Bishop Museum’S Work

The Scientific Measurement of Polynesia

LATE in 1934, the cutter “Tiare Tahiti,” attached to ‘‘The Islander,” the mas tership of the Eastern Polynesian Expedi tion, financed by the Rockefeller Expedi tion and the Bernice Puahi Bishop Museum at Honolulu, called at Tahiti to meet Dr. Peter Buck, the noted anthro pologist and authority on the Pacific.

Together with Mr. Kenneth D. Emory, a member of the Museum staff, Dr. Buck is now engaged on an ethnological sur vey of Mangareva and surrounding

islands. He proposes to spend two months on Rimatara and Hull Islands before re turning to Hawaii, via his native New Zealand. Since relinquishing his travell ing professorship at Yale, Te Rangi Hiroa (as Dr. Buck is known to his Maori people), has been travelling in Europe, investigating the museums there for Poly nesian exhibits.

The expedition has been at work in the Pacific for some months. With the com pletion of the Mangareva survey, the wealthy Bishop Museum will have com pleted its detailed reconnaisance of the Polynesian Islands, a work upon which it has been engaged for many years. At present it is in the Eastern Tuamotus.

Although most of the Tuamotus are un inhabited, ancient ruins are being studied there. In this eastern section, particu larly on the islands of Hao and Taka poto, the people are said to be living in the primitive state of the Polynesian of old.

Legends and folklore, invaluable in the study of Polynesia, are believed to be practically untouched. That portion of th« Pacific is also considered of the greatest importance to botanists. Many plants growing there are not found else where. The same can be said of its in sect life.

Likewise, land-shells in that area will probably explain the extent to which they were distributed by the ancient Polynesians, or to which islands they are indigenous. New light may, therefore, be thrown upon island connections in the past. Furthermore, those islands, iso lated from the American coast and other land (except Eastern Island which, has been fully studied) may produce evidence that there have been plants and insects from South America, or that the popula tion had such contact.

At Pitcairn, the expedition hopes to complete the measurements of those in habitants who are a cross between the descendants of the Bounty sailors and the Tahitian women they took there; gain information on plant and land shell life; and thus add, very materially, to the world’s knowledge of that remote spot.

Mr. H. L. Shapiro, of the Bishop Museum staff, made a study some time ago of what is termed “English-Tahitian hybrids” on Norfolk Island—a term, inci dentally, that the Islanders rather re sented. Neither did they particularly like having their photographs reproduced in the interests of science. As Mr.

Shapiro was unable to land at Pitcairn Island owing to its inaccessibility, the present expedition has made a special time allowance so that its members may effect a proper landing.

Curiously enough, the natives on that little cluster of islands known as Man gareva, the most eastern home —save Easter Island—of the Polynesians, speak a dialect more like Maori and Hawaiian than Tahitian, and, consequently, are of the greatest interest to scientists. It is possible that the people living there to day are descendants of that earlier popu lation of Tahiti, expelled in all directions about the 12th century. Nearly a century ago early missionary investigators com mented upon the similarity in dialect be tween the Mangarevans and the Maoris.

Very often they stayed at the Bay of Islands, in New Zealand, on their way to their Pacific stations, and so secured a knowledge of both peoples.

The Museum also hopes to find some land-shells there that have not been re discovered for a century. The last report obtained was in 1840, and it is now not certain where some of the shells originated.

Mangareva, incidentally, is one of the few places in the Pacific where hitherto the Bishop Museum has not sent inves tigators. Although the original inhabi tants have almost disappeared and the old culture has all but gone (attributed to the conversion of the natives to Chris tianity in 1835, and later disastrous epi demics of disease), it is believed that modern methods of research will obtain fresh information and furnish further clues.

Research workers from the Museum were at the Tuamotus in 1929. Prior to that, science knew very little about the group. As the eastern portion was only imperfectly investigated, the present ex pedition proposes spending some time there to complete the survey.

Members of the expedition are: Dr. C.

Montague Cook, malacologist; Dr. Peter Buck, and Mr. Kenneth D. Emory, eth nologists; Mr. Donald Anderson, Mr. Ray mond Fosbery, and Professor Harold St.

John, botanists: Mr. E. C. Zimmerman, entomologist: and Mr. J. Frank Stimson anthropologist.

Polynesia is of intense interest to Aus tralian students of anthropology and eth nology. Dr. Raymond Firth, now of the London School of Economics (and for merly Acting-Professor of Anthropology at the University of Sydney), is still work ing in London on his book on the Poly nesian culture on the island of Tikopia.

He spent some time there on behalf of the Australian Council of National Re search.—“Eriki.”