THE ARTS OF THE CLUB. 3 
New Caledonian complex, 13 degrees away to the southwest. In the 
southern quadrant the nearest inhabited land is New Zealand, 20 
degrees remote from Tongatabu. In the eastern quadrant the nearest 
land is the Cook Islands, 16 degrees southeast of Samoa. 
Of the utmost simplicity in its geographical statement, widely 
removed as it is seen to be from contact with its neighbors, Nuclear 
Polynesia presents to our view a picture of considerable ethnic com- 
plexity. At least two races and their cultures have there entered into 
competition and offer for our efforts at disentanglement resultants 
which vary in each of the datum-points of the area. Furthermore, the 
superior culture makes its appearance in twofold stages of develop- 
ment. At the epoch when the arriving Polynesian culture, at a period 
which there is satisfactory reason to synchronize with the earliest 
centuries of the Christian era, advanced upon the occupation of this 
Pacific area we postulate two conditions affecting the region: The 
far-flung archipelago of Fiji (two major land-masses in Viti Levu and 
Vanua Levu, hundreds of smaller islands surrounding a central sea) 
was in occupation of a folk whose immediate affiliations—somatic and 
racial, and cultural and social—were with some one of those westward- 
lying peoples whom we class as the Melanesians. ‘The island groups 
which determine the eastward apices of the triangle were empty of 
humanity; no trace of somatic admixture is now found which can not 
be attributed to amalgamation with the Melanesians of Fiji during the 
period of intercourse for which we have abundant documentation in a 
large corpus of myth-history handed down in tradition congruent in the 
memories of diverse members of the race; the soil, although it is con- 
stantly revealing its inmost secrets under the downpour of tropical 
rains, has disclosed not a single artifact which suggests a culture in 
the least anterior to that of which the present occupants of the soil 
were possessed at the time of their discovery. 
This complexity of two major elements—in fact, for our practical 
consideration a complexity of a Melanesian and of two Polynesian 
elements—must underlie any study of the art and industry of Nuclear 
Polynesia as exhibited in its club types. These implements, the sum- 
mit of the useful in savage life and therefore worthy to receive the 
summit recognition in ornament, are the highest expression of human 
purpose; they are in essence the life of the man, the joy of living which 
falls but little short of the joy of dying. It may not be altogether 
possible to resolve satisfactorily all the elements of this complexity. 
The postulated Melanesian factor which is at its dominant position in 
Fiji may not be single in itself, for no one has yet systematized the 
interlacing of various elements in the peoples commonly set apart as 
Melanesian, yet it is evident that upon linguistic grounds approxi- 
mately colimital with cultural distinctions there must be at least three 
groups of Melanesians. During the present inquiry we shall regard 
