218 THE QUEENSLAND LABOR TRADE. 
Polynesian and represent a much more primitive method of speech, 
and that the Polynesian languages might possibly be described as much- 
worn specimens of Melanesian rather than the Melanesian as crude 
forms of Polynesian, and one would not be in error in saying that the 
key to the study of the Polynesian languages etymologically is found 
in the Melanesian languages. 
It is curious, however, that these Melanesians in Queensland should 
have been described as Kanakas. Kanaka is an Hawaiian word mean- 
ing man, and is identical with the Maori tangata, so the Kanaka labor 
trade means really the trade in men. Possibly the use of the word is 
reminiscent of the labor trade carried on by the Spaniards from Lima 
for laborers in the mines. Numbers of their ships went kidnapping 
at the Sandwich Islands and at Samoa, and just as in Melanesia in 
later days the labor vessels were known as “‘men-buying” or “men- 
stealing’’ ships, so the Hawaiians probably named them “‘kanaka- 
stealers,”’ but it 1s not certain how the Hawaiian word first came to 
be used in the trade in the western Pacific. 
Polynesians as such were but little recruited for Queensland or Fij1. 
In 1894 Bishop Wilson reported on a number of Gilbert Islanders 
(Micronesians) who had just been recruited, and in the early years 
raids were made on the Polynesians of Uvea in the Loyalties and on 
the Micronesians of the Line Islands. The Rotuma people included 
in that early raid are Polynesians in geographical situation, but speak 
a Melanesian language. Beyond these instances Polynesians as such 
seem not to have been recruited at all. However, a few were recruited 
from Rennell, an outlying island in the Solomons, and likewise from 
Ongtong Java (Lord Howe Island), north of the Solomons, and from 
Tikopia. Most of these recruits died and the survivors were returned 
to their homes before completing their three years. 
To call these Melanesians Papuans, as some of the labor-vessel 
captains did, or worse still, as some of the Presbyterian missionaries 
in the southern New Hebrides did, is really inexcusable from a lin- 
guistic point of view. Everyone in this part of the Pacific ought to 
know that the term Papuan is used to describe the peoples of New 
Guinea. The word Papua in itself is said to be a Malay word meaning 
frizzly or fuzzy and was applied by sea-going Malays to the frizzly- 
headed natives of New Guinea, they themselves of course having 
straight, long hair. So far, however, as the character of the hair goes, 
Melanesians might well be called Papuans. The Melanesian teachers 
in the Anglican Mission in Papua to-day are always called South Sea 
Islanders—a name imported from Queensland, whence they were 
obtained. All the legislation concerning the imported laborers in 
Queensland was under the heading of Pacific Islanders or Pacific 
island laborers. 
