Number of the population, its decrease and shifting

The present population of the Pacific in the space between the western promontory of New Guinea and Easter Island, and between the Hawaiian Archipelago and New Zealand, is reckoned at not more than a million and a half, not including whites. Yet even to-day on some of the Polynesian islands we find such a density as borders on over-population.

The Kingsmill, or Gilbert, group counts 35,000 in less than 200 square miles, the Marshall Islands 12,000 in 170. But these are all cases in which the inhabitants of small islands have the run of the coco plantations and fishing-grounds belonging to an entire archipelago. Tonga too - for one of the less bountifully endowed groups, - the Solomon Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago, show a population that is relatively not at all thin.

Boat of the Hermit Islands (After a model in the Godeffroy collection.)
[Click on picture for higher resolution]

Generally the smaller areas of land tend to a closer packing of the population. But the great majority of the Pacific islands hold far fewer persons today belonging to the original native races than they did before the arrival of European influences. We must look not only at the figures, but at the geographical aspect.

The South Island of New Zealand and the Chatham Islands have no longer any but a small and vanishing aboriginal population, and these crowded back into the furthest corner; while all the natural advantages have passed into the hands of the more numerous and more active white inhabitants. The number of the Maoris between 1835 and 1840 was reckoned with good reason at 100,000; today there are 42,000, including numerous half-breeds, who will soon be the sole survivors. So it is with Hawaii, and so even with the small islands.

If we inquire the causes of this phenomenon, which has already given occasion for great dislocations in the regions of races and peoples, we find them everywhere the same. After the remarks made in the Introduction we can sum up the causes in the words used by Pennefather in 1888 as applied to the case of the Maoris: drunkenness; diseases; clothing in bad European materials instead of in their own close-woven mats; a state of peace, which has allowed them to fall into indolence, and to exchange healthy dwellings on fortified hills for damp sites in the neighbourhood of their potato-fields;^[1] prosperity, which has introduced leisure and pernicious modes of enjoying it. Progress on the lines of European custom is opposed by their hereditary usages, especially their political subdivision and the absence of private property in land. But the cannibalism of the Maoris has played a special part in the destruction of the Maoraris of the Chatham Islands.

The importation of European diseases has in many districts accelerated the rate of decrease. Kubary's inquiry into the astonishing disappearance of the Pelew Islanders, the most complete and comprehensive inquiry that we have for any portion of Oceania, reveals a whole string of internal causes. Important phenomena in the social life of the island races, such as adoption in its various forms, the descent of titles to sons, the ruined state of large houses, point to a long previous period of this lamentable decrease.

The natives wrongly ascribe it to the climatic disorder, influenza; but the main cause must be sought in their dissolute way of life, particularly in the case of the women. The deficiency of births is so great that total extinction is anticipated in the near future. Early licentiousness in both sexes; special features in married life of a kind to deter the younger women, so far as possible, from entering into bonds, and to inflict upon the others the heavy labour of taro cultivation, keeping couples apart and placing considerations of utility before everything; lastly, the practice of headhunting, which is not yet obsolete. Kubary stated in 1883 that in the last ten years only thirty-four heads had been cut off; these causes offer a sufficient explanation.

In the light of the description given by the writer just quoted, the entire population would seem to be in a morbid state, what with a tendency to dysentery, induced by living exclusively on taro, the prevalence of intestinal parasites, the liability of all the older people to chronic rheumatism as a result of the climate and the exposure of the naked body, and the lack of endurance of the man under circumstances of bodily exertion.

This decrease is in close connection with a decadence from levels of development formerly attained in political and social matters, and even in arts and crafts. In Micronesia they have ceased to build the large club or assembly houses of former days; and therewith a source of endless encouragement to fancy and skill has been dried up. The people make fewer things than they used to do - their originality has died out; they are in a way to become poor ethnographically. A glance into the past of these races reveals remains of bygone generations, telling of another state of things, of a larger population, of more considerable results from labour, of more enduring works.

¹ [Yet, says the late Mr. Stevenson, the Marquesans are dying out in the same houses where their fathers multiplied.]