198 MELANESIA AND ITS PEOPLE. 
sionary’s simple wardrobe seems to him to be lavish in the extreme; 
he therefore has no compunction in asking for what he knows the white 
man to possess. If a person has practically never owned anything at 
all and if all his fellows are in the same condition too it is almost impos- 
sible to get him to understand that he should feel gratitude towards 
those who give him anything, since from his point of view they have so 
much in that they have anything at all. 
RELATIONS OF NATIVES WITH WHITES. 
The question of treachery follows on that of gratitude. It is a matter 
of common belief amongst Europeans that natives are treacherous. 
This idea of treachery is generally founded on ignorance of the point of 
view of the natives. It is generally supposed that one can not trust 
oneself to them; that their attitude is uncertain and that they are 
liable to turn and rend one without any provocation. While granting 
that the native is a person of moods, it is just as possible to foretell 
what action he is likely to take in a given case as it 1s with Europeans. 
In his actions he follows a line of reasoning quite as much as the white 
man does. Many attacks on and murders of white men have been 
ascribed to treachery on the part of the natives, but it is only fair to 
call to remembrance the awful indignities and atrocities perpetrated on 
them by the whites and to put these in the scale over against the accu- 
sations of treachery. The native certainly at times acts wickedly either 
on the impulse of the moment or for a wicked end, but in most cases of 
wrong done to whites in Melanesia there has been some antecedent 
cause, some evil associated with a white person somewhere. ‘The occa- 
sion may have been remote and the connection faulty from our point 
of view, but in the mind of the native the provocation was there. With 
our notions of direct justice and of the necessity for the punishment of 
the actual wrong-doer himself we can not understand the point of view 
of the native, which is that justice is satisfied so long as some one of the 
same people who did the real or fancied wrong is made to suffer. 
