SPECIAL ARTICLE.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18551, 28 November 1925, Page 15

SPECIAL ARTICLE.

£ BLOND STRAIN IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN. —-♦"" — tatCUUX WMTTIK TO* "188 rEZSS.") ' FBy J- BIAMniAX Brown, LL.D.] '_-_ «..-. 0 f the Blonds Proclaimed in < f/\ Honolulu. % *Jittt M tbc I nstitntc of Pacific Rela " * !^ M - closing its sessions, a new--1 "'mar raised in Honolulu a storm of " *Mitrtversy on the racial question in fte tropics- The issue was entirely diftf «t from that which had been put the Orientals in the conferences at X vp-jjioa tho question of the race-con-joousness and the scorn of colour by *- (feridentals. The new question conJ " «jnieU the permanence of the white > j£*B in the tropics, or even outside of tie«ooler belts of the temperate zone. 1 lecturer from the University of Malta, fr~tn interview that appeared in the Mtier*, warned the whites in the jjisiian Islands, whether blonds or jjOJeUes, that if they did not protect itamjwlres from the actinic rays of the glljby day, and by preference lead a Ljgpsl-life, their adrenals would be £jf|d, and they would reproduce iiffiijtg and failures from a uuaucial Jjjjpf view, and therefore eventually ESSjjarasites, charity burdens, crim'.jajfeand so on," and, worst of all, JSHs-jpod their complexions. "The kJ&jU at one time invaded the MediterEgypt, and even far-off India, ' flttjßre all wiped out, because their orZjjggps couTd not adjust themselves to rays of the suu of the 'jjok'eni climate." His critics pointed {«(&*> him the children and grandchildren *nd great-grandchildren of the missionaries who arrived in Vo.M»nds a hundred years ago; they no means less healthy or enerefficient than those, who had 3||jpejreceiitly from the States, though been bora and brought up in instead of struggling against 'Wmtat, insanity, criminality, alcoholfailure, parasitism, insuicide, and premature old asj|p&d death," they were the most suc„9g citizens of Honolulu. One scihas travelled widely in the £g|||as showed how all recent medical "||P«M, tends to hold that the chief wlIN? 1 * 0 w^lte occ "Pation of hotter '|||gigr'is insect life and tho diseases and Even the PolyMost Protect from the |S»|wteyiolet Says. ff||l||u? w P na t of doom for the white a|g|P«WJ 4t ventures beyond the realm the temperate zone, resource of his views by referbook, "The Effects j||||!gtaeal Light on White Men.' ' The K a me<^ca l army officer in the *||sßpEgißes for many years, and recom||||||i||Jhf! use of orange-coloured undcr||||iPPC to prevent the ultra-violet to the skin. His sucthe American army in the years later reversed his Ton » in tne Philippine Science" (1911), showed JililPllffflfe 8 thc ra y s of the tho mi schief with mM&Sifo'r'l and not tho ultra «HBBir&TW eally ' actlve ra ys, whilst phowed m contradiction that brun'^BP^^rl^^i 10 * 6 than D,on< i s from tuberculosis in,, the 1 I>ad contended forty degrees of fhites could not in the ' 'SSSSr? theVpopulation of > *"*«s* and mw Zealand would, re-' v s!u ? His dis- ♦ 2&J?sffl*&9 M Woodruff as .. holding fliatihV Continental United khern States like (Wisconsin— are not ie blond man, but ad black instead of protection against i had the advantage ving the. ductless sb an explanation tinic.rays on the ropics. He advises iWaiians to protect 3 Sim and keep the ials for digestion, ration, and other f their system. »nds Even Amongst dan Gods. trouble to get waiians, he would y had amongst them lis, but families who Se ehu are known Wands; the diction■ord "rod' or eandyntenance or florid." e represented as in consecrating the the timber for new by the late Dr. !, the blond one, here iyer to you, a snuffou, a fowl of light wl of a red colour ish off). The image b god of life." many who were to know only one^ — he chiefs of police nplexion was a light cd blood showing the cheek; the hair l in bright sunlight own tinge. He told blond, and all her :k as she could go, he was a boy his but his father, who hair, used to cut it dye the skin black, the dark hair and d to a conquering he blond hair and earlier race that t the same direction custom in Mangaia, of the Cook group, golden-haired chiidto the god Tanganongst the MJapxis igh Esteem. Opposite direction of a Taupo native "New Zealanders." ave somewhat far 1 in their cheeks; th yellow or golden ciou that is unmisthey were what all over the men and their arts B8 of last century* the "Children at near Taupo Lake" ■ following letterry heart of the in-"olden-coloured hair e observed, though a circumstance of >; the boy whose a x the centre figure oud is the son of f fukanu, a settleioiling springs near b no mixture with sould have taken regard the boy with and he is known by f Ko Tiki, which

