Stock of culture

Paddles used at dances, from Easter Island
Larger paddle approx, 180cm long
(Berlin Museum of Ethnology).

Knowledge of geography

The frequent migrations of the Polynesians from one island to another led in course of time to the acquirement of a certain stock of knowledge. The talented Tupaia drew for Cook a kind of map on which numerous islands of Polynesia were marked. The names were found to be pretty correct, but not the position and size. Intelligent people were fairly well informed about neighbouring islands; they distinguished the low or coral islands from the lofty or volcanic, and knew whether they were permanently or only occasionally inhabited, and the like. The brother of the chief of Raraka drew with chalk on the deck of Wilkes's vessel all the islands of Paumotu that he knew, and named three, which were actually discovered later.

Genealogies

What the Polynesians knew rested on a great persistency of tradition. Their stock of culture shows of how much a talented race, without writing, and we may add, in its stone age, is capable. Mythology, historical tradition, and star-lore, are taught together by special persons, and a little medicine besides. Part of this is kept secret. Genealogies are taught at night to promising boys. On the memorial tablets they find the important names in the notches,distinguished by special ornamentation. When they become priests they recognise each other by secret passwords. The traditional hymns which are recited at purificatory festivals are in the keeping of the priests.

Bamboo flutes from Hawaii
(British Museum)

Medicine

Besides the sacred, there is also a profane tradition, the depositaries of which are often curiously enough in the lowest ranks of society. To them are entrusted historical memories, the lays of the heroes, the myths which have become old wives' fables. Among the priests a kind of medical science had developed itself, the sound principles of which were smothered under the hocus-pocus of supernatural commerce. The Tahitian places the seat of life and natural disposition in the belly, and uses the term "bowels" to denote what we express by "heart." On the other hand the head is as with us the seat of the human thinking faculty, and for this reason receives special veneration, which to be sure has a cannibal tinge. Among the more rational modes of treating the sick, "massage" has the first place. Among medical apparatus we find bottle-gourds for administering injections, and the claws of a Squilla for puncturing pustules.

Counting

The Polynesian language possesses numerals to denominate the thousands. Lehu, "ashes," indicates the limit of the numerable. As a rule the system is naturally that of division into fives and tens; but Tou-Fa, that is "four-reckoning" forms in the Marquesas and Hawaii a scale with forty as its peculiar unit. In Hawaii, Ule, Pelew, and elsewhere, they used, to facilitate counting, a system which was also highly elaborated in Peru, of tying knots in string. The Tahitians tied strips of coco-palm leaf in bundles; the New Zealanders used notched sticks.

Reckoning of time

Time is reckoned by lunar months. In Tahiti there were fourteen of these, two of which Forster regarded as intercalary. The names of the months in many cases are referable to agriculture and the phenomena of vegetable life. In New Zealand we find thirteen months, and the tenth reckoned twice over. The names of the months and the first day of the year vary from one island to another, and besides that, traces remain of another system of chronology dividing the year into two parts with the disappearance and reappearance of the Pleiads, thus reckoning six months only. Thus in a number of islands New Year's day falls at the southern winter solstice. Besides this, they reckon by generations; and this reckoning goes back twenty-nine generations in Rarotonga, twenty-seven in Mangareva, amounting to a handsome tale of centuries, but of course starting from mythical times.