Cook Islands’ “Blue Spot”

Babies

From Our Own Correspondent

Mangaia, Cl.

THE native people of these islands have always been of ethnological interest to visiting scientists, by reason of the well-known fact that in the Cooks is to be seen probably the purest Polynesian strain in the Pacific.

Native customs prevail to-day as they did when Cook called, only the undesir able or violent ones having been done away with. Midwifery is still exclusively Polynesian in practice; but this does not account for a peculiarity, seen in new born native infants, that has often puzzled doctors and ethnologists. Every baby shows from birth up to about its second year, a curious blue area at the base of the spine, like a bruise or ink stain, that seems to be characteristic of the Cook Islands. No explanation has been found for the condition, which is universal; it is not caused by injury or disease, and vanishes by the time the child is able to move about. A similar “blue spot,” it would seem, is visible among the infants of certain Indonesian tribes in the Arafura Sea, where natives have a decided resemblance to Polyne sian and Maori types.

It has been suggested that there is an ethnological connection between the two peoples.

Robert Rex who represented Niue at the South Pacific Conference in Suva, in May, arrived home in June, and has been busy going from village to village explaining to the people the meaning of the issues discussed at the Conference and enlisting their support to implement the resolutions passed.