THE NATIVE RACES
The native races of the South Pacific, with the possible exception of
the Maori, will have no influence in settling the destiny of the ocean.
Neither the Australian aboriginal nor the Kanaka--under which last
general title may be grouped all the tribes of Papua, the Solomons, the
New Hebrides and other Oceanic islands--will provide the foundation of a
nation. It is one of the curiosities of world-history that no great race
has ever survived which had its origin in a land south of the Equator.
From the earliest civilisations to the latest, there is not a single
instance of a people of the southern hemisphere exercising any notable
effect on the world's destinies. Sometimes there seems no adequate
reason for this. That Africa north of the Equator should have produced a
great civilisation, which was the early guide and instructor of the
European civilisations, may be explained in part by the curious
phenomenon of the Nile delta, a tract of land the irrigation of which at
regular intervals by mysterious natural forces prompted inquiry, and
suggested that all the asperities of Nature could be softened by effort.
(The spirit of inquiry and the desire for artificial comfort are the
great promptings to civilisation.) But it is difficult to understand why
in America the aboriginal Mexicans should have been so much more warlike
than the Peruvians or any other people in South America; and why the
West Pacific should wash with its northern waters the lands of two great
races, and with its southern waters flow past lands which, though of
greater fertility, remained almost empty, or else were peopled by
childlike races, careless of progress and keen only to enjoy the simple
happiness offered by Nature's bounty.
The Australian aboriginal race is rapidly dwindling: one of its
branches, that which populated the fertile and temperate island of
Tasmania, is already extinct. In Tasmania, reacting to the influence of
a mild and yet stimulating climate, a climate comparable with that of
Devon in England, but more sunny, the Australasian native had won to his
highest point of development. Apparently, too, he had won to his highest
possible point, for there is evidence that for many generations no
progress at all had been made towards civilisation. Yet that point was
so low in the stage of evolution that it was impossible for the poor
natives to take any part, either as a separate race, or by mingling
their blood with another race, in the future of the Pacific. The black
Australian is a primitive rather than a degraded man. Most ethnologists
have concluded that this black Australian is a Caucasian. Wallace
ascribes to him kinship with the Veddas and the Ainus of Asia. Stratz
takes the Australian as the prototype of all the races of man.
Schoetensack contends that the human race had its origin in the
Australian continent.
But, however dignified by ancestry, the Australian aboriginal was
pathetically out of touch with modern civilisation. He broke down
utterly at its advent, not so much because of his bad qualities as
because of his childishness. Not only were alcohol, opium and greed
strange to him, but also weapons of steel and horses and clothing. He
had never learnt to dig, to build, to weave. War organisation had not
been thought of, and his tribal fights were prodigal of noise but
sparing of slaughter. When the White Man came, it was inevitable that
this simple primitive should dwindle from the face of the earth. It is
not possible to hold out any hope for the future of the Australian
blacks. They can never emulate the Maoris of New Zealand, who will take
a small share in the building up of a nation. All that may be hoped for
is that their certain end will be kept back as long as is humanly
possible, and that their declining days will be softened by all
kindness. A great reserve in the Northern Territory--a reserve from
which the White population would be jealously excluded, and almost as
jealously the White fashions of clothing and house-building--holds out
the best hope for their future. It is comforting to think that the
Australian Government is now resolved to do all in its power for the
aboriginals. Indeed, to be just, authority has rarely lacked in
kindness of intention; it has been the cruelty of individuals acting in
defiance of authority, but aided by the supineness of authority, that
has been responsible for most of the cruelty.
The Maori or native New Zealander was of a different type. The Maori was
an immigrant to New Zealand. Some time back there was an overflow of
population from the fertile sub-tropical islands of Malaysia. A tribe
which had already learned some of the arts of life, which was of a proud
and warlike character, took to the sea, as the Norsemen did in Europe,
and sought fresh lands for colonisation. Not one wave, but several, of
this outflow of colonists struck New Zealand. The primitive people
there, the Morioris, could offer but little resistance to the warlike
Malaysians, and speedily were vanquished, a few remnants finding refuge
in the outlying islets of the New Zealand group. Probably much the same
type of emigrant occupied Hawaii at one time, for the Hawaiian and the
Maori have much in common. But whilst the perpetual summer of Hawaii
softened and enervated its colonists, the bracing and vigorous climate
of New Zealand had a precisely opposite effect. The dark race of the
Pacific reached there a very high state of development.
