There are on the island five tribes, wholly independent of each other,—the Roankiddi, the Metelemia, the Nót, the Tchokoits, and the Awnak, none, however, numbering much above 1500 souls, the most numerous and important being the Roankiddi.
Each king, we are told, has a minister whose power almost rivals his own. Next in rank to the minister are the nobles, who bear the following strange-sounding titles: Talk, Washy, Nane-by, Noatch, Shoe-Shabut, and Groen-wani; after these come such as are not of noble birth, but have earned them through illustrious deeds, and have been rewarded with estates. On the death of the king he is succeeded by whichever of his nobles
has the title of Talk, the others rising one grade. The monarch has the right of freely disposing of his property. As a rule he leaves it to his sons, but if he have none he usually bequeaths it to the next sovereign. Between the monarch and his courtiers some quaint patriarchal customs prevail. Thus the first ripe bread-fruit is brought to the king. Whenever a chief uses a new turtle or fish net, the prey during a certain number of days is sent to the king. Another mark of the respect paid to the king, as also by all ranks to their superiors, is to be found in the custom for a native who meets another of higher rank in a canoe,—he cowers down in his own boat till the other has passed by, the two canoes approaching on the side opposite the outrigger, so that the person of superior condition may, if he see fit, satisfy himself of the identity of the other.
The Awnaks and Tchokoits had, at the period of our visit, been at war with each other for six months, and it is significant of the ferocity and courage of both parties, that not a single combatant had thus far been wounded on either side! Their weapons are chiefly spears of hard wood, six feet long, the barb, instead of iron, being made of fish-bones, thorns, or ground mussel-shells, which they throw with great dexterity; also hatchets, long knives, and old muskets, obtained from the whale-fishers in return for yams and tortoise-shell. At present there are about 1500 muskets in all on the island, and each native possesses at least one, some of the chiefs having as many as three, besides ample ammunition. Singular to say, these
formidable auxiliaries are rarely called into play in any of their wars, the fatal effect of fire-arms having contributed not a little to the promotion of harmony and peace between the various tribes! Their warriors are selected from among the most powerful men of the tribe, and as a rule they behave with much consideration to the women and children, whom they almost always spare. When either party sues for peace, a neutral party is sent to the monarch of the opposite tribe with a few Kawa roots. If these are accepted, the struggle is considered over, and a succession of friendly visits are thereupon exchanged between the chiefs of the two tribes, which are usually followed up by festivities and much consumption of Kawa.
As to the narratives of most earlier travellers that the island is inhabited by two entirely distinct races, the one yellow the other black, we could neither see nor hear of anything which would confirm such a statement. It seemed more probable that the diversity of skin and hair among the various tribes was exclusively caused by a variety of crosses, which are still frequent, and in former times must have been still more prevalent. The present population consists of whites, negroes, and yellow-coloured aborigines, who, as speaking a dialect allied to that of Polynesia, seem to belong to the Malay-Polynesian stirps. The present white settlers are English and North Americans; formerly they were chiefly Spanish and Portuguese who traded with the natives. Negro slaves and free blacks have also occasionally visited the island,
or been left there for good and all. These considerations alone suffice to explain certain appearances among the natives, such as brown or yellow skins, with crisp woolly hair, and very full lips, without any more marked characteristics of the Ethiopian race. We noticed one native with woolly hair of a reddish hue, but otherwise of strongly-marked Malay features, and on inquiring into his ancestry, were informed in reply that his father was a Portuguese (negro understood), and his mother a native.
The daughter of Doctor Cook, the Scotchman already mentioned, of whose union with a native woman of the island there was issue a handsome well-shaped mestiza of a light yellow colour, strongly recalling the stately, elegant quadroons of New Orleans and St. Domingo, had intermarried with a full-blooded negro of the district of Columbia, U. S., from which resulted a new and entirely dissimilar admixture. Their children had the face of the mother, with the woolly head of the father.
At all events it may be laid down with some degree of certainty, that the aboriginal races, especially those inhabiting the Caroline Archipelago, are not of the Pelagian Mongols, nor are they an offshoot of the Mongolian race of the Asiatic continent, as Lesson maintained; also that Puynipet has not been peopled by the Papuan negroes; that the woolly crisp hair of so many of its inhabitants is mainly explained by the intimacy between the black crews of the whalers (it being well known that a large proportion of the crews of the American
whalers are negroes), some 50 or 60 of which visit the island every year, and often remain for several weeks taking in provisions and other stores.