ORIGIN OF HAWAIIANS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 31, 30 October 1937, Page 15

ORIGIN OF HAWAIIANS

Skill as Navigators

rorty-slx dsys and 2760 pjiles oul frem their starting point at Honolulu et this is written, two Erench seientists here just made port at the Kexn Is lends of the mid-Pacifio iu one of th« strangest craffe afloat, writes Mr Weodi Peters jn a recent iasue of Populai Science Monthly, as accurate a copy as medem artisans can make, their boal is patterned af ter native Hawaian craf 1 of 1000 years ago. By sailing it hali way around the world, under the spon sorshipt of the Prench GeograpMc Se ciety, they hope to obtain evidence thal may help to solve a baffling mystery oi human migration. Some timo in remote history— -perhaps in the first or second century— tall, brown-skinned men and women beached such craft on the shores oi Hawaii and Qther PacJElc. islands and settled there. Their straight black hair and almost-European features distinguished them f rom negro and yellow reoes. Where did they come fromt Known to have been skilled at navigation, these Polynesians, as they and thei; descendents ara called, must nevertheless have been largely at the

b. mercy of the elements at sea. There" » fore the two Erenchmen, Cept. Emc de s Bisschop ahd Joseph Tatibouet, conteat " the opinion of meny anthoriti.es thet j the original home of the Polynesien* • was in Asia, and that they migrated in r donblt canoes by way of the Maley s archipelago to Samoa and Hawaii. Pret vailing east-to-west winds and ocean ■* currenta mahe such a voyage inconceivl able in the frail craft they had at their • dispoeal, the Erench seientists maintain, - hoiding instead that they came from ; Central and South Ameriea. with the • aid of favouring trade winds. Seehing to trace the Polynesians* - migration and the spread of their cul- • ture through ancient relics, the scienl tists passed two perilous . yeara sailing ■ emong the islands of the Japanese E Mandate group and thence tq Hawaii. ' The journey ended in disaster when ' their small craft was wreeked upon the ! almost unexplored shore of a Hawaian island, Bescued at the point of starva- > tion, the seafarers devised a new ven1 ture to demonstrate more dramatieally ; the route that the myst«rimn ^own i race may have tahen.