GILBERT AND SULLIVAN, 1924
My share in the application of carbon tetrachloride had been a decided step forward for me, and I had spent two very busy years in Fiji, campaigning both for cure and prevention. But what most engaged my heart and mind was the plan for an improved medical school for natives. Through thick and thin I preached my crusade and hung to the idea like a terrier. In this plan I saw the only salvation for the island peoples.
In February, 1924, when I set out for a brief survey of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, the idea was still foremost in my thoughts. That was the first time I took Malakai along, just to show them.
The G and E Group, as it is conveniently called, is satirized by young cadets over the Fiji Club bar as “Gilbert and Sullivan.” It has a certain comic appeal. Dr. Walter E. Traprock, America’s glamour boy among nature fakers, chose these dots on the sea for his Cruise of the Kawa, where the national bird of the Filbert Islands was supposed to lay square eggs and cackle “Ouch!” Robert Louis Stevenson was far more serious, describing scenes of blood and beauty along the threading atolls.
Samoans, who once stigmatized as ghosts and slaves all folk who lived beyond them, called their islands “The World’s Navel.” In this they were somewhat off their bearings, for their Samoa is a bit too far southeast to center the earth. The Gilbert and Ellice group is strung in faint tattoo marks along the very middle of Earth’s belly. In all it covers 1,000 miles of sea, with islands so sparsely scattered that the easternmost is some 600 miles from the westernmost. A white man’s government has combined these two archipelagoes, but as a matter of geography they lie about 100 miles apart. The Gilbertese are a Micronesian stock, the Ellice folk are typically Polynesian and have a physique, a language and a social organization entirely different from the Gilbertese.
The Gilberts, which have been the meeting place of the races, have become the meeting place of the anthropologists. Originally, these men agree, the inhabitants were a black, smallish, flat-nosed mouse-eared people, called “the Spider Folk” because their divinities appeared in the form of spiders—also of turtles. The Spider Folk were supposed to be dreadful magicians, therefore they were avoided. Then came the invaders, great of stature, red of skin (that is, light brown), who fought them like devils, but still feared the Spider Magic. Songs survive, telling of the conquerors’ prowess as sailors; in them they are extolled as Children of the Sea, Fierce Fish of the West.
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The mystery of Polynesian or other Pacific migrations is a puzzle that may never be solved. The Gilberts formed a bottle neck through which many waves of migration must have come from the ancestral home, Hawaiki—from which are derived the modern names Hawaii and Savaii. Some pressure, some social convulsion on the continent must have driven them off of the southeast tip of Asia and sent them out in migratory waves—no turning back, a fierce starving horde in a quest for land and a home in the Pacific. Another stream undoubtedly crossed the Behring Sea and traveled southward along the coast; Mexican legends told of their coming from the north. Probably they passed as far as to South America. Our red Indian race must be the mixture resulting from these invasions. They must have reached the continent across the Pacific, or some must have returned from the west coast of the Americas, to have brought the sweet potato to the Pacific. In this time we can appreciate the thrill of horror that went over the peaceful Pacific islands, waking to see strange fleets of enormous canoes pouring forth their hordes of death-driven warriors.
In the sterile Gilberts the invaders found little that they wanted—except women. They lingered for a generation or so, then conquered the Ellices, captured Rotumah, fought their way into Savaii and Upolu in Samoa.
Tradition and genealogy tell the story plainly. About twenty-four to twenty-eight generations ago a return invasion rolled back from Samoa, moving northward. It overwhelmed the Ellices, but was repulsed by the Gilbertese; except that small Nui in the Ellices still retains much of the Gilbertese language and customs.