THE FIJIANS
A STUDY OF THE DECAY OF CUSTOM
THE FIJIANS
A STUDY OF THE DECAY OF CUSTOM
BY
BASIL THOMSON
AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF DARTMOOR PRISON," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1908
OTHER WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
South Sea Yarns
The Diversions of a Prime Minister
A Court Intrigue
The Indiscretions of Lady Asenath
Savage Island
The Story of Dartmoor Prison
(In collaboration with Lord Amherst of Hackney)
The Discovery of the Solomon Islands
Copyright, London 1908, by William Heinemann.[Pg v]
PREFACE
This volume does not pretend to be an exhaustivemonograph on the Fijians. Their physical characteristicsand their language, which have no bearing upon the state oftransition from customary law to modern competition, areomitted, since they may be studied in the pages of Williams,Waterhouse and Hazlewood, which the author has freelyconsulted. All that is aimed at is a study of the decay ofcustom in a race that is peculiarly tenacious of its institutions—thedecay that has now set in among the natural races inevery part of the globe.
The author lived among the Fijians with short intervals forten years, first as Stipendiary Magistrate in various parts ofthe group, then as Commissioner of the Native Lands Court,and finally as Acting Head of the Native Department. Muchof the anthropological information was collected for the Commissionappointed in 1903 to investigate the causes of thedecrease of the natives, of which the author was a member,and of that portion of the book his fellow-Commissioner, Dr.Bolton Glanvill Corney, C.M.G., and the late Mr. James Stewart,C.M.G., should be considered joint authors, though they arenot responsible for the conclusions drawn from the evidence.
To Dr. Corney, whose services to medical science in theinvestigation of leprosy and tropical diseases in the Pacific areso widely known, his special thanks are due. He alsoreceived valuable assistance from Dr. Lynch, the late Mr.Walter Carew and a number of native assistants, notably IlaiMotonithothoka, Ratu Deve, the late Ratu Nemani Ndreu,and others. The late Mr. Lorimer Fison also helped him withmany suggestions.[Pg vi]
The ideas expressed in the introduction were formulated inthe author's presidential address to the Devonshire Associationin 1905: the marriage system and the mythology weredescribed in papers read before the Anthropological Institute:some account of the "Path of the Shades" and the fishing ofthe Mbalolo are to be found in others of the author's books.
The spelling adopted for native words may be displeasingto Fijian scholars, particularly the rendering of q by nk, butalthough wanka may not represent the Fijian pronunciationas accurately as wangga, it is certainly less uncouth. Hazelwood'sspelling, excellent as it is for the purpose of teachingFijians to read