Disease-bearing Tahitian boys were coming over with a bribe which few Rarotongan girls could resist—bottles of French perfume. For this the girls deserted their local sweethearts and husbands, flew to the scented strangers, and were sorry afterward. The bright lights of Rarotonga were luring so many from surrounding islands that overcrowding threatened a higher infection of tuberculosis. Polynesian hospitality invited the germ, for relatives came pouring to be packed like sardines in the coral houses. They ate so much that many hosts went undernourished between parties.

Speaking of forced sophistication, a little native nurse in one of the best hospitals approached me shyly and asked for an examination. I brought in assistants, had her put on the table and ignored her protests over the delicate job at hand. When I had finished I asked her why she had made such a fuss; she ought to be used to doctors. “Oh, but Doctor,” she said, “I thought you were going to examine my chest!” She had expected me to use a stethoscope. It was the same all over the Cooks. Put a stethoscope to a native’s chest and he thought it was magic to cure whatever ailed him. What ailed the little nurse happened to be pregnancy.

Here’s another example of the naïve sophisticate. I was with a local merchant, admiring the beautiful sunset, when a pretty native girl stopped her bicycle. She was trig and slim in a white duck dress, white shoes and a flaming red scarf around her neck. What she said sounded like something you learn by rote: “I-am-looking-for-the-doctor, to-come-to-my-mother, who-is-very-ill.” I asked my friend if her mother was ill and he said, “That’s something she learned at school and is trying on us.”

She smiled primly and my friend asked her where her lover was. She said, “Luff? That is no good. Some boys talk luff, I say ‘Go way, I am too strong. I no go down to the beach.’” Her name, she told us, was Ngapuku, and she was sixteen, fancy free. “I am a Girl Guide,” she announced. With every breath she went on talking about “luff,” which did not interest her because she was a proper Girl Guide. Where and how she guided the stranger came out in the next sentence. Last week when a New Zealand gunboat came in she met a sailor who talked “luff” and was indignantly repelled. However, since Jack ashore wished to be guided, she took him around to the other sort of girl and charged a fee of twenty-five shillings, five for girl friend and twenty for herself.

The Cook Islands had no half-caste question because there were no half-castes, socially speaking. All were members of the local community, and a light-skinned baby was a welcome arrival. There was no slightest stigma on illegitimacy. Married natives were eager to adopt such children. One British trader I knew had a native wife and four daughters; long before a newcomer was born a delegation came to the house and begged for the privilege of adopting the baby. The prospective mother finally promised it to a childless couple, if it should be a girl. But if it was a boy she would keep it. She had no boys.

I heard of one native who quarreled with his wife and left her. But when he learned that she had been living with a white man he returned and implored to be taken back. He wanted the privilege of fathering her expected child. The Maori here seemed to be moving toward another race, and I hoped that it would be for his betterment. Children with a European strain usually got ahead faster, not because they had more brilliance or character, but because their lighter skin seemed to cast an aura of superiority. Parents favored them, schoolteachers, however fair-minded, unconsciously moved them toward the head of the class. I am not sure that the full-blooded Cook Islanders were not the best type I saw in the Pacific. Although the women were inclined to sloth and fat, the men were thin and well-muscled, hard workers and innately industrious. All day long they labored in their gardens, or carried produce miles to load it on the steamers offshore. At home they did the cooking for their lazy wives, who, like most Polynesian wives, were spoiled by their husbands.

As an inquiring physician I noted the fine condition of the men; handicapped by imported disease, inadequately defended by a medical system not yet well organized, they seemed to be building up their bodies against many of the ills that attacked them. The principal occupational disease among them was hernia, result of lifting heavy loads.

On my second visit there, 1932, I wrote to the Secretary of the Cook Islands, urging him to take advantage of the larger number of Native Medical Practitioners we were then able to offer. I pointed out one paradox: sophisticated Rarotonga showed less confidence in European physicians than I usually found in the primitive outlying islands. Everywhere there was a faith in witch-doctor remedies, which was astonishing considering that these places had been in contact with Europe for over a hundred years. During my first visit I used Malakai more than once to scold and wheedle sick natives away from their ancient superstitions. He could talk to them as man to man, which was more than any European could ever do. I missed him on my second trip.

Some of the impressions I am giving deal with my later stay on these islands, but they are mainly true of the Cooks as I saw them in 1925-1926.

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