PITCAIRN ISLANDERS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3822, 16 October 1936, Page 9

PITCAIRN ISLANDERS

STORY OF SIX GENERATIONS. Dr H. L. Shapiro’s study of the Pitcairn Islanders, “The Heritage of the Bounty. The Story of Pitcairn Island Through Six Generations,’’ (recently published, was undertaken on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History for the purpose of investigating the social and biological aispects of majrriage between Anglo-Saxons and Polynesians, and the results of in-breeding. In 1790 nine mutineers of the Bounty, six Polynesian men, and twelve Polynesian women, landed on Pitcairn. In the personal appearance of the islanders to-day the Anglo-Saxon type predominates. Dr Shapiro did not find one man or woman sufficiently Tahitian in appearance to pass as a Polynesian, whereas a number of the men might readily mix in an English community as persons of white race. This preponderance of the Anglo-Saxon type is explained by the fact that whereas there has been no addition to the Polynesian strain since 1790, there has been fresh infiltration of English blood from time to time. But the suppression of the Tahitian language on Pitcairn is the reverse of what might have been expected. The first children born on the island of Polynesian mothers', were taught English, and not the language of their mothers. This resulted in thq permanent establishment of English throughout successive generations. To-day the islanders speak English to visitors, though with a peculiar accent; but among themselves they use a curious jargon which Dr Shapiro describes as “ incomprehensible to English and Polynesian ears.” He suggests that this dialect may have .had its origin in the efforts of the mutineers to teach the Tahitians English. The inevitable in-breeding has not resulted in physical deterioration of the islanders, except in regard to tenth. Most of the islanders have bad teeth. On the other hand, as noted in “The Age” on 29th August, the inhabitants of the lonely island of Tristan da Cunha, in the south Atlantic, have exceptionally good teeth. According to Mr J. R. A, Moore, president of the Dental Society of the Cape Province, who visited Tristan da Cunha in 1932 and examined the teeth of 156 of the inhabitants, he found a degree of dental perfection such as is unknown to his profession in any other community-