The Fijians: A Study of the Decay of Custom

The religion of the Fijians was so closely interwoven with their social polity that it was impossible to tear away the one without lacerating the other. It was as unreasonable f...

Of the centuries that lie between the age of myth and the age of history there are but the feeblest echoes. From the ethnology of the people of to-day we may infer that the stre...

At the cession of the islands in 1874 the form of land tenure among the Fijians was very imperfectly understood. Most of the settlers, seeing the large tracts of uncultivated la...

The principal authority upon the state of society among the Fijians when Europeans first came into contact with them, is the Rev. Thomas Williams, a man possessing intelligence...

There are two systems of kinship nomenclature current among Fijians, one indicating consanguinity, and the other kinship in relation to marriage. This latter system radiates fro...

Of all inhabited countries in the world Fiji is probably the poorest in history. No European, who left a record behind him, had intercourse with the natives until 1810, and the...

The state of incessant intertribal warfare in which the first missionaries found the Fijians has led certain writers to represent them as a bloodthirsty and ferocious race whose...

No less than one per cent. of the native population of Fiji are lepers, and, if native tradition is to be believed, the decay of customary law has not affected the people in thi...

As the natural disposition with which a child enters this world, restrained though it may be by caution or fear of public opinion from expressing itself in acts, remains unalter...

While the great island groups of Tahiti, Hawaii, Samoa, New Zealand, Tonga, and the Solomons had been known to Europe for many years--some of them for nearly two centuries--the...

It has been too readily assumed that the ancient system of the Fijians was wholly evil. The disposition of early explorers and missionaries is to describe the races with whom th...

Yankona (_Yaqona_) the _Kava_ or _Ava_ of the Polynesians, is an infusion of the root of the pepper plant (_Piper methysticum_), which is indigenous in Fiji. Throughout Polynesi...

It has already been shown that the decay of the Fijian race is due, not to a low birth-rate, but to an excessive mortality among infants. The mean annual birth-rate for the ten...

The necessity for bartering commodities, which is one of the earliest needs of primitive society, was met by the Fijians in an original manner. Nomad tribes, who are perpetually...

There is no point upon which primitive races differ more than in their regard for chastity. Among civilized peoples there has been an ebb and flow of sexual morality so marked t...

About 1850, when the first details of cannibalism among the Fijians began to reach England through the missionary reports, there was a good deal of scepticism. Naval officers wh...

Every Fijian is a fisherman by instinct. At ten years old, with a little four-pronged spear, or with a bow and a four-pronged arrow, he is scouring the pools left on the reef by...

Whatever may have been the origin of seagoing ships, the evolution of the outriggered canoe is not difficult to trace. We may imagine a savage in remote antiquity standing on th...

Famine, in the European sense of the word, is unknown in Fiji. Even in times of scarcity every native can find sufficient food to satisfy his hunger, but, though the quantity is...

Among the tribes in Fiji, where Melanesian blood predominates, the _mbure-ni-sa_, or unmarried man's house, was a universal institution. In the Lau group the strong admixture of...

Chief among indigenous diseases (if diseases introduced before contact with foreigners may be called indigenous) is yaws, called by the Fijians _thoko_, or by its Malayo-Polynes...

Procuring abortion in the old days appears to have been limited to women of high rank who, for reasons of policy, were not allowed to have children. When it is remembered that e...

While ceremonial dancing takes the place both of theatrical shows and of sports with the Fijians, there are two national games that have held their own, and a number of amusemen...

If we were called upon to name the one invention that stands between savagery and the growth of civilization we might fairly choose the timepiece of sundial. Fixed routine in da...

The Fijian generally sleeps upon his back, with his head turned a little to one side, so that the part of the skull immediately behind the ear may rest upon the wooden neck-pill...

Like the Arabs, the Fijians circumcised their boys when just entering upon puberty, about the twelfth year. In heathen times the age seems to have been somewhat earlier, for Wil...

Swimming seems to come naturally to every Fijian. As soon as a child can toddle, it is playing at the water's edge with older children, and little by little it ventures out unti...

From the writings of early travellers it might be inferred that the Fijians practised polygamy to the same extent as the Arabs and other Mahommedan nations, but a moment's refle...

The tubercular taint in the Fijians, though less marked than among some of the Polynesian races to the eastward, is sufficient to influence the vitality of the race by impairing...

The Fijian of to-day is neither savage nor civilized. Security from violence has fostered his natural improvidence. The missionaries, who have effected so marvellous a change in...

Though few Fijians can be brought to trust a bank with their savings, they are quite alive to the advantages of receiving interest. When the Native Commissioner had been trying...

Though the contrary is asserted by European residents, I think that the physical strength and endurance of a Fijian are greater rather than less than that of the average English...

The tobacco plant was indigenous in Fiji, but until the beginning of the nineteenth century the leaf was only used for killing lice, from which it took its original native name...