CHAPTER VI. 
MIGRATION DRIFT AND ERRATICS. 
In the succession of several volumes I have been able to prosecute 
somewhat minutely the examination and discussion of the linguistic 
evidence pertaining to the movement of Proto-Polynesian migration 
through the western Pacific from the earlier site of the race in Indonesia 
in the direction of its point of later distribution in Nuclear Polynesia. 
The physical material in this collection of the weapons of offense and 
of defense has afforded the machinery of a separate investigation of the 
same theme through other methods, quite distinct, and on that account 
all the more confirmatory. ‘The result proves to be the same along 
either line of inquiry. In these wooden artifacts of Nuclear Polynesia, 
highly evolved in form to correspond with needs not only utilitarian 
but even vital in their necessity, most remarkably specialized in orna- 
ment, there are found with equal clarity the memorials of such transit 
and sojourn of the peoples of the Nuclear Polynesian race through and 
in various parts of Melanesia as has already been established through 
the study of the many languages of the two Pacific areas. 
At particular points of the present inquiry proof has been adduced 
with growing strength of a distant source in Melanesia and in Melane- 
sian culture for this or that form of the artifacts, for this or that manner 
of decoration. In all study of this wonderful folk-movement which 
took Proto-Polynesians in two discrete waves of migration out of their 
earliest known seats in the islands of Indonesia and set them in Nuclear 
Polynesia, thence to undergo later distribution, we lack positive rec- 
ords. Such must be the case with an unlettered people. ‘The proof of 
the migration is all inferential; it subsists in the interpretation of ob- 
scure traditions, in the dissection of linguistic material, in the dissec- 
tion of the anatomy of customs and social manners. We refer this 
movement to a period relatively remote; the various accounts when 
synchronized suggest a date generally equated to the beginning of the 
Christian era. After the first eastward impulse had expended itself 
with the settlement of the race in Nuclear Polynesia, we postulate an 
inter-migration period in which there was no communication between 
Melanesia and Polynesia. Later by some six centuries we find a new 
folk-movement of sundered branches of the same race moving outward 
from Indonesia with a culture somewhat markedly advanced, partic- 
ularly in religious faith and social custom, pursuing some oceanic track 
not yet identifiable to a settlement of conquest upon the new abodes of 
its simpler kin. Quite uncertain as this second or Tongafiti migration 
track must remain in the present state of our knowledge of the race, 
there is ample reason to believe that it did not engage at any point 
with Melanesia and its culture. Following the Tongafiti arrival in 
Ly 
