In Yap, the lowest class (whom Gräffe wrongly calls slaves) are obliged daily to provide the upper classes with agricultural produce, and whenever the chiefs require it to aid in constructing houses and canoes. Whatever they possess, even to their wives and daughters, may at any time be required by the upper classes. Yet all labour is not exclusively incumbent on them. They are only bound to definite taxes, viz. to a tribute of victuals, and of mats and other materials for housebuilding; and their “slave-state” consists rather in a low and dependent condition than in being taxed with labour.
On the Marianne Islands there were three classes: nobles, semi-nobles, and common people. The common people were strictly separated from the nobles and entirely subjected to them. They were not allowed to navigate or fish or take part in any other pursuit followed by the nobles. Their principal occupations were tilling the soil, constructing roads, building canoe-houses, making nets, carrying ammunition in war, cooking rice, roots, etc. As they were forbidden to use canoes and fishing implements, the only fish they could procure were eels, which the nobles disdained; and even these they might only catch with the hand, not by means of nets or fish-hooks[108].
In Pelau, according to Kubary, there are no social classes; but the wants of the chiefs are generally provided for by the work of dependent relatives, who are treated as adopted children and may at any time leave their employers. Semper, however, speaks of a despised working class.
On the Kingsmill Islands, according to Parkinson, there are [[338]]two subjected classes. One is the class of the te torre, who live as vassals on the lands of the great landholders; they get a small piece of land for their own use; they must provide their lord with men when at war, and bring him the number of cocoanuts he desires, and what he needs for his household. The lowest class are the te bei or kaungo. They have no property, no land to live upon; they live with the great landholders by whom they are maintained; they on their part must work for their lords, i.e. fish, prepare food, etc. The lord, by giving them a piece of land, can raise them to the class of the te torre. These two classes have no voice in government matters; they follow their lord without grumbling; his will is their will; an offence against the lord is regarded by them as a personal offence, and avenged as such. Generally no one marries outside his class. In ordinary life there is no difference between master and vassal; they drink, dance, and play together; they wear the same kind of dress.
We shall inquire now what is the condition of the lower classes in Melanesia.
Rochas states that in New Caledonia the common people enjoy a rather independent position; they have to perform some services for the chiefs, which chiefly consist in cultivating their lands; but they always own a piece of land themselves. They are, however, sometimes killed by the upper chiefs for cannibal purposes. Glaumont enumerates the following classes: sorcerers, warriors, common people, slaves. But he adds that the chief himself, however powerful, would not dare to take away the field of taros or ignames belonging to the least of his subjects. According to Brainne, there are two classes: numerous chiefs of various kinds, and serfs, over whom the former, especially the superior chiefs, have the right of life and death. Lambert, a good authority, remarks that the only division of the people is that between the chiefs and their relatives and the rest of the population, and observes that those writers are wrong who speak of a class of nobles. The chief is not allowed to dispose of the property of his subjects[109]. So it seems that the natives here are rather democratically organized.
In Fiji, according to Williams, the lower classes were formerly [[339]]heavily oppressed. The chiefs looked upon them as their property, and took away their goods and often even their lives; this was considered “chief-like.” “Subjects” says Williams “do not pay rent for their land, but a kind of tax on all their produce, beside giving their labour occasionally in peace, and their service, when needed, in war, for the benefit of the king or their own chief.” Waterhouse states that many poor men could not procure a wife; they then borrowed one from a chief, and so became his retainers. Fison, speaking of the inhabitants of certain villages, says: “These are of the lowest rank, or rather of no rank at all. They are kaisi, the descendants of “children without a father.” They are vakatau ni were (husbandmen), but they are not yeomen like the taukei. Neither the lands they cultivate, nor the town lots on which they dwell are their own. They are not even tenants. They are hereditary bondsmen, adscripti glebae, whose business it is to raise food for their masters. Their lords may oppress them, and they have no redress. In times of peace they must work for them and in war time they must fight for them to the death”. According to Wilkes, “in each tribe great and marked distinctions of rank exist. The classes which are readily distinguished are as follows: 1. kings; 2. chiefs; 3. warriors; 4. landholders (matanivanua); 5. slaves (kai-si).” In another passage he speaks of “the kai-si or common people”. In Jackson’s narrative, quoted above, mention is also made of these kai-si or inhabitants of “slave lands”[110].
Codrington remarks: “In the native view of mankind, almost everywhere in the islands which are here under consideration [Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz Group, Banks’ Islands, and New Hebrides], nothing seems more fundamental than the division of the people into two or more classes, which are exogamous, and in which descent is counted through the mother.… Generally speaking, it may be said that to a Melanesian man all women, of his own generation at least, are either sisters or wives, to the Melanesian woman all men are either brothers or husbands”[111]. This seems to be sufficient proof that a subjected and despised lowest class does not exist; else the natives would not all be “brothers” and “sisters”. [[340]]
This conclusion is strengthened by consulting some other writers.
Guppy, describing the Solomon Islands, makes no mention of social ranks. Elton states that the chiefs have little power[112]. Nor have we found in any of the other writers anything tending to prove that the common people are oppressed.