248 ETHNOLOGICAL STUDIES 



This half-finished house shows 

 its simple construction. The roof 

 is covered with palm leaves and 

 such walls as there are will con- 

 sist only of mats. Rennell Island. 



tiki-tiki fished it up from the bottom of the sea, and his father, Atang- 

 gangga, who could give all things life, covered it with woods. But then 

 father and son quarrelled, and in his anger Mau-tiki-tiki turned the island 

 upside down so that his father was drowned. It is because the island lies 

 bottom side up that it is so rough and unapproachable. The inaccessibility, 

 the remoteness, and the natural poverty are the reasons why Rennell Island 

 has been left in undisturbed peace for so long. 



What is it that makes this small island so attractive to ethnologists? 

 Generally speaking, the Solomon Islands are inhabited by dark-skinned 

 Melanesians, who used to have the reputation of being some of the most 

 savage tribes in the Pacific, many of them head hunters and cannibals. 

 North of the Solomon Islands proper, however, is a strip of small islands 

 — Mortlock, Tasman, Lord Howe, Sikaiana, etc. — where the inhabitants 

 are fair-skinned Polynesians, and this applies to Rennell and its small 

 neighbour Bellona Island. This fact has given rise to a good deal of 

 speculation. The islands were once thought to have been resting places 

 during the migration of the Polynesians from their original home in the 

 Philippines to the eastern Pacific; but the view generally held now is 

 that their population is more likely to have originated as a backwash from 

 the east. 



Unfortunately, the physical features of the Rennellese provide us with 

 no solution to this problem. Although I did not have an opportunity of 

 making anthropometric observations, the combination of fair skin, facial 



