BECKWITH] INTRODUCTION 297 
istics, the same language, customs, habits of life prevail; the same 
arts, the same form of worship, the same gods. And a common stock 
of tradition has passed from mouth to mouth over the same area. 
In New Zealand, as in Hawaii, men tell the story of Maui’s fishing 
and the theft of fire.t A close comparative study of the tales from 
each group should reveal local characteristics, but for our purpose 
the Polynesian race is one, and its common stock of tradition, which 
at the dispersal and during the subsequent periods of migration was 
carried as common treasure-trove of the imagination as far as New 
Zealand on the south and Hawaii on the north, and from the western 
Fiji to the Marquesas on the east, repeats the same adventures among 
similar surroundings and colored by the same interests and desires. 
This means, in the first place, that the race must have developed 
for a long period of time in some common home of origin before 
the dispersal came, which sent family groups migrating along the 
roads of ocean after some fresh land for settlement ;* in the second 
place, it reflects a period of long voyaging which brought about 
interchange of culture between far distant groups.’ As the Crusades 
were the great exchange for west European folk stories, so the days 
of the voyagers were the Polynesian crusading days. The roadway 
through the seas was traveled by singing bards who carried their 
tribal songs as a race heritage into the new land of their wanderings. 
Their inns for hostelry were islets where the boats drew up along 
the beach and the weary oarsmen grouped about the ovens where 
their hosts prepared cooked food for feasting. Tales traveled thus 
from group to group with a readiness which only a common tongue, 
common interests, and a common delight could foster, coupled with 
the constant competition of family rivalries. 
1 Bastian in Samoanische Schépfungssage (p. 8) says: ‘ Oceanien (im Zusammenbegriff 
von Polynesien und Mikronesien) repriisentirt (bei vorliiufigem Ausschluss yon Mela- 
nesien schon) einen Flichenraum, der alles Aehnliche auf dem Globus intellectualis 
weit tibertrifft (von Hawaii bis Neu-Seeland, von der Oster-Insel bis zu den Marianen), und 
wenn es sich hier um Inseln handelt durch Meeresweiten getrennt, ist aus solch insularer 
Differenzirung gerade das Hilfsmittel comparativer Methode geboten fiir die Induction, 
um dasselbe, wie biologisch sonst, hier auf psychologischem Arbeitsfelde zur Verwendung 
zu bringen.” Compare: Kriimer, p. 394; Finck, in Royal Scientific Society of Géttingen, 
1909. 
2 Lesson says of the Polynesian groups (1, 378): ““On sait . . . que’ tous ont, 
pour loi civile et religieuse, la méme interdiction; que leurs institutions, leurs céré- 
monies sont semblables; que leurs croyances sont fonci€rement identiques; qu’ils ont 
le méme culte, les mémes coutumes, les mémes usages principaux; qu’ils ont enfin les 
mémes mceurs et les mémes traditions. Tout semble done, a priori, annoncer que, 
quelque soit leur éloignement les uns des autres, les Polynésiens ont tiré d'une méme 
source cette communauté d'idées et de langage; qu’ils ne sont, par conséquent, que les 
tribus dispersées d’une méme nation, et que ces tribus ne se sont séparées qu’A une 
époque ot la langue et les idées politiques et religieuses de cette nation étaient déja 
fixées.”’ 
3 Compare: Stair, Old Samoa, p. 271; White, 1, 176; Fison, pp. 1, 19; Smith, Hawaiki, 
p. 123; Lesson, 11, 207, 209; Grey, pp. 108-234; Baessler, Neue Siidsee-Bilder, p. 113; 
Thomson, p. 15. 
. 
