POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 16/ 
means of subsistence, necessarily impart a maritime 
character to their habits, and render the building, 
fitting, and managing of the vessels one of the most 
general and important of their avocations. It also 
procures no small respect and emolument for the 
Tahua tarai vaa, builder of canoes. Vaa waa, or 
vaka, is the name of a canoe, in most of the islands of 
the Pacific; though by foreigners they are uniformly 
called canoes, a naihe first given to this sort of boat 
by the natives of the Caribbean Islands,* and adopted by 
Europeans ever since, to designate the rude boats used 
by the uncivilized natives in every part of the world. 
The canoes of the Society Islanders are various, both 
in size and shape, and are double or single. The canoes 
belonging to the principal chiefs, and the vaa mataaina, 
public district canoes, were in general large—fifty, sixty, 
or nearly seventy feet long, and each about two feet 
wide, and three or four feet deep; the sterns 
remarkably high, sometimes fifteen or eighteen feet above 
the water, and frequently ornamented with rudely carved 
hollow cylinders, square pieces, or grotesque figures, 
called tiis. The rank or dignity of a chief was supposed, 
in some degree, to be indicated by the size of his canoe, 
the carving and ornaments with which it was embellish¬ 
ed, and the number of his rowers.—Next in size to 
these was the pahi, or war canoe. I never’ saw but 
one of these: the stern was low, and covered, so as 
to afford a shelter from the stones of the assailants; 
the bottom was round, the upper part of the sides 
* After his first interview with the natives of the newly discovered 
islands, in the Caribbean sea, we are informed by Robertson, that Co¬ 
lumbus returned to his ship, accompanied by many of the islanders in 
their boats, which they called canoes ; and though rudely formed out of 
the trunk of a single tree, they rowed them with surprising dexterity. 
