canoes were upset with grappling irons and the natives then fished out of the water and kidnapped. All this, of course, was in the days before the annexation of Fiji as a British colony. Somewhat later, about 1875, the demand for seasonal laborers on the sugar plantations of Queensland, Australia, also led to blackbirding and the kidnapping of natives of the Solomon Islands. This traffic did not cease until 1903. The high death rate of kidnapped natives formed one of the causes of depopulation which had become general throughout Melanesia until quite recently.
The great English explorer of the Pacific, Capt. James Cook, with his ships, the Adventure and the Resolution, landed on September 5, 1774, on the northern coast of New Caledonia at Balade and gave to the island its present name. He sailed southward along its east coast on the way to New Zealand. Twenty years later, in 1793, two French ships, the Recherche and the Esperance, landed at the same place under Bruni d'Entrecasteaux after they had sailed northward along the west coast of the island following its great outlying barrier reef. About the same time in 1793 the English Captain Kent discovered the bay on the south coast which he named St. Vincent. By the year 1827 various French and English explorers had discovered and charted the entire group which we now know as the New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands. The entire Melanesian area during the years following this period of discovery was a lawless world in which American and European whalers, blackbirders, and sandalwood merchants participated from time to time. This advance guard of civilization presented a somewhat bewildering picture to the native population. Accustomed as the New Caledonian clans were to defend their several territories from aggression by one another, they were not slow to kill those who robbed, murdered, and molested them. In spite of existing undeclared warfare, a group of sandalwood merchants did succeed in establishing friendly relations with the natives on the Island of Pines (Pins) in the 1840's. A lively trade was conducted, in axes, guns, cloth, and tobacco.
12 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
The entry of the French into the Melanesian picture is somewhat typical of Gallic impetuosity. The French navigator, d'Entrecasteaux, when he landed in the Bay of Balade at the extreme northeast corner of New Caledonia in 1793, remained on the island long enough to make a thorough report to the authorities in the French establishment in the Marquesan Islands. In 1843, the grand chief of Balade ceded French Marist missionaries a tract of land in exchange for metal axes and beads. A mission was established, and at the farewell feast before the Bucephale sailed away with the French Admiral, the assembled chiefs were informed that France had established sovereignty over the island.
France wanted to use the island of New Caledonia as a naval base and trading depot as she had no possessions in that far part of the Pacific. The French flag which the Admiral and the Bishop had so briefly planted at Balade was later again lowered at the insistence of the British. How- ever, when in 1853 a French naval officer, while attending a function in Sydney, learned that a British naval detachment was instructed to annex the island for Great Britain, he immediately informed his superiors of this development. France and Great Britain were comrades at arms at the time in their war against Russia. Whatever new seizure of the island was undertaken had, therefore, to be engineered without giving too much offense to their ally. Napoleon issued two sets of instructions to two contingents of the French fleet to take possession of the island at two points and to fortify these. These instructions were not to be carried out, however, if they found the island already occupied by some other power. Admiral Despointes received his orders while at Callao, Peru, but did not divulge the purpose of the voyage until he had left Tahiti. Even at Tahiti he covered his tracks by not taking aboard provisions sufficient for a long journey, provisioning being effected secretly from another French boat. Arriving at New Caledonia September 24, 1853, he again raised the French flag at Balade and 2 days later at the He des Pins.
The actual rulers. of New Caledonia during the early years of French occupation were undoubtedly the Marist missionaries, although many of them were killed and eaten. Neither France nor England, of course, realized the mineral resources hidden in the low hills and mountains of New Caledonia.
MICRONESIA GEOGRAPHY
The myriads of small coral islets, reefs, and volcanic islands, which together make Micronesia, pepper the western Pacific north of the
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 13
Equator. As mentioned before, the first explorers were keenly interested in their great number and their outstanding trait of smallness. In the much larger islands south of the Equator, however, they observed with greatest astonishment the dark-skinned and frizzly-haired native in- habitants. Micronesia extends a full 2,000 miles from east to west and about the same distance from north to south. The most westerly of these, the Pelew, or Palau, Islands, lie not far from the southern Philippines. Directly east are the Carolines which in the form of innumerable reefs, coral islets, and the volcanic islands of Yap, Truk, Ponape, and Kusaie dot the Pacific from Yap to Kusaie, a distance of more than 1,500 miles. Northeast of the Pelews in a straight line extending from north to south lie the volcanic Marianas in their relation to the Carolines like the stem of an inverted capital T. East of the Carolines lie the Marshall Islands, the Gilberts straddling the Equator, and the Polynesian Ellice group directly north of Fiji.
The six Micronesian archipelagoes lie for the most part north of the Equator, while the islands of Melanesia, which occupy an identical longi- tudinal segment of the western Pacific, lie altogether south of it, and are for the most part large, mountainous, and rather compactly situated with relation to one another and to the Australian continent. They were presumably connected by land bridges during the geologic past. Almost altogether of coral origin, the Micronesian islands are small and have a total area of less than 1,400 square miles. Their combined native popu- lation when first brought into contact with the white race is estimated at approximately 100,000. The native population of all Micronesian islands in 1938 was 107,334. This slight increase becomes significant when contrasted with the general depopulation that has swept away much of the native population in the great Melanesian islands. Furthermore, in the Japanese-held Pelews, Carolines, and Marianas, an additional 70,141 Japanese immigrants must be included. Ultimately, this will lead to the extinction of the native Micronesians on those islands or to their amalga- mation with the Japanese newcomers. By way of contrast, the Gilberts and the Polynesian Ellice Islands have a foreign immigrant population of but 793 Chinese and 261 Europeans.
The low, flat island formations of Micronesia owe their origin to the lowly coral polyps. A smaller number of high islands were formed through combined volcanic action and deposition of coral debris. These are covered with a heavy growth of vegetation, since the high mountain ridges precipitate rain. On the low coral islands of Micronesia, however, there is frequently a scarcity of fresh water. The coral atolls rest on the 2
14 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
top of submerged mountains many fathoms below the surface of the water. The coral polyps feeding on the upper slopes of these mountains slowly built up reefs which, owing to the substructure on which they rested, assumed circular shape. Fragments of dead coral are forced above the water level by the action of tide, wind, and wave and form the beginnings of an atoll. The height of a coral island above the surface of the sea is rarely more than a few feet, although the circular reef of which the low islands are a part may be many miles in its outer periphery. The greater portion of the reef remains awash at high tide. Within the circular reef is a sloping sandy beach and an enclosed lagoon of quiet water. The outer slope of the reef exposed to the sea is studded with boulders of rough, dead coral broken off by the combined action of wind and sea. Lime-secreting plants aid in binding together the coral to make a wave-resisting barrier. Reef corals have been found alive in dredging from depths of 40 fathoms. Reefs, however, are not built from depths of more than 200 feet.
Micronesia, for the most part a featureless expanse of ocean dotted with coral atolls many leagues apart, is a region of steady winds from which the low islands fail to attract much rain, except in the eastern area where the rainfall is heavy, although the high islands, among them notably Kusaie, Yap, Ponape, and Guam, have abundant precipitation and luxuriant vegetation.
Scattered atolls provide a uniform and circumscribed environment for their isolated communities. The outer margin of an atoll has the fresh tang of the wind and the steady thunder of rollers dashing a lively barrage of spray along the reef, and pounding its edge into large, sharp- edged coral lumps, which rattle noisily in the backwash. The grateful, cool shade of coconut groves provides relief from the blinding glare of the sun on the reef. Dazzling white inner beaches encircle the placid waters of the lagoon. Villages of the Micronesian natives are usually built on the inner side of one or more islands of the atoll facing the lagoon. The life of the Micronesian is hard, but in his coral island home he is less subject to many of the diseases always present in the insect- and germ-laden environment of his Melanesian neighbor living on the great islands to the south. Micronesia has a fairly healthy native popu- lation. However, the introduction of Japanese commercial undertakings such as the growing of sugarcane in Saipan, one of the Marianas, has brought myriads of flies and diseased immigrant laborers, and accelerated native depopulation.
Resources provided by nature are meager. Fish are always a staple
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 15
food, and coconuts and the fruit of the pandanus are usually available. Root crops such as taro are nonexistent or inferior although the introduced arrowroot has become a staple crop.
Among the algae growing on the coral reefs of the Caroline and Mariana Islands, the most conspicuous are the brown Padinas with fanlike fronds expanded like the tail of a strutting peacock. From some of the gelatinous species of red algae the natives make blancmange.
At the mouths of streams of the high or volcanic Micronesian islands where the water is brackish and the shores are muddy, mangroves and their allies form dense thickets which extend far out into the water at high tide. Thickets of nipa (Nipa fruticans), a stemless palm with great pinnate leaves, are also found near the mouths of most of the rivers where the water is brackish, and are used by the natives for thatching their houses. Associated with it are large, simple pinnate ferns, of wide distribution throughout the warmer regions of the globe. At least two species of bamboo grow on the high islands.
The principal beach plant is called goatsfoot convolvulus, from the shape of its leaves. Its long, prostrate stems form a carpet over the sand without twining or taking root, and bear large, rose-purple, funnel-shaped flowers. In addition to many species of beach plants are a number of shrubs growing in the vicinity of the beach — the beach plum with white, honeysuckle-like flowers and exserted pink stamens, and the custard apple being characteristic.
The forest vegetation of the Micronesian volcanic high islands consists almost entirely of strand trees, epiphytal ferns, lianas, and a few under - shrubs. The principal trees are the wild breadfruit, the Indian almond, jack-in-the-box, the giant banyan, called nunu by the natives, with prop- like, aerial roots growing down from the limbs and with fruit resembling small, red crabapples. A handsome tree known in the East Indies as Alexandrian laurel yields the tough cross-grained wood of which the natives of Guam make their cart wheels. Heritiera UttoraUs, called in India the looking-glass tree, furnishes the natives of Guam with tough wood for their plows and wheel spokes. Among recently introduced trees are Canangium odoratum, the fragrant flowers of which are the source of the perfume known as ilangilang; the custard apple or bullock's-heart ; and a leguminous tree known in the East Indies as the Manila tamarind, but which was brought from Mexico for the sake of its tannin-yielding bark and its edible pods. The betel nut palm, Areca catechu, grows spon- taneously in damp places; a small, slender-stemmed species allied to Areca, called palma brava by the natives, is gradually spreading over the
16 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
Mariana Islands. The sago palm has been introduced sparingly. Among the succulent plants are wild ginger (Zinziber), turmeric, and the Polynesian arrowroot (Tacca pinnatifida) .
Grassy upland regions on the volcanic islands of Micronesia are almost devoid of trees and shrubs. They are characterized by a red claylike soil. Miscanthus japonicus, which covers large areas, is called sword grass on account of the cutting scabrous edges of its leaves. It grows higher than a man's head and offers refuge for deer. Roofs thatched with this grass are more durable than those of coconut or of nipa palm leaves, but more work is necessary in their preparation. They are not common except in regions where coconuts and nipa palms are scarce. Seed-bearing plants are gradually spreading over the islands through the medium of fruit pigeons. Pineapples continue to grow for years where they are planted, and in old garden spots are found plants of the introduced arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea) as well as the native arrowroot, tur- meric, wild and cultivated ginger, and the cassava plant, or manioc {Man: hot esculent a) . Among the trees and shrubs which do not spread of their own accord are the tamarind, the cashew nut (Anacardium oca- dentate), the tree which in Honolulu is called the golden shower {Cassia fistula), the pomegranate, and the scarlet hibiscus.
Among the plants which on account of their sterility must be planted by man are the textile screw pine or aggag (Pandanus tectorius) ; the seed- less breadfruit or lemae (Artocarpus communis) ; taro (Colocasia escu- lenta) and yams (Dioscorea spp.), which are seldom known to produce seeds ; sweet potatoes, which are propagated by cuttings ; and bananas and plantains, which are seedless and must be grown from root suckers. Whole fields in the Marianas are overgrown with guava bushes, just as in the Hawaiian Islands and many other tropical countries.
Oranges, lemons, limes, and shaddocks are planted about the villages of the high islands. In many gardens grow the pomegranate, atis, or sugar apple (Annona squamosa) ; laguana or soursop (Annona muricata) ; and the papaya (Carica papaya). Coffee, bananas, and plantains of several varieties are planted, also vines of betel pepper (Piper betle) which cover trees and walls. The oleander, crape myrtle, and scarlet hibiscus are planted for the sake of their flowers. Along the roadsides are fine mango trees; Melia azedarach, the "pride of India," bearing clusters of lavender flowers with dark violet stamens; the horse-radish tree; the silk-cotton tree (Ceiba pentandra) ; the leguminous Sesbania grandi flora, called katurai, with edible flowers and seed pods; and the Poinciana pulcherrima, called flower fence in the British West Indies,
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 17
bearing racemes of beautiful red and yellow flowers; and the Indian almond.
Among the rarer trees are the magnificent flamboyant; the cabo-negro palm and the ivory nut palm of the Caroline Islands; the candle nut (Aleurites moluccana), called kukul in Hawaii, and the Pangium edule, "rauel," on the island of Yap.
Of special interest "on account of their method of germination and growth are the giant banyans (Ficus spp.) of the forest, and the man- groves of the brackish estuaries. The banyans usually begin their existence upon other trees, sending down aerial roots which interlace and grow together, clasping the trunk of their host, and eventually strangling it. They then lead an independent existence, their great spreading limbs send- ing down more roots, which are like pendent threads at first, but soon thicken after gaining a foothold in the earth, and serve as columns to support the great dome of foliage overhead, as well as to supply it with nourishment and moisture.
The chief interest in the mangroves lies in the fact that their fruit germinates while still attached to the tree, the spindle-shaped radicle perforating the apex of the fruit, elongating and hanging vertically down- ward. When the fruit falls, the radicle sticks into the soft mud below, retaining an upright position, like a stake thrust into the ground, and resisting the current of the tide as it ebbs and flows.
Among Micronesian plants there are a number that exhibit in a marked degree the phenomenon known as sleep movements, folding their leaves each night and opening them again at sunrise. Some of them are so sensitive to changes in the intensity of light that they go to sleep if the sky suddenly becomes overcast, and wake up when the sun reappears.
Interesting examples of self-protection are offered by several plants growing in Guam, the most striking of which is that of the spiny yam. This plant grows spontaneously on the island and in places forms im- penetrable thickets. It takes its name from a mass of spines surrounding the base of the stem and serving as a protection to the starchy tubers be- low from hogs and other enemies.
Among the principal food staples of the high islands is the taro (Colocasia colocasia), a plant of the Arum family. Both the land and water varieties are found invariably to have their smooth, succulent, satiny leaves free from the ravages of snails, insects, or herbivorous ani- mals. Cattle and chickens delight in nipping off the young leaves of bananas and plantains; deer often inflict serious injury on a young coco- nut plantation in a single night; breadfruit trees suffer from the attacks
18 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
of all herbivorous animals, and must be protected from them — fruit, leaves, and bark; and even tobacco will be devoured in the field by insect larvae unless it is carefully watched and attended. On chewing a small portion of a taro leaf, the cause of its safety from attack is at once apparent. The tongue, roof of the mouth, and lining of the throat seem to be pierced by a thousand tiny needles. This burning sensation is caused, not by an acrid fluid, but by minute needlelike crystals of calcium oxalate contained in their tissue. Not only is the root of the taro edible, but the tender young leaves are eaten like spinach or asparagus. When not thoroughly cooked, however, they retain their acridity, and in Polynesia it is a common occurrence to experience an intense burning of the throat after a meal of savory taro tops cooked with coconut custard.
On the sandy beaches there is sometimes a line of drift just above high-water mark which is rich in seeds, fruits of various kinds, and driftwood brought by the great ocean current that sweeps across the Pacific from east to west. Sometimes the seeds and logs are riddled with teredo borings or are covered with barnacles, but often they appear fresh and little worn by the erosion of the waves and sand. Many of the seeds are dead; some of them are alive and capable of germination. Not all the species that reach the islands gain foothold there. The fruits of plants growing in muddy estuaries or mangrove swamps, for instance, cannot establish themselves on a clean, sandy beach. Germinating fruits are frequently cast up only to die, and nuts of the nipa palm, though found in perfect condition, can establish themselves only near the mouths of streams where the water is brackish. Though coconuts are of frequent occurrence in the drift, it is interesting to note that on the eastern, or weather, side of the islands where they are washed up, there is not a single coconut grove near the water's edge, while on the western, or lee, side, where groves have been planted, they grow so near the sea that their roots are often bared by the waves.
The seeds that occur in the drift owe their buoyancy to various causes. Many of the "sea beans" enclose an air space between their cotyledons; others have kernels which do not fill the stony, water-tight shells, but leave a space for air to keep them afloat; some have a separate air chamber; others have fibrous envelopes or husks composed of light tissue; and still others have woody or corklike shells of low specific gravity.
The most beautiful land bird on the Micronesian islands is the rose- crowned fruit dove. The general color of its plumage is green. Its head is capped with rose-purple and the lower surface is yellow and orange, with some purple on the breast. When it utters its mournful, sobbing
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 19
note it presses its bill against its breast and swells the back of its neck. Another fruit dove is of a uniform reddish-brown color, while the male has a white throat and olive-green reflections on its breast. Another bird, probably introduced, is the beautiful little pigmy quail. This bird, which is only 5 inches long, is remarkable for the large size of its eggs. They are of a brownish color, sprinkled with deeper brownish dots, broadly ovate in form, and 1 inch through in their greatest diameter. The most remarkable bird of the Marianas is a megapode closely allied to, if not identical with, a megapode found in the Pelew Islands, and is of the same genus as the jungle fowl or mound builder of Australia. It is about 9 inches long, and is remarkable for the thickness of its legs and the size of its feet. It is of a brownish color with a grayish head on which there is an area of naked skin of reddish color, and with yellow bill and legs. It flies heavily. These birds have a habit of heaping up mounds of earth, decayed leaves, and rubbish in which they lay their eggs. They have been collected on the islands of Rota, Saipan, Pagan, and Agrigan, of the Mariana group. The natives attract them by knocking stones together. The short-eared owl is well known to the natives of the Mariana group. They describe it as having big eyes and a catlike face, and say that it catches lizards. It is said to be common on the island of Tinian.
Numerous land birds frequent the high islands but are not found on the low coral atolls. Among these are kingfishers which feed upon insects and lizards. A swift which builds a nest of leaves stuck together with a secretion from the mouth is, however, a different species from the edible- nest-building swift of China. Numerous shore birds such as the bittern, the rail, the plover, the reef heron, and others are caught by means of path snares. Sea birds, particularly snow-white terns, boobies, and frigate birds, are common.
