Liiifou — Tlic Marquesas Islands 461 



dominantly Indonesian, centered in western Polynesia. A second type seems to 

 have centered in southeastern Polynesia, associated with people predominantly 

 Caucasic, but who showed considerable negroid admixture. This type survived into 

 historic times in the Marquesas and New Zealand but had been greatly modified 

 in the Society Islands by immigrants with a culture of western Polynesian type. 

 A third culture, associated with populations of mixed Indonesian and Caucasic 

 type with little negroid admixture, formerly existed in Hawaii and the Mar- 

 quesas, but had been modified or displaced in the Marquesas by immigrants with 

 a culture of southeastern Polynesian type. Two of the cultural types are, there- 

 fore, linked with mixed populations and have either been introduced into Poly- 

 nesia by mixed groups of immigrants or have been developed from the fusion in 

 Polynesia of races dissimilar in physical type and probably in culture. The evi- 

 dent correlation between culture and physical type in Polynesia points to a rela- 

 tively recent settlement of the region. 



The Samoan and Tongan cultures apparently are not hvbrids produced by 

 the complete fusion of originally distinct cultures. They are rather to be con- 

 sidered as developments of a single comparatively simple culture which has been 

 modified by borrowing from several sources. This culture seems to have been 

 characterized by the use of rectangular houses or houses with a rectangular 

 center and apses, many piece canoes and lateen sails ; bludgeon clubs and possibly 

 throwing clubs ; a high development of mat weaving with a use of fine mats as 

 clothing; an angular geometric art with a poor development of wood carving and 

 a rarity or absence of human effigies ; a moderate development of stone con- 

 struction, extended earth burial for commoners and vault burial for chiefs ; a 

 tendency toward centralized government with divine chiefs and social classes ; 

 elaborate geneologies, and a worship of gods or dead chiefs. The Samoans 

 and Tongans appear to be racially more homogeneous than the inhabitants of 

 any of the other large Polynesian groups and are predominantly brachycephalic 

 (Dixon, 70 fl, PI. xxii-xxv), with a large proportion of the Indonesian race 

 (79 b, p. 19). It seems probable, therefore, that the culture just outlined was 

 introduced into Polynesia by immigrants of Indonesian race. 



The Maori and Marquesan cultures, which seem to be the historic repres- 

 entatives of the old southeastern Polynesian type of culture, sho\A' a number of 

 Melanesian affinities. Maori art resembles that of the Massim region of New 

 Guinea and that of some parts of New Britain, New Ireland and the Solomon 

 Islands much more than it does that of western Polynesia. The five-piece type 

 of canoe construction was used in most of the Melanesian localities where the 

 natives built large craft and the highly decorated bows and sterns of the ]\Iaori 

 and Marquesan canoes are suggestive of some Melanesian forms. Cannibalism, 



[201] 