The Defeated Blonds in the New Zealand Mountains Become Fairies. The district is between seventy and eighty miles to the south-west of the wild forested Urewera country which has held Europeans at armslength more and longer than any other Maori region of Xew Zealand; an 1 is ■ also the traditional dwelling place of the Turehu, a Blond aboriginal race, that had supplanted the Tuturaaiao, the supplanters of the Kui, the original proteges of Maui when he hauled up the land from the sea; these last conquerors had come from "the other side of the ocean" and were themselves mastered and absorbed by the newcomers from Polynesia in the fourteenth century. Nearlv twenty years ago, I went up into this ancient home of the blond aboriginals, and when I was received in the wharepuni by x the leading men, one of the 'tohungas addressed mc in a long and eloquent speech : T replied in English was interpreted to them, and' n* J stated the purpose of my visit, to seo the urukehu, they called out as ono man, "T-irehu," Turehu"; th«*7 identified the blond element in the Maori with the aboriginals their ancestors had displaced.

And the Maoris have many names for this blond race, that like all defeated peoples took refuge in the mountains and forests, and by their rare and furtive descents to the lowlands during the night or in mists, produced an eerie feeling in the minds of the conquerors as of something supernatural or dimly seen like a fairy or a spirit from the other world. Turehu itself means seen or shining as in a mist or a dream. Another for this shadowy people is korakorako, the duplication of the word for an albino or pigmentless human; it also implies their blondness. A third, pakchakeha is a duplication of the word for a foreigner, and is derived from keha, meaning dim and whitish, an epithet of the moon. Two others, heketoro and tahurangi. seem to mean a gleam or fire from heaven. Ngatiwhatui refers to their ancestry from aboriginal; whilst the commonest name for them, Patupaiarehe or Paiarehe or Parehe, if derived from rehe "puny" points to the pigmy form p that the imagination of the conquerors often gives to the remnant of the defeated as thev appear in their distant' refuses. It. is only in the larger islands and groups of Polynesia like New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands with high mountains, and deep forests to afford hiding places that we have the tradition of pigmies and fairies, giants and ogres; the Menehune of the latter group are pigmies and shadowy people who are megalithic builders. And in both tradition eives these dwellers in the mist and the forest a definiteness of personality that is difficult to dissolve into mere myth.

Blanching in the Pacific an indication of a Blowi But even in small islands where there are no refuges for the defeated,' we have not far to seek for evktences of a Caueasoid ancestry of the Polynesians, and that not infrequently blond Caueasoid ; Easter Island is perhaps the most salient example; it is so isolated from all other parts of Polynesia, and so far out of the route of European voyagers, whalers, and traders, that any European traits are presumably indigenous, if not primeval. One has only to look at the faces of the images to see that the people they were meant to' represent had Caueasoid if not European ancestry; they are "oval, atraighWosed, large-eyed, thin-lipped, and short in the upper lip." Even the small remnant of natives that now live in Hangaroa, the one village of the island, show strong Caueasoid traces in their features, and theichaix; their.faces are as European-like as one would,find in an equal number of the south of Europe; their complexions are varied, but often approach white; whilst their hair in the sunlight shows brown and frequently red'. If anyone should look at the picture of the last descendant of the kings, Hine Riroroko opposite page 76 in "The Riddle of the Pacific," he will find it difficult to trace anything unEuropean; the darkness of skin is due to the angle at which the photograph was taken. All the early visitors to the Island, Behrens, who wrote the first description of Eoggewein's discovery in 3722, Cook, Forster, Beechey,- Moerenhout, give such description of the natives as might well fit Europeans. Brother Eyraud, the first to reside on the Island, staying on the Island nine months in 1864, says that "their colour though a little coppery, differed little from that of Europe, many being entirely white."

liming the Hair in Melanesia Expresses Admiration of Blond Conquerors. That the aristocracy who are represented in the great stone busts were almost white, we may conclude from the custom which the natives _kept up till the coming of the missionaries, that of secluding the young men and women in caves till they were of an age tomany, doubtless to keep them out of the sun in order to blanch their skin. The seclusion of young women during the heat of the day by their aristocratic parents in most islands Of -rolynesia. had'the same purpose. The Gilbert Islanders on the western borders of Polynesia, to this day, follow the same practice with their maidens, so as to bring them out with blond complexions at the great ruoia, the dance at which the voung men make their matrimonial choice; the ancestral land-of Matang to { which their spirits pass at death is a | country of blonds. In a similar way the Easter Islanders counted a white skin as an essential for .joining in the dance; they had a .blanching house near their dancing places. A blond Son of Western Polynesia and all order to Jored wigs that arc the speo17milk oT footmen in highlv arisial mark oi ]lc of what fashion about European ttoeiSS«th century; eyery courtsin the >**££ t h b i oll d who Md of European Monarchies. The East Coasts and Islets Show Most TrSes of Caueasoid and Even Blond Warriors. And this fashion of liming the hair all through Melanesia and along ffi north coastof New Guinea, a clear sign that blond warriors swept along E-e the trade winds and made tbemSf every here and there the masters v wi-*d un to That this is no Sere fantastic &f£nce is manifest. t» r.l cets familiar with the lite SSTStSSffthe New Hebrides the Solomon and the coasts ot New Guinea. There he will imd indubitable evidence of a taller, handsomer, and more European race of warriors from the east, landing amongst nevoid? and changing their appearance their culture, and their language. No single expedition or migration could have worked such a Through centuries, if not thonsands of vears fleet* must have been o-oming, some of the smaller to meet defeat and extinction es is evident from the fata of one in Epi in the New Hebrides two eenerations ago, leaiving its mark in one light-coloured, brown-haired girl. But most must have been large and left their impress specially on the eastern solitary islets and on the cast coasts of the larger islands. And amone them must have been conspicoous tho light-haired, else, this fashion woukl not have been universal; nor would there have been so manifest in, many of the islands the lighter conv-

