TAHITI 



S- ) 

 I ' > 



COCOANUT TREES ON TAHITI ISLAND. 



COPRA, WHICH IS A DRIED COCOANUT MEAT FROM WHICH AN OIL IS EXPRESSED THAT HAS COUNTLESS USES FOR SOAPS, 

 COSMETICS AND FOOD PRODUCTS, IS THE CHIEF SOUTH SEA ISLAND COMMODITY. 



The social system of Tahiti and neigh- 

 boring islands of the Society Group, 

 which Europe first lauded and later 

 destroyed, was a peculiar one and by 

 no means wholly barbarous. It was 

 very similar to that of Europe in the 

 Middle Ages. There was no king, but 

 each district or chiefery had an inde- 

 pendent ruler who inherited under the 

 law of primogeniture and traced his 

 descent by a most carefully-kept genea- 

 logical system to almost incredible an- 

 tiquity. These nobles had courts con- 

 taining heralds, astronomers, jesters, 

 minstrels, priests, and indeed nearly all 

 the retinue of a feudal barony. Ath- 

 letics, dancing, and music, the last quite 

 highly developed, were the common 

 pastimes. Navigation was a science. 

 Tahitian voyagers sailed thousands of 

 miles to Hawaii and New Zealand, with- 

 out compass; indeed the Maoris of 

 New Zealand are now generally believed 



to be a race resultant from the conquest 

 of an aboriginal savage race by Society 

 Island war chiefs who colonized and 

 carried their customs and religion. 

 War was both pastime and vocation, 

 for quarrels between clans were inces- 

 sant, but was much in the nature of 

 duels or tournament. Cause was de- 

 clared and the victor withdrew after 

 honor was satisfied. Conquered terri- 

 tory was never held. On the whole the 

 people were social, gay, and pleasure- 

 loving to a degree which has given them 

 a rather bad reputation with conven- 

 tional moralists. Of Aryan ancestry, 

 practically or wholly escaping Mongol 

 or Negroid infusion by their exodus 

 from the mainland in the remote past, 

 they were and are still about what would 

 be expected of a people much like 

 Southern Europeans but who have been 

 isolated for ages under all the passionate 

 influences of the tropics. 



