282 ]\Icino!rs Bcniicc P. BisJiop Muscudi 



THE HOUSE DOOR 

 No doors of the ancient type have survived, but good descriptions were ob- 

 tained from informants. The doorway was normally in the middle of the front 

 wall, the central pair of posts being placed relatively close together to form the 

 jambs, while the top stringer of the wall formed the lintel. In many houses, 

 however, a separate lintel was placed some distance below the stringer. The door- 

 way was then so low that a person entering was compelled to bend almost double. 

 The object of the low doorway was purely defensive. Both high and low door- 

 ways were used in all the islands in ancient times. Two forms of door are said 

 to have been used with the high doorways. One of these consisted of two coco- 

 nut leaf mats of the sort used for thatch, one of which was tied to either door 

 post. To close the aperture the edges of the mats were drawn together and tied. 

 The second form of door was made b)- planting two strong posts in the house 

 floor, one close behind either doorpost ; two heavy planks, as high as the door- 

 way and more than half as wide, were then hewn from breadfruit wood and 

 placed between the door posts and inner posts on either side of the doorway, 

 the whole forming a crude double-leafed sliding door. To close the door the two 

 planks were slid out from either side of the doorway meeting the middle. Stewart 

 (59j PP- ^33--?)^) speaks of "a small door in the middle, furnished with a shutter, 

 in a slide, to be closed or opened at pleasure." Informants in Hiva Oa said that 

 the small doorways there were provided with a single-leafed sliding door, although 

 the exact arrangement had been forgotten. According to informants in the 

 valley of Pua Ma'u, Hiva Oa, the doorways, whether high or low, were arranged 

 with inner posts, like those already described, but were closed by laying a number 

 of timbers of breadfruit wood, one above the other, in the space between the front 

 posts and inner posts. 



INTERIOR ARRANGEMENT OF THE HOUSE 

 The interior of the house consisted usually of a single room, without par- 

 titions, but Kruesenstern (34, p. 161) and Gracia (28, p. 123) both say that in the 

 better houses one end was divided off by a bamboo partition and was used as a 

 storeroom for valuables and Handy (^,2) reports tapa curtains called kalni police 

 ioto sometimes used in Nuku Hiva. There was no furniture; even the stools used 

 by some of the other Polynesian grou]3S were lacking. The bed formed an in- 

 tegral part of the house. A strip comprising the rear half of the house-floor 

 was left unpaved at the time of the construction of the pacpac, and this was leveled 

 and filled with soft earth, free from stones, until its surface was six to eight 

 inches below the paved forward portion of the house-floor. Two carefully 

 dressed palm logs eight inches to a foot in diameter were then laid along either 

 edge of the depression. The straightness and polish of these logs were the pride 



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