plexion and in the babies the blond hair. Some islets like Tikopia, to the south-east of the Santa Cruz group, have a population that is entirely Polynesian; Speiser. in his "Two Years in the New Hebrides," grows quite lyrical over the beauty and dignity of the Tikopians: "the golden, godlike forms of the natives walked about with proud regal gait"; he "seemed to see the living originals of some classical picture."

Traces of Blondism Grow Fainter Westwards into Indonesia. The influence seems to taper off as we follow along the north coast of New Guinea; and yet in every village, as 1 stood amongst the natives, some towered above me. whilst the majority dia not reach the height of my shoulder. The evidence of a lighter-skinned and blond-baired race grew sparser. And yet I remember away in the nortii of the Solomons meeting a European planter from further west with an Admiralty boy as attendant who had the lightest of complexions, and hair that was naturally blond. And again in Geelvink Bay on the north-cast coast of Dutch New Guinea in one of two large canoes that ba*l come to, meet Mr Van Hasselt as he returned from Humboldt Bay on the borders of German New Guinea I saw two "native paddlers who formed a striking contrast; one was clearly an albino with yellow hair and pink eyes that shrank from the sun : the other was a healtu* youngster with thr> red showing in nis cheek and his head yellow, inclining to rod. I asked the missionary to oali th«m on bnard our steamer and on the deck the contrast sppmnd even more ; v trikinc. Mr "* T an ]-T;is?elt t'hem and found thr.t the latter came from ;i v.-hns*. families were ai most all as linrhtr in comn;e:ion p« the '■ boy. Throughout the Malay Archinciai £o T watch"d for, any trr>ce of, t'ie liaht ; yHlow h:\ir that T'had ?een in Poly-. : nesia and more sohrr-My in Melanesia; : I never sn<v it. though T saw amongst i the natives of the interior of manv is- | la.nds tall (•■rr.<s. like the Polynesian, I with hair thnt tended- to be wavy. But ; r)r. H. 0. Forbes in the sixth part ' of bk " V Naturalist's "Wanderings in 1 the Enstern Archipelago" describes a people whom he came across in the ' back blocks of Eastern Timor as manij festly defendants of a blond ancestry. 1 He had left the kingdom of Bihisusu ! r.nd descended to the bed of the Maka- ! taha to see a fair; he was about to re- ! sume his journey when his eye lighted j on "a red-hairt-a vouth, first one, then a few others, some with curly hair, j with red eyelashes, blue eyes, and ! the hair over th* body also reddish." i They lived in a colony together net far off; their neighbours even intermarried with them. and the offspring sometimes took after one parent, sometimes after the other. In imagination he "pictured theii weary retreat, full of strange and romantic vicissitudes from a more northern clime till forced off the mainland by superior might into in this remote isle, where as a surviving remnant amid its central heights they are living united, but nob incorporated;, with the surrounding race whose pedigree has no link in common with their own." Around them he recognised a mixture of negroids and caucasoids. and seemed to see mingled migrants from -the far Pacific and Papuans from the neighbouring island of New Guinea. , He had been through most of the Malay Archipelago exploring the interior of several of the islands, but had never seen anything like this; nor did it ever strike him that this blond colony could have come into Northern India with" the Indo-Euro-peians who introduced Sanskrit and then strayed over India and all the great islands to the west of Timor without losing their -- blondism as the Sanskritists had long lost any that they had brought with them. In the neighbouring islands to the east; Timor-Laut, he found an artificial blondism of the same sort as is found in Western Polynesia and in Melanesia: "all-the natives were handsomefeatured fellows, lithe, tall, erect, and with splendidly formed bodies. They dyed their hair of a rich golden colour by a preparation made of cocoanut ash and lime, varying, however, in shade with the time from a dirty grey through a red or russet cotbur, till the second day, when the approved tint appeared."