Pioneers in Australasia

by Harry Johnston

OCEANIC NEGRO TYPE FROM THE NORTHERNMOST SOLOMON ISLANDS
(From a photograph)

Melanesians, like Polynesians and Papuans, lived much on a fish diet if dwelling anywhere near the sea. The Papuans of New Guinea do not seem to have known the Bread-fruit until modern times, though that tree was the most important staple of life in so many Pacific islands, and under another name appears anciently to have been a favourite article of food in the Malay Archipelago. There was, however, no Bread-fruit among the New Zealanders, though they had sweet potatoes, taro yams, and gourds. Likewise the New Zealanders omitted to take the pig with them from their original home in Samoa: perhaps, however, the pig had not then reached those islands from the west. The New Zealanders ate their dogs, and the domestic dog throughout Oceania was bred for eating, and not merely as a hunting companion. Like the Dingo of Australia, and the domestic dogs of Negro Africa, the breeds of Malaysia and Polynesia could not bark. In Melanesia and most parts of the Pacific, including New Zealand, one or more species of rat were much in request as food, and were introduced by these different races of men into almost all the islands, including New Zealand.

All the Melanesians, like the Papuans of New Guinea, and the Negroes of the Bismarck Archipelago, were thorough-going cannibals, and this vice—the eating of human flesh—infected some of the Polynesian peoples, especially the New Zealanders. Cannibalism probably existed at one time in all the Polynesian islands, but had died out in most by the time they were discovered by Europeans, only remaining as a well-established custom in New Zealand and throughout Melanesia. The New Zealand Maoris used after one of their inter-tribal battles to collect the bodies of their slain enemies, cut off their scalps and right ears, and offer these first as a sacrifice to the gods. Then a row of cooking pits were dug on the right hand "for the gods" and on the left for humans. The eyes and the brain were removed from a dead warrior, and were eaten raw by the chief man of the victorious party. When the cut-up bodies of the vanquished were cooked, the chief's sons and relations first, and the whole of the army afterwards, fell on the meat cooked on the left-hand row of pits and devoured all they could at a sitting. The right-hand section of the feast was presided over by the priests and the contents of the pits partly consumed by them, and partly carried off to be stored against future requirements. What was left over on the left-hand side was packed up in baskets and sent to friendly tribes, who by accepting and eating the remains of these slain men took the side in the quarrel of the victorious force.

In Fiji human flesh was, above all, the food of chiefs, but everyone partook who could. Slaves were captured in war or purchased from other islands and were carefully fattened up for the table.

Cannibalism was partly an act of revenge, a desire more completely to extinguish a fallen enemy, and in part a sacrifice to the gods of the victorious tribe, or it began as an act of atonement or propitiation to win the favour of a deity. In New Caledonia and New Zealand—perhaps also in Fiji—it was often provoked by mere hunger for meat, a hunger less easy to satisfy than in the large islands of the Bismarck Archipelago and the mainland of New Guinea, where there were the great Cassowary birds, large fruit bats, tree kangarus, phalangers, and an immense variety of pigeons.

In religion there was mostly this difference between Melanesians, Micronesians, and Polynesians: the two latter had castes of priests who devoted themselves to the conduct of religious ceremonies, and were often unmarried; whereas amongst the Melanesians and Papuans there were no priests, anyone—usually the chief of the village or tribe—being competent to sacrifice to the gods, or to conduct the semi-religious ceremonies (so like those of Negro Africa) connected with birth and death: most of all, the solemn rites observed in the initiation of boys and girls into the duties of adult life on their entering manhood or womanhood. The dwarf Negroes or Negritos of New Guinea and the islands to the west had very little religious belief; the Papuans more, but not so much as the Melanesians of the Pacific archipelagoes. These last, no doubt, had been taught and influenced for many hundred years by the Polynesians. All these peoples believed in a variety of gods, devils, spirits, and fairies. (The Fijians even believed in water-babies!) Sometimes the supernatural being was the soul of a deceased hero or chief, canonized after his death, and still working for or against the survivors in the form of a shark, a turtle, a fish, snake, or lizard.

Stones and trees were worshipped as the form or the home of a god; so were lizards, snakes, birds, the sea, a volcano, the sun, the moon, stars, and vault of heaven. Nearly everything of fixed form had a soul, was alive, was connected in some way with the spirit world. A belief among Papuans, Melanesians, Micronesians, and Polynesians in the immortality of human beings was almost universal. Only perhaps among the Negritos was it absent or "not thought about".

As to the arts and industries, all this region lay outside the range of metal-using countries, except where iron had been introduced by the Malays, as on the north-west coasts of New Guinea and the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Otherwise the races of Australasia and the Pacific were still in the Stone Age. The Papuans and Melanesians, however, had a great feeling for art and colour. They carved wood most skilfully with chisels made of bivalve shells, or stone adzes. There was a great tendency, derived from Malaysia, especially in New Guinea and Melanesia, to build houses on piles, with platforms rising high above the ground: a most convenient architecture both for defending the dwelling against attack (by drawing up the ladder of approach) and for raising sleeping places above the range of mosquitoes, centipedes, snakes, and damp. In some parts of New Guinea the people constructed their houses high up in the forks of great trees, and used rope ladders to ascend and descend.

But in Polynesia and those island groups to the east and north-east of New Guinea much influenced by the Polynesians, the houses were mostly built on the ground, sometimes with a stone floor, or were raised on a mound of earth. They were usually oblong in shape, and of considerable length, with a roof of thatch or palm leaves in shape like a long boat turned upside down. In the Solomon Islands the houses (occupied by several families) were occasionally as much as 70 feet long and 40 wide. The thatched roof was in some instances carried right down to the ground, in other cases it formed a veranda supported on posts. But in parts of New Guinea and the islands adjacent to its eastern half, in Fiji and New Caledonia there were round or oval-shaped huts, looking like hayricks. The houses of the New Zealanders had firm walls made of slabs of wood, and one small window facing eastward. There was a porch over the door. In the southern part of the great South Island, near the snowy mountains, there were winter houses made by excavating a square or oblong pit in the ground and roofing this over. In wintertime a fire was lighted inside this underground dwelling, and the temperature under the heavily thatched roof became very high, whilst it was freezing outside; but as the dwelling was unventilated it was often unwholesome for its occupants. Except among the wildest Negritos and Papuans, there were in every village a club house and a guest house, or the two uses combined in one large dwelling. And on this club house the men of the village lavished their best ideas of art and decoration. The beams and posts would be handsomely carved and painted, or even inlaid with beautifully coloured sea shells; mats woven of palm fibre or grass covered the walls, and the timbered floor might be lacquered with some vegetable varnish. Similar decorations were bestowed on their temples and their chiefs' houses.

The furniture consisted of little else than a rude bed made of slabs of wood covered with matting; chairs or stools were carved out of solid blocks of wood, or made from bamboo sections. The fireplace was a thick cane basket covered with clay. Canes or reeds and the invaluable bamboo equally made light but firm frames which did duty as tables in Polynesian households, but the Melanesians were usually content with mats and stools for all furniture. Pottery—baked clay—was made by the Melanesians and by most Papuan (but not Negrito) and Micronesian tribes; it was also known to the Polynesians, but for some reason had in late centuries almost gone out of use, its place being taken by wood vessels, gourds, the halves of coconuts, and the shells of clams. Still, the manufacture and use of clay pots were retained by the Polynesians of Easter Island. Food was cooked by placing it between hot stones, which were then sprinkled with water, and the whole thing covered over till the food was steamed and cooked. Water was boiled in wooden vessels by dropping in red-hot stones.