hitians and all
their kind were ancient Aryans who in the dim past were in India,
and afterward in the Indian archipelago. They were in Sumatra, in
Java, in the Philippines long before the Malays. Certainly their
blood brothers, changed by millenniums of a different environment,
remain in Malaysia, known there as the aborigines (Orang-Benoa),
by the majority races. D'Urville said the Harfouras of Celebes were
identical physically with the Polynesians. At some unfixed date the
first of the Polynesians pushed out in their insecure craft for this
sea, driven away by the Malay-Hindu invasion or by interracial feuds.

The pioneer, according to the legend, was Hawaii-uli-kai-oo, Hawaii
and the Dotted Sea, a great fisherman and navigator. He sailed toward
the Pleiades from his unknown home in the far West, and arrived at
eastern islands. So pleased was he with them, that he returned to
his western birthplace for his family, and brought them to Polynesia.

Other Polynesians left the Asiatic archipelago about the end of the
first century, and went to many islands. Finally they reached the
Samoan, Tongan, Marquesan, Paumotuan, and Society groups, and Easter
Island and New Zealand. In pushing eastward they skirted Papua, but
were unable to stay, because the Papuans, whom the Polynesians had
long ago driven out of the Asiatic archipelago, were stronger than the
emigrants. They next tried Fiji, and tarried there longest, leaving
those powerful imprints on the Papuans in appearance and language
that make Fiji the anomaly of Melanesia. But the Fiji-Papuans at last
drove them out, and they left with blood in their eyes. When the whites
found the Marquesans in the sixteenth century, they were building at
Vaitahu great war-canoes to "attack the black people who used bows
and arrows." No living Marquesan had ever seen them nor could they
have attained Fiji in any strength, yet the historical hate persisted.

The Marquesans of the north said their race came from Hawaii, and
those of the south from Vavao. Seventeen places they had stopped at
in their great migration eastward, they said.

Pu te metani me Vevau
A anu te tai o Hawa-ii!
Pu atu te metani me Hawa-ii
A anu te ao e Vevau!

Blow winds from Vavao
And cool the sea of Hawaii!
Blow back, winds from Hawaii,
And cool the air of Vavao!

That was the Marquesan legendary chant, the primal command of their
God after creation. Vevau and Hawaii were