Being merely hunters and collectors, with the arrival of English colonists their doom was sealed. "Only in rare instances can a race of hunters contrive to co-exist with an agricultural people. When the hunting ground of a tribe is restricted owing to its partial occupation by the new arrivals, the tribe affected is compelled to infringe on the boundaries of its neighbours: this is to break the most sacred 'law of the Jungle,' and inevitably leads to war: the pressure on one boundary is propagated to the next, the ancient state of equilibrium is profoundly disturbed, and inter-tribal feuds become increasingly frequent. A bitter feeling is naturally aroused against the original offenders, the alien colonists; misunderstandings of all kinds inevitably arise, leading too often to bloodshed, and ending in a general conflict between natives and colonists, in which the former, already weakened by disagreements among themselves, must soon succumb. So it was in Tasmania." After the war of 1825 to 1831 the few wretched survivors, numbering about 200, were gathered together into a settlement, and from 1834 onwards every effort was made for their welfare, "but 'the white man's civilisation proved scarcely less fatal than the white man's bullet,' and in 1877, with the death of Truganini, the last survivor, the race became extinct[374]."
FOOTNOTES:
[319] Cf. S. H. Ray, Reports Camb. Anthrop. Exp. Torres Sts. Vol. III. 1907, pp. 287, 528. For Melanesian linguistic affinities see also W. Schmidt, Die Mon-Khmer Völker, 1906.
[320] C. G. Seligman limits the use of the term Papuasian to the inhabitants of New Guinea and its islands, and following a suggestion of A. C. Haddon's (Geograph. Journ. XVI. 1900, pp. 265, 414), recognises therein three great divisions, the Papuans, the Western Papuo-Melanesians, and the Eastern Papuo-Melanesians, or Massim. Cf. C. G. Seligman, "A Classification of the Natives of British New Guinea," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. Vol. XXXIX. 1902, and The Melanesians of British New Guinea, 1910.
[321] That is, the indigenous Papuans, who appear to form the great bulk of the New Guinea populations, in contradistinction to the immigrant Melanesians (Motu and others), who are numerous especially along the south-east coast of the mainland and in the neighbouring Louisiade and D'Entrecasteaux Archipelagoes (Eth. Ch. XI.).
[322] The Melanesians of British New Guinea, 1910, pp. 2, 27.
[323] The curly or wavy hair appears more commonly among women than among men.
[324] Kanaka is a Polynesian word meaning "man," and should therefore be restricted to the brown Indonesian group, but it is indiscriminately applied by French writers to all South Sea Islanders, whether black or brown. This misuse of the term has found its way into some English books of travel even in the corrupt French form "canaque."
[325] L'Archipel de la Nouvelle Calédonie, Paris, 1895.
[326] Lifu, Mare, Uvea, and Isle of Pines. These Polynesians appear to have all come originally from Tonga, first to Uvea Island (Wallis), and thence in the eighteenth century to Uvea in the Loyalties, cradle of all the New Caledonian Polynesian settlements. Cf. C. M. Woodford, "On some Little-known Polynesian Settlements in the Neighbourhood of the Solomon Islands," Geog. Journ. XLVIII. 1916.