The Maori system of government was tribal, and there does not seem to
have been, up to the time of the coming of the White Man, any attempt on
the part of one chief to seize supreme power and become king. Land was
held on a communal system, and cultivated fairly well. Art existed, and
was applied to boat-building, to architecture, to the embroidering of
fabrics, to the carving of stone and wood. War was the great pastime,
and cannibalism was customary. Probably this practice was brought by the
Maoris from their old home. If it had not been, it might well have
sprung up under the strange conditions of life in the new country, for
New Zealand naturally possessed not a single mammal, not a beast whose
flesh might be eaten. There were birds and lizards, and that was all.
The Maoris brought with them dogs, which were bred for eating, but were
too few in number to provide a satisfactory food-supply; and rats, which
were also eaten. With these exceptions there was no flesh food, and the
invitation to cannibalism was clear.
A more pleasant feature of the national life of the Maori was a high
degree of chivalry. In war and in love he seems to have had very much
the same ideas of conduct as the European of the Age of Chivalry. He
liked the combat for the combat's own sake, and it is recorded as one of
the incidents of the Maori War that when a besieged British force ran
short of ammunition, the Maori enemy halved with them their supply, "so
as to have a fair fight."
In his love affairs the Maori was romantic and poetic. His legends and
his native poetry suggest a state of society in which there was a high
respect for women, who had to be wooed and won, and were not the mere
chattels of the men-warriors. Since this respect for womenkind is a
great force for civilisation, there is but little doubt that, if the
Maoris had been left undisturbed for a few more centuries, they would
have evolved a state of civilisation comparable with that of the
Japanese or the Mexicans.
When Captain Cook visited New Zealand in 1769 the Maori race probably
numbered some 100,000. The results of coming into contact with
civilisation quickly reduced that number to about 50,000. But there was
then a stay in the process of extinction. The Maori began to learn the
virtues as well as the vices of civilisation. "Pakeha" medicine and
sanitation were adopted, and the Maori birth-rate began to creep up, the
Maori death-rate to decrease. It is not probable that the Maori race
will ever come to such numbers as to be a factor of importance in the
Pacific. But it will have some indirect influence. Having established
the right to grow up side by side with the White colonists, possessing
full political and social rights, the Maoris will probably modify
somewhat the New Zealand national type. We shall see in New Zealand,
within a reasonable time, a population of at least 10,000,000 of people,
of whom perhaps 1,000,000 will be Maoris. The effect of this mixture of
the British colonising type with a type somewhat akin to the Japanese
will be interesting to watch. In all probability New Zealand will
shelter a highly aggressive and a fiercely patriotic nation in the
future (as indeed she does at present).
The Malay States bred a vigorous and courageous race of seamen, and
Malay blood has been dispersed over many parts of the Pacific, Malays
probably providing the chief parent stock both for the Hawaiians and the
Maoris. But the Malay Power has been broken up to such an extent that a
Malay nation is now impossible. Since the British overlordship of the
Malay Peninsula, the Chinese have been allowed free access to the land
and free trading rights; and they have ousted the original inhabitants
to a large extent.
The Maori excepted, no race of Polynesia or Melanesia will survive to
affect the destinies of the Pacific Ocean. Nature was cruelly kind to
the Kanaka peoples in the past, and they must pay for their happiness
now. In the South Pacific islands, until White civilisation intruded,
the curse of Adam, which is that with the sweat of the brow bread must
be won, had not fallen. Nature provided a Garden of Eden where rich food
came without digging and raiment was not needed. Laughing nations of
happy children grew up. True, wars they had, and war brought woe. But
the great trouble, and also the great incentive to progress of life,
they had not. There was no toiling for leave to live. Civilisation,
alas! intrudes now, more urgent each year, to bring its "blessings" of
toil, disease, and drabness of fettered life; and the Paradise of the
South Sea yields to its advance--here with the sullen and passionate
resentment of the angry child, there with the pathetic listlessness of
the child too afraid to be angry. But, still, there survives in tree and
flower, bird and beast, and in aboriginal man, much that has the
suggestion rather of the Garden of Eden than of this curious world which
man has made for himself--a world of exacting tasks and harsh
taskmasters, of ugly houses and smoke-stained skies, of machinery and of
enslaving conventions.
