Voluntary and involuntary migrations in the Pacific

Oceania, as being, of all regions which men inhabit, the richest in islands, the poorest in land, seems at the first glance a most favourable soil on which to study isolated evolutions of civilization. It is, however, a region of constant intercourse, and nowhere offers a wide or fertile soil for permanently independent evolution. It furnishes interesting evidence of the special directions in which individual elements in the fund of civilization possessed by a "natural" race can develop, but it shows us no persistency of a single racial type and a special civilization. Instead of the deep gradations which divide the Fuegian, a kind of Bushman or Hottentot, from the Inca of Peru, expert in many arts, rich, devoted to sun-worship; Oceania displays, in the domain of culture, only slight variations on the same ground-theme. Its great problem is not the tranquil development of local peculiarities, but the equalising effect of migration from one archipelago to another, and ultimately from quarter to quarter of the earth.

Involuntary migrations in the Pacific

The distribution of Malayo-Polynesian races over an area covering 210 degrees of longitude and 80 of latitude, is an astounding fact. It gains in significance when we remember that wide tracts of very deep ocean divide these islands, while the islands are so small that even exploring navigators did not discover them till late, and then with difficulty. No cause appeared too vast to explain such a phenomenon, and we cannot be surprised that not only older inquirers like Quiros, or seafaring men like Crozet and Dumont d'Urville, but even a man like Broca^[1] could admit the idea that in this island-world we have the remains of a submerged continent. Even the hypothesis of a separate creation of races so isolated has been brought into play here.

But migrations of the islanders are mentioned even by Forster and Cook; and have been more and more recognised as the great fact in the ethnography of the Pacific. Numerous indeed are the records of accidental involuntary migrations. When Cook came to Watiu in 1777, his Tahitian companion Mai found there three fellow-countrymen, all that were left of twenty,from Tahiti, 750 miles distant, who had been cast away twelve years before. In 1825 Beechey found on Byam Martin Island forty men, women, and children, the survivors of 150 from Matia, who some years before had been caught in an unwontedly early monsoon, and driven 625 miles to Barrow Island; subsequently leaving this on account of its barrenness, and settling on Byam Martin. A remarkable point in this is that the course from Matia to Barrow Island is against the trades.

In 1816 Kotzebue found on Aur, one of the Radack Islands, a native of Ulie, who had been cast away with three others while fishing, arid covered a distance of 1850 miles against the trades. Inhabitants of Ulie were carried to the Marshall Islands also in 1857; Ralick islanders to the Gilberts, Gilbert islanders to the Marshalls, and westward to the Carolines; and Finsch reports a more recent case of castaways from Jaluit or Bonham Island to Faraulep in the western Carolines, a distance of 1500 nautical miles.

During his short stay on Yap, and then in Pelew, Miklouho-Maclay often met people who had been cast away on other islands and had returned. Kubary, in his account of the Pelew Islands, mentions as a well-known fact that the inhabitants of the Carolines are often driven to the Philippine Islands. In every case they make the island of Samar or the most southerly point of Luzon, just where the northern equatorial current breaks on the island wall of the Philippines. On the other hand, inhabitants of the Philippines seem never to have come to Pelew, though plenty come from Celebes and the islands in the Celebes Straits.

Another region where people are often cast away is in and about the Fiji Archipelago, its boundaries being indicated by Tikopia, Lifu, Savaii, and Vavao. Active as the regular intercourse may be between Tonga and Fiji, the presence of numerous Tongan and Fijian half-breeds exactly on the windward side of the Fiji Archipelago would suggest that people had been driven westwards, even had we not clear evidence that they have been driven from Tonga and Savaii to the still more westerly islands of the Banks group, to the New Hebrides, and the Loyalty Islands. They appear even to have got to the central Solomon Islands. It is when we come within the Melanesian groups that these movements gain in interest, owing to the large number of Polynesians to be found there, or the traces, often so clear, of Polynesian influence.

A third region is even more important by reason of its local connection with the Polynesian legends of migrations. It embraces the Hervey or Cook Islands, the Tubuai or Austral Islands, the Paumotu or Low Islands, and the Society Islands. To supplement the instances already given we may mention the involuntary journey of Williams in a boat from Rarotonga to Tongatabu, and that of several natives from Aitutaki to Niue; in both cases distances of a thousand miles were traversed in a westerly direction. Those natives of Manihiki who were driven by a storm to the Ellice group in 1861, and there spread the first Christian teaching, accomplished a still longer course. Between the Society Islands, especially Tahiti, and the Paumotu group, a particularly close connection has been established by frequent castings-away both with and against the trades.

Cases have been known here also in which persons have been driven southward, but never beyond the tropic, so that no connection has been formed with New Zealand. Finally, we have evidence in involuntary journeys made from Tahiti to Byam Martin and Bow Islands that, especially during the summer, it is possible for vessels to be driven against trade winds and currents in an easterly direction, that is to say in the direction in which the Easter Islanders must have reached their remote land.

Reports about castaways in this direction from the continent of Asia or from Japan are more rare. Apart from some established historical cases we may here refer to the repeated instances of persons being driven from Japan northward and eastward to Lopatka, Kadjak, and Vancouver Islands, which are equally confirmed by history. Even from China ships are said to have been cast away on the north-west coast of America. Evidence of journeys in the opposite direction is afforded by articles of undoubted northwest American origin which come ashore on the coasts of the Hawaiian Islands.

With the South American continent there are no manifest relations, although in higher latitudes westerly winds and currents lead towards South America,while in equatorial regions they are easterly and lead away from it. The only conclusions that are possible here, and will be later investigated, are based upon the data of ethnography.

¹ [Not to mention Darwin and Lyell.]