POr POUNDERS. 



37 



kalo, as in some Micronesian islands, the edible substance is pounded with similar 

 pestles of wood or stone. The root of the kalo {Colocasia csciiloita) is cooked and then 

 pounded on large wooden dishes, with no inconsiderable labor, into a tough and pasty 

 dough Avhich is then in turn diluted with water and allowed to sour as a paste. This 

 is the favorite food among the Polynesians both 3'onng and old, and it seems to confute 

 the popular idea that tropical peoples will not by choice do hard work. Certainly poi 



FIG. 31. HAWAIIAN POI BOARD AND POUNDERS. 



pounding was the hardest bread-making known among the nations, and the laljor fell 

 to the lot of the men alone. 



But it is not so much the work done with these pounders, which will properly 

 be considered in the chapter on Food, as the work exjjended in making them, and also 

 the variation in forms that we are to study here. Every important group in Polj-nesia 

 (iising poi) had its own pattern, and as they have been somewhat mixed in niu.seums 

 and private colle^lions, a very brief notice of these forms must be given here. The 

 group with which in traditional times the Hawaiians had the closest connection through 

 their long voyages, had a form cjuite distinct from any known to their visitors, and 

 vet the Tahitian form is often attributed to the Hawaiian islands because the inter- 

 course in the period when the whaling industry flourished in these waters brought 

 many Tahitian things to Honolulu which became a point for their redistribution to the 



[369J 



