PACIFIC OCEAN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 October 1924, Page 16

PACIFIC OCEAN.

AND ITS PEOPLES. DR. MACMILLAN. BROWN’S : - RESEARCHES. Y-Al'i' TO NORTH-WEST AMERICAN • COAST. Dr. j. Macmillan Brown, Chancellor or the University of i\e\v Zealand, was a passenger uy tile xaniti, winen arrived at Wellington from San Francisco on rvionday. < For some twenty years past Professor Macmillan Brown lias, been studying the Pacific Ocean and its peoples, and 'especially the problem of how it has been peopled. 111 pursuance of that research wort ho has just completed a to the i\orth-wets coast of America. He left New Zealand at the end of -May last. I have visited nearly all the other groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean; also the coasts of China and Japan; and I have gone ail through South and Central America,’’ said Dr. Macmillan Brown to a Post representative.- “I have made these visits with the view of seeing what could be made out of these lands as to the peopling of the Pacific Ocean. This trip to the Northwest Coast of America was to see whether there was any warrant for thinking that there is an affinity between those peoples and the Polynesians. : The voyagers Cook, Vancouver, Portlock, and Mears seemed all to report a -likeness between the culture df these north-west coastal Indians and the Polynesians, and also indicated that they were, when their faces were washed. white or almost white. s “I went to see them personally, and was disappointed to find that they were almost as Mangoloid as the Indians of the interior—broad and high cheekbones and black, lank hair. These were especially in the Haidas and the Queen Charlotte Group (off Prince Rupert, British Columbia). I made two visits to them; and the natives undoubtedly have much more of the European look in their faces than those to the north, in Alaska—the Tlilinkeets. The Thlinkeots extend all'along the coast of United States and Alaska. Then, again, there are in "Vancouver Island another section commonly called Nootkas—although that was a mere mistake of Cook in calling them Nootkas. They are intermediate between Haidas and I'lilinkeets in their features. But there is a reason for all these coastal Indians oeing Mongoloid. The defeated tribes from the interior broke through? frequently to the coast. It was the great refuge of defeated tribes, and hence there are an immense 'number of dialects and languages amongst the coastal peoples. Secondly, there was a custom of slave traffic from the South to the North. Those in Vancouver Island and on the adjoining coast, after defeating the less warlike Indians inland, sold their "vxptives in the North-west to the Haidas and Thlinkeets. It would, of course, be the chiefs that would get the captive women into their households, and hence there would be a Mongolising of the posterity of those, chiefs. “I found a great deal of culture very much akin to the Polynesian, culture, as the voyagers in the 18th and 19th centuries pointed out, There were “pas’ or villages aIL along the coast, generally on precipices, and in defensible situations. Hence there is one island called ‘Hippah’ Island, and the early voyagers noted that it was like the New Zealand ‘pas,’ on the coast. “I saw a good many weapons and implements that were very like the Maori: one especially, a club of bone, was quite the same shape as the Maori mere. There was one curious phenomenon all along the coast. ‘Whenever I bioiieht my camera to bear, the natives hid .their faces or went off. Two experts in Alaska, the Rev. Mr Corse, in Wrangell, and. Father Kashevaroff, a Russian born in Alaska, and now curator of the Juneau Museum, held that this timidity towards the camera was duo to fear of being laughed at, or an expectation of money. I offered them money, and vet they refused to stand to the camera ; and I do not think they were specially sensitive to criticism or laughter. My explanation is that the shadow, like the name, is considered part, of the life, and that by the taking of photographs you take the shadow from them. This is confirmed by a sentence in ‘Kane’s Discoveries.’ He was along that coast in the last century. and he says: ‘I took a portrait of a chief, and offered him a plug of tobacco, and lie said: “is this all you give me for risking mv life?” I generally held my camera behind me, and brought it forward,’ said Professor Macmillan Brown. “It was exactly as if 1 had taken a revolver from my hip pocket. The result is that I have not very many photographs of the natives. The best I took were during mony in Nootka Sound, on the Northwest Coast of Vancouver Island. The Lieutenant-Governor and a judge were unveiling a memorial to Cook and Vancouver in commemoration of their striking the North-west Coast there more than a. century ago. Whilst the chief, Napoleon Buonaparte Maquinnah, was replying.to the Lieutenant-Gover-nor and having his speech translated by a missionary, I held my camera above the group of listeners and snajishotted him with some success. If he had been conscious of it he doubtless would have taken drastic action.”