There are few reptiles in Micronesia. A large lizard, black in color and speckled with yellow dots, occurs in the Marianas where it is con- sidered a great pest. The gecko, a small semidomesticated house lizard, is beloved by the natives because it devours insects. It pursues vermin while running upside down on the ceiling or rafters of the native house. Several of them may be seen at times stealthily surrounding a single insect.
Sea turtles are common. Fish remains a staple food throughout the extent of Micronesia, although here, too, natives now prefer to eat their fish out of tin cans. Nets of various description are used, as is also a stupefying poison obtained from the crushed fruit of the Barringtonia asiatica, a glabrous tree known to the Mariana islanders as pitting. Fishermen are able to scoop up the stupefied fish in nets or to spear them after a bagful of the narcotic has been sunk in deep holes in the reef.
20 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
Insect life has not been thoroughly studied on all the larger islands. To the casual observer the insects are not particularly obvious. There are, for example, no highly colored butterflies as in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Insect pests, however, are present in sufficient number to make native gardening in most cases hazardous. Mosquitoes are trouble- some and abundant but not to the degree noted in the Melanesian Islands. The numerous centipedes and scorpions are not dangerous, although their bite may be painful. There are no tarantulas or other dangerous spiders.
There are no indigenous quadrupeds in Micronesia. The only native mammals are two species of bats, the large fruit-eating "flying fox," called jan'thi by the people of Guam, and another small insectivorous species. The jan'thi flies about in the daytime, flapping its wings slowly like a crow. It has a disagreeable musky odor, but this leaves it when the skin is removed, and the natives sometimes eat it. The flesh is tough, but not unsavory. The principal fruits eaten by it are guavas, fertile bread- fruit, the drupes of the fragrant screw pine, and custard apples. This species occurs on the Micronesian high islands. The smaller insectivorous bat is nocturnal in its habits, and flutters about very much like our own common species. It remains in caves during the day and ventures forth at twilight.
The brown rat was probably introduced through the agency of ships. It is very abundant and is a great pest, especially in plantations. It destroys young coconuts, ascending the trees and often making its nest there. The common mouse, also introduced, apparently causes little harm.
An introduced deer causes great damage to the crops of the natives. It was brought to the island of Guam by Don Mariano Tobias, who was governor of the Marianas from 1771 to 1774. Its flesh has a fine venison flavor and is a favorite food staple of the natives, who hunt the animal with dogs and guns, often burning great stretches of sword grass in which it hides. These animals often make raids upon the garden patches of the natives at night and eat the melons and other succulent vegetables cultivated there. During the rutting season the honking cries of the fighting bucks are heard at night especially when the moon is full.
The water buffalo, cattle, horses, mules, pigs, goats, cats, and dogs have been introduced. In the Marianas the buffalo are used for carrying burdens, drawing carts, and for plowing rice, just as in the Philippines.
Goats are not plentiful. The wild hogs that roam the forests live on fallen wild breadfruit and various roots. It is interesting to note that they eat the exceedingly acrid rootstocks that grow wild in the forests. Dogs are pests in the villages. They are not well cared for, as a rule, and
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Plate 7
Upper: Marshall Islanders in outrigger canoe sailing on starboard tack in Jaluit Lagoon brailing up to "spill" the wind, which is too fresh. The lateen sail is of strips of plaited pandanus.
Lower: Detail of outrigger housing. The Marshall Islander balances the pull of the wind on the sail with his weight on the platform of the outrigger.
Plate 8
Upper: Native house with thatched walls and roof; mother and children in foreground. Rongelab atoll, Marshall Islands.
Lower: House and family of Chief Nakirora, Kiwa village, Taritari atoll, Gilbert Islands.
Plate 9
Upper: Typical house with thatched roof, walls of removable matting, and elevated floor provid- ing air space. Ellice Islands.
Lower: Group of women and children of Fongafale village, Funafuti atoll, Ellice Islands. The Ellice Islanders are predominantly Polynesian.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 21
get their living by foraging. Cats have gone wild. Dogs and cats are fed coconuts when other food is not available.
PATTERNS OF CULTURE
Subsistence. — Slender resources face the Micronesian. Practically no soil covers the coral, and the inhospitable sand will grow few plants. The staple food, the coconut, grows best near the sea and on low land. It bears relatively few small nuts as compared to its productivity in Melanesia but supplies, through a cut flower stalk, a steady drip of nutritious sap. Its trunk is used in house construction. Its leaves are woven into mats and baskets and into the thatch of the house roof; the husk fiber serves for cordage and textiles. The scarcity of fresh water makes the water found in green coconuts especially desirable. Ripe nuts provide a juice which is used to protect the skin against salt sea water. The nuts are husked with a pointed spike, and the meat is grated with a rough piece of coral fastened to an arm of a stool. The fine scrapings are then diluted with water to a creamy paste and consumed with fish. To obtain the oil of the coconut, the grated nut is placed in a wooden bowl and ex- posed to the sunlight. The oil collects in the bottom of the bowl. The sweet and slightly acid sap of the coconut tree is collected by tapping or cutting the end of a flower bud. In the Pelews and the Gilberts the sap is boiled until it becomes a thick, sweet syrup. Fermentation otherwise sets in rapidly and the sap becomes intoxicating. The lore of the coconut is widespread throughout Micronesia and Melanesia.
The pandanus, where enough soil exists so that it can be grown, is the second most important plant. It belongs to the screw pine family and is not a palm. Its fruit provides a not unpalatable food ; its leaves are used for fiber and thatch covering; and its branches supply timber for canoe outriggers and other light woodwork. The fruit of the pandanus is a staple food in the Micronesian islands, particularly in the Marshalls and Gilberts, and is preserved for use as sea stock by the bold canoe rovers of the two archipelagoes. The drupes are separated, dried, and pounded into a dust resembling snuff. This dust is exposed to the sun until a sweet juice exudes, rendering it sticky, after which it is rolled into broad, flat cakes. These are rolled up and tightly wrapped round with dried leaves and sennit, preserving them from injury by salt water.
Breadfruit and other plants that thrive in the high Melanesian islands grow abundantly in those Micronesian islands that are of volcanic forma- tion such as the Marianas and Yap, Ponape, and Kusaie in the Carolines. Breadfruit and bananas, both staples of Micronesia, require a good soil
22 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
and cannot thrive on most of the coral atolls. In the Gilberts the bread- fruit tree culture involves the manufacture of soil produced by the mixing of powdered pumice (a highly vesicular volcanic glass) with what little sandy soil is available. Depredations of pigs are harmful to the tender trees. The fruit of this tree is a spherical, yellowish-green ball resembling the Osage orange but much larger. It cannot be eaten raw and is usually baked.
Taro (Colocasia esculenta) must be carefully tended to produce a crop in the Gilberts and other Micronesian coral islands. Trenches are dug in de- pressions in the sand, and the taro shoots are planted in those trenches which are moist enough to grow a crop. In the Pelews, yams are cul- tivated in swampy lands. Arrowroot is grown in the northern Marshalls, although this plant is supposed to have been introduced from America. The root is grated and squeezed, passed through a sieve and washed, after which the remaining pulp — a tasteless powder — is mixed with oil from ripe coconuts and cooked with hot stones. Prepared in this manner, the jellylike substance has a sweetish taste, much appreciated for use at feasts.
The preparation and ceremonial drinking of kava, made by crushing the root of a pepper {Piper methysticum) , appears to have been limited to the islands of Ponape and Kusaie in the eastern Carolines. The con- coction tastes like soapsuds and is mildly intoxicating. A few Europeans have learned to like it.
The chewing of the betel is characteristic in the Pelews, the Marianas, and the Carolines. The quid is prepared by placing a slice of the areca palm nut in a leaf of the pepper plant, together with lime ladled with a lime spatula from a gourd container. It is a mild narcotic, colors the saliva red and increases its flow.
Wild chickens are found in the Pelew Islands and in the Gilberts but are not hunted. The frigate bird is captured by the Gilbert Islanders by means of the bird bola — an oblong piece of stone, or worked fragment of shell of the giant clam (Tridacnd), attached to a long plaited cord and looped at the other end about the finger of the hunter. A tame frigate bird serves as a lure. This is considered the sport of chiefs who retain special bird-catchers. In a limited way this bird is used as a carrier of messages, like the carrier pigeon.
There are on all inhabited islands a few pigs and chickens. Rats, which are plentiful, are eaten.
Implements, as well as fishhooks, are derived from sea products in Micronesia. Slender adzes are contrived by grinding down large specimens of the auger shell (Terebra), while larger adzes are made from the thick
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 23
shell of the giant clam (Tridacna) . Hoes and scrapers are often made of turtle bone. In the Carolines a short-handled hoe with a blade of tortoise shell is the characteristic tool, while in the Gilberts wooden spades are used to work the shallow sandy soil. In the Mariana Islands, numerous types of metal tools were introduced from the Philippines replacing native forms of Micronesian knives and cutting tools of shell and bamboo.
The Micronesian finds the sea a generous provider. Squid, crabs, and shellfish haunt the innumerable cracks and crannies of the reef, and fish abound in the sheltered waters of the lagoon. Fish and mollusks are eaten raw.
Fishing is the chief activity of the atoll dwellers, and lines, nets, sinkers, and hooks are inevitably prominent in any display of Micronesian arts and crafts. Sennit fiber derived from the spathe of the coconut tree and pandanus-fiber lines can be made in any quantity, but as stone, bone, and wood are scarce except on the high islands, most hooks are made of molluscan sea shell or of turtle shell. The commonest hook has a carved shell shank. Open-sea fishing is for bonito and similar fish, while flying fish are netted from canoes by torchlight at night. Torches of candlewood nuts are used in all the islands where the tree will grow. The nuts are baked, and the nut kernels threaded on a midrib of a coconut leaflet. They burn with a smoky, flickering flame. The light requires constant tending since the charred cinder of a burned nut has to be removed when the nut below begins to burn.
In the Carolines and Gilberts fish weirs of coral rock and cane are built and the fish herded into them at high tide. Pools formed by the tides, caves in reefs, and other confined waters are poisoned with poisonous plants. Although the poison stupefies the fish, which float up to the surface, it does not spoil them for use as food. The Gilbert Islanders catch eels with a looped snare attached to a pole. As in Melanesia, the spearing of fish with a trident spear is a common practice, and at night fish are lured to the surface with torches. Fish nets and seines are also used. The fishhook used by the Caroline Islander has a shank cut from the shell of the abalone, with a barb of tortoise shell. A special kind of fishhook with narrow opening and a small, recurved bone barb is used to catch the Ruvettus, a large pelagic mackerel.
The shark is a favorite food, much preferred to the myriads of other fish and mollusks available. The tiger shark is sometimes sought and killed by a swimming native armed with no other weapon than a knife or a spear.
To aid the fisherman magic is invoked in the form of pairs of fish
24 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
carved from stone, one of which is buried and the other exposed. If the catch is poor, the carving used as a lure is then buried and the companion carving exhumed. The South Sea Islander is a great believer in luck, either good or bad. In Yap, the westernmost of the Carolines, fishermen are ceremonially isolated during the fishing expedition.
The Gilbert Islander is not only a good fisherman but a master sailor. He knows the ocean currents, the winds, and the stars. He knows the constellations that are visible from the Gilbert Islands and has plotted the heavens in distances and angles as they appear to him from his native island. The Pleiades or the "Seven Sisters," Antares, and all the other principal stars are known in their relation to angular distances and declination north or south of the star Rigel. Before a student navigator in the Gilberts is permitted to identify a star in its position in the heavens, he has to memorize a long list of familiar stars and constellations and to be able to indicate the relative positions as they might appear when observed at sunrise or at sunset at any given season of the year when sighted through the rafter and eaves in the thatched roof of the com- munity house. The pupil is next instructed in the plotting of courses by the stars observable on a voyage to a given distant island.
Today the Marshall Islanders are expert builders of canoes and boats, and in the past they were clever and daring navigators. They build good- sized trading schooners of European model, as well constructed as those of foreign origin. As a result the old-time great outriggers are no longer built; only paddling outrigger dugouts and medium-sized sailing canoes for fishing and coastwise trips have survived.
Every chief and sea pilot possessed elaborate charts based upon his own experience and on knowledge handed down or gained from others. These sea charts are made with thin strips of the midrib of the leaflets of the coconut, arranged on a frame usually rectangular in shape. The knowledge they record is indicated by the arrangement of the leaf strips relative to one another and by the forms given to them by bending and crossing. Curved strips indicate the altered direction taken by ocean swells when deflected by the presence of an island ; their intersections are nodes where these meet and tend to produce a confused sea. These "charts" are never made to scale and are, in fact, little more than mnemonic devices for the use of their owner.
Double canoes, which are much used in Polynesia, are unknown in Micronesia except on Truk Island of the Carolines. Sails were formerly commonly made of pandanus matting, although in the eastern Micro- nesian islands they were of woven cloth. The sail is of the lateen type,
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 25
triangular in section with yards at both sides and suspended from the masthead. Its forward end, where the two yards join, rests on the deck at the bow. Tacking is managed by slacking off the sail and carrying the yard ends bodily from the bow to the stern, where they are again fastened. The stern now becomes the bow, since both ends of the vessel are similar. Micronesians can sail close to the wind with this sail manipulation. The shallow draft of the canoe combined with the narrow beam makes this type of boat a good sailing vessel.
Native canoes and sailing vessels have no metal in their construction and are built up of planks lashed together with coconut-fiber cord. They could not be other than frail, but their builders are not afraid to set a large sail and travel long distances in the open sea. An outrigger float serves as a stabilizer, and the sail must be kept trimmed and just so full of wind as to heel the boat to leeward so that the outrigger float is poised just above the water. One sailor is assigned to control the position of the outrigger float; it is his duty to throw his weight on the outrigger if it rises too high. For this purpose the Micronesian sailing canoe has a platform built over the outrigger supports.
Shelter. — Houses are always rectangular, of wood-and-thatch construction, and are practically all roof, with very high, steep gables reaching close to the ground. Decoration is applied in the form of ornamental plaited lashing, though in the Pelews and the western high islands, which have sizable trees, some of the timbers have human effigy carvings.
In contrast with Melanesia, where houses are built flush with the ground, Micronesian house builders elevate their structures on a raised platform. In the Carolines, stone house-platforms 3 feet high are con- structed. Thick-walled enclosures made of large worked basaltic stones are found buried in the jungle on Yap Island in the western Carolines, while on Ponape in the eastern Carolines, house construction includes platforms and wells. On Guam, in the Marianas, isolated stone pillars capped by large mushroom-head stones remain as the mute reminders of the use of stone house-posts. There is no recollection or native tradition regarding this now abandoned type of house architecture. Although no metal nails are used, great care is shown in the fitting of the timbers and in the laying of the thatch. Lashings of braided coconut fiber hold the timbers firm. Flooring of split bamboo planking characterizes the house of the Pelew Islander, and sliding shutters that can be removed form the wall coverings. On Ponape, the walls are of cane or reeds. On Kusaie, of the eastern Carolines, as well as in the Marshall Islands, a saddle-shaped roof is preferred, similar to that built by certain Indonesian and southeastern Asiatic peoples.
26 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
The council house in Micronesia is narrow but may extend 60 to 100 feet in length. These houses are the sleeping quarters of the unmarried men and are taboo to women. In the Pelews, the chief sits on a raised platform at one end of the house or council chamber, while long benches extend along the walls. Ordinary dwellings have numerous partitions forming rooms.
Except for floor matting of strips of pandanus leaves, which are made pliable by steeping in salt water, the rooms are unfurnished. Personal belongings, baskets, and coverings are piled on the floor matting. Natives of the island of Ponape, as in Polynesia, sleep on a pillow cut from a bole of the pandanus. On Guam, Filipino types of beds, low stools, and tables have been introduced.
Clothing and bodily adornment. — In the Pelews, men formerly wore no clothing; women continue to wear a short skirt of coconut fiber tied about the waist with a string. In the Carolines, boys, as they gradually become accepted into the fellowship of adult males, are permitted to wear at first one loincloth, later, two. The fully initiated adult man wears a loincloth, then over this a strip of pandanus leaves and grass, also a bunch of the same material stained red which is permitted to hang down in front over the loincloth. On Yap, in the western Carolines, women wear a skirt of leaves reaching to the ankles, but on Ponape a knee-length skirt is worn. In the Marshalls, thick bunches of shredded bark are connected with a strip of matting passed between the legs. Women wear two woven pandanus-mat skirts, one in front and another behind. In the Gilberts, men wear a pandanus-mat kilt, women a short skirt of grass, bark, or coconut leaves. Upper garments are practically unknown in Micronesia. Tapa is little used in Micronesia, as the paper mulberry, from the inner bark of which the tapa is obtained, does not thrive on these wind-blown islands.
Cloth is woven on small looms in the Caroline Islands, also on Ontong Java, Santa Cruz, and other islands along the Micronesian-Melanesian margin where contacts were early made between the two island cultures.
Tattooing is done with carbon as a pigment. Needles of bird or human bone set in handles somewhat like miniature adzes are dipped in carbon obtained from charred coconut husks and driven into the skin with a blow. Since the practice is painful, the work is done a little at a time. In the Pelews, both sexes are tattooed on the body; in the Carolines arms and legs only are so decorated. In the Marshalls tattooing is a mark of rank, and commoners are not permitted to have their cheeks tattooed. Slaves, wherever this population class existed throughout Micronesia,
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 27
were not tattooed. In the Gilberts, as formerly in Fiji and as is the custom in the Melanesian islands, cicatrization, or the raising of scar tissue is practiced. Women in the Gilberts are so scarred by burning. Other forms of bodily mutilation of sporadic occurrence in Melanesia, such as deformation of the heads of infants, or circumcision, are not recorded from Micronesia, although the ear lobes are pierced. In the Carolines the lobe is stretched with rolls of leaves to ever increasing size, while in Ruk and Mortlock of the same island chain heavy ornaments are inserted. The pierced ear lobe may become so extended as to become embarrassing to the individual when not filled with the large ornament that has caused its distention. To avoid snagging in the brush, it is tied into a knot. Pelew Islanders pierce the septum of the nose, Tasman Islanders and Ontong Javanese the nostril walls.
Micronesian women cut their hair to shoulder length; men tie their hair into a knot on top of the head. By way of contrast, the Fijian hair- dress is a work of primitive art — Williams measured one head of hair, of which the circular mop was 5 feet in circumference. Micronesians generally have scraggly beards which they pluck with shell tweezers, the Gilbertese constituting an exception by permitting their beards to grow. The teeth of the shark are used as razors and knives for hair cutting.
