Class Divisions

Fly whisk (insignia of a chief)
from Pelew Islands
image size approx 880mm top to bottom.
(British Museum.)

Class-divisions among the Polynesians are, by reason of taboo, as sharp as in the most thorough system of caste. They fall into those which participate in the divine, and those which are wholly excluded from it. The aristocratic principle is seldom carried to such an extreme as here, where a stern psychology remains inexorable even beyond the grave. In Tonga the native people, in contradistinction to the immigrant nobles, are regarded as having no immortal souls; while the souls of nobles return from the next world and inspire those of their own order for the priesthood, so that the connection of the tabooed class with the gods is never interrupted. The boundary between these two classes is not everywhere alike, though the divisions into chiefs, freemen, or slaves runs through all Polynesia. In the Marquesas the untabooed class comprises all women with their male attendants, as well as singers and dancers; in Rapa indeed all men were sacred, and had to be fed by the women. Of the men of rank the greater number are connected by ties of relationship, the memory of which is preserved by professed genealogists, with the aid of pedigree-sticks. The remembrance goes far back. When the palace in Hawaii was dedicated none were admitted save those who were connected with the sovereign in the tenth or some less degree.

Nobility carries practical advantages in the shape of high posts of state. There are oligarchies, where the smaller chiefs take their part in the government by performing inferior - services as diplomatic envoys, intermediaries in secret matters of council, and such like. The child of a chief belonging to the Ehri, born of a low-class mother, is put to death. But in some cases a man can overstep these boundaries, as in Tonga, where clever craftsmen from among the people are raised to the tabooed class as Tubunas. Outwardly, social intercourse displays itself in pleasing forms.

In Micronesia the division of classes is equally into nobles, freemen, and slaves. The first, with the priests, are the most influential, the freemen the most numerous; the two often coincide or break up again into definite classes. Since, however, in many cases property gives higher rank than birth, there are nobles who, as owners of a district, rise to the position of little kings. Where, as in the Mortlocks, a population of 3500 is divided into ten tribes and sixteen states, the road from the chief to the noble is naturally as short as that from despotism to oligarchy.

In East Melanesia the classes correspond with the Polynesian divisions. In Fiji we find the distribution by businesses, as in Tonga. Here there are individual tribes who carry on a distinct trade - sailors, fishermen, or carpenters. There are even special villages of fighting-men, fishermen, carpenters, physicians, artists in hair, potters. The most despised of all classes are the coolies. Even in New Guinea every Motu village is distinguished for some one industry, one for its women's dressmaking, another for its shell ornaments, others for pottery or coco-palm planting.

In regard to the certain existence of slavery in these districts there is room for doubt. It has always been lightly assumed. In the west, where the feeble political structure does not allow of warfare on a large scale, slavery is often absent; but in the Solomons we meet with it, accompanying a more vigorous development of chief's authority. It used to prevail even more extensively in Fiji where successful risings of slaves even took place.