Why Change Samoa?

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 942, 8 April 1930, Page 8

Why Change Samoa?

DR. BUCK AND ETHNOLOGY

WITH drastic changes, wliat has New Zealand to offer the Samoans, who, best of all the Polynesians, have retained their ancient customs and social law? Proiii purely an ethnologist’s viewpoint, Dr. Peter 11. Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) asked this question in an Auckland Institute and Museum address last evening at the University College.

Dr. Buck, who leaves for Honolulu today to resume his work as ethnologist to the Berenice P. Bishop Museum, addressed a crowded audience on the. diversity of culture among the Polynesian peoples, a diversity to an extent usually ignored. One significant observation made by him was that the New Zealand Maori, coming from the tropics to a temperate zone, of necessity developed a culture sharply distinct from the social orders of other Polynesians. Ethnologists ordinarily agreed that the Polynesians entered the Pacific in waves, after journeyings from Asia, Dr. Buck said. In Papua and the Melanesian islands they found a settled population and so ventured on Eastward from Fiji as far as Easter Island, branching north to Hawaii and south to New Zealand. Diversity of culture was so pronounced that it would be wrong, knowing one Polynesian people, to judge all the peoples from the one basis, and Dr. Buck was convinced that the race should be studied island by island. Ethnologists had come to two ways of thought; one school, following Elliott Smith, maintained the cultures, across the Great Ocean of Kiwa (the Pacific) to the Mayan civilisation of Mexico, were simply variations of the Egyptian civilisation, and the other school believed the peoples had adapted themselves to local circumstances. Dr. Buck could not understand why the schools were so dogmatic; he judged that both contentions had influences. There had undoubtedly been independent evolution and invention. Yet, the abrupt differences in practices and social orders amazed the observer who endeavoured to determine the complex thing known as culture, among .the Polynesians. Ethnologists said the Pacific was the last part of the world to be . colonised. That was because of the vast ocean spaces, but a neolithic race, hewing out wooden canoes with stone adzes, had conquered the distances. THROUGH MELANESIA Passing over Melanesia, the Polynesians occupied Samoa, Tonga and Niue; branches pushed' on past the Tokelaus, Pukapuka and the Cook Islands to Ra’iatea, the Tahitian Island. Then followed branchings to other groups. In Tahiti, customs were developed vastly different from those of Western Polynesia and the Eastern practices spread, with variations, to New Zealand and Hawaii. The Samoans practised polygamy and had families of title. Such names as Tamasese and Malietoa were handed down through the centuries, but the inheritance of the title depended on the social power of a wife’s family, heedless of earlier marriages. The Eastern Polynesians, however, strictly observed the rights of primogeniture. Today, in Samoa, the guild of carpenters, traditionally instituted by Tagaloa, the Creator, still operated with all the age-old ceremonials. Samoan guest-houses were built according to the ancient plan. No “guild” existed in the East. Kava drinking, with strict attention to seniority and excellence of birth, was perpetuated in Samoa in the welcoming of guests; as an example of Eastern development, the first sign of greeting among the Maoris was the wailing of women. Samoans lire-

served their rituals for the handing round of food. They led a full Polynesian life in their observances, and, without attempting to criticise any administration, Dr. Buck asked seriously what could be done to improve Samoan life by changing an ancient accepted order. Varying culture was noted by Dr. Buck even in one group, especially the Cook Islands. The people of Rarotonga traced their ancestry in myth, voyages and localisation precisely as did the Maoris, but their system of land tenure, entirely feudal, differed from the more communal system in New Zealand. This basis of tenure was traced back 26 generations to the fixing of the order by Tangia and other supreme chiefs. On the island of Mangaia, repeated military conquests, and peaces consummated by human sacrifices, formed the order of land holding. The loose practice of judging Polynesian cultures as one would not hold. Dr. Buck said. MAORI INVENTIVENESS Maori history, steeped in glorious incidents, was undoubtedly the history of even modern New Zealand. Climate, food, geographical surroundings and contact with other peoples were the factors bearing on culture, Dr. Buck said, in dealing with the evolution of the Maori in New Zealand. The Maori race had shown it s inventiveness in a degree not attained by other Polynesians. But it had been the cold which had stimulated the race to endeavour in manufacturing textiles in place of the light, ornamental apparel of the tropics, in constructing houses of flax, raupo and solid timbers instead of flimsy structures of light woods, reeds and grasses in the tropics, and in planning cultivations to replace the prolific natural food supplies of the islands. Weaving, notably taniko, and the artistic carving of the heavy whare timbers had been invented by the Maoris. These arts were New Zealand born in their essentials, with possibly one or two motifs emanating from Melanesia. Turning to the future of the Maori race, Dr. Buck declared his conviction to be that the spirit which urged the bold Polynesian voyagers from Asia to the farthest bounds of the Pacific Ocean remained with the Maoris today. This fine hope would enable the Maoris, he thought, to adapt themselves to the demands of European civilisation, and, perhaps, to add to that civilisation something which would make the New Zealanders of the future distinctive as a race. In the past, rather too much had been expected of a race, emerged from a neolithic age, lacking finance and with many land titles greatly obscured, to compete with Europeans engaged in agriculture. Excellent assistance was being given by officials of the Native Land Court and the Health Department. Dr. Buck praised the display in the Maori section of the War Memorial Museum. Mr. H. E. Vaile, presidnt of the Auckland Institute and Museum, referred to the notable contributions of Dr. Buck to knowledge of the Polynesians. New Zealanders felt that Dr. Buck was merely with the Americans temporarily and there was a sincere wish that the doctor would return to the land of his own people.