As bodily ornamentation the Pelew Islanders smear themselves with oil and turmeric and wear wreaths of flowers in the hair. The Gilbertese make a hat woven from strips of pandanus leaf, whereas the men of Ruk, in the Carolines, wear a comb with a feather ornament. Flowers, and in the Pelews ornaments or rings of tortoise shell, are worn in the ear. Earrings and beads of shell are also worn by the men of Ruk and Mort- land Islands, nose ornaments of tortoise shell by the men of Ontong Java. The Gilbert Islanders wear necklaces of teeth of slain enemies and also slender necklaces of plaited human hair. Cylindrical beads of shell are worn as necklaces throughout Micronesia.
Gorgets or disklike ornaments of large Conus shells and bracelets cut from Conus or Tridacna shells complete the ensemble of bodily decoration. A girdle of coconut-fiber cord worn by the women of the Marshall Islands is a badge of rank, the length of the cord varying with the rank of the wearer.
Weapons. — The sling and the spear were the most important weapons of Micronesian peoples. In the Caroline island of Ponape the bow is used to a limited extent, the wooden arrows as well as spears being tipped with spines of the sting ray. The sling, an important weapon in the Carolines and the Marianas, was little used in the Gilberts. Sling-
28 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
stones are pointed egg-shape and strike point first like a bullet. The throwing stick, employed in the Pelews, is unknown elsewhere in Micro- nesia. Thrusting spears, as in Melanesia, also lances set with rows of shark teeth, were commonly employed in warfare. In the Gilberts barbs of sting ray spines and of shark's teeth were used. Clubs, though formerly made and used in most island groups, are not important in Micronesia.
Among the Micronesians, the Gilbertese seem to have been the most warlike. Their long, lacerating spears and swords were set with rows of shark teeth. Their defensive body armor consisted of a full suit of thick, closely plaited sennit fiber which in the back extended several inches above the top of the wearer's head. Such armor is now unknown although formerly it may have been used elsewhere in Micronesia. In combat each Gilbertese armor-clad warrior was supported by an attendant whose duty it was to ward off the opponent's blows.
The Pelew Islanders were at one time addicted to the taking of heads of enemies slain in battle, more as trophies than as a means of acquiring mana or supernatural power. Cannibalism was foreign to the Micronesian war-magic complex, though it cannot be denied that Gilbert Islanders ate the flesh of their slain enemies.
Music and games. — Although island peoples of the west Pacific love music, such appreciation did not lead to the invention of advanced types of musical instruments. Stringed instruments which are plucked like the pseudo-Hawaiian ukulele, or the Japanesee koto, are unknown to the islands. Even the vented, transverse, mouth flute of bamboo, which is played throughout Polynesian islands of the eastern Pacific, appears in use only in Ponape, in the eastern Carolines. The Fijian nose flute, which is played by holding one end loosely against one nostril, the other nostril being closed with the thumb, is unknown to the Micronesians. Pipes of Pan and the bamboo jew's-harp, known to most Pacific peoples, are strangely silent in Micronesia. Drums, however, are played to accompany dancing. Large, cylindrical, upright drums with heads of shark or ray skin and resting on stone platforms as in Polynesian islands are played in the Marshall Islands and on Ponape, in the Carolines. The Marshall Islanders beat a small hourglass-shaped drum with skin heads. Drum signaling is not reported — instead, a rudely reshaped molluscan shell serves as a trumpet for signaling from village to village.
Games, other than those of children, partake of the nature of athletic sports. Competitive wrestling, boxing, swimming, diving, and ball games, are recorded. The ball used in the Gilberts is a stuffed cube of matting of pandanus strips. Goal lines are recognized.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 29
Canoe racing, a popular sport in the Gilberts, is carried on in small canoes having an unusually large sail-area in proportion to size of hull.
Men are no longer permitted to fight but continue to talk endlessly about their former prowess. Mock battles are staged in war dances to the accompaniment of beating of huge drums. The dancer oils his body before the dance with an evil-smelling oil obtained from premasticated and fermented fish heads.
Position of women. — The former lowly position or regard in which women were held is betrayed in the Marshall Islands in odd linguistic uses of the prefix It, meaning woman. For example, the word li-kam means a lie, li-porok, curiosity, li-pilipil, favoritism.
Marriage customs vary greatly from island group to island group but in some of them marriage is arranged by the mother of the prospective husband, and the bride becomes a virtual slave to her mother-in-law. A man marries the sister of his ceremonial bride if she has no children. Also, if a man's brother dies, it becomes his duty to marry the brother's widow. Exchange of wives among other groups is arranged without ceremony. This practice is unlike the ritual exchange of wives among the Papuans and may be ascribed to the economic status of women as community drudges. On Ponape, in the Carolines, as an example, women make the mats which are universally in demand in daily life, plait the comparatively inartistic baskets, prepare the bundles of sago palm leaves for use as roof thatch, make the girdles or belts for the men, prepare the coconut and fish oil, prepare the cosmetic turmeric for the village dandy and others, carry water for cooking and drinking purposes, build the ovens and light the fires, prepare the food, and attend to all other house- hold duties. They also assist in most outdoor labors such as the com- mercial marketing of copra. All their labor apparently is thoroughly enjoyed and partakes of the spirit of fun.
Infanticide is probably even more rare in Micronesia than in Melanesia, where it is resorted to only under exceptional circumstances.
In the Marshall and Caroline Islands descent is established through the mother, while in the Gilberts descent is said to be traced through the father.
Taboos. — The concept of something that is forbidden or taboo because it is sacred, therefore untouchable, has a practical mundane application in the traditional religious beliefs of the Micronesian. He does not go beyond using injunctions or temporary taboos, such as abstaining from eating certain foods or shunning the company of women before engaging in a fishing trip. A priest usually has charge of announcements regarding such 3
30 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
temporary taboos, most of which are well known through their traditional observance. Much more practical is the village chief who places a taboo on the use of coconuts until enough have been accumulated to buy a new canoe for community use in trading or fishing. The gardener, who is also practical in his religion, places a taboo sign — the carved figurine of a shark — in his garden to announce that the crop is under the protection of the shark totem, and that the vegetable thief will be eaten by a shark. Each clan has a recognized totem, a mythical animal or spirit protector.
Sorcery, magic, religion. — The same rules regarding protection of the individual against sorcery that prevail in parts of Melanesia have been observed in the Gilbert Islands. Personal leavings such as nail parings, hair clippings, faeces, and discarded garments are carefully burned or buried lest the sorcerer seek these as a medium for his nefarious practice of black magic. An expectant mother is particularly susceptible to the attack of the sorcerer, and such personal leavings must be carefully kept out of the clutches of the sorcerer. She has countermagic in an amulet consisting of a porpoise tooth and human hair, and charms are chanted to her at sunrise and sunset. Magic dietary regulations are numerous, and failure to observe them are believed to produce dire effects in the unborn child.
Although ancestor worship, which includes a form of veneration of the skulls of the departed ancestors, has practically vanished, the role of the sorcerer is still an active one. Every activity in daily life is hedged about with magical devices to insure success. To a certain extent the Christian prayer has taken the place of former heathen magic rites but has not entirely replaced them. Quite aside from this white magic prac- ticed to insure protection of the individual, there still flourishes a form of black magic or "wishing to death," known in the Gilbert Islands as wawi. The sorcerer surreptitiously approaches the remains of a fire where the one to be wished to death has cooked a meal. He proceeds to steal the smoldering embers of the fire and recites his magic formula invoking the "Spirits of sickness, spirits of fear, and spirits of rottenness," to "stab him, pierce him! " The formula ends with the bald statement that the victim is dead. Sorcery in a lighter vein, such as the children's practice of putting the stars to bed at night, follows the formula:
Mr. Star, thou, the little one,
Wink once, wink twice.
Thee I have chosen: thou art sleepy!
Thou sleepest, Mr. Star, thou, the little one,
In a little cloud.
O-o-o-a-a-a ! Sleep !
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 31
The soul of the dead goes to a paradise, which lies over the brim of the world toward the west in a submarine cavern beneath the colorful coral floor of the lagoon. There are, however, regulations to be observed to bring this about. The portal to paradise is guarded by a bird-headed woman who awaits the soul in midocean. If the dead does not have proper tattoo marks it cannot get safely past this guardian of the portals. Another sentinel, the watcher with the net, must be passed before the spirit of the dead may enter his paradise. If the individual during life had been guilty of treachery to his clan, the watcher with the net hurls the spirit into a pit where it becomes impaled on a wooden stick. If the individual record is clear, the watcher will remove or pull aside his net and smilingly permit the soul to pass on its way. As in Melanesia, the spirit world is well populated. The spirits of ancestors haunt the reefs, forest, and mountains. They are under the floor and in the roof thatch conspiring to punish the living for insufficient honor bestowed upon the dead.
Micronesian culture taken altogether is not as involved as is that of the larger Melanesian islands. This harmonizes with the restricted re- sources of the islands. Enterprise and ability are evident in the in- genuity and versatility which wring every possible use out of the limited resources the islands provide. There is less of elaborate feasting and organized ceremonial life than in Melanesia and a less developed ex- pression of ritual in art and in the routine of daily life. There appears to have been no temple- or marae-build'mg as in Polynesia. The numerous gods and lesser personages of the spirit world are not arranged in a definite hierarchy, as in Polynesia. No profound interpretative conception of the origin of earth and sky has been recorded. Micronesia has not, however, been studied by the social anthropologist as thoroughly as has Melanesia and Polynesia. Future investigations may disclose more precise relation- ship between Micronesia and the two other great cultural subdivisions of Oceania namely, Melanesia and Polynesia, and may also uncover anthro- pological and cultural origins in the Indonesian background.
The prevailing similarity in geographic features, flora and fauna throughout far-flung Micronesian atolls is disturbed almost solely by factors associated with the few volcanic high islands, namely, the Marianas, the Pelews, and Yap, Truk, Ponape, and Kusaie in the Carolines. It is erroneous to assume the existence of comparable racial and cultural uni- formity. Unknown prehistoric peoples have, no doubt, passed through the area. Some of these peoples are presumably the historic and present- day neighbors of the Micronesians. This is inferred from the many sub-
32 • WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
areal racial and culture traits which link eastern Micronesia with Polynesia, southern Micronesia with Melanesia, and western Micronesia with the Philippine Islands and Indonesia. In this brief outline of Micronesian patterns of culture, an illusory impression of general cultural identity may be conveyed unless the individual culture trait is associated with a given island or archipelago. The Micronesian patchwork of borrowed and of uniquely developed individual culture traits is, however, firmly quilted into general patterns of island cultures which are briefly discussed in the following pages.
THE PELEW (PALAU) ISLANDS
The Pelews are the most westerly of the Micronesian islands. They form a compact chain of about 100 islands extending north to south and lie 500 miles east of the Philippines, but less than 250 miles north of western New Guinea. They were discovered supposedly by Villalobos in 1543, although the claim of discovery is also made for Sir Francis Drake in 1579. Along with other traditional lore associated with their early history is the statement that these islands received their original name "Palau," which is not a Micronesian word, from the Spanish. The intimation is that the word was originally spelled "Palos" which means "mast" in Spanish and that the islands were so named because the coconut trees growing wild upon the islands appeared when seen from a distance to be a large number of masts.
Although the Pelews are usually considered geographically as an inde- pendent archipelago, they are sometimes associated with the Carolines of which they form the extreme western outlying group. A barrier reef with many passages extends the entire length of the archipelago. The larger islands of the group are volcanic high islands with a fertile soil and covered with dense vegetation. The larger islands are named Babelthuop, Korror, Uruktapi, Irakong or Eil Malk, Pililiu, and in the extreme south N'yaur.
The native Micronesian population of the Pelew Islands suffered a tremendous decline within historic times. A century and a half ago it was estimated at 40,000; in 1875, it was 10,000. In 1916 the native population had shrunk to a total of but 4,880, and now many of the smaller islands are uninhabited. The Pelew Islands in prehistoric times must have witnessed some of the early dispersals of Indonesian peoples which later spread out fan-shape throughout the whole of Micronesia and Polynesia. Today the Micronesian peoples of the Pelews, Yap, and the western Carolines are physically more like their East Indian neighbors
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 33
than are those of the eastern Carolines. The average stature of the male Pelew Islander is 64 inches.
In a general way the culture traits of the Pelew Islanders are similar to those of the greater Micronesian area. There are, however, many individual trait differences. One of these, "the order of the bone," is noteworthy. As a symbol of rank chiefs and other men of influence of the Pelews wear armlets made of the atlas bone of the dugong — the East Indian manatee or sea cow. This bone, being difficult to procure, is considered especially valuable. The making of earthenware utensils for their own use is characteristic of the Pelew and western Caroline Islanders. In the eastern Carolines no pottery is made. On the whole it appears that there has been considerable borrowing in the Pelew Islands of Indonesian and Melanesian traits from the neighboring East Indian and outlying Papuan islands.
THE MARIANA ISLANDS
This group consists of 15 volcanic islands fringed with coral reefs extending roughly from 13° to 21° N. latitude, a distance of approximately 400 miles from north to south, and forms a link in the island chain extending southward from Tokyo to the Caroline Islands which parallel the Equator at right angles to the Marianas. In the order of their location from south to north, the Marianas include the following islands: Guam, which is much the largest, Rota, Aguijan, Tinian, Saipan, Farallon de Medinilla, Anatajan, Sariguan, Farallon de Torres, Guguan, Alamagan, Pagan, Arigan, Asuncion, and Uracas. Although successively named by Magellan in 1521 the Islas de las Velas Latinas (Isles of the Lateen Sails), and later Ladrones (Isles of Thieves), the islands in 1668 were officially named the Marianas in honor of Maria Anna of Austria, widow of Philip IV of Spain.
The group is situated in a latitude where the northeast trade winds and the monsoons meet; rainfall is, therefore, almost continuous and hurricanes are frequent. Earthquakes are common but not particularly destructive owing to the flexible type of native architecture.
Although the population of Guam under American occupation from 1898 to 1941 greatly increased from a low of 2,440 in the second half of the eighteenth century, several of the islands in the Japanese-controlled, mandated portion of the archipelago, remain unpopulated. During the last two decades a large number of Japanese have settled in the Marianas, including the Island of Guam.
Throughout the Marianas, under Spanish rule before 1898, the native
34 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
clan leaders, who held the responsibility for distributing land within their clan groups, became the possessors of colonial governmental authority with few restraints. This island totalitarianism had perhaps as much to do with the suppression of the rights and ultimate extinction of much of the native population as had the forced concentration of the old Chamorro stock within the Island of Guam under Spanish colonial ad- ministrators. The younger people today know nothing about their clan and care little for the clan system.
From the time of its colonization by the Jesuits in 1668 to 1898, Spain administered the Marianas, including the island of Guam, making of the area practically a closed Spanish sea. Early in the Spanish-American War the American cruiser Charleston entered the harbor of Guam. The Spanish officials, who did not know that Spain was at war with the United States, apologized for not answering the "salute," since they had no ammunition. At the close of the war the island of Guam was retained by the United States. In 1899 all the other islands of the Marianas and the Carolines were sold by Spain to Germany for $4,500,000. After acquiring the remainder of the Marianas from Spain, Germany established the seat of government on the island of Saipan, 120 miles north of Guam.
Shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Japan took pos- session of the Caroline and Mariana Islands with the exception of the American-owned island of Guam. The League of Nations recognized this seizure and in 1920 mandated these islands to Japan. At the out- break of World War II, in December 1941, Japan extended these seizures to the island of Guam, attacking and imprisoning the American marines, naval detachments, and labor forces stationed there. The significance of the Japanese pattern of politico-economic expansion is now clearly recognized.
The chief island of the Marianas proper, Saipan, under Japanese man- date, was closed to foreigners. The South Sea Bureau in Tokyo (Nanyo) had made it all but impossible for Americans to visit any of the Japanese mandated islands. Although Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, she did not relinquish the mandate. There is no record of any demand ever having been made by the League that nations withdrawing from the League surrender to it their assigned responsibilities, including mandated islands. The Japanese have developed Saipan into a sugar-producing island. The busy port of Garapan has primitive carts drawn by oxen cluttering up the streets alongside charcoal-burning automobiles.
During the 43 years of American occupation of Guam from 1898 to 1941 the mixed native Chamorro and old immigrant Filipino population
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 35
increased from 9,000 in 1900 to 22,000 in 1941, with a school attendance of 4,000 pupils. American standards of living took root, and a pleasing form of native Chamorro-Filipino-American civilization came into being, with Americanisms in the ascendancy. A money economy replaced the copra-barter economy; working for wages supplanted peonage.
Expert craftsmen were trained to work in the American naval establish- ments. These functioned along with traditional native farming and fishing industries. Hard-surfaced roads were built of locally quarried casajo. Throughout the years of American occupancy, Guam was held by the United States Navy as a closed port to foreign shipping and immigration, and plantations dependent on contract labor therefore did not develop. Guam, one of the most beautiful of all the islands of the western Pacific, became one of the cleanest. Without the fevered stimulus of foreign contract labor, considerable copra was nevertheless exported by the native Filipino-Chamorro people. The loyalty of the Chamorro to all that is American and that is "states-side" (pidgin English) resulted in a number of petitions to Congress requesting that the people of Guam be given the rights of American citizenship. The Chamorros, unlike the Filipinos, did not ask for independence. ,
It is to be regretted now that all 17 of the Marianas as well as the Carolines were not taken by the United States in 1898. The change from coal to oil burning made it less necessary to develop Guam as a coaling station than had originally been conjectured by Navy engineers. The extensive development of Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands, and of Olongapo and Cavite, in the Philippine Islands, with regard to repair and drydock facilities further tended to lessen the supposed importance of Guam's harbor at Apra. The Washington Disarmament Conference in 1922, as a concession to Japan, is responsible for the removal of heavy armament which had been painstakingly placed at strategic points in 1917. By the year 1932 all American armament laboriously transported over mountain and through jungle had been removed.
It may be readily understood that once embarked on their enterprise of conquest after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese lost no time in overrunning defenseless Guam which they had long viewed with avarice from the Mariana island of Rota, 49 miles to the northeast. Ritidian Point, the northern tip of Guam, is visible in clear weather from Rota.
A large number or Tagalogs imported by Spain from the Philippines have intermarried with native Chamorros. Chamorro mestizos (mixed breed) are lighter in skin color than the Chamorros of unmixed blood. The women still dress in the long skirts and gauze balloon-sleeved camisa of the Tagalog woman of the nineteenth century.
