PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



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area. The people of negrito features and a postposing grammar in New Guinea, 

 New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, Australia, etc., who have been termed Melanesian, 

 he classifies as Papuan. The other islanders he divides into two groups. Those of 

 Eastern Polynesia and New Zealand he calls the Sawaiori, a name compounded of 

 the words ^^-moa, Ha.-ivai-i, and Ma-ori, denoting three representative peoples 

 belonging to the race. To those of the north-western islands he gives the title 

 Tarapon, from Tara-wan and Pon-ape, representative islands in the Gilbert and 

 CaroHne groups. A judgment based on partial vocabularies can hardly be a definite 

 one ; still a court must decide on the evidence before it, and render a verdict liable 

 to revision should fuller testimony afterwards be forthcoming. At present the 

 Malay element in the Niskwalli is represented by 51 Javanese, 45 Malay, 22 Sulu, 

 21 Sunda, 17 Bali and Mysol, 15 Tagala, 14 Bugis, 12 Bisayan, Madura, Wahai, 

 and Tidore words. This decides nothing but the general fact of the Malay- 

 Polynesian origin of the Salishans, save that in Tagala, Bugis, Macassar, Mysol, 

 Menado, Salibabo, Saparua, Awaiya, Camarian, etc., the taiuata or Polynesian form 

 of the word for man appears, which is also Salishan. The Tarapon or Micronesian 

 division of the South Sea Islands has but a small representation of some thirty 

 words. But the Sawaiori division counts 51 Maori, 30 Tonga, and other verbal 

 equivalents, showing that the Salishan stock is Sawaiorian. It has also verbal 

 affinities to the languages of the Pelew islanders and the Malayan aborigines of 

 Formosa, which suggest the route by which the Niskwalli and their brethren passed 

 from the Malay Archipelago to the Hawaiian Islands and thence to the American 

 coast. 



The Malays have been called the Phcenicians of the East, and I have already 

 hinted that Phcenician blood is in them. The enterprise that carried them to 

 Madagascar in the west, and to Easter Island in the east, which sent them to the 

 fishing grounds of Australia and to the ports of China, which pirate-wise swept the 

 seas with hundreds of large war prahus and well-provisioned craft of many sails; 

 that enterprise which brought to Central America the culture of the Maya-Quiches, 

 and overflowed into the West India Islands long before Columbus reached their 

 shores, became paralyzed when European voyagers, headed by the Portuguese, 

 invaded their domain. Before they came, Hindoos, Arabians and Mongols had 

 effected large displacements of population, but till late in the Sixteenth Century,, 

 fleets of three hundred sail, cari'ylng fifty thousand combatants, were not unknown 

 in their eastern seas. Of the Malay-Polynesian tribes, however, there is no such 

 thing as continuous history. Their tjaditions blend with their mythology, and it is 

 little to be wondered at that they and their widely-separated relatives should have 

 preserved no record of their migrations, when the same is true of some of the most 

 highly civilized nations. 



Like the Malay-Polynesians, the Salishans are not scalpers, but decapitators or 

 head-hunters, as were the extinct Beothiks of Newfoundland. Their canoes, also, are 

 dug-outs, as originally were those of all tribes of insular origin. They tattoo the 

 jaw and wear scanty clothing. When first met with they were not hunters and looked 

 upon venison with disgust. Their fish-hooks, made of wood or bone, were similar to 

 those of the South Sea Islanders. In regard to their mortuary customs. Dr. Franz 

 Boas says : " The face of the deceased is painted with red and black paint. * * 

 * A chief's body is put in a carved box, and the front posts supporting his coffin 

 are carved. His mask is placed between these posts. The graves of great warriors 

 are marked by a statue representing a warrior with a war club. -'= * * After 

 the death of husband or wife, the survivor must paint his legs and his blanket red. At 

 the end of the mourning period, the red blanket is given to an old man, who deposits 

 it in the woods." The Salishan lament of a mother over her dead child is, ''Ah 

 seahb ! shedda buddah ah ta bud ! ad-dc-dah ! " or, " Ah chief, my child is dead ! Alas '." 



