HAND AND LEFT-HANDEDNESS. 5 
San Francisco and the Australian Colonies. “The Fijians,” he says, “are quite equal 
in stature to white men; they are better developed relatively in the chest and arms 
than in the lower limbs; they are excellent swimmers, and, if trained, are good rowers. 
Left-handed men are more common among them than among white people ; three were 
pointed out in one little village near the anchorage.” Yet here, as elsewhere, it is 
exceptional. 
The evidence of the recognition of native right-handedness reappears in widely 
separated islands of the Pacific. The Samoan word lima, hand, also signifying “ five ” ; and 
the terms lima maira, right hand, and lima woat, left-hand, are used as the equivalents of our 
own mode of expression. But also the left-hand is lima tau-anga-vale, literally, the hand 
that takes hold foolishly. In the case of the Samoans, it may be added, as well as among 
the natives of New Britain, and other of the Pacific Islands, the favoured hand corres- 
ponds with our right hand. My informant, the Rev. George Brown, for fourteen years a 
missionary in Polynesia, states that the distinction of right and left hand is as marked as 
among Europeans ; and left-handedness is altogether exceptional. In the Terawan lan- 
guage, which is spoken throughout the group of islands on the equator called the 
Kingsmill Archipelago, the terms atai or edai, right, dexter, (entirely distinct from rapa, 
good, right.) and maan, left, sinister, are applied to bai, or pai, the hand, to denote the 
difference, e. g., te bai maan, the left hand, literally, the “ dirty hand,” that which is not used 
in eating. The languages of our American continent furnish similar evidence of the 
recognition of the distinction among its hunter-tribes. In the Chippeway the word for 
my “right-hand” is ne-keche-neenj, ne being the prenominal prefix, literally “my great 
hand.” “My left-hand ” is ne-nuh-munje-neenj-ne. Numunj is the same root as appears in 
nuh-munj-e-doon, “1 do not know ” ; and the idea obviously is “the uncertain, or unreliable 
hand.” Again, in the Mohawk language, “the right-hand” is expressed by the term 
Ji-ke-we-yen-den-dah-kon, from ke-we-yen-deh, literally, “I know how.” Ji is a particle 
conveying the idea of side, and the termination dah-kon has the meaning of “ being accus- 
tomed to.” It is, therefore, the limb accustomed to act promptly, the dextrous organ. 
Ske-ne-kwa-dih the left-hand, literally means “ the other side.” 
Analogous terms are found alike in the languages of civilised and barbarous races, 
expressive of the inferiority of one hand in relation to the other, which is indicated in 
the classical sinistra as the subordinate of the dextra manus. The honorable significance of 
the right hand receives special prominence in the most sacred allusions of the Hebrew 
scriptures ; and in medieval art the right hand in benediction is a frequent symbol of the 
First Person of the Trinity. In the Anglo-Saxon version of the New Testament the 
equivalent terms appear as swythre and wynstre, as in Matthew vi. 3: ‘“ Sothlice thonne thu 
thinne aelmessan do, nyte thin wynstre hwaet do thin swythre;” “ When thou doest alms, 
let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” Again the distinction appears in 
a subsequent passage thus: “ And he geset tha scep on hys swithran healfe, and tha tyecenu 
on hys wynstran healfe.” (Matt. xxv. 34) Here the derivation of swythre from swyth, 
strong, powerful, swythra, a strong one, a dextrous man, swythre, the stronger, the right- 
hand, is obvious enough. It is also used as an adjective, as in Matthew v. 30: “ And gif 
thin swytrhe hand the aswice, aceorf hig of;” “ Andif thy right hand offend thee, cut it off.” 
The derivation of wynstre is less apparent, and can only be referred to its direct significance, 
se wynstra, the left. In the Greek we find the isolated apuorepos, apiotepa, left, » apiorepa, 