36 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
In Saipan, as in Tinian, another of the Marianas, the remains of former stone houses of the Chamorro people contrast architecturally with the remaining old Spanish mission structures, but most of all with the long rows of flimsily constructed houses occupied by Japanese prostitutes, geishas, and laborers, together with their shops and Shinto temples.
The sacred houses once present in all the islands and the native Chamorro priesthood with its secret society, the urltoy, have disappeared. Native religious beliefs have in larger part become syncretized with those of the historic religions brought to the islands from the Philippines and from Japan.
THE CAROLINE ISLANDS
The Caroline Islands lie east of the Pelew group from 2° to 12° N. latitude. They extend eastward 1,800 miles, from Yap (Ouap) to Kusaie (Ualan), which is nearest the Marshall group. The name comes from that given by the Spanish Admiral Lezcano to a large island in the group not now identified. The earliest account is by a Jesuit missionary, Juan Antonio Cantova, who visited portions of the group in 1721 and was killed at Mogmog 10 years later. The islands cover approximately 877 square miles distributed over nearly 50 groups, most of them atolls. In 1885 the German gunboat litis took Yap, which Spain at once claimed, and her claim was sustained by the Pope, acting as arbitrator. After the Spanish- American War and the loss of Guam and the Philippines, Spain sold the entire group to Germany. The Carolines were seized from the Germans by the Japanese during World War I, and in 1920 mandated to them by the League of Nations. German missionaries had supplanted the Spanish mission fathers and were in turn, after 1914, replaced by Japanese missionaries of Shinto, Buddhist, even Christian religions. Con- sequently, while the children greet one in the morning with "Ohayo," the middle-aged say "Guten Morgen," and the aged courteously extend a greeting in the familiar Spanish "Buenos dias."
While the Marianas have a north-south trend, the Carolines have an east-west axis. Some of the many islands of the Caroline group are of volcanic origin and belong with the oceanic high islands. Here grow breadfruit and huge mango trees, the papaya and the introduced orange. The scent of the introduced flowering jasmine mingles with that of fermenting copra. Seasonal differences are not great, although the northeast trade winds blow for 6 months followed for 6 months by the southwest monsoon. This seasonal change is lacking in the eastern Carolines.
Plate 10
Upper: "Flying foxes," a species of destructive fruit bat. The meat of this small, smelly mammal is eaten by Micronesians and Melanesians, who also use its fur for decorative purposes.
Lower: The breadfruit tree. Its globular, melon-shaped fruit, gathered just before it ripens, provides a starch food comparable to. boiled potatoes. The South Sea Islander prefers to eat it as a pudding with the meat of the coconut. It is preserved by slicing and drying. Its fibrous inner bark provides a form of tapa cloth.
& *:y
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Plate 12
Upper: Native footbridge of three lashed logs near Buna, northeastern coast of New Guinea. The Melanesian ammunition carriers are dressed in modern shorts. Photograph by Press Associa- tion, Inc.
Lower: Dugout outrigger canoe of St. Matthias, northernmost island of the Bismarck Archipelago.
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Plate 13
Upper: Dugout canoe with built-up plank prow and stern, Malaita Island. The outrigger is not characteristic of the watercraft of the central and southern Solomon Islands. Note the decorative inlay in white on the prow.
Lower: War canoe of the island of New Georgia, central Solomons. The elaborate decorative inlay on elevated prow is in mother-of-pearl shells.
Photographs by Merl La Voy.
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MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 37
Ponape is a high island, the largest in the Japanese mandated area, covering about 130 square miles. The lagoon surrounding it, in turn rimmed by a reef, provides a ship basin. Harbor landings are cut into the island of Ponape itself, the most important of which, Jokaj, is a forti- fied islet 876 feet high in the lagoon. The Spaniards had made Ponape their capital in Micronesia. Since it has long been a crossroad of the western Pacific, the native population is through intermarriage a blend of Micronesians with Filipino, Polynesian, Melanesian, and Japanese.
In the Carolines, ancient stone platforms and images are found on Ponape and Kusaie. Quite aside from this resemblance to certain stone structures in the large Polynesian islands farther east, there are cultural and physical traces of culture migrations and racial admixtures with peoples from the Melanesian islands to the south, as well as from the islands of Malaysia, principally the Philippines. The physical appearance of the native population of the western Carolines reveals this admixture and indicates a degree of relationship with the Indonesian-Filipino. The average stature of the male Caroline Islander is 64.5 inches.
The Japanese base at Truk, in the eastern Carolines, includes a large number of coral islets surrounding a lagoon and belted by a white reef. The floor of the lagoon is covered with algae and coral, sea fan, red sea cucumbers, bright blue sea moss and oarweed, starfish and fish of many highly colored varieties. Sponges, variously hued geranium-scarlet, marigold-yellow, and green, decorate the bottom of the shallow water of the lagoon. In places, the bottom of the lagoon drops away to unknown depths, providing adequate space for shipping and fleet anchorage.
Shark fishing by the natives on the island of Truk is peculiar in that no bait is used. Fishing is carried on over the reef on the ocean side where the bottom descends rapidly, and where sharks lay in wait for food that may come their way. Fishermen carry a rattle with which they strike the sides of the boat to attract the shark. When the killer is at- tracted near enough to the boat, it is harpooned. Bonito are lured in the same manner.
At the western end of the Carolines, midway between the Pelews and the Marianas, about 500 miles southwest of Guam, lies the island of Yap, the island of stone money. Of all the strange currencies used for the purpose of gaining prestige and in barter, the calcite disks brought to the island of Yap from the 300-mile distant Pelews are perhaps the most unique. Part of the value, of course, lies in the difficulty of transporting these heavy stone disks, ranging from 6 inches to 12 feet in diameter, in frail outrigger canoes all the way from the Pelews. Calcite is not found
38 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
on Yap. If it were, then of course the value of this strange currency would no doubt soon disappear.
Yap actually consists of three islands plus a number of islets all located as parts of an encircling band around a central lagoon 19 miles in diameter. A peculiar form of communal slavery exists in Yap, the slaves being the common property of the free who, under the old tribal organization, rule the community through headmen or chiefs. Yap is really the western- most extension of the Caroline Island archipelago.
During the period of the Japanese mandate, from 1920 to 1938, there has been a remarkable increase of 50 percent in the native population of the eastern Carolines, the greatest increase being on Ponape, contrasting with a decrease of 30 percent in the western Carolines, with the highest rate of decrease on the island of Yap.
THE MARSHALL ISLANDS
The Marshall Islands include two chains of picturesque coral atolls, the Ralik and the Ratak, which extend from northwest to southeast between 4° and 15° N. latitude. The Marshalls lie east of the Carolines, midway between Hawaii and New Guinea. The eastern chain, the Ratak, has 16 atolls; the western, the Ralik, 18. The atoll of Jaluit, which includes 50 islets, is the trade center for the archipelago, and lies in the latter chain. Its native Micronesian population exceeds 1,000. A native village, Jabor, lies at the north and widest end of the island. Owing to the number of trading vessels stopping at this place, the natives have become sophisticated and have lost much of their own culture. One small series of physical measurements of natives of Jaluit is known. These measurements give an average stature for males of 65 inches and for females, 58.3 inches. In their slightly greater stature, lighter skin color, straight to wavy hair, and narrower nose, the Marshall Islanders, like other Micronesians, differ physically from the shorter-statured, darker- skinned, and frizzly-haired Melanesians.
The Spanish discoverer of the Marshall group, de Saavedra, in the early sixteenth century, named them Los Pintados after observing the remarkable tattooed bodies of their native inhabitants. The entire archi- pelago was discovered piecemeal, Jaluit, for example, not being known to Europeans until 1809, when it was discovered by the English. The islands derive their name from the British Captain Marshall, who explored them in 1788.
Wotje, one of the most important atolls of the Ratak chain, con-
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 39
sists of 65 islets surrounding an oval-shaped lagoon. The Marshalls, of all the atoll archipelagoes in Micronesia, are the nearest to the Hawaiian Islands.
THE GILBERT ISLANDS
The Gilberts in their eastern position in the Micronesian chain of gemlike coral islands consist of 16 coral atolls, the total area of which is only 166 square miles. These islands, never more than 20 feet above sea level and never more than a few miles across, resemble long ribbons of coral rock from 10 to 50 miles long. They have had no part in American interests in the Pacific since the whaling fleet became a thing of the past. In 1841 two ships of the United States Exploring Expedition under Lieutenant, later Captain, Charles Wilkes of the United States Navy, stopped there. Wilkes made a careful survey of the islands, a survey on which British admiralty charts are based.
The soil of the coral islands is scant and sandy, although it supports a dense mat of coconut and pandanus trees. The root crops so characteristic of the food economy of the larger volcanic islands of the eastern Carolines do not thrive here, although an inferior taro is cultivated. As in other small consolidated coral islands, the scenery includes no mountains or streams, but this lack is more than counterbalanced by the artistic and pleasing coloring of the water in the lagoons and among the reefs. Light and shade play in the latticed thatch of the coconut palms which overhang and crowd the sandy beach. The deep waters off the reef in the light of the tropical sun are a deep cobalt blue. Over the shallow reefs the water becomes a rich purple, and various shades of emerald reflect from the shallow waters of the lagoon. Twenty-eight thousand natives crowd these coral atolls, which constitute one of the few island groups in the western Pacific where native depopulation is not a problem. The native popula- tion has increased to such an extent that during the years just before the outbreak of World War II about 2,000 Gilbertese were transported to the Phoenix Islands, a similar group of islands situated 300 miles to the east. All the land is owned and occupied by native Micronesians. There are, consequently, no large coconut plantations such as have been developed in the larger sparsely populated Melanesian islands. The administrative capital is on Ocean Island, which, like Nauru Island, has extensive phosphate deposits.
Nauru, 1,000 miles south of the great Japanese naval base at Truk in the Carolines, serves as an outer bastion of Truk's defenses, but far more important, it produces about one-twelfth of the world's output of phos- phates and thus is of tremendous importance to Japan not only for
40 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
fertilizer but for ammunition. Despite its small size, Nauru has a native population of 1,680.
The important product of the 16 islands of the Gilberts is copra, the dried meat of the coconut which enters commerce and ultimately is utilized in the manufacture of soap, food for animals, oleomargarine, and candles.
The Gilberts have been a British protectorate since 1892. In 1900 Ocean Island was added to the protectorate which was annexed as a Crown colony in 1915. A Resident Commissioner was responsible to the British High Commissioner for the western Pacific, for which the seat of government was at Suva, Fiji.
The skin color of the Gilbertese is a light brown, contrasting with the several shades of brown to black of the Melanesians and the light copper color of the Polynesians. The male Gilbert Islander has an average stature of 66.4 inches, considerably taller than the average Melanesian, and is leaner than the neighboring Ellice Islander who is inclined to corpulence. The Gilbertese, like all Micronesians, are traditionally careful of the body. A peculiar custom of bleaching the skin is practiced by the women and girls, who shut themselves up in screened houses out of the sunlight to improve their complexions. The body is massaged with coconut oil and covered over with juice pressed from the meat of the coconut. The resultant bleach is much admired. The native dress of the women, a grass skirt extending from the waist to the knee, has been for the most part replaced by the "Mother Hubbard," which is made of imported cotton print cloth. Older men still dress in finely textured bark matting which is wound about the waist and fastened with a girdle of plaited human hair. The younger men wear a loincloth or kilt of cotton print.
The houses of the Gilbertese are simple affairs, consisting essentially of a thatched roof resting on corner posts about 6 feet above the ground. An elevated floor covered with midribs of coconut leaves provides an air space of a few feet under the house, and mat screens of coconut leaves are let down as desired to form walls. The leaf of the pandanus provides material for roof thatch, while rafters and support posts are obtained from the same plant. Fiber for lashing the various parts together is obtained from the coconut palm. Houses are lined in a row along the beach, forming the small villages in which the Gilbertese dwell. In the center of the village is the large clubhouse, more than 100 feet long and almost equally as wide. The ridge pole of the roof may be as high as 60 feet above the ground, and from it the roof slopes to within a few feet from the ground so that one must stoop to enter.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 4l
A taboo of sacredness surrounds the community house of a typical Gilbert Island village. It not only has its place as a community center for the planning of the ceremonial life of the village, but is itself a part of the sacred possessions of the village clan. Missionary effort has been successful in the Gilberts, and the majority of the native population considers itself Christian. The Gilbertese are also 70 percent literate.
THE ELLICE ISLANDS
The Ellice group consists of nine low atolls of wiich eight are in- habited. The group extends for a distance of about 360 miles from north- west to southeast and lies entirely south of the Equator. It was visited by Maurelle in 1781, and by Captain de Peyster in 1819.
The Ellice Islands have a native population of little more than 4,000. The natives are mostly Polynesian, but Micronesians from the Gilbert Islands colonized the Ellice group in part, particularly the island of Nui. The people are lighter in color and larger than the Gilbertese and use a Samoan-type language. The generally high opinion of the Ellice natives as to intelligence, friendliness, and physical strength has been corroborated by first-hand reports from the American landing at Funafuti. Normally, the Ellice Islanders make their living chiefly by fishing and farming and the export of copra. Under British administration all coconut plantations were limited to native ownership.
Native commercial enterprise and initiative is noted in the Ellice Islanders' successful operation of producers' cooperative trading societies. These collect and market the copra produced on the land of the members ; they also retail trade goods in exchange. These societies have succeeded in ousting the trader from nearly every island of the group. The social climber of the village has in the cooperative trading society a medium for attaining the role of leadership and usually succeeds in getting himself elected a member of the various committees dealing with its activities.
The usual type of diseases found elsewhere in Micronesia are for the most part prevalent in the Ellices. Lambert found 52 percent of the population to be infected with hookworm. This compares very unfavorably with the 9 percent in the nearby Gilberts. A second disease scourge is filariasis which produces elephantiasis and which is carried by certain species of mosquito. This disease has not been brought under control. The Ellice group is participating in the program of the Central Medical School by sending a quota of picked young men to Suva, the capital of the Fijis, for training as medical assistants and practitioners. There has also been developed a course of instruction for student nurses. Even a
42 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
maternity center has been established, and child welfare work has been undertaken.
The Ellice Islanders are 94 percent literate. They are said to hate illiteracy just as they hate a dirty house or a fractious child. The com- munity brings pressure to bear upon any individual who cannot read or write. Secondary school training has been provided for a limited number of boys in the Gilbert and Ellice groups. The British Colonial Ad- ministration hoped thereby to obtain a suitable number of native officials.
The American marines in April 1943 set up military "housekeeping" at Funafuti in the Ellice Islands, next door to the Japanese-held positions in the Gilbert group. The important Japanese base on Nauru Island, mentioned in the section on the Gilberts, is about 1,000 miles from Funafuti.
Funafuti atoll lies somewhat south of the center of the scattered Ellice group and is considered the best natural site for general military use. It comprises some 30 coral islets surrounding a lagoon that is more than 13 miles long and 10 miles wide at its broadest central expanse. The lagoon is deep enough for oceangoing vessels and offers good landing facilities for seaplanes. There are several safe ship entrances, although peace-time mariners were warned of hazardous shallows and coral patches within. The largest island in the Funafuti atoll, bearing the same name, is a slim, boomerang-shaped elbow of land nearly 7 miles long and one-third of a mile across at its widest part. Its prewar population was about 350 natives.
Like the rest of the Ellice group, Funafuti is low lying and thickly covered by coconut palms, many of which rise to 60 to 80 feet. Light reef -mud roads rim the islands. The most comfortable season of the year is from March to October when the northeasterly trade winds blow.
MELANESIA GEOGRAPHY
New Guinea and the islands of Melanesia are thought to have been at one time in close relation with continental land masses joined to the Asiatic mainland. The island arc of which New Guinea forms the major portion is linked through the 80-odd Louisiade islands off its southeastern coast with a submerged mountain ridge and the great island of New Caledonia, also with the outlying Loyalty Islands not far from its eastern coast line. As one proceeds eastward in Melanesia it is noted that island groups show fewer traces of previous continental land connection, or mountain folding. Finally the coral atolls are all that remain.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER
43
There is a general geological resemblance between New Caledonia and New Zealand. Old rock formations in New Caledonia consist of slate and schist, with basic volcanic, granitic, and serpentine intrusions. Within the slate are limestones containing fossil brachiopods, providing abundant evidence of submergence. Veins of nickel occur along with numerous other minerals. A barrier reef and lagoon encircle the entire island.
Another island arc with its connecting submarine mountain ridge paral- lels the New Guinea-New Caledonia arc on the north and includes great
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island archipelagoes extending from the Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, and New Britain on the northwest, through the Solomons, Santa Cruz, and the New Hebrides to the southeast. New Ireland is volcanic but also has ancient sedimentary rocks, and certain limestones appearing in New Ireland continue along the island chain of this arc all the way to the New Hebrides. New Britain and the Admiralty Islands are also volcanic but have much recent outlying coral structure.
In Melanesia, volcanic high islands occur in much greater number than the coral atolls or low islands. In fact, in the New Hebrides, the Solomons, and New Britain volcanoes are still active. Recent disastrous volcanic
44 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
eruptions occurred within this area on the island of New Britain in 1897 and in 1937, destroying most of the surrounding vegetation and covering the island capital, Rabaul, with a thick layer of ash and pumice, destroy- ing ships in the harbor of Blanche Bay, and necessitating the removal of the capital to Lae on Huon Gulf of the north cost of New Guinea.
Ontong Java, or Lord Howe Island, located well within the Melanesian area north of the Solomon Islands, is one of the most perfect coral atolls known, its enclosed lagoon and surrounding islands with the outlying barrier reef forming a perfect oval.
In the British protectorate of the South Solomons are numerous formerly volcanic islands situated irregularly and at some distance from the main group of the Solomons. These include the densely wooded Swallow and Santa Cruz Islands, the native flora and fauna of which are very similar to those of the nearby Solomon Islands. Other outlying islands, such as Rennell, Ticopia, and Amida are of particular interest to the ethnologist since they are inhabited by Polynesians and constitute the marginal fringe of the Melanesian area.
