Fascinating Quest Of

Dr. Peter H. Buck

Origin and History of The Polynesian Race

By John Williams

11HE period when the first men and • women and children, who were the progenitors of the great Poly nesian race, moved out from Indo nesia in their narrow, low canoes is a moot point which the astute scien tist will dodge if he can, but if corn ered probably he might admit maybe late B.C. or early A.D.

The evidence is based too much upon ancient and untrustworthy gene alogies.

However, once the general move ment out of Indonesia was under way, then the evidence became more convincing. It is at this point that Dr. Peter H. Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa), the New Zealand ethnologist, starts his new book, “Vikings of the Sun rise”, which is a descriptive study of Polynesia. Dr. Buck is himself a Polynesian—now, probably, the most famous living Maori.

Dr. Buck neatly confines the Poly nesians in what he calls the Poly nesian triangle: that is, all that area embraced within a line drawn from Hawaii on the north down to Easter Island, then back across to New Zea land and up to Hawaii again. So many thousands of square miles of the world’s greatest ocean are in volved that it is little wonder that Captain James Cook, the British navi gator, the first accurate observer and recorder of the Polynesian, marvelled at the wide distribution of the Poly nesian culture and, in admiration, described the race as the “most ex tensive nation on earth”.

The triangle forms a well-defined spearhead for Micronesia and Mel anesia, the two great cultural routes along which the Indo-Malayan peoples moved into the Pacific. The Society Islands are the approximate centre of the triangle. Dr. Buck pro vocatively places emphasis on the ori ginal movements into Polynesia along the Micronesia route, rather than along the Melanesian, and the later movements of the Polynesians from the Society Islands westward into Melanesia. It was while passing through the inhospitable atolls of Micronesia that the original culture lost a lot of things, and even the memory of them. For example: here were a Stone Age people who de pended upon stone for fashioning their adzes. There was no stone on the atolls. The imaginative people found shell substitutes.

From atoll to atoll, then from island

to island, these men and women kept the prows of their canoes steered “into the eye of the sun , moving eastward, ever eastward, across the great ocean into the Unknown. These were the centuries of the most mar vellous of all maritime achievements, of the excellence of human resource and endurance that survived un believable privations. The Stone Age le> by sheer grit> became the mo st 0 f ocean seamen, by develop ing ocean -g o ing canoes with sails.

The constant trade winds favoured their inventive genius. Strong cur rents swept them to distant isles, They developed remarkable powers of observation and reasoning. Their wise old men memorised the heavens anc j usec j the stars to guide the tire

less voyagers back whence they started, with the tidings of the new lands. All the knowledge was cherished with almost religious fervour in what we call myth and legend.

Within the triangle the Polynesians worked out their destiny, deliberately and calmly, and with daring imagination and the ability to learn by failures.

NEW islands meant new local environments, which differed vastly.

This meant important variations in material cultures, but always the wisdom of the race developed perfect adjustments which were not upset until the coming of the first Europeans. Dr, Buck revels in reporting these details, details of which he is the world’s chief authority.

In the tracks of these oceanic nomads the reader is swept with Dr.

Buck as guide. Here a piece of evi deuce is weighed in the light of an other piece found a thousand miles distant. It is a fascinating chain of almost forgotten canoes and foods anc * fish nets and hooks and methods of cooking.

Overgrown trails lead amid the crumbling remains of weather-worn temples, half buried in tropic sands or tumbled and moss-covered in Jungles of gnarled vines. There is evidence that bespeaks the affinity of a conim on Polynesian religion. Stone Sods were worshipped. To-day, all are fal * erL There is lonely Easter Island - Were those sprawling, “my sterious” stone images originally gods, or were they simply works of art?

Dr. Buck has many convincing answers because, as a scientist, he has spent more than 30 years voyag

ing along most of the Polynesian tracks, even to the most remote isles.

He was accepted everywhere as Te Rangi Hiroa. His skilled command of the Polynesian mother-tongue and its varied dialects, the tales from afar that he had to tell, assured him al ways of tribal acceptance and cour tesies according to the traditions of his, the Polynesian, race. Never were his hosts ill at ease before the inquiring earnestness of his science.

But as Te Rang! Hiroa filled field book upon field-book with satisfying notes coaxed from dimming memo ries, always over his shoulder watched the detached, restraining mind of Dr.

Peter Buck, the scientist. So was developed a unique collaboration that reaches great heights in “Vikings of the Sunrise”. Group by group, Poly nesia is almost clinically pondered, with unusual care. Theories, popular so long that they are almost accepted as gospel by superficial writers and speakers, have their wishful think ing exploded by the Polynesian academist, with proper scorn.

Incidentally, one of the pet theories disposed of is that of the Pacific’s alleged “sunken continent”, or archi pelagos.

