172 THE SUBANU. 
ratio of 257 words to the corpus of Malayan speech in some scores and 
more of languages. I do not now recall an enumeration of the number 
of words which we have assumed from the American Indian. Squaw 
and papoose, wigwam and tepee, wampumpeag and quahaug from 
which it was cut—I am sure that I could find 250 words taken by vio- 
lence or wheedling from our wards and included in the tongue we speak. 
But not on that account (should I ever be tempted to become a philo- 
logic systematist) do I intend to propose the erection of a speech family 
of the Anglo-Algonkian for New England or Anglo-Iroquoian for New 
York, although I sometimes fancy that such a family, did it really exist, 
would tend toward the better preservation of the purity of the diction 
now local to Manhattan. This is not absurd, or else Bopp’s Malayo- 
Polynesian family founded on equal numbers is absurd; which, in truth, 
I believe it to be. 
I shall not here enter at length upon the consideration of the source 
of this Polynesian content of the Malayan; I shall not here explain how 
it is possible that the Malayan contains Polynesian and the Polynesian 
contains no Malayan. Amending the figure from 150 to 257, I have 
presented this argument in full in The Polynesian Wanderings. In its 
barest outline I shall restate it. 
The Polynesian peoples before the Christian era occupied more or 
less completely the islands of the Malay Archipelago and were probably 
as now in the Pacific, coast-dwellers. About that epoch the Malayan 
peoples descended upon the island region from the coast lands of the 
Asiatic continent with a superior civilization, probably in the possession 
of the art of working metals. Before the better-equipped warriors the 
Polynesians fled eastward, ever being dislodged from more eastern 
islands of the archipelago as the Malayans bore upon their rearguard. 
Eventually the Polynesians were forced out of the archipelago by way 
of the waters respectively north of New Guinea and south* thereof and 
in the free Pacific were beyond the reach of their oppressors. From the 
reading of the material contained in this volume I add to my former 
consideration another explanation of the Polynesian content. 
In the west of Malaysia—say in Sumatra, since the present ethno- 
logic position of Mentawei off the western coast of that island is most 
significant—the first stragglers of the Malayan swarm, too few to be 
dangerous, necessarily on their good behavior, would be adopted into 
the Proto-Polynesian communities and undergo naturalization in speech 
and habit. Later, upon the coming of the irresistible body of the 
invaders, this body of naturalized Polynesian Malays would be the first 
to feel the attack and would scatter wherever their fleets could carry 
them, yet as soon as peace was made they would prove readily assimil- 
able with their parent Malayan stock. ‘This provides a sufficient expla- 
nation why we find the most archetypal Malay at points so sundered as 
*See note at end of chapter, p. 173. 