With the White Man came sugar plantations and cotton fields. The Kanaka
heard the words "work" and "wages." He laughed brightly, and went on
chasing the butterfly happiness. To work a little while, for the fun of
the thing, he was willing enough. Indeed, any new sort of task had a
fascination for his childish nature. But steady toil he abhorred, and
for wages he had no use.
Some three years ago I watched for an hour or two, from the veranda of a
house at Suva, a Fijian garden-boy at work. This was a "good"
garden-boy, noted in the town for his industry. And he played with his
work with an elegant naïveté that was altogether charming to one who had
not to be his paymaster. Almost bare of clothing, his fine bronzed
muscles rippled and glanced to show that he had the strength for any
task if he had but the will. Perhaps the gentleness of his energy was
inspired by the æsthetic idea of just keeping his bronze skin a little
moist, so as to bring out to the full its satin grace without blurring
the fine anatomical lines with drops of visible sweat. His languid grace
deserved that it should have had some such prompting. If a bird
alighted on a tree, the Fijian quickly dropped his hoe and pursued it
with stones, which--his bright smile said--were not maliciously meant,
but had a purpose of greeting. An insect, a passing wayfarer, the fall
of a leaf, a cloud in the sky, all provided equally good reasons for
stopping work. Finally, at three a little shower came, and the "model
boy" of Fijian industry thankfully ceased work for the day.
A gracious, sweet, well-fed idleness was Nature's dower to the Pacific
Islander, until the White Man came with his work, as an angel with a
flaming sword, and Paradise ended. Now the fruit of that idleness is
that the Kanaka can take no part in the bustling life of modern
civilisation.
In one British settlement, Papua, a part of New Guinea, the Australian
Government is endeavouring to lead a Kanaka race along the path of
modern progress. "Papua for the Papuans," is the keynote of the
administration, and all kinds of devices are adopted to tempt the
coloured man to industry. His Excellency, Colonel Murray, the
Administrator of Papua, told me in London (where he was on leave) last
year (1911) that he had some hopes that the cupidity of the Papuans
would in time tempt them to some settled industry. They had a great
liking for the White Man's adornments and tools, and, to gratify that
liking, were showing some inclination for work. The effort is well
meant, but probably vain. "Civilisation is impossible where the banana
grows," declared an American philosopher: and the generalisation was
sound. The banana tree provides food without tillage: and an organic law
of this civilisation of ours is that man must be driven, by hunger and
thirst and the desire for shelter, to plan, to organise, to make
machines, to store.
Every nation in the Pacific has the same experience. In the Hawaiian
Group, the American Power finds the native race helpless material for
nation-making. The Hawaiian takes on a veneer of civilisation, but
nothing can shake him from his habits of indolence. He adopts American
clothes, lives in American houses, learns to eat pie and to enjoy
ice-cream soda. He plays at the game of politics with voluble zeal. But
he is still a Kanaka, and takes no real part in the progress of the
flourishing territory of Hawaii. Americans do the work of
administration. Imported Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and others, are
the coolies and the traders. The Hawaiian talks, basks in the sun,
adorns himself with wreaths of odorous flowers, and occasionally
declaims with the pathetic bleat of an enraged sheep at "American
tyranny."
When White civilisation came to the South Pacific, the various islands
held several millions of coloured peoples, very many of them enjoying an
idyllically happy system of existence. To-day, 50,000 Maoris, beginning
to hold their own in the islands of New Zealand, represent the sole hope
of all those peoples to have any voice at all in the Pacific.
Humanitarian effort may secure the survival for a time of other groups
of islanders, but the ultimate prospects are not bright. Probably what
is happening at Fiji, where the Fijian fades away in the face of a more
strenuous coolie type imported from India, and at Hawaii, will happen
everywhere in the South Pacific.