128 ETHNOGRAPHY. 



The natives of the Friendly Islands, as we have before remarked, 

 have several peculiar customs, which they have derived, apparently, 

 from their Feejeean neighbors. Some of the most remarkable of 

 these are found also at Nukuhiva. Thus the Feejeeans, who take 

 great pains in dressing their hair in a frizzled mass resembling a huge 

 bushy wig, are accustomed, in order to preserve this from injury, to 

 wear a kind of turban, or head-wrapper, of very fine white paper- 

 cloth. The Tonga people, who have no such reason for the custom, 

 have yet adopted it merely for ornament, and we find it also among 

 the Marquesans. The description which Porter gives of the turbans 

 worn by the latter, might stand, word for word, (except only the 

 name,) for a description of the same article at the Feejee Group. 

 Again, the Feejeeans set a singular value upon the teeth of the whale, 

 which are used by them for ornaments, and also as a kind of circu- 

 lating medium. In the Friendly Islands they are equally prized, but 

 only as ornaments, and the same is the case at the Marquesas. The 

 statement of Captain Porter, that a ship might be stocked with pro- 

 visions at this group for a few of these teeth is equally true, at this 

 day, of the Feejee Islands. Nothing like this has ever been known 

 at either Tahiti or Samoa. 



On the whole, it seems probable that the northern portion of the 

 Marquesan Group was first settled by emigrants from Vavau, and the 

 southern by others from Tahiti, and that their descendants have since 

 gradually intermingled. The Tahitians may have been the most 

 numerous, and perhaps received additions from time to time, from 

 their parent country, which is only seven hundred miles distant, 

 which would account for their language having become, in a great 

 measure, predominant. It is to these, also, that the tradition with 

 regard to Havaiki is probably to be referred. 



The story of the Nukuhivans, as Commodore Porter received it 

 from the chief Gattanewa (Keatanui), was to the effect that Oataia, 

 with his wife Ananoona, came from Vavau eighty-eight generations 

 back, (reckoned in the family of Gattanewa himself,) and brought with 

 them bread-fruit and sugar-cane, and a great variety of other plants. 

 They had forty children, who were all named after the plants which 

 they had brought with them, with the exception of the first son, who 

 was called Po, or night.* They settled in the valley of Tieuhoy 



* There is, perhaps, a mistake here. Those divinities, in other groups, of whose 

 origin the natives can give no account, are spoken of by them as hanau-po, " born of 

 night." Hanau has both an active and a passive meaning, and is used for " to bring 



