The number of natives in the New Hebrides and Banks Islands amounted, according to the approximate census of the British Resident Commissioner in 1910, to 65,000. At a conservative estimate we may say that before the coming of the whites, that is, a generation ago, it was ten times that, i.e. 650,000. For to judge from present conditions, the accounts of old men and the many ruined villages, it is evident that the race must have decreased enormously.
Language
The languages belong to the Melanesian and Polynesian classes. They are split up into numerous dialects, so widely different that natives of different districts can hardly, if at all, understand each other. It is evident that owing to the seclusion of the villages caused by the general insecurity of former days, and the lack of any literature, the language developed differently in every village.
On some islands things are so bad that one may easily walk in one day through several districts, in each of which is spoken a language quite unintelligible to the neighbours; there are even adjoining villages whose natives have to learn each other’s language; this makes them fairly clever linguists. Where, by migrations, conditions have become too complicated, the most important of the dialects has been adopted as a kind of “lingua franca.”
Under these circumstances I at once gave up the idea of learning a native language, as I never stopped anywhere more than a few weeks; and as the missionaries have done good work in the cause of philology, my services were not needed. I was, therefore, dependent on interpreters in “biche la mar,” a language which contains hardly more than fifty words, and which is spoken on the plantations, but is quite useless for discussing any abstract subject. In nearly every village there is some man who can speak biche la mar.
Colonization
As we have seen, colonization in the New Hebrides was begun by the whalers, who had several stations in the southern islands. They had, however, little intercourse with the natives, and their influence may be considered fairly harmless.
More dangerous were the sandalwood traders, who worked chiefly in Erromanga. They were not satisfied with buying the valuable wood from the natives, but tried to get directly at the rich supplies inland. Naturally, they came into conflict with the natives, and fierce wars arose, in which the whites fought with all the weapons unscrupulous cruelty can wield. As a result, the population of Erromanga has decreased from between 5000 and 10,000 to 800.
Happily, the northern islands were not so rich in sandalwood, so that contact with the whites came later, through the coprah-makers. Coprah is dried cocoa-nut, which is used in manufacturing soap, and the great wealth of cocoa-nut palms attracted coprah-makers as early as the ’Seventies of the last century. They were nearly all ruined adventurers, either escaped from the Nouméa penitentiary or otherwise the scum of the white race. Such individuals would settle near a good anchorage close to some large village, build a straw hut, and barter coprah for European goods and liquor. They made a very fair profit, but were constantly quarrelling with the natives, whom they enraged by all sorts of brutalities. The frequent murders of such traders were excusable, to say the least, and many later ones were acts of justifiable revenge. The traders were kept in contact with civilization through small sailing-vessels, which brought them new goods and bought their coprah. This easy money-making attracted more whites, so that along the coasts of the more peaceable islands numerous Europeans settled, and at present there are so many of these stations that the coprah-trade is no longer very profitable.
Naturally, many of these settlers started plantations, and thus grew up the plantation centres of Mele, Port Havannah, Port Sandwich, Epi and the Segond Channel. Many plantations were created by the “Société Française des Nouvelles Hébrides,” but owing to bad management these have never yet brought any returns.