Source and Mii^rafioii of the Polviicsiaii Race. 229 



to push on eastward until the Polynesian islands, at tliat time uninhabited, afforded them 

 that sheher and rest which in \-ain they had sought on the Papuan coasts. 



That their first attempt at permanent settlements, after a precarious and unsuc- 

 cessful sejour at the Loyalty Isles, was at the Viti or Fiji Islands there can be little 

 doubt. The number of Polynesian names by which these islands and places in them 

 are called, even now, by the Papuan inhabitants, argues, if not wholly a priority, at 

 least a permanence of residence, that can not well be disputed. The mixture of the 

 two races, especially in the southeastern part of the Viti Archipelago, indicates a pro- 

 tracted stay and an intercourse of peace as well as of war. But after some time — 

 how long- can not now be expressed in generations or in centuries — the Papuans suc- 

 ceeded in driving the Polynesians out of their group, and then, if thev had not liefore, 

 they occupied the island groups still further eastward, simultaneously or successively. 

 Of that intercourse, contest and hostility between the Papuan and Polynesian races on 

 the southwest fringe of the Pacific there are several traditionary reminiscences among 

 the Polynesian tribes, embodied in their mythology and connected with their earliest 

 data, or retained as historical facts pointing to past collision and stimulating to further 

 reprisals. The Tonga Islands have a tradition, recorded by Mariner, that Tangaloa, 

 one of their principal gods, had two sons, of which the elder was called Tupo, the 

 younger, Vaka-ako-uli. The first was indolent and shiftless, the other industrious and 

 prosperous. Jealousy induced the former to kill the other. Then Tangaloa called the 

 older brother and the family of the younger before him and thus addressed the latter: 

 "Vour bodies shall be fair, as the spirit of your father was good and pure; take your 

 canoes and travel to the eastward and all good things attend you." And to the older 

 brother the ofifended god thus spoke: "Thy body shall be black, as thy soul is wicked 

 and unclean ; I will raise the east wind between you and your brother's family, so that 

 you cannot go to them, yet from time to time I will permit them to come to you for the 

 purposes of trade." When we consider that from earliest times the Tonga Islanders 

 have kept up a constant intercourse with the \'iti group, either warlike or commercial, 

 it is not difficult to apply the tradition or to point the moral. 



That the hostility in the early days of Polynesian settlement in the Pacific was 

 remembered by other tribes as well as the Tonga, and looked upon as a national vendetta, 

 may be inferred from a remark made by Quiros in his account of the expedition of 

 Mendana (1595), while at the island of Santa Christina (Tahuata ) in the Marquesan 

 group. He says: — I quote from I'oyagc dc Marchand, vol. I, p. 22"/, — that the 

 natives, having observed a negro on board of the admiral's shi]) among the Spaniards, 

 said that to the south of their island there was land inhabited by black men; that thev 

 were their enemies; that they used the bow and arrow; and that the big war-canoes then 

 lying in the bay of Madre de Dios, were destined and being fitted to make war upon 

 them. Quiros, not then knowing the existence of the \'iti group, discredited their story 

 of the black men. The specialty, however, of their using the bow and arrow points 

 them out as the Papuans of the Viti group, to whom that weapon was and is familiar, 

 while by the Polynesians generally it is never or seldom used for purposes of war. 



Whether the Marquesans at that time actually carried on so distant a warfare as 

 between their group and the Viti, may or may not be called in doubt ; but the fact, that 