The flora of the fertile volcanic island valleys differs decidedly from the scanty vegetation of the coral islands which have been built up on isolated coral reefs or as atolls with enclosed lagoon. Besides the plants introduced by human immigrants, many other species have been brought in by migratory birds, ocean currents, and prevailing winds, sometimes from great distances. The pandanus, or screw pine, and the coconut palm are the most characteristic plants to be found on the low islands. Wind- borne spores of mosses and ferns, winged seeds of trees and other plants, and bird-carried fruit seeds, on the other hand, have found lodgment in the fertile valleys of the high volcanic islands. These methods of dispersal may explain why little difference exists in the volcanic islands between vegetation of the coastal plain and that of the mountainous interior. The regularly spaced rows of coconut trees covering coastal plains of em- battled New Guinea and Guadalcanal in the Solomons are commercial plantings for the production of copra. In the dense jungle the introduced elephant-eared taro, banana plants, the papaya, the palms of many species mingle with indigenous growth. The elevated hills, mountain slopes and valleys have a semitropical vegetation. To what extent pine forests and other plants of the Temperate Zone are present on the higher peaks above an altitude of 6,000 feet has not been recorded. The extreme heights of Papuan New Guinea with their perpetually ice- and snow-capped peaks are not found even in the more elevated portions of other large Melanesian islands.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 45
The fauna is much poorer in forms than is plant life in Melanesian and Micronesian islands. Even the pig, which is universal and runs wild, was introduced either by immigrating Melanesians or within historic times. Capt. James Cook in 1774 is supposed to have left a limited amount of breeding stock on several of the islands he visited. It is, however, more plausible to assume that the pigs introduced on oceanic islands within historic times were brought by the Spaniards, who explored the Solomons and colonized Santa Cruz in Melanesia and the Carolines in Micronesia in the sixteenth century, 200 years before the exploratory voyages of Captain Cook.
The indigenous land fauna is poor in mammals. Several species of rats and of bats, or "flying foxes," occur generally throughout the area. Species of kangaroo, cuscus, and other characteristic Australian mammals are found mostly in New Guinea. Cattle and horses were introduced within historic times on most of the larger islands but have increased only when, as in New Caledonia, they were permitted to run wild. The relatively open range available for grazing in New Caledonia has provided abundant food for both introduced deer and cattle.
New Guinea has more than 600 species of birds. Characteristic are MacGregor's bird of paradise, with its orange-colored wattles resembling ears, brilliantly colored parrots, crested white cockatoos, and numerous black and orange colored birds. Many species of birds in New Guinea are not found in Australia where vegetation is sparse and climatic condi- tions are different from those of the New Guinea rain forests. Fruit- eating pigeons, which are numerous, have presumably been responsible for the distribution of fruit-bearing plants on many of the islands. In the Solomons and New Hebrides, as well as in New Guinea, species of flightless birds are numerous, including the large and vicious cassowary which was formerly supposed by many Americans to have a special pre- dilection for eating missionaries. The range of the kagu, a flightless bird, is restricted to the island of New Caledonia.
The distribution of insect life throughout Melanesia is very uneven, the malaria-carrying anopheles mosquito, for example, occurring on all the islands except New Caledonia. Myriads of ants and large butterflies are characteristic. But little systematic study has been made of the insects of the area except in Fiji and the Solomons.
The vivid coloration of many species of fish characterizes the marine
fauna of the area. Native statements about certain species of fish being
poisonous when used as food during certain seasons have not been
thoroughly examined. As in Indonesia, the sea mammal — the dugong —
4
46 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
is common, particularly in northern Melanesia. A sea worm known as the balolo, which comes to the surface of the water in the Fijian area for 2 days each year and propagates itself by division, is a favorite food of the natives, who can through long observation predict accurately when it will appear. Reptiles including the turtle, also the tortoise, noted for its amber shell, are abundant, as are also species of nonpoisonous lizards. Snakes of several poisonous species and crocodiles frequent coastal waters of the larger islands.
Lobster fishing on the coral reefs of New Caledonia introduces a novel bait in the form of a dead squid which is attached to a pole and moved about in the depressions within the coral reefs. The lobsters become terrified at the sight of the squid and do not move. Divers wearing goggles and gloves for protection against the sharp coral spines descend and bag the lobsters at will.
In eastern Melanesia knowledge of irrigation was highly developed among native peoples. Irrigation terraces similar to those of northern Luzon in the Philippine Islands and water conduits of split bamboo stems, together with other features of extensive irrigation projects, were in use in New Caledonia when the Marist missionaries first arrived in the 1840's.
New Caledonia differs from the rest of Melanesia in that its climate is more semitropical than tropical. Furthermore, it is larger than the Pacific islands with which Americans have been familiar in the past. The climate from May to December is cool and generally dry — somewhat like Florida in winter.
The eastern or windward side of the island has more rain than its western slope. Here thrive great tree ferns which reach the height of forest trees in the United States. Two-thirds of New Caledonia's surface consists of crystalline-serpentine rock containing extensive mineral de- posits. The scanty soil in this mineralized portion of New Caledonia pro- duces only a scrub forest, but the valleys are fertile, and in them the natives cultivate food plants. Introduced plants such as the guava, acacia, lantana, aloes, and wild lemons grow here without cultivation, and overrun abandoned or uncultivated farm land.
The great central mountain range in New Caledonia bears the French name Chaine Centrale. Niaouli scrub land characterizes much of the mountainous approaches to the central range. The niaouli tree is a type of stunftd eucalyptus; from it the French produced a niaouli oil which is similar to oil of eucalyptus. The slim and tapering New Caledonian pine is called pin colonnaire by the colonial French and has long been used locally in landscaping. Much of the land formerly cultivated through-
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 47
out the interior of the colony is going to waste and reverting to extensive growths of niaoull and lantana scrub.
New Caledonia has come to be known as a cattle country. During World War I New Caledonia packing houses, which are entirely modern, supplied much of the meat furnished the Australian expeditionary forces. Paspalum grass covers much of the grazing land. A peculiar method of herding wild cattle which overrun the island is noted in the semiannual roundup, the travail au calicot. A fence of white cotton cloth is erected in the form of a V half a mile in length. The wild cattle are driven by cowboys into the open end of the V, into which tame cattle had previously been herded. Here they are kept several days without water or food. The wild cattle are afraid of the white cotton barrier and remain with the tame cattle until they are docile enough to be driven with them to the pastures in the fertile valleys.
Not only may imported plants become a pest, but also animal importa- tions. It is said that the wife of one of the early governors of New Caledonia brought to the island a pair of Indonesian deer from Sumatra and that from that comparatively recent beginning have developed the numerous herds of wild deer. An average of 150,000 deer skins are exported annually. Deer hunting is a popular sport throughout the island.
PATTERNS OF CULTURE
Physical types and language. — The Melanesians proper inhabit the islands of Fiji, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Banks, Santa Cruz, Solomon, New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty, those off the southeast coast of New Guinea, and part of the north and southeast coast itself. In Fiji, and to a lesser extent in New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands, they are mixed with Polynesians; in New Britain, New Ireland, the Admiralty group, and New Guinea, with Papuans.
The line of demarcation between Malaysian or Indonesian peoples and Melanesians is drawn between Sumba and the island of Timor in the East Indies, across Flores, and between Celebes and the Moluccas. In Timor, the Negroid and the Malaysian types meet. The Melanesians on that island are represented by both broad-headed and long-headed physical types.
The Arafuras are a mixed group found in Misool and on the island of Ceram, one of the more important of the Moluccas. They are very small, delicately molded as to physique, and less stocky than the Papuans of New Guinea. They resemble the Melanesian rather than the Papuan and have broader noses and coarser features than those of a pure Malay.
48 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
A large element of Papuan origin is found in the population of Melanesia. The Melanesian population is, therefore, not homogeneous but exhibits considerable variation. The heads are usually long, but here and there are found round-headed groups. Average stature is short as compared with that of the American (average measurements for males are cited under the various island group headings). The forehead is com- monly rounded, with brow ridges not usually prominent. The nose is generally broad and smaller than in the Papuan; it is sometimes straight. The hair is of the frizzly type and sometimes curly or wavy. The skin is sometimes very dark, shading to the color of saddle brown.
R. H. Codrington of the Melanesian Mission was one of the first linguists to point out identities in Polynesian, Melanesian, and Indonesian languages, a linguistic discovery later confirmed and expanded by other students. Australian and Papuan languages, which vary too widely in structure and vocabulary for group classification within the orbit of Oceanic stock languages, are thereby excluded. The linguistic relationship existing within Oceania may have great historical and cultural significance, since Papua and Australia are so closely allied geographically to Melanesia.
Pidgin English, the lingua franca used in interdistrict, interisland, and commercial contacts throughout Melanesia is essentially a collection of nouns, adjectives, and other words forming an English vocabulary ar- ranged to a certain extent according to Melanesian grammatical construc- tion. Melanesian dialects distinguish, for example, between dual and plural, "and also between inclusive and exclusive dual. Pidgin English is generally spoken throughout the whole of Melanesia, just as in another great area of the West Pacific, the Dutch East Indies, the Malay dialect has come to be the universally accepted medium of commercial and social intercourse. Pidgin English is characterized by the use of words used in common English speech but spelled as an illiterate individual of any country would tend to enunciate and unite its various sounds. Phrases that illustrate this principle are:
bello, assembling of laborers at sunrise olotime, all the time olosame, all the same house-cook, cookhouse house-washwash, washhouse
The Melanesian proudly asserts that "Talk belong me, he straight; all other kind talk, he cranky."
The following lines in pidgin English are from a songbook published by a Roman Catholic mission in New Guinea and would be immediately understood throughout the controlled area of Melanesia:
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 49
Pies bilong mi i namberwan,
(Place belong me he number one,)
Mi laikim im tasol.
(Me like him that's all.)
Mi tink long papa, mama tu,
(Me think along father, mother too,)
Mi krai long haus blong ol.
(Me cry along house belong all.)
Mi wok long pies i longwe tru,
(Me work along place he long way true,)
Mi stap no gud tasol.
(Me stop no good that's all.)
Pies bilong mi i namberwan,
(Place belong me he number one,)
Me laikim im tasol.
(Me like him that's all.)
Ol wantok, brader, susa tu,
(All one talk (i.e. my fellow tribesmen), brothers, sisters too,)
Long taim i wetim mi.
(Long time they wait for me.)
Ol salim planti tok i kam,
(All send plenty talk he come,)
Ol tink mi lus long si.
(All think me lost along sea.)
Nau mi kirap, mi go long pies,
(Now me get up, me go along place,)
Mi no ken lusim mor.
(Me no can lose him more.)
Pies bilong me i namberwan.
(Place belong me he number one,)
Mi laikim im tasol.
(Me like him that's all.)
Calendar. — Events in the Melanesian calendar are noted as taking place with relation to the beginning or the end of the trade-wind season. If the monsoon season is particularly rainy, as in the Trobriand Islands, east of New Guinea, festivals, voyages, and important undertakings are arranged on a monsoon seasonal basis. The state of the staple crop is, generally speaking, the basis of calendar calculations. Weeding, planting, harvesting periods are references for calendar intervals.
The lunar calendar, except in calculating the time of the probable appearance of the palolo worm, has little significance except to garden magicians. The elders of the village who plan feasts, mortuary cere- monies, and the numerous events of clan life do calculate by a lunar system and have names for the 13 lunar months of the solar year. To the average native, ripening of the tubers or of the nuts, and the changing of the wind direction heralding the major trade-wind or monsoon seasons
50 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
are more important. A peculiar dating of months by the position of the constellation Pleiades in relation to the directional location of certain neighboring villages at sunset is known to some of the islanders.
Throughout equatorial Melanesia the year is divided seasonally into the monsoon season, which lasts from November to April or May, and the season of the southeast trade winds. Large land masses are affected climatically by these changes, but the smaller islands show less appreciable differences.
Subsistence. — Taro and bananas, two staple foods, are represented by many distinct species. Taro tubers require about 5 months to reach maturity. Banana suckers are planted with taro shoots but require a year to produce a bunch ripe enough for plucking. Cut-up taro and unripe bananas are cooked together as a vegetable stew. Tobacco, yams, sugar- cane, and herbs are also sporadically cultivated in native gardens.
Forest products, sometimes cultivated, are utilized as foods. The canarium almonds are eaten in otherwise tasteless puddings and are ex- ported to the New Guinea inland tribes. In season, breadfruit where it can be grown replaces taro as the staple for most meals. Coconuts not only supply drink but at times also the midday meal. Starch of the sago palm is utilized on the occasion of feastings. The pawpaw, or Malay apple, and other fruits and berries are collected and consumed as food. Nuts including the Tahitian chestnut and the areca palm nut for the betel mixture are collected.
The storehouse, which is characteristic of the New Guinea village where yams are cultivated, is absent in Melanesia. Taro and bananas spoil very quickly, although taro roots will keep if left in the ground for a few months after ripening.
The marine annelid, the palolo worm, which rises to the surface of the sea on the seventh to ninth day after the full moon in November for spawning, is considered a great delicacy. Melanesians are primarily gardeners but, in a nearly equal degree, fishermen. In the larger islands there is usually a sharp distinction between the coast people, who are mostly fishermen, and the inlanders, who cultivate garden crops; the latter are always by far the more primitive. The gardens, in which both sexes work, are very well tended; on some of the islands irrigation is practiced, and on New Caledonia irrigation canals are constructed. Fish are almost everywhere captured by hooks, spears, and traps. In Santa Cruz, the Solomon and Admiralty Islands, and New Guinea the bait is sometimes suspended from a kite, so that it trips along the surface of the water. Except in New Caledonia, there is not much game, and hunting is therefore not an important pursuit.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 51
Cooking is performed by means of heated stones, or locally in pots or shells, fire being produced by friction, usually by rubbing a stick along a groove in another or hearth stick. A mild intoxicant, kava, is prepared from Piper methysticum in Fiji, New Hebrides, and the Banks Islands, where the practice has been introduced from Polynesian sources. Betel chewing, introduced from Indonesia, is found as far east as Santa Cruz and Ticopia.
Shelter. — Habitations vary greatly in pattern and in size from the rude huts of the inland Admiralty Islanders to the large communal dwellings of New Britain. A circular ground plan is found in New Caledonia and locally in the Admiralties, Santa Cruz, and New Ireland, and was the usual pattern originally in the Banks Islands. Elsewhere buildings are rectangular. Pile houses are common on the coast of the Admiralties (Manus), in the Solomons (Florida Island), New Britain and New Ire- land, and Melanesian New Guinea, where villages extend some distance out into the sea.
Clothing and bodily adornment. — Clothing is very scanty. Materials for costume and decorative apparel are taken from the vegetable kingdom, bark-cloth girdles and trade-cloth loin covering for the men and fringed skirts for the women being the most common patterns. Head deformation is still occasionally practiced, notably in New Britain, but vestigially throughout Melanesia. The piercing and distention of the ear lobes is common. Tattooing is found practically everywhere in eastern Melanesia; cicatrization, frequently by burning, is among the forms of bodily decora- tion rapidly disappearing in Fiji, New Caledonia, the Solomons, New Ireland, and New Britain. Throughout the area from New Guinea to the Solomons, the septum of the nose is pierced, and a pin worn in the hole; in some cases the wall of the nostril is pierced (Ontong Java), or a small hole made in the tip of the nose to receive the point of an orna- mental pin (Solomon Islands) . The hair is frizzed out in a mop in Fiji, New Caledonia, New Britain, and in Melanesian New Guinea; elsewhere it is generally kept short; in some islands it is bleached with lime; combs are inserted as ornaments, those of the Solomons and the Admiralty Islands being the most decorative. Necklaces of string and shell, shell beads, teeth, and seeds; armlets of shell or trade beads; pendants of shell, turtle shell, and boar's tusks are worn in great variety. Especially characteristic are the cachalot ivory pendants and shell and ivory breast- plates of the Fijians, the serpentine beads of New Caledonia, the large discoidal shell ornaments of the Solomon Islanders, the turtle-shell fret- work of the Solomons, New Ireland, Admiralty, and New Guinea, and the boar's tusks of New Britain and the Admiralty Islands.
52 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
Arts and crafts. — Canoes are found everywhere except in the Torres (Banks) Islands, the commonest craft being the dugout with single outrigger. In part of the Solomon Islands a well-made built-up plank canoe without an outrigger but with high prow and sternposts, often orna- mented with shell inlay, is characteristic. Large double canoes are built in Fiji, New Caledonia, and Melanesian New Guinea; these are furnished with sails and are capable of performing considerable voyages during which pottery is traded along the coast of New Guinea for sago. Canoes, drums, arrows, and clubs are also bartered.
Various forms of "currency" are in use in different islands, but strings of small shell disks are most characteristic; other forms are whale's teeth (Fiji), and "flying fox" teeth (Solomon Islands). A peculiar system of ceremonial exchange of shell ornaments, known as the kula, occurs in a certain group of islands in the archipelago off the eastern end of New Guinea. Two distinct types of ornament are passed around the group from island to island in opposite directions, and are the subject of elaborately organized maritime expeditions (lakatoi).
Quite aside from traders' goods, the chief tool is the adz or ax, with polished blade of stone or even of shell, as in the New Hebrides, Banks Islands, Santa Cruz, Admiralty Islands, and in Melanesian New Guinea. Of the stone blades, the best are the serpentine ceremonial axes of New Caledonia.
The best pottery was formerly made in Fiji; native Fijian pots exhibit great variety of shape and are covered with vegetable varnish; in New Guinea the Motu, a Melanesian tribe living near Port Moresby, are the best potters. Pottery is also made in New Caledonia, one of the New Hebrides (Espiritu Santo), the Solomons (Bougainville, Treasury), and the Admiralty Islands. Bark cloth was formerly manufactured in most islands, but nowhere attained the excellence of Polynesian tapa. Looms are found in Santa Cruz, and were formerly used by the Banks Islanders, but are now obsolete in the latter group. Food vessels are largely carved from wood, the best known being the large kava bowls of Fiji, the inlaid food bowls of the Solomons, often in bird forms, and the elaborately carved bowls of the Admiralty Islands. Containers and utensils are also constructed from gourds, bamboo joints, and coconuts.
The decorative art of the Melanesians is of a fairly high order, es- pecially in the Solomon Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, and New Guinea. Human, bird, and fish forms appear more or less conventionalized in al-
Plate 14 Village scene in Guadalcanal, British Solomon Islands. Photograph by Merl La Voy.
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Photographs by Merl La Voy.
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MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 53
most every pattern. In the eastern Solomons bird and fish patterns pre- dominate, but in the western Solomons the art resembles rather that of the New Britain Archipelago. The art of the New Hebrides, Banks Islands, and Santa Cruz is mainly geometric.
Prevalent geometrical designs are almost always traceable to some anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, or phyllomorphic motive more or less conventionalized. Thus in the bark belts, the human face is applied as a decorative pattern. Eye forms are occasionally plainly recognizable. On combs and wooden clubs are etched a curved beak and eye of the frigate bird. This design is conventionally modified into meandering, inter- locking spirals with the eye placed at each point of intersection. The beak alone is represented occasionally in Melanesian art as scrolled arabesques.
