108 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



The traditions of the Hawaiians, with the evidence derived from a 

 ■comparison of languages, show that their islands were settled by emi- 

 grants from the Marquesas (the nearest inhabited land) about fortj'- 

 :six generations, or about fourteen hundred years, ago. The inhabi- 

 tants of the Marquesas trace their descent partly fi-om Tahiti and 

 partly from Vavau, one of the Tonga (or Friendly) Islands. And the 

 people of Tahiti trace back their ancestry to the Navigator Group 

 (Samoa) which, with tlie neighboi'ing gi'oup of Tonga, was appai'ently 

 the piimary centre, or mother-country, of the Polynesian race. The 

 •emigrations from these western mother groups to the eastern clusters 

 must have taken place at least two thousand years ago. The care- 

 fully preserved genealogies of the Marquesan and Hawaiian chiefs- 

 are sufficient e^-idence on this point.* 



Now in compai'ing the languages of the eastern, or emigi'ant, com- 

 munities w4th those spoken in the western, or mother groups, we are 

 struck by the very slight changes which they have undergone, in words 

 and grammar, during this long period of over twenty centuries. They 

 still constitute, in fact, but dialects of one general language. The 

 Samoan is neai'er in words and pronunciation to the Hawaiian than 

 the Portuguese is to the Sjianish, or than the Lowland Scotch is to the 

 English. Hundreds of words in the eastern and western groups are 

 absolutely identical. The remainder differ chiefly in certain regular 

 permutations, of which the rules are easily understood. These per- 

 mutations are all in the direction of simplicity and ease of pronuncia- 

 tion. They and s of Samoa both become h in Hawaii. The Tongan 

 (or original Polynesian) k is dropped altogether in Hawaiian (as it 

 has also been in Samoan), its place being supplied by a slight catch 

 ing of the breath. Ika, the word for fish in Tongan and New Zealand, 

 is pronounced la in Samoa and Hawaii. The nasal ft (ng) become 

 simply n in Hawaiian. Mafia, which in Samoan and Tongan is 

 branch, becomes mana in Marquesan and Hawaiian. 



The few grammatical changes are in the same direction of greater 

 simplicity. The Samoan has several particles wliich are affixed to 



* See the subject fully discussed in the " Ethnography and Philolog-y of the U. S. Exploring- 

 Expedition," (under Wilkes) p. 117, and in the elaborate work of the late Judge Fornander of 

 Hawaii, on ' The Polynesian Race." A great scientific authority, M. de Quatrefages, has 

 ■summed up the facts and arguments in his volume " Les Polymsicns et leurs Migrations," 

 which decisively settled this interesting question. 



