On the isle of Kusaie twelve principal chiefs own all the land; but the chiefs of the second rank administer and cultivate it for them. The common people are obliged to pay a tribute to the chiefs and serve them. The highest mountains are planted up to their summits with bananas, taro, sugarcane, etc[54].
On the Eastern Caroline Islands the land belongs exclusively to the two upper classes; the third class are attached to the soil on which they live[55].
Hale states that in Ponape or Ascension Island there are three classes. All the land belongs to the two upper classes. The estates are never alienated and pass only by succession[56].
Gerland tells us that on the Marianne Islands the nobles were hereditary owners of the whole of the land[57].
As to the Kingsmill Islands, the particulars given by Wilkes and Parkinson, as quoted in the second chapter of Part I[58] sufficiently prove that all land had been appropriated. According to Wilkes “any one who owns land can always call upon others to provide him with a house, canoe, and the necessaries of life; but one who has none is considered as a slave, and can hold no property whatever.” Hale tells us that “the katoka are persons not originally of noble birth, who either by the favour of their chief or by good fortune in war, have acquired land and with it freedom”[59]. If in Wilkes’ statement we read “proletarian” instead of “slave,” and take Hale’s “freedom” in an economic, not in a legal sense, we find that here too the lowest class were destitute of landed property.
The conclusion is that on most of the islands of Micronesia all land has been appropriated, most often by the upper classes to the exclusion of the lower. In Pelau, though a vast amount of land is actually out of tillage, the regulation of landed property related by Kubary proves that all land is held as property. Here, as well as in Rotuma and Tahiti, we have to deal with the effects of the depopulation that has taken place in Oceania. In Mortlock there seems to be free land; but Kubary’s account is not very clear. [[324]]
§ 7. Land tenure in Melanesia.
Codrington, in his article “On social regulations in Melanesia,” remarks that his observations “are limited to the Northern New Hebrides, the Banks Islands, the Santa Cruz Group, and the South-eastern Solomon Islands”[60]. Of land tenure he says: “Land is everywhere divided into (1) the Town, (2) the Gardens, (3) the Bush. Of these the two first are held as property, the third is unappropriated.… Everywhere, or almost everywhere, the abundance of land makes it of little value. If an individual reclaims for himself a piece of bush land, it becomes his own”[61].