Wood carving is usually characteristic of peoples of the Stone Age, and this is notably true of the Melanesian islanders. Their carvings of representations of the alligator and the frigate bird are superb. The Polynesian art complex employs similar designs but uses the medium of bark cloth instead of wood. Tattooing is characteristic of both Melanesian and Polynesian areas.
Social customs, games, and music. — Advancement in social status in Melanesia involves only the adult male and consists chiefly in receiving the admiration and respect of the society in which he lives. The attitudes, demeanor, and behavior of the advancing aspirant to social prestige simu- lates what is considered by the group as the ideal pattern of manhood. Criteria by which he is judged are numerous. In unacculturated groups, the badge of homicide is foremost. The capture of trophy heads and skill in fighting come next. Also of great importance are accomplishments in the hunt and in the arts such as carving of the sacred wooden images (malagan), as well as ability in playing on flutes and gongs and in dancing and singing. Possessing more than one wife is obligatory to the social climber. He must, furthermore, stand up for his rights whenever threatened— he must give the impression of great strength.
The status of the headman is conditioned by the reputation of the individual or by his rank in the men's clubhouse. Hereditary patrilineal chief ship also occurs in New Caledonia and in Fiji. The laws relating to property, especially land, are complicated. In New Caledonia a dying man will frequently distribute his property, while in the Admiralty Islands the property of a deceased headman is distributed by his son amongst the whole tribe. The only islands where chiefs of any power are found are Fiji and New Caledonia. The high position of the Fiji chief is due to the religious sanctity which surrounds him as the direct descendant
54 WAR. BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
of the tribal ancestor. The conquest of the greater part of Fiji by the Mbau raised its leader to a position occupied by no chief elsewhere in Melanesia. In the New Hebrides, Banks Islands, Santa Cruz, and Solomon Islands, a chief usually owes his position to social climbing, or to the fact that he has inherited the cult of some powerful spirit. In New Britain, the duties of village headmen lie mainly in the administration of the village funds. Village headmen also appear in the Admiralties, in New Guinea, and in the Trobriand Islands.
Secret societies with graded membership as in Masonry are found in the Torres and Banks Islands, in the northern New Hebrides. Indications of the former existence of such societies are found in New Caledonia, in the interior of Fiji, and again in the Bismarck Archipelago. With the exception of Fiji, the societies are associated with matrilineal descent and are most developed where dual organization is found. The institution known as the men's house is a prominent feature of secret societies. The use of masks is also important. On the one island of Mota there are 77 societies with various subdivisions. Each society is the owner of marks which are used to protect property.
The Qat of the New Hebrides, the Tamate of the Banks Islands, the Matamgala of Florida, the Dukduk of New Britain, the Nanga of Fiji are examples of the secret societies which are characteristic features of Melanesia and are accessible to men only. The candidates during initiation have to submit to rough treatment. The members of the societies are believed to be in close association with ghosts and spirits of the dead. They exhibit themselves in masks and elaborate dresses, in which disguise they are believed by the uninitiated to be supernatural beings. Mysterious noises which herald their approach are produced by the bull-roarer and other appliances. Such organizations are powerful agents for the main- tenance of social order, and they inflict punishment for breaches of customary law. Women are rigorously excluded, except in the case of the Nanga of Fiji, which is said to have been introduced from Tonga. The clubs are a means of attaining social rank. They are divided into different grades, the members of which eat together at their particular fireplace in the clubhouse. Promotion from one grade to another is chiefly a matter of payment, and few reach the highest. Those who do so become per- sonages of very great influence, since no candidate can obtain promotion without their permission.
The social system is complicated. Male descent is characteristic in Fiji (where traces of female descent also exist among the hill tribes) and portions of the Solomon Islands. Elsewhere in Melanesia, descent is
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 55
traced through the mother, particularly in the New Hebrides, Banks Islands, locally in the Solomon Islands, New Britain, Admiralty Islands, and the southeast end of New Guinea and its island satellites. In Fiji the natural wife for a man is his mother's brother's daughter; in New Caledonia the cousins on the mother's side are regarded as fitting consorts, but not those on the father's. In both these islands, and part of the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands, brothers and sisters after puberty must avoid one another.
There are many forms of children's games. Athletic amusements include running and wrestling (Fiji), football (New Hebrides), surf-riding with a board, hide-and-seek (Banks Islands), throwing and dodging spears (Solomon Islands). Toys such as tops (Solomons, New Guinea) and kites (New Hebrides, Banks Islands, and New Guinea) are also enjoyed. A game called lavo, with disks and a board, is played in Fiji. In the Banks Islands of the New Hebrides group, as in some of the western islands of Polynesia, a reed dart with a pointed head of heavy wood, the tiga, is thrown by hand, the object being to attain the greatest distance. The game of cat's-cradle or the making of figures with a string and the fingers of the hands is thoroughly enjoyed by Melanesian children and adults. Mimetic dancing is performed on ceremonial occasions often with the wearing of masks.
Musical instruments do not exhibit much variety. Wooden drums are used on all the Melanesian islands except Santa Cruz. Those of the New Hebrides are especially remarkable, both in size and from the fact that they are ornamented with a grotesque head carved at one end. The drums of the Admiralty and Solomon Islands, also those of northern New Guinea and New Britain, used for transmitting signals are very large. Flutes played either with mouth or nose are made in Fiji, New Caledonia, New Britain, New Ireland, and New Guinea. The conch-shell trumpet, generally with lateral orifice, is known in all the islands except New Caledonia, being used ceremonially and for sending signals. The bamboo jew's-harp is fashioned and played in the Solomon Islands, New Britain, Admiralty Islands and New Guinea. Crude stringed instruments and a form of musical bow have been reported from the same areas.
Warfare. — Native causes of conflicts within the Melanesian area be- tween groups normally friendly usually involve one or more individuals of one village or clan with an individual of another village or clan. Another more serious cause of conflict and warfare in Melanesian society is traditional enmity between clans or districts not normally friendly. In the smallest island a constant state of suspended warfare may exist, the
56 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
two opposing districts being separated by a sort of "no man's land" which in days gone by was the traditional battleground. Causes of conflicts of the first type for which individuals are primarily responsible are seemingly for the most part trivial, such as might in civilized society be removed with the payment of a light fine or brief imprisonment. Also included in this group are conflicts arising out of violation of native practices and taboos, as for example elopement with a girl without the prior payment to relatives by the bridegroom of the proper bride price. Also included are thefts from another's garden or insults publicly expressed on the occasion of ceremonial gatherings. The relatives and clansmen, however, consider the affront as offered not to the individual but to the group. The injured man feels that the injury was directed against all clan members. The clansmen of the offender are bound by ties of kinship to protect him from retribution. The honor of the two parties must be vindicated in a general melee. Quarreling of this character may result from a man's receiving an inadequate food portion at an important feast, leading him to denounce the giver of the feast in a loud and querulous voice.
Conflicts of the second type, usually much more serious and prolonged, are due to no individual action at all but to natural causes which in civilized nations might be termed "an act of God." A prolonged drought is attributed to sorcery emanating from a neighboring village or clan. This leads to reprisals by countermagic or by a hostile act. Greed for neighboring lands and the grasping of territory in the possession of others, a common cause of civilized warfare, plays an extremely minor role in Melanesia. The Old Testament injunction, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," characterizes war aims in Melanesian society, the community effort being directed not toward obtaining compensation, but toward exacting reprisals.
In Melanesia the completion of any important work demanded a human sacrifice whose head was ceremonially treated and disposed of usually in some public place to appease the spirits who might otherwise cause the undertaking to miscarry. The launching of a war canoe, the building of a canoe house, the acquiring of skulls for special ritual purposes, the erection of a new chief's hall, the death of an important headman, and other similar reasons were given, and in certain areas continue to be given, for the taking of a human head. The germs of warfare are obvious in such practices.
Certain rules of warfare were recognized by both parties to the resulting conflict. The place where the conflict was to take place was a "no man's
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 57
land" reserved for that particular purpose. The day and place of conflict were settled beforehand by both sides. The battle could be halted by common consent or continued if convenient to both parties. Hostilities took on an elaborate ceremonial nature and the observance of the etiquette of war was a religious obligation. The rules for peacemaking were as ceremonial and elaborate as those controlling hostilities. Cere- monies and semisacred rules regarding the etiquette of war and peace varied throughout the great expanse of the Melanesian island world. Before the Japanese invasion the controlled area was rapidly being extended and native warfare suppressed.
A peculiarity of Melanesian warfare is that in both types of con- flict— that of the individual supported by his kinsmen, or that of the entire group — causes of ill will had to be removed with the cessation of hostilities. This was achieved by each party's compensating the other for injuries received in the fighting, the party suffering most receiving the greater compensation. Payments were made in compensation for men killed in fighting and for the wounded, also for pigs that had been killed and for insults openly expressed regarding particular individuals. Traditional peacemaking procedures varied from island to island, almost from district to district. The typical weapons of Melanesia are the club and spear, and each island possesses its own distinctive patterns. Clubs are massive, though a smaller knobbed type is used as a missile. The wooden clubs of the Solomons are often partly overlaid with plaited basketry work, while short maces with heads of pyrites were seen there by Mendana. Those of New Britain have stone heads. The ceremonial mace-club of the New Caledonian clan chief is of disk-shaped polished serpentine. It was socketed into live wood which lent additional strength to the haft.
Of the spears, those of the Solomon Islands and New Hebrides, which are often furnished with bone barbs, are the most elaborate. Those of New Caledonia are usually pointed with a sting-ray spine, while those of the Admiralties commonly have an obsidian head. In New Caledonia spears were hurled by means of short cords; in northern New Guinea bamboo spear throwers are employed. Slings are used in most of the islands.
The Melanesian bow is plain, although the arrows vary greatly in pattern and in the number and material of points and barbs. Arrows are unfeathered except in the New Hebrides and Aru Islands. In the New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, and New Guinea, guards are worn to protect the left arm against the bow string. The bow is also used as a hunting
58 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
or fishing weapon. Many excellent hardwood bows were collected in 1840 by the United States Exploring Expedition in Fiji, the New Hebrides and Banks Islands, Santa Cruz, and the Solomons.
Daggers are fashioned of obsidian in the Admiralty Islands, but of cassowary bone in New Guinea. As parrying weapons clubs are used in the New Hebrides, and shields sporadically in the Solomon Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago, and New Guinea. Blowguns have been reported from the South Cape in New Britain.
Head hunting was carried on by raiding parties against a distant and preferably an unprotected village. Dangers of retaliation were decreased if the attacked group was unacquainted with the attackers. The familiar pattern of head hunters the primitive world over is seen in the surrounding of a dwelling, each hunter crouching with spear poised, and in the staging of the attack just at dawn. As the occupants rushed out they were speared. All were killed, if possible. No one was spared because of age or sex. Only the heads of male victims were carried back with the raiding party. Each head was carried by the ear. The community welcomed the returning warriors with a celebration of victory. Treatment of heads varied. After the flesh disintegrated, the head was sun-dried and painted. Head hunting was most developed in the western Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Britain and New Ireland, but was completely absent from southern Melanesia. In the Solomons, natives of the islands southeast of Ysabel did not practice head hunting.
It was customary among the Tanga of New Britain to collect the bodies of the slain enemy and carry them to the chief settlement of the victorious clan. Corpses were carried with the face of the dead man toward the ground, while his arms and legs were secured behind his back at the wrists and ankles. A pole was then pushed through the tethered arms and legs and the body was thus carried, belly down, to the feasting ground. Each man had a right to the body of the warrior whom he had slain. As the body was being carved up preparatory to being placed in the oven a special signal was made on the large wooden drum. This announced to the enemy that a cannibal feast was being made of their dead.
Although there is much to suggest that cannibalism was at one time very common in Melanesia, there is however only one report from the New Hebrides to support the theory that human flesh was regarded as a special delicacy. The body of an enemy was eaten because that was the most insulting way of treating an enemy.
Cannibalism was attended by ritual from the time the body was pre- pared for transport to the moment when it was actually consumed. The
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 59
formality of the proceedings marks them immediately as social actions with definite social functions. Cannibalistic feasts were merely retaliatory actions designed to assuage outraged group feelings.
Burial customs. — The disposal of the dead varies greatly. Sometimes the body is subsequently disinterred, the skull preserved, and the bones reburied. In the New Hebrides (Malekula) , Solomon Islands (Rubiana) , New Ireland, and New Guinea (Sepik River) the features of the deceased are more or less realistically modeled over the skull in fiber, clay, or other plastic material. In places the body or bones are buried on a coral reef or sunk in the sea (New Hebrides, Solomon Islands, New Britain, and Admiralty Islands). Sometimes the body is exposed in a tree (New Caledonia, Solomon Islands) or on a staging, and the bones later placed in a crevice in the rocks. Burial in a canoe occurs in the Loyalty (Mare) and Solomon Islands. In the latter islands attempts to preserve the body in certain cases were made by painting with turmeric or removing the viscera and inserting wood shavings. In some cases the body is simply left to decay, while the dried skin and bones are kept in the dwelling or deposited elsewhere. In the Admiralty Islands certain relatives receive bones as mementos. In New Ireland the corpse is placed on a stage and a fire lighted beneath; when the stage collapses, the liver is removed from the body and distributed and the rest of the body burned.
Commemorative feasts in the case of important men are celebrated in New Caledonia, New Hebrides, and Banks Islands. The strangling of the widow or widows was a frequent feature of a Melanesian funeral in early days.
Magic and religion. — Magic is used to further private ends or for economic purposes, as in garden culture and hunting. Knowledge of the right magical formulae is as essential to the canoe builder as knowledge of the correct engineering formulae is to the naval architect. There are many gods and nature spirits but the most prominent religious concept is undoubtedly that of mana. Mana is a force altogether distinct from the forces of nature. This power or force is supernatural and acts in all kinds of ways for good or for evil. To succeed in almost any undertaking, it is necessary for the Melanesian to possess or control some of this force. Although supernatural, mana reveals itself as a physical force, or in any achievement or activity of an individual.
Spirits and ghosts are the custodians of this mana and can impart it to the living individual; hence the Melanesian's veneration and fear of ghosts and spirits. Melanesian religion consists essentially in getting this mana for one's self or, at any rate, for one's benefit. All religious cere-
60 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
monial practices from ritual cannibalism to the sacrifice of pigs go toward achieving this individual religious goal.
Much effort is devoted to the propitiation of spirits, which are of two kinds, the ghosts of departed men of influence, and spirits which never have been men. In Fiji a regular hereditary priesthood is found, and the gods are provided with temples. In the New Hebrides, Banks Islands, and Santa Cruz, any man can act as priest who knows the particular ritual suitable to a definite spirit, and the man who is in communication with a powerful spirit rapidly becomes a person of importance. In the Solomon Islands offerings are made at shrines built for relics and images of the departed great. The shades of the dead are the principal objects of reverence also in the Admiralty Islands and New Guinea. Everywhere is the belief that the soul after death must undertake a journey beset with various perils to the abode of departed spirits. As a rule only the souls of brave men, or initiates, or men who have died in battle, win through to the most desirable abode. In the Solomon Islands ghosts are supposed after a certain period to become transformed into ants' nests and to form food for other ghosts. The abode of departed spirits is often repre- sented as lying beneath the earth (New Caledonia, New Hebrides, New Britain), or in some cases as situated on a mountain.
Black magic is sometimes practiced with the aid of a figure, representing the victim, which is mutilated. Sickness is frequently attributed to pos- session by a spirit or to the action of an enemy who has stolen the invalid's soul or introduced some foreign substance, such as a stone, into his body by magical means. Sickness of this sort is treated by incantations and countercharms, or by the simulated removal of the stone by suction. Bleeding, concoctions of herbs, and massage are the most usual remedies applied for illness of any sort, while trepaning is practiced in New Britain in case of injury to the skull from slingstones. Divination by prophecy, when the individual becomes inspired by some spirit, and by dreams is practiced.
The first Christian mission work in Oceania was conducted by the Roman Catholics in the sixteenth century. The Wesleyan movement in England was the first to further the Protestant mission within Melanesia. Later came Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian missions which operated from England and later from New Zealand and Australia. Still later came Lutherans, particularly in the German colonies of the Bismarck Archipelago and New Guinea. Last to arrive were the Mormons, Pente- costalists, and Seventh Day Adventists. Jehovah's Witnesses have recently made their appearance in Fiji.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 6l
The sect first to arrive obtained the most converts. Thus most Fijians are Methodists. The Tannese of New Hebrides are Presbyterians. At first the several denominations agreed to operate in distinct areas. Later, both Protestants and Catholics desired to work in each other's territory. Many communities now have two or more churches and a following.
NEW GUINEA AND ITS ISLAND SATELLITES
New Guinea's total area of 360,000 square miles of tropical forest, swamps, and high, precipitous mountain chains remains as yet incompletely explored, and its resources are almost entirely undeveloped. Successive claims to the entire island were advanced by Spain and Great Britain, but the claims of the Netherlands to the western half of the island were recognized by Britain in 1824, although the Dutch made no permanent settlement until 1898. In the 70's traders and missionaries began to arrive in the eastern portions of the island, and in the 80's Australia began to worry about the imperialist activities of Germany under Bismarck. Even today Australian claims for control of the islands north of their continent are based on defense measures. In 1884 Germany took possession of the northeastern coast of the island, and Britain immediately declared a pro- tectorate over the remaining eastern portion of the island and the eastern outlying islands. In 1888 this territory was declared a Crown colony and in 1906 was transferred to the 5 -year-old Commonwealth of Australia. In 1914 Australia took possession of the German-occupied northeast portion of the island, as well as of the Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain, New Ireland, New Hanover, and the Admiralty Islands), and in 1920 the League of Nations gave to Australia a class "C" mandate for this territory which it has administered since May 9, 1921. The south- eastern portion of the island, which Australia had received from Britain in 1906, continued to be administered separately as the Territory of Papua. The practice initiated by the Germans of extending the name New Guinea to include the islands of New Britain, New Ireland, and others of the Bismarck Archipelago was continued by the Australians.
The extremely mountainous interior of New Guinea has prevented the building of roads to the interior. There was before the beginning of World War II no land road from Port Moresby, the capital of the Territory of Papua on the south coast, to Lae at the base of the Huon Peninsula on the north coast, the capital of the Mandated Territory after the removal there of the seat of government from Rabaul, New Britain, in 1941. Transportation has been entirely by boat along the coast. What has hindered commercial exploitation has, however, fostered native popu- 5
62 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
lation growth. The terrain is too difficult even for the successful conduct of petty native warfare by the numerous Papuan and Melanesian tribes. This may be one of the reasons for the relatively large native population of the secluded interior valleys.
