A History of the Binomial Classification 
of the Polynesian Native Dog 
Katharine Luomala 1 
This is a survey of attempts from the last 
quarter of the eighteenth century to the present 
to give a binomial classification to the Poly- 
nesian native dog. Taxonomic interest has been 
expressed mainly by German and British natural 
scientists. Most of them, having neither seen a 
living Polynesian dog of unquestioned native 
breed nor studied skeletal material from a dog 
presumed to be of native breed, have had to de- 
pend on a few generalized descriptions by ex- 
plorers and settlers. Presented here are the 
taxonomists’ classifications and theories, the de- 
scriptions that they have cited, and the probable 
sources and dependability of any of their un- 
acknowledged information about the appearance 
of the Polynesian native dog. 
This paper results from my interest, mostly 
anthropological and mythological, in the Poly- 
nesian native dog. Polynesians in New Zealand, 
the Tuamotus, and the Hawaiian Islands narrate 
variants of a myth that the demigod Maui-of-a- 
thousand-tricks transformed a man he hated into 
a dog, the first known to them and a symbol 
of abhorred traits like gluttony, laziness, and 
incest. A story, entirely different from this, that 
Samoans and Tongans tell, of how Maui died 
when he attempted to kill a cave-dwelling, man- 
eating dog, is probably a post-European com- 
position since the dog was apparently absent 
from western Polynesia at the time of European 
discovery (Luomala, 1958). Polynesians had am- 
bivalent attitudes toward the dog, for it was 
both a symbol of the social outcast and a symbol 
of prestige that through its varied uses increased 
the status of its owner (Luomala, I960). 
The dog was present at the time of European 
discovery of Polynesia in only a few archipela- 
goes. The Tuamotus, Society Islands, Hawaiian 
Islands, and New Zealand had dogs which I be- 
lieve they did not get from any known European 
1 Department of Anthropology, University of Ha- 
waii, Honolulu. Manuscript received April 6, 1959- 
explorers and which may actually have been 
descendants of dogs introduced into the eastern 
Pacific by the Pacific islanders themselves. No 
dependable evidence has been found of the dog’s 
presence in western Polynesia at the time of first 
European contact. Indicative of the intricacies of 
the question of the pre-European distribution of 
the dog is the fact that the first European ref- 
erence to seeing a dog in Polynesia was in 1606 
at a Tuamotuan atoll, perhaps Anaa, where the 
Quiros expedition met an old lady carrying a 
little white or speckled dog and wearing a gold 
and emerald ring! Also in certain other islands 
like Tonga, for example, no dogs existed but the 
natives recognized and called by the name of 
kuri, the most common Polynesian word for 
dog, the dogs on board Captain James Cook’s 
ships (Luomala, I960). 
Only studies of skeletal remains of dogs from 
archeological sites definitely established as pre- 
European by radiocarbon dating or other means 
will provide more information than we now 
have on the native dog. Only in the Hawaiian 
Islands, New Zealand, and the Marquesas is 
such work going on at present. The Marquesans 
apparently had no live dogs at the time of Euro- 
pean discovery in 1595, but recent finds in 1956 
of remains of dogs in what appear to be pre- 
European sites on the western coast of Nukuhiva 
Island point to their former presence in the 
Marquesas (Shapiro, 1958: 269). 
I have never located any information as to 
what finally happened to the Tahitian dog that 
George Forster of Cook’s second expedition 
mentions was brought back to England. There is 
no further word on its fate in England or what 
disposition of its hide and skeleton was even- 
tually made when it died. It was one of two of 
the Society Islands dogs aboard ship that had 
recovered from an experiment on them at "Mal- 
licollo” (Malekula, New Hebrides) with Male- 
kulan arrow poison. Later the dogs, like some 
other domestic animals and a pet bird aboard 
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