Trading journeys

Sacred staff Cook Islands
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Even if we regard only the involuntary journeys, the Pacific Ocean appears no longer as a watery desert where islanders live in seclusion; but mutual relations of the most varied kind, both between the islands, and between them and the continents, become manifest. Castings-away are no exception but the rule, and take people in every direction. Ethnography has to take account of these casual relations which in the long vista of years have stretched a dense network from one land to another. She must give up the idea of any sharp separation between the races of Oceania, and allowing all consideration to disunion and peculiarity, must give its due to every cause which makes for union.

But this view is met also by the life and ways of the Oceanians, their mode of thought, and their tradition. There is in them a pronounced migratory sense. Journeys of many hundreds of miles are not seldom undertaken by them, either for the purpose of falling upon the inhabitants of neighbouring islands and getting heads for their canoe houses, or in order to meet on some appointed day of the year for a general exchange of goods. The inhabitants of Yap, and Simbo, and the Tongans are specially renowned for voyages of this kind. The piratical inhabitants of Biak also traverse hundreds of miles in their canoes.

Trading journeys

Trade is naturally a chief cause of roaming. The fact that in the Polynesian islands it is mainly carried on by the chiefs or on their account can only be favourable to the enterprises, since none but they have either authority or knowledge to lead the greater expeditions.

The Tongans, who monopolised the trade between Fiji and Samoa, with the inhabitants of Sikiyana, of Peleliu, and some others, are noted as genuine trading races. Division of labour in trades leads of necessity to exchange. It is specially to be observed that the higher development of any industry, as of pottery in Bilibili, Teste, or Moresby, all of them islands off New Guinea, is always found to improve all the appliances of travel and transport, and thus especially to raise navigation to a higher level.

Boat of the Mortlock Islands, with outrigger and sail of rush-matting.
After a model in the Godeffroy collection.)
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War and Famine

Political disturbances again have created numerous motives for migration. Attacks of one island upon another, flight to remote islands, are common occurrences. At the time of the Spanish conquest the inhabitants of the Marianne Islands took refuge in the Carolines. Tongans fleeing from a cannibal chief peopled the island of Pylstart or Ata; Kaumualii, when threatened by attack from Kamehameha, had a ship made ready in Kauai, in order that he might fly with his family in time of danger to one of the ocean islands. Lastly, too, hunger was a spur to migration, famines being frequent.

Constant contact with the sea has given birth to a spirit of adventure for which the aristocratic constitution of society provides nourishment and tools. The Tongans may well reckon as the Phoenicians of South Polynesia; Samoans and Fijians never ventured upon the journey to Tonga except in boats manned by Tongan seamen. Nor, moreover, are real wandering tribes lacking. Lastly, we must not forget the low value placed upon human life in all island countries with a tendency to over-population. Infanticide, human sacrifices, cannibalism, a permanent state of war, are sufficient explanations of this, and from the same root springs also the love of emigration.