The western, or Dutch portion, of New Guinea, is exploited in a small way for copra and for gum dammar, which is used as a base for varnish. Prospecting for oil and gold was interrupted by the war. Experimental growing of rubber and coffee has been initiated. In Papua, the south- eastern portion of the island, considerable acreage has been improved in coconut and rubber plantations. Papua also exports beche-de-mer (trepang), pearls, and trochus shells.
The Mandated Territory, that is, the northeast portion of the island, has a white population of about 4,500. The area under commercial cultivation comprises 260,000 acres, about half of which is devoted to the growing of coconuts mainly on New Ireland and New Britain. Shells, trepang, tortoise shell, rubber, coffee, cocoa, and peanuts are exported. Prospecting for oil was active before the outbreak of the war, but it is gold that has made the Territory prosperous. An Australian prospector, Shark-eye Park, was the first to obtain paying amounts of gold from alluvial panning in the 1920's in the Morobe district. Another Australian developed dredging operations in the same field, and in connection with these operations inaugurated the Guinea Airways, a freight-carrying line from the ports of Salamaua and Lae on Huon Gulf. The goldfield of Wau is but 33 miles by air from Lae, and although no land road has been built, about $10,000,000 worth of gold is taken from the Wau fields each year. Labor demands for the goldfield are great, and recruiting of native laborers has brought about instability of native life. The death rate among the laborers is high, although the climate is comparatively healthy- — the field lying at an elevation of 3,000 feet.
An important phase of administration, aside from the collection of a 10-shilling head tax throughout the controlled area, is the supervision and control of native workers on plantations, in the mines, and in other European enterprises. There is no forced labor as such. Recruiters for the mines and plantations go into the hinterland back of the coastal ports and villages, sometimes relying on trickery involving such devices as ventriloquism, rubber snakes, and missionary garb to obtain recruits to "make paper." Since they must be signed on in the presence of the district officer, the spell must last at least long enough to bring the fol- lowing of recruits to the town where that official is at the moment. Former blackbirders, unscrupulous traders, and beachcombers have for the
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 63
most part gone with the extension of the Mandated Territory Government control areas to much of the hinterland.
The administration of New Guinea is complicated by the great diversity in local languages and in the social organization, religious beliefs, and magic fears, as well as the various means of gaining a livelihood practiced by widely separated peoples throughout the area. The attempt of the administration to enlarge the controlled area is based primarily on the desire to eliminate widespread practices prevalent in the uncontrolled area involving head hunting, cannibalism, sacrificing of widows, immolation, infanticide, and many forms of local warfare. In the uncontrolled areas throughout the interior, villages are perched in the most inaccessible places or at strategic points either to prevent attack or for defense. High palisade stockades guarded by skillfully hidden pits studded with spears are placed along the approaches. All coastal areas are now considered safe for Europeans, but many parts of the interior in the uncontrolled area are not. The fact that visiting white men or an expedition carry much impedimenta in the form of supplies and weapons of various sorts arouses the covetousness of the uncontrolled native. The possession of a steel knife, for example, means much to a Stone Age native, changing his economic status immeasurably.
Quite apart from possible problems concerned with looting, Europeans are cautioned by the district officers to avoid the uncontrolled areas be- cause of the danger of arousing native fears or otherwise upsetting them in an area saturated with fears of sorcery in which all sickness and distress is credited to magic. All strangers are regarded with suspicion and may be attacked if the natives' religious code requires at the time some act of ritual homicide for which the passing stranger might be an appropriate victim.
The language problem is another barrier in the advance of civilization. Even when grammatically related, dialects are so diverse as to be mutually unintelligible a few miles beyond the locality where the language is spoken. The Lutheran missions of the Morobe district have attempted to develop one of the Melanesian types and one of the Papuan types of languages, hoping that by reducing these to writing and through instruction in the schools they might cause them to be adopted throughout the whole district. A similar attempt to single out one of the dialects for recording and literary purposes has been undertaken by the Roman Catholic mission in New Britain and New Ireland, where the language spoken by the natives of the Rabaul district has been selected. Pidgin English has be- come the common form of speech throughout the Mandated Territory
64 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
of New Guinea; without it miners, labor recruiters, planters, and government officials could not transact business with the natives. Pidgin English vocabularies include many words from various New Guinea languages and other languages as well as English.
In the classic work on the Melanesians of New Guinea by C. G. Selig- man extensive reference is made to a unique sailing vessel, the lakatoi, which is actually a large raft of dugout canoes. By means of the lakatoi the natives engage in annual trading voyages in the Gulf of Papua along the southeast coast of New Guinea. This annual voyage is the big event in the social life of the Motu, a Melanesian people who live near Port Moresby in the only dry belt of New Guinea. The Motu women are potters, while the men are sailors, so that when the lakatoi embarks on its annual voyage of some 200 miles along the gulf coast, it carries a cargo of cooking pots to be traded for sago. The expedition begins in September, at the close of the season of the southeast trade wind, and returns before April, toward the end of the northwest monsoon season. The organiza- tion and actual conduct of the expedition is not only concerned with practical economics, but is hedged about with innumerable magical and ceremonial practices which involve more effort and more avoidance of things tabooed than are required in the actual conduct of the voyage. Formerly such trading expeditions carried an additional cargo of bows and arrows and tobacco which were exchanged for shell ornaments, the ceremonial "currency" so important in discharging the bride price, or payment for wives.
The Melanesian portion of New Guinea is essentially coastal and in the main is limited to the southeastern "tail" of the island "bird" and to its "tail feathers," the small outlying island archipelagoes, namely, the d'Entrecasteaux, the Trobriands, the Louisiades, and other isolated small volcanic islands. Melanesian-speaking people occupy New Guinea's southeastern coast as far west as Cape Possession, while Melanesian settle- ments have been noted on its northern coast as far west as Geelvink Bay, far within the western or Dutch half of the island. Southeastern New Guinea and its Melanesian island satellites have long been the classic school for the study of primitive social organization.
The Melanesian is slightly taller than the Papuan and reveals in com- parison a marked refinement of features. Males of the Melanesian- speaking Arup of the north coast east of Humboldt Bay for whom measurements are available have an average stature of 63 inches. The Melanesian's frizzly hair mop and his narrower and less depressed nasal structure are, in New Guinea, offset by his blacker skin color when
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 65
contrasted with the Papuan of lighter skin color who occupies the greater portion of the island and who in the south has undoubtedly come in contact with Australian natives over the islands of the Torres Strait. The Caucasian features which are such a striking characteristic in the bearded Papuan faces with their Semitic or Hebraic cast, accentuated by the figure-6 convex curvature of the nose and the receding hair line, are quite distinct from those of the less hirsute New Guinea Melanesian.
The difficulties in the way of classifying exactly the peoples of New Guinea are illustrated by the number of peoples occupying portions of the Melanesian Bismarck and Solomon Islands who conform to the general Melanesian physical type, but who speak an unrelated Papuan language, while conversely a few Melanesian-speaking peoples of eastern and northern New Guinea are found to conform physically to the Papuan type.
The native peoples of New Guinea are treated at length by M. W. Stirling in Smithsonian War Background Studies Number Nine.
THE BISMARCK ARCHIPELAGO
The Admiralty Islands
The Admiralties, the most northerly of the Melanesian Islands, lying but 2° south of the Equator, were discovered by Schouten and Lemaire in 1616. The group consists of one large island, Great Admiralty, and many smaller islands including Mok, Buke, Pere, Balowan, Lou, Rambutchon, and others. Great Admiralty Island, 60 miles long from east to west and 15 miles wide, is of volcanic formation, its peaks reaching an elevation of 3,000 feet. Its red volcanic soil and steep slopes are ill adapted to gardening.
The native inland people, although divided into numerous small groups speaking mutually unintelligible dialects, are collectively and disdainfully known to the seafaring people of the islands as Usiai (inland people). They live in small scattered communities but congregate for occasional ceremonies. The light-skinned, timid, scrawny natives of the many smaller islands of the Admiralty group, the Matankor, likewise speak several different dialects and have different customs. A third group of Admiralty Islanders, the Manus, or "salt-water boys," numbering about 2,000 individuals, are darker skinned and much more aggressive. They are also more picturesque and have been singled out for study by American anthropologists. Their villages consist of pile dwellings built out over the water in the wide lagoons along the south coast of the Great Admiralty or are similarly built under the shelter of other precipitous islands. Since
66 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
these Manus people do not have gardens, but nevertheless require the products of land and forest that are utilized by the land-dwelling Usiai and Matankor, they resort to fishing and trading. They are adventurous sailors, making extensive interisland voyages in their 40-foot outrigger canoes, and are also skillful fishermen. They trade fish and mollusks to the Usiai for sago, taro, fiber for net and rope making, leaves for bags and mats, betel nuts and gourd lime containers, gum for canoe caulking, and sago leaves for their roof thatch. Turtles are bartered for wood to be used in canoe and house building. There are regular markets for the exchange of products of the sea for products of the land. A conciliating influence on conflicting trade interests may be noted in the interchange of the ingredients of the betel masticatory. The land-dwelling gardeners, the Usiai, grow the betel nut, while the seafaring Manus burn and refine the coral lime with which the betel nut and pepper leaf are chewed.
On Admiralty Island the houses are unpretentious, oval, beehive huts, rather roughly thatched right down to the ground and with only a couple of low openings. Clubhouses are larger and have as doorposts human figures carved in wood and covered with incised patterns, and for interior decoration rows of brightly painted pig and turtle skulls arranged on shelves. Other art expressions include human and animal forms, rendered both naturally and in patterns. They decorate their own bodies with scars, paint, and tattooing.
Their most attractive productions are astonishingly symmetrical wooden food bowls with spiral or fretwork handles; they also fashion wooden bowls in the form of birds, pigs, and crocodiles. On Hermit Island, fret- work or tracery in wood is applied to the decoration of canoe ornaments, spoon handles, lime knives, and other small objects. The Admiralty Islanders perforate the nasal septum and hang a nose pin from a short string of beads looped through the hole. They also slit their ear lobes, which are dragged down into long loops by the weight of suspended ornaments.
In fighting, the natives have specialized in throwing spears with heavy, sharp heads of obsidian or volcanic glass. Blades of the same material are made for use as throwing knives. They also throw smaller reed darts with hardwood points.
Their food is chiefly sago and coconut, supplemented by taro, bread- fruit, bananas, and roast pig.
New Britain and New Ireland New Britain, the largest island of the Bismarck Archipelago, lies north- east of New Guinea. It is 330 miles long but nowhere more than 50
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 67
miles wide. Up to 1928 it had never been crossed by a white man, except at its northern extremity, owing to the fact that a high and very rugged range of mountains extends from one end to the other. The recent travels of three grounded American aviators through its mountainous interior have materially contributed to our geographic knowledge of the island.
Volcanic action is evident throughout the island, especially in the north, where are located the Matupi sulfur springs close to the town of Rabaul. The highest peak on the island, the Father (7,500 feet) on the northwest coast, is an active volcano. Near it are two other peaks, the North Son and the South Son, and not far from Rabaul are three more, the Mother, the North Daughter, and the South Daughter, the first-named being an extinct volcano. Vulcan Island, with an area of several acres, on the south side of Blanche Bay, made its appearance in a single night in the year 1870, during an eruption of Mount Mother. Earthquakes are of frequent occurrence. The coast is precipitous in some places, in others flat and fringed with coral reefs, but there are several good harbors, the best being Simpson Haven, the inlying portion of Blanche Bay; others are Jacquinot Bay, Arawe, Linden Haven, and Powell Haven. There are no rivers of importance and only a few short, swift streams.
As Neu Pommern, the island formed part of the colony of German New Guinea from 1884 until 1914, when it was occupied by Australian troops. In 1920, it was mandated by the League of Nations to the Commonwealth of Australia, by which country it is now being administered as part of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. The chief town and former center of administration before its removal in 1941 to Lae, on Huon Gulf on the north coast of New Guinea, was Rabaul, situated on Simpson Haven, which is also a good port with a safe and spacious anchorage for shipping. The bulk of the white population of New Britain, before the Japanese invasion, was settled in or near Rabaul, where sanitary conditions have been greatly improved and which has a fairly healthy climate, although with a rainfall of more than 100 inches. Scattered along the island coast are commercial coconut plantations, and there is a considerable shell-fishing industry. Some roads have been constructed. Before the irruption of the Japanese, the island was divided for administrative purposes into four districts: Rabaul, Kokopo, Gasmata, and Talasea, each administered by a district officer appointed by the ad- ministrator of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea.
New Ireland, the second most important island of the Bismarck Archi- pelago, lies northeast of New Britain and practically at right angles to it. It resembles New Britain in several respects: it is long and narrow, is
68 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
very mountainous (highest peak 6,500 feet), and has no rivers of any size. Geologically it is older than New Britain, however, and lacks the definite volcanic appearance of that island. The coast line is fairly unbroken, but there are good harbors at Kaevieng, Namatanai, and Muliama. The island is divided into two districts, northern (Kaevieng), and southern (Namatanai), the latter including the 37-rnile-long fertile but mountainous island of New Hanover, the most northerly of the Melanesian islands. The port of Kaevieng boasts substantial government buildings and a wharf capable of berthing ships up to 2,000 tons. Fair roads have been built by indentured native labor.
The native peoples of New Britain and New Ireland as a whole are Melanesian in type and in culture, but among them are groups of Papuans. Moreover, secondary or later influences from New Guinea have had their effect upon the Melanesians; consequently statements made about any one custom may hold for only a limited area, and the physical type varies considerably. The Namatanai of New Ireland, for example, as shown by available measurements, have an average stature for males of 63.7 inches, while the males of Tanga, a small outlying island, have an average stature of 64.6 inches.
The common weapon is the sling, with which stones are thrown con- siderable distances with great accuracy and force. Wooden spears are also used, but defensive shields are apparently not known. Some war clubs are of polished hardwood, often ornamented with carved and painted designs, but stone-headed clubs, such as are common in New Guinea, are also used. Their plank-built paddling canoes without sails are adapted for coastal and river transport.
The natives utilize food resources of both land and sea. Yams and taro are cultivated, and coconuts and breadfruit are grown. Pigs, fowls, snakes, lizards, crocodiles, birds, and fish supply flesh food. Every tribe must avoid injuring, killing, or eating its totem animal. This food taboo arises from the native belief that ancestors, whose spirits are worshiped or feared, turned at death into individual animals of that species.
In one part of New Britain the natives belong to two main totemic groups, the Sea Hawks and the Eagles; elsewhere the groups or moieties have as totems the praying mantis and a leaf insect. A child belongs to the same totem as its mother — that is, descent is matrilineal ; but a man always takes his wife from the opposite totem group, because all the women
Plate 18 Fighting men of the Melanesian Santa Cruz Islands. Photograph by Merl La Voy.
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Upper: Women of Ontong Java (Lord Howe Island). The population of this atoll in the British Solomon Islands belongs to the Polynesian fringe. Note the shaved heads and their general non-Melanesian appearance.
Lower: Man, children, and habitation, Ontong Java (Lord Howe Island).
Photographs by Merl La Voy.
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MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 69
of his own group, being descended from his own totem, are therefore his "sisters."
In New Ireland, totemic beliefs are enshrined in white chalk figures of men and animals, and in elaborate memorial carvings, malagan, which frequently symbolize the tribal totem as well as the person commemorated. The term malagan applies not only to the memorial carvings, but also to the elaborate ceremonial feasts with which they are associated. The feasts, like the carvings, are primarily concerned with commemoration of the dead; at the same time, high social prestige accrues to a family which "makes malagan" in fine style and with lavish expenditure of food and native wealth. It is not mere ostentation, however; there is a great deal of important ritual and social obligation in the institution, which consti- tutes a valuable cohesive influence in the community.
In New Britain social discipline is maintained, and the inherent love of ceremony finds expression in the Dukduk secret societies. Dukduk is an ancestral spirit; so at least the women and uninitiated youths are sup- posed to believe. It emanates or issues from time to time from the men's clubhouses, which are taboo or forbidden to women, in the form of a weird figure — actually a member of the society hidden under a high, conical mask and a garment of leaves (representing bird feathers) ex- tending to the knees.
Dukduk is male, and his female companion is Tubuan, a less elaborate figure. One or the other will caper madly through the village, and since they have general license to strike, beat, or kill, the women and children flee in terror on their approach. Each Dukduk lodge increases its power and wealth through initiating, with elaborate ceremonial and feasts, boys who pay such high fees that they fall heavily in debt and have to work hard in the gardens or at fishing to clear themselves.
The Dukduk inflicts fines on all and sundry for breach of taboos, for a slight to a member, or for infringement of the social code. It also de- mands considerable fees for "protection" of gardens and property, thus combining the powers of tribal authority with those of an extortionary "racket."
A native "currency" of great importance in trade and the ceremonial life of the Melanesians of New Britain consists of strings of small mol- luscan shells. The exact source of these shells is a trade secret jealously guarded by the Nakanai people who obtain them on the beach of one of the small islands between New Britain and New Guinea. Throughout the whole of New Britain, and also in New Ireland and the more distant Solomons chain, these shells strung into long chains on thin strips of
70 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
cane pass readily as the equivalent of money. The unit of this shell currency is a string of shells measuring the length of two outstretched arms.
The acquisition and retention of wealth in Melanesia is a prerequisite to social climbing and to social prestige, and children are taught this im- portant fact early in life. On the Duke of York Island the concept of interest is well developed, 11 string-of -shells units usually being returned for 10 units borrowed. The local man of influence, the headman, be- comes the local village banker. A system of fines for wrongs committed is well recognized. At the conclusion of battle or a season of warfare, there was formerly a reciprocal payment for damage inflicted. Peace could not be made until relatives of the killed and wounded received their just compensation in shell money. An essential difference between such social payments and our concept of reparation payments is that both sides in- volved in the conflict must agree as to the amount, and payments for injuries inflicted were made not by the group but by the individuals who committed the wrong. No organized police system exists in native Melanesian society strong enough to suppress or punish the individual wrongdoer. Quarreling therefore tends to have serious consequences and to terminate in chronic feuding. Claims to injuries, however, are adjusted by popular opinion, all having a voice in the settlement. Individual ag- gressiveness, however, tends to overawe public opinion, while the timid and the young are likely to suffer injustice.
