TBE NATIVE TRIBES OF FOLYNES-IA. 45 & 



aot of course by necessity, but tbrougb choice and custom. I do not 

 deny that many of the Polynesians eat human flesh, but they do it 

 rather as a conscientious duty than as a social habit. When they kill 

 an enemy there are certain portions of his body which they eat. They 

 do this to dishonor their foe and to quiet their own consciences. They 

 have accomplished all that duty and the ethics of war require, when 

 they have tasted a mouthful of the fat that is near the kidneys j and if 

 they go farther and make a feast upon the greater part of the body it 

 is because they are over-elated with victory, or because they are giving 

 way to a more than ordinary hatred of the man whom they have over- 

 come. Perhaps too they may sometimes go upon much the same prin- 

 ciple that a white man adopts, when, having drunk one glass of whisky 

 punch, he goes on drinking other glasses of whisky punch, until he 

 gets much more than either does him good or improves his reputation. 

 If this be cannibalism then the Polynesians are cannibals ; but it is 

 not the sense in which the word is constantly being applied, and in 

 which I claim that it has no existence in many places where it has 

 been said to prevail. My opinion therefore is that if any one becomes 

 food for a Polynesian it is his own fault, and not merely a consequence 

 of his going among these people. 



Let me now more particularly but still very briefly advert to a sub- 

 ject which in many of its bearings is of the greatest interest to anthro- 

 pologists, I wish I could say to society generally. I allude to the 

 future of the Polynesian race. I need not here dwell upon or even 

 pause to illustrate the fact, which is so prominent in the history of 

 Anglo-Saxon colonization, that aboriginal tribes seem destined to disap- 

 pear before a higher civilization, when that is presented by our own 

 people. Numerous evidences of this will occur to the minds of all 

 present, of which perhaps not the least important, although the most 

 recent, is the rapid diminution of the Negro, which is now and has 

 been since the civil war going on in the United States. I think how- 

 ever we must acknowledge as a law in this matter, that the disappear- 

 ance takes place in the direct ratio of the lower mental and physical 

 development of the aborigines, and it is upon this that I am inclined 

 in a great measure to shape my conclusions. In this country for 

 example we see a fusion of the Indian with European blood, and at 

 present we have no data upon which we can determine whether the 

 mixed race will be perpetuated. Bat among the aborigines of Aus- 

 tralia we see no such tendency. I have met with the oflBpring of black 



