148 MASKS AND LABRETS. 



was populated in quaternary times by an autochthonic race, who were 

 the hunters of the moa, and who appear from their remains to have 

 more or less resembled the Melanesiau type. The Maori traditions in- 

 clude the idea of an older race who did not know the use of jade imple- 

 ments. The traditions of North Island Maoris place a race of wild men 

 in the interior as do those of the people of Chatham Island. These were 

 recognized as an older race by the Maories, and were dolichocephalic. 



The people of Samoa, in deforming the head to make it more brachy- 

 cephalic, are suggested by Kubary (Schmeltz, 1. c, pp. 472-474) to have 

 been originally actuated by a desire to conform their appearance to that 

 of the higher, incoming, and conquering brachycephalic race which in- 

 vaded these islands, and overcame the original dolichocephalic mel- 

 anitic inhabitants. The chiefs and upper classes were held by pride 

 from mixing with the women of the subject race, and their descendants 

 show it in their purity of type as regards color, hair, and form. The 

 commoner sort, however, probably were less continent in this respect, 

 and therefore their descendants, proud of their ancestry on one side, 

 but with the blood of the conquered element conspicuous in the longer 

 shape of the head, sought by artificial means to modify this inheritance. 



The Polynesian in its purity was a brachycephalic, conquering race. 

 As now found, it has mixed with the lower and conquered long-headed 

 people, and both have been more or less modified by contact, example, 

 and intermarriages. 



The features most akin to those to which on the western coast of 

 America particular attention is now called are evidently related more to 

 those of the Melanesians or predecessors of the true Polynesians than 

 to the latter, except so far as the Polynesians have been modified by 

 the customs of their forerunners. This would accord with the greater 

 antiquity which the circumstances seem to imperatively require. 



In Melanesia we find human heads more or less habitually preserved, 

 painted, and ornamented; the same again in New Zealand, in Bolivia, 

 in the interior of South America, in Mexico, and again on the north- 

 west coast. Here again, be it not forgotten, modes and details are 

 locally different, but the essential fact is the same. In the opposite 

 direction we have it in Borneo, and in Africa also. 



In Melanesia we find carved figures of a peculiar sort used in religious 

 rites, or with a religious significance, and, strangely enough, two or 

 more figures in a peculiar and unaccustomed attitude especially devoted 

 to these purposes. Again, in Central America and Mexico, we meet 

 the same attitude, and again on the rattle in the hand of the shaman on 

 the northwest coast, and in the carvings on his head-dress and by his 

 door. 



In Melanesia we find social festivals celebrated with masks upon the 

 face. We find the priest ofificiating in a mask, and masks hung up in 

 the morai, or temple of the dead, and in memory of the dead. In Peru, 

 in Mexico, on the northwest coast to the frozen borders of the icy sea, 