As stated above, New Britain and New Ireland were administered, be- fore the coming of the Japanese, as a part of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, and each island was subdivided into subdistricts. Political divisions, however, cannot coincide in their boundaries with those of native cultures, which in the Mandated Territory number in the hundreds. District officials had magisterial powers supported by armed native police. The police tended to become arrogant and officious, but were careful to conceal these qualities in the presence of white men. Courts were con- ducted in the pidgin of Melanesia, and natives readily understood the routine of court procedure. In each village the district officer appointed a headman, who usually was also the native headman of the village. This system was taken over from the German administration.
In native society certain crimes such as murder and sorcery cause great public disturbance, but no machinery existed for their adequate punish- ment. Public opinion supported private vengeance by a kinsman of the injured or murdered individual. Intermittent warfare between villages was not organized but was conducted as a personal raid by one kinship
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 71
group on another. Such warfare has been completely suppressed among the coastal peoples, but continues on in the interior. Natives sometimes express regret that the good old days of personal vengeance have passed, although they may derive some satisfaction in a public hanging within their own village.
Native society throughout Melanesia regards as antisocial or as crimes breaches in the pattern of behavior arising out of kinship and the breaking of taboos of religious, economic, or social character. Many of these acts are, according to European standards, not crimes at all and were con- sequently ignored by the district officer, but since native punishment of antisocial behavior itself comes within the European definition of criminal attack, it was punished by the courts. The immediate effect is the breaking down of native custom and laws for the enforcement of correct social behavior. For example, in one of the districts, at Mewehaven in southern New Britain, a widow at her own express wish was strangled by her brothers on the death of her husband, in accordance with native traditional practice. In this case the court passed the death sentence on the brothers but commuted the death penalty.
Sorcery, being secret, is difficult to suppress, particularly when unbiased witnesses cannot be obtained. Administration punishment was by con- fiscation and fines. The sorcerer is frequently the agent of the village headman in enforcing taboos, property rights, and social behavior gen- erally, which always involves the enhancement of the position of the headman. When the sorcerer is freed from the control of the village headman and sets off on his own to commit mischief, the headman's authority breaks down and a superstitious people becomes more fear-ridden. The upsetting of a complicated credit structure involving native sense of responsibility and honesty can greatly disturb native society, especially if native forms of chattels and debt obligations are discredited. Native re- action toward adultery, a common offense in the New Britain Court for Native Affairs, varies. Since native opinion is usually satisfied with compensation, punishment of adultery as a crime opens the way for native accusers to get revenge on an individual for an entirely different grievance, adultery being altogether too common to have permitted con- sideration of the offender as a criminal under native law. Native women frequently allege that a native man "pulled" her into marriage. Such accusations were not treated as rape, since the real matter involved was the neglect of the proper payment of the traditional bride price of strings of shell disks, pigs, and other gifts, to the woman's relatives, who then set up the complaint.
72 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. \6
Petty offenses against district regulations, before the coming of the Japanese, involved such matters as failure to pay the head tax of 10 shillings levied on adult males, failure to provide transportation for the district officer, neglect in observation of health regulations, such as not building the proper type of houses in the proper line, persistence in the burial of the dead under the house, and not building fences to keep the pigs out of the houses and the village. For purposes of facilitating the collection of the head tax, the district government discourages the change of residence of individuals from one village to another. Natives generally admit the advantages of organized government and of the cessation of petty warfare and feuding and wish that the district officer's influence extended to the control of the sorcerer.
THE SOLOMON ISLANDS
The Solomons, which lie southeast of the Bismarck Archipelago and east of New Guinea, form a double chain of large volcanic islands. Ex- tending from northwest to southeast, New Georgia, Guadalcanal, and San Cristoval make up the inner or southern line, while Buka, Bougainville, Choiseul, Ysabel, and Malaita constitute the outer chain facing the Equator and the open sea to the north. Actually, the Solomon Island chain is geologically the central part of the great island arc to which belong Santa Cruz, the Banks, the New Hebrides, the Loyalties, and the large island of New Caledonia.
As early as 1875 a number of traders lived on several of the Solomon Islands, a situation which led to the establishing of a British protectorate over the southern Solomons in 1893. This was expanded to include others of the group in 1899 and 1900, after a trade with Germany in which that country relinquished her claims to the central Solomons in exchange for certain rights in Samoa. The northern Solomons, the islands of Buka and Bougainville, former possessions of the German Reich, were mandated in 1920 by the League of Nations to Australia and from 1921 to 1942 were administered as a part of the Mandated Territory of New Guinea.
The Resident Commissioner of the British protectorate of the Solomon Islands is responsible to the High Commissioner for the western Pacific with headquarters in Fiji. The general law of the land is the Order in Council of 1893, plus regulations issued by the Commissioner under powers conferred by that order. The order is concerned essentially with sup- pressing trade in firearms and intoxicating liquor and with the regulation and procurement of labor for plantations and public works such as road
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA— KRIEGER 73
building. The Resident Commissioner of the Solomons had his capital on the 2-mile-long island of Tulagi, the smallest capital in the British Empire.
Tulagi, in the shelter of the larger, nearby island of Florida, north of Guadalcanal, is approximately 350 miles from Kieta, on the island of Bougainville, the capital of the northern Solomons mandated to Australia. The government officers are housed in a number of white-painted wooden buildings with red-painted galvanized-iron roofs. Before the coming of the jeep there were no streets in this capital city; travel was entirely by boat or on foot. Tulagi's large, mile-square harbor, though very beautiful and sheltered, is too deep for ship anchorages. In the harbor lies the smaller island of Makambbo, where a trading company has its warehouses, and 3 miles away is Gavatu Island, the property of a soap company. Communication with the outside world was by a vessel plying periodically between Sydney, 1,800 miles distant, and numerous other island trade outposts.
On January 23, 1942, a Japanese seaplane landed at Kieta, on Bougain- ville, and a Japanese officer planted the flag of the Rising Sun on the beach. A week later Tulagi was bombed. Japanese landing parties soon followed, but on May 7, 1942, the Allies destroyed their warships in Tulagi harbor. Since that time the Allies have repeatedly bombed the Japanese installations and airport at Kieta. On August 7, 1942, they drove the Japs out of Tulagi and, on February 5, 1943, after a 6-months' almost continuous battle, out of the not far distant island of Guadalcanal and the Russell group.
Within the protectorate 50,000 acres are now given over to the culti- vation of coconut trees. The dry meat of the coconut — copra — is the most important export, but woods of various kinds, ivory-nuts, trochus shell, and beche-de-mer are also exported. Europeans and resident Asiatics may hold land under various titles either in freehold or by lease. Land acquired by foreigners prior to the fundamental law of the land, namely, the Order in Council of 1893, is recognized by the Crown, and the Resident Commissioner has proclaimed as Crown lands all areas not required by natives. Such lands may be leased from the Crown. Additional land may be obtained by private concerns direct from the natives, however, under government supervision. The British Government has always been on the alert to prevent private encroachment on lands actually required for native gardens and other uses.
The principal employer of labor in the South Solomons is the firm known as Lever's Pacific Plantations. Coconut plantings of this concern ar§ found on practically all the islands except Malaita. The largest is in
74 WAR BACKGROUND STUDIES, NO. 16
the Russell Islands, west of Guadalcanal, partly because the native popula- tion there has died out and left the land available for planting. Employers and managers have been permitted to return to their plantations in areas where the Japanese have been removed.
The total native population in the Solomon Islands protectorate is slightly less than 100,000, of which over 40,000 dwell on the southern island of Malaita. Great variation in physical type appears throughout the archipelago, and numerous mutually unintelligible native dialects and languages are spoken. The young men of the various districts of a single island when assembled on a commercial plantation have difficulty in making themselves understood.
Unlike the Polynesians, the Solomon Islanders did not at first extend hospitality to visiting Europeans. Even harmless strangers were, when possible, invariably put to death. In the 1880's several European vessels were attacked in the Solomons, and the entire crews of five ships, as well as a number of French scientists, were killed. The indiscriminate murder- ing of sailors continued until the Solomons were made a controlled area under a British protectorate. As early as 1845 French Marist missionaries, including a bishop and a number of lay brothers, were killed on San Cristoval. A successful mission was somewhat later established by the Church of England in the Banks Islands southeast of the Solomons. Be- cause of this initial success, the language spoken on Mota, one of the Banks islands, became the quasi-official language of this English mission throughout Melanesia. Christian missions have continued to operate throughout the Solomons and now have training schools at various places. Native teachers receive instruction in the Church of England at Siota College on Florida Island.
Throughout the Solomons the average stature of males for whom measurements are available is 63 inches. The people living in the western Solomons are coal black in skin color, while those of the eastern islands are somewhat lighter in color, and in Malaita much lighter. In Malaita the color of hair is usually brown, not black as in the western islands. It is actually sometimes chestnut or straw-colored, and these lighter colors are artificially obtained in other islands through the use of hair bleaches. Throughout the group the hair is coarse in texture and tends to stand out in a mass. On the western islands the frizzy hair mop of the women vies with that of the men, but in Malaita, as in the marginal island of Ontong Java, women shave the hair. In the eastern islands, particularly in Malaita, the nose is not so. broad as in the western islands, where it tends to approach in form that of the Australian.
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 75
In skin color the natives of Buka and Bougainville are dark, with a reddish hue appearing in some individuals. The scalp hair is very thick, and this attribute, combined with the characteristic frizziness, accounts for the moplike coiffure. The hair is trimmed short — much shorter than elsewhere in Melanesia. Black hair, when bleached with lime or ochers, may assume a red or yellowish shade, and when an individual wishes to dress up, black or red paint mixed with coconut oil is applied freely to the hair. Eyes are dark drown, the Mongolian fold being present in some individuals. Noses have a pronounced bridge. Mothers do not like their children to have flat noses and consequently pinch the noses of infants to correct this tendency. They also press the sides and the back of the head to elevate the crown and to make its sides straight. However, no head binding or bandages are applied, as in New Britain. Although teeth are frequently missing, there is no ceremonial removal or mutilation of the teeth. Tattooing is not practiced in the western Solomons as it is in eastern Melanesia, but scarification, that is, the producing of bodily design by raising scar tissue, is widespread. In men the pattern covers only the upper chest area; in women it is continued over the abdomen and thighs, and some individuals are scarified on the face. Rebellious youth has brought this practice into disuse in many villages. The ear lobe and the septum of the nose are pierced for the insertion of ornaments.
Coastal villagers and the population of the islets have forgotten much of their native culture and have abandoned their traditional ritual and way of life. Women no longer go out to work in the gardens as do those of other parts of the Mandated Territory.
The coast of northern Bougainville is rocky and protected by cliffs, below which along the beach are native villages, although some are located on top of the cliffs. A coastal road was by government order kept clear by the women of the villages. The usual coral reef borders the beach, and in the jungle back of the cliffs are the taro gardens. The interior of Bougain- ville beyond the taro gardens is a succession of ridges which become mountain chains toward the interior and are largely unexplored.
Rainfall is heavy, but as Bougainville lies within the equatorial belt of calms outside the hurricane belt, there are no typhoons. Prevailing winds from the southeast are moisture-laden, and there is little interruption of the growing season throughout the year. Rain water collected in shallow pools is shared with the pigs and dogs and is consequently germ-laden.
Taro roots are roasted in the embers in a pit oven filled with heated stones, or boiled in a blackware pot. Pottery-making villages are Malasang on the east coast of Buka, and Buin on the south end of Bougainville.
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Pots are bartered throughout the islands, and fish and taro are exchanged between the coastal and the mountain villages. One half-smoked fish has an established value of six taro roots.
Cuscus, which resemble the opossum, are hunted from their hiding places in trees at night with the aid of coconut-leaf torches. Wild pigs are also hunted, but frequently without success. Shellfish and crabs are collected on the reefs, and the land crab is also relished. A change from a steady diet of taro is provided by breadfruit in season, and coconuts are consumed as food and drink.
Fishing with kites, vavatoa, is fairly successful in catching garfish with a spider-web lure. Bonito is caught with a composite hook of cut clam shell provided with a tortoise-shell barb, pieces of octopus being the usual bait. Communal fishing with the aid of nets is undertaken on the reef, and basketry fish traps are thrust into shallow water to catch small fish which come in shoals. Much magic is considered essential to catch fish, especially the bonito.
The plank canoe, similar to that of the southern Solomons, is used, as well as a dugout with single outrigger. The seaworthy mon, formerly the war canoe of the Buka people, is used on pig-purchasing expeditions to the island of Nissan.
Everyone on Buka and Bougainville chews the betel nut and smokes. Pipes of clay are made in some villages, but the trade pipe has also made its appearance. Although some tobacco is grown locally, the stick tobacco of commerce is preferred and has become staple currency.
Social climbing and the giving of feasts bigger and better than any provided by rival climbers is the primary ambition of a village self-made man. Hereditary position, important in Polynesia, plays no great role here ; the social climber must show that he has surpassed his rivals in the distribution of food and gifts. The greater the feast provided by the social climber, the more he is permitted to have the drums beaten in his honor and the more likely he is to become a village leader or chief.
The use of the wooden drum, or tui, is widespread throughout Melanesia. When the tui is used for signaling, it is struck sharply near the top center with a beater consisting of a number of strips of the lawyer vine (Calamus australis) bound together at the striking end but loose at the other. On the Pororan Islands off the coast of Buka, the northernmost of the Solomons, the signaling code, like the Morse code, consists of long and short beats. When used as a signaling drum, the function of the tui might be compared to that of a local newspaper. For example, the arrival of a stranger of importance is signaled — — —
MICRONESIA AND MELANESIA — KRIEGER 77
; a death is signaled
; announcement that the bride
price has been paid for the purchase of a wife is somewhat more lengthy, the opening signals for which are —
signal for annoyance is a number of long beats. Characteristic annoyances thus announced have to do with the failure of a wife to cook the taro properly, the death of a pig, or similar personal grievances which the signaler wishes to make public. Other characteristic signaling by means of long and short beats on the tut have to do with a call by the chief, various stages of house building, or of the preparation and progress of a feast such as the tying of the pigs, cooking of the taro, killing of the pigs, counting of the food to be consumed at the feast, the theft and killing of a captive. Counting by signaling is — . — . — repeated for each unit counted up to nine, beyond which this elaborate unit is somewhat shortened. This system of number signaling has been developed in some of the other outlying islands of the Solomons to the extent that the arrival of a government official is relayed from village to village even to the number of carriers, police, supplies, and other details.
Guadalcanal, 80 miles long and 25 miles wide, may be described as one of the exposed summits of a submerged mountain chain. On the southern side the hills rise directly out of the sea, but the northern slope is more gradual, forming a shelving plain narrow at the eastern end but broadening out farther along the coast. The highest peak is Popomanasiu, over 8,000 feet in height, but several others rise to over 6,000 feet. The temperature and the humidity are always high, and rainfall is heavy — Longgu on the north coast, where much of the fighting with the Japanese invader took place, has an average annual fall of 200 inches. Several crocodile-infested rivers, among them the Mantanikau near Henderson Field, carry a considerable volume of water. The mountainous core of the island is extremely dissected, making travel inland very difficult.
Mendana related in the sixteenth century that miles upon miles of houses were seen in Guadalcanal. This was, no doubt, an exaggeration, but the native population was formerly much greater than it is today. The Protectorate Blue Book gives the present population as over 14,000, but most of the inhabitants live near the coast, and the hills everywhere are only sparsely settled. The birth and death rates at the present time are approximately equal.
About 20 dialects are spoken on the island, but there are only three types of social organization. The people of the eastern tip have a semi- 6
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patrilineal organization similar to that of Malaita, while those of the coastal plain and the western end have matrilineal clans, usually five in number. The remainder of the island is occupied by various linguistic units, all with a dual organization.
The hill peoples everywhere are divided into two moieties (rau) called respectively Manulava (big bird, meaning the eagle), and Haravu and Manukiki (little bird, meaning the hawk) . A myth relates how the two groupings came into being. The island was built up out of the sea by two men, Tzatza and Tzili, and when they had finished they planted two seedlings, one, the ficus (sambahd) the tallest of tropical trees, and the other the cordyline {tzili). An eagle alighted on the ficus and laid two eggs, out of which sprang a man and a woman, and simultaneously two leaves fell from the cordyline and also changed into a man and a woman. The cordyline man married the eagle woman, thus giving rise to the Manulava moiety, and the eagle man took the cordyline woman, thus founding the Manukiki group. Subsequently a sky spirit, Sivotchu, gave them pigs and all other living things.
Guadalcanal is divided up into named districts associated with different clans. Each clan has an affiliation of this kind with several districts, and the members have the right to erect a dwelling and cultivate a garden in any one of them. Although descent is traced through the mother, marriage, nevertheless, is patrilocal, and if a man wishes to go and live on his clan land he has therefore to leave his father's house. In practice only a minority do this, and the result is that the inhabitants of any district belong to several clans.
There are no hereditary headmen, and authority is exercised by indi- viduals who possess more than average ability and who have accumulated and then distributed quantities of wealth. Such men are spoken of as tauvia.
People formerly lived in small homesteads with three or four families in each. The administration of the protectorate has given orders that these settlements should be centralized, and a village was accordingly built in every district. These are occupied, however, only when the district officer is on patrol.
Wealth consists of garden produce, pigs, and "ceremonial currency" — that is, strings of shell disks and porpoise and dogs' teeth. The chief crop is taro, which is grown the whole year round, but yams are also im- portant, though they ripen only at one season of the year. Taro is culti- vated without much ceremony, and as a rule each man has his own plots separate from those of his neighbors. The forest is cleared of heavy timber
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by the man himself, assisted perhaps by a relative or two. He makes a stout fence to keep out the wild pigs while his wife burns up the rubbish. Planting is done by either sex, but weeding and digging the crop are women's work.
Yam gardens are generally a community affair, and the whole district collaborates to clear one big plot. The tauvla or some magician under his direction first recites spells to drive out the evil influences of the forest, and then all the menfolk set to work and cut down the trees. The whole area is then fenced and the women burn the rubbish. The tauvia next divides the garden plots among his followers, giving each one a separate area. Boundaries are indicated by small fences to prevent sub- sequent disputes. The seed yams are brought from the village, and again spells are recited, this time to ensure that the crop will be prolific. After this the tubers are planted, and from then on until the whole garden is ready for harvesting consumption of yams is strictly forbidden. When the crop is ripe, the whole district goes fishing in one of the many rivers. The catch is brought to the garden and cooked, and each man goes and digs two or three tubers from his plot. A ceremonial meal is eaten to- gether, and the harvesting begins on the following day.
A third important crop is the canarium almond, which does not require cultivation. These nuts grow on immense trees, and if a man works alone be may be occupied for a couple of days in stripping only one. Usually three or four neighbors