EFATE AND VITI AND POLYNESIA. 45 



A. 



We know from our study of the Samoan record of historical 

 tradition and equally from our comparison of the elements and 

 methods of that language with its congeners in eastward Polynesia 

 that this group of islands, so centrally situated in its relation to the 

 outward islands as is the palm to its outstretching fingers, has been 

 the scene of at least two settlements of Sawaiori stock. To these 

 two periods, culminating in the victory of the earlier colonists in 

 the Matamatame epoch,* I have assigned the designations of Proto- 

 Samoan and Tongafiti, the one carrying to us its own explanation, 

 the other equally clear to the Samoan as his own name of the enemy 

 who drove him into the mountains, harried him with exactions, and 

 was at last expelled by the semidivine might of his great national 

 hero, Savea, in whom the Malietoa name began. 



Our initial problem, therefore, is to deal with the incidence of the 

 now established Polynesian content of Efate. Is it Proto-Samoan, 

 is it Tongafiti, is it a mixture of both? That is to say, in another 

 form of statement, was it the former swarm out at the gates of the 

 Malay seas, or was it the latter, or was it both which bivouacked 

 in Efate of the New Hebrides on its way to Samoa? Or, this is 

 a possibility as well, did wind-driven estrays from Samoa obtain a 

 foothold in Efate in sufficient numbers to fix and clinch these several 

 items upon the Melanesian speech there existing? Was it during 

 the earlier Proto-Samoan period, during the succeeding Tongafiti 

 period, or during the modern Samoan era after Matamatame, when 

 the language is a mixture of these two in proportions by us as yet 

 undetermined, that such reverse migrations took place? 



B. 



The last hypothesis, the counter migration westward from Samoa 

 considered as an eddy current of the great eastward sweep of the 

 race, we shall take up first. The drift of such castaways has been 

 known within the historic period. I cite Codrington'sf excellent 

 authority upon this point : 



From the limits of the Melanesian languages as defined above, the lan- 

 guage of the Polynesian settlements in Melanesia has to be withdrawn. 

 The distinction between this and the Melanesian is everywhere plain, and 

 there is very little distinction apparently to be made of dialect in the 

 speech of one settlement and another. These Polynesian outliers are to 

 be found in Uea, one of the Loyalty Islands; in Fate, Sandwich Island; 

 in some islets of the Sheppard Group, and notably in the settlement of 

 Mae in Three Hills ; in Tikopia, north of the Banks Islands, and in several 

 of the Swallow Group near Santa Cruz ; in Rennel and Bellona, south of 

 the Solomon Islands, and in Ongtong Java, near Ysabel. The language 

 of these is said, on good authority, to be substantially that of Tonga, and 



*27 American Journal of Philology, 371; 30 American Journal of Philology, 171. ' 

 f Melanesian Languages, page 7 et seq. 