TN a chapter called “The Trail of A Plants and Animals”, Dr. Buck brings up Easter Island and the sweet potato, one of Polynesia’s staple foods. Taro, yams, breadfruit, coco nut, bananas and many other foods widely known through Polynesia came from the Indo-Malayan area. The only outstanding food that definitely came from the Americas is the sweet potato.

How did it come? Imagine Easter Island, the lonely eastern corner of the Polynesian triangle. Many cen turies ago a bold and footloose voy ager, temporarily at “home” on Easter Island, probably sat upon the hills peering eastward, ever eastward, into the eye of the sun. At night, hour

upon hour, he memorised the stars and the course that he would set. He talked of his plan to voyage on east ward. Who would volunteer?

The start, one supposes, was de layed until the prevailing south-east trade wind swung to the west. It stays in the west for a comparatively short while, but enough, the voyager reckoned, to take his canoe to the islands which must lie in the eye of the sun. Off he set, confidently, as perhaps once he had sailed off to reach Easter Island.

Week after week the sturdy out rigger was kept moving eastward, and no land was sighted. This was un usual for isle-sprinkled Polynesia.

Was the voyager afraid? But day after day upon that immensity of the ageless ocean the sun rose to give the brave leader confidence and at night, in the engulfing canopy of the heavens in which lived his generous gods, were the stars, a great and magic carpet that beckoned the cour ageous ever eastward. . . .

The canoe at last came within sight of South America, the abrupt, tower ing coastline of Peru. Here were a new people, a totally different people, who had a culture as far from the Polynesian as to-day New York’s is from Tibet’s. The Polynesians un doubtedly were bewildered. There were new foods, new words, new weapons. There were sweet potatoes, satisfying and easy to grow. The Peruvians called them “Kumar”.

No matter how much the Poly nesians felt ill at ease in Peru, they could not escape. They could not voyage back to Easter Island in the teeth of the westerly wind. They had to mark time and wait until it swung back into the south-east.

They had a few sweet potatoes left when they got back to Easter Island.

They repeated the Peruvian name for them. From Easter Island the po tatoes were carried back along the trails throughout Polynesia, and the name was varied. To-day, for ex ample, the New Zealand Maoris call the potatoes “kumara”, but the Hawaiians say “uala”.

DR. BUCK moves upon more certain ground in his chapter upon the Maoris of New Zealand, Te Rangi Hiroa’s homeland. How the Maoris developed their remarkably high material culture cannot be properly understood, Dr. Buck contends, until the culture of central Polynesia, whence came the Maoris, is studied first.

For example: In Central Polynesia tapa beaten from the paper mulberry tree made a cloth sufficient for human requirements. So from central Poly nesia the Maoris (a word meaning aborigines) took along cuttings of the mulberry tree which grew readily

enough in New Zealand. But in this new land the Maoris first saw snow.

Tapa cloth was scarcely snug enough to keep out the chill winds.

There were great forests of trees and the low lands were overgrown with a tough flax. Once more the Polynesian inventive genius was stirred. The Maoris fashioned adzes from basalt and finer tools from greenstone. Trees were felled and hauled from the forests. Wooden houses, the stoutest in Polynesia, were developed. In them the people sheltered from the winter storms, and in them, too, the Maoris stored foods harvested from the fertile land in summer. This preservation of food against the want of winter was a new task for the Polynesian.

The Maoris found that the flax leaves, when stripped and scutched, had the toughest of fibre. So they invented a weaving, which was an adaptation of their fish-trap techni que, and wove splendid cloaks that

were gored to fit the figure, a cultural step beyond the tapa wrap-arounds of Central Polynesia.

The Maoris developed more artistic appreciation in the long N.Z. winters.

Weeks of rain, which kept everybody indoors, stirred imaginations. Fine carving tools were fashioned with which woodwork and carving was ad vanced to a higher degree than else where in Polynesia. Instead of mop ing through the long winter, the quick-witted elaborated every inch of their buildings, inside and out, with exquisite carvings.

Chapter after chapter “Vikings of the Sunrise” sweeps through the Polynesian culture, from the consoli dation of the race in Central Poly nesia and along the various radials of sub-migrations until the present day. There are 21 chapters and a magnificent epilogue that rings with the emotion that often must have gripped a crowded Polynesian meet ing house when the people were gathered to solve a problem confront ing the community, the welfare of the race.

“Vikings of the Sunrise” never develops into dull scholarship. It has the breadth and depth and richness of Polynesia that cannot be weighed and labelled in the confines of a magazine review. There is fine writ ing that glows with the warmth of the tropics, that flows with the ease and the charm of the Polynesians.

The book will be treasured by stu dents because it is written for them by an outstanding Polynesian who tempers scientific facts with the sop histication of his venerable race.