Polynesian culture, the beliefs and practices of the indigenous peoples of the ethnogeographic group of Pacific Islands known as Polynesia (from Greek poly ‘many’ and nēsoi ‘islands’). Polynesia encompasses a huge triangular area of the east-central Pacific Ocean. The triangle has its apex at the Hawaiian Islands in the north and its base angles at New Zealand (Aotearoa) in the west and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the east. It also includes (from northwest to southeast) Tuvalu, Tokelau, Wallis and Futuna, Samoa (formerly Western Samoa), American Samoa, Tonga, Niue, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia (Tahiti and the other Society Islands, the Marquesas Islands, the Austral Islands, and the Tuamotu Archipelago, including the Gambier Islands [formerly the Mangareva Islands]), and Pitcairn Island. At the turn of the 21st century, about 70 percent of the total population of Polynesia resided in Hawaii.
The physical environment of the Polynesian islands is not as favourable for human habitation as it might at first seem. It certainly presented difficulties when the ancestors of the Polynesians entered the area some 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, first settling on the western islands—Wallis and Futuna, Samoa, and Tonga—which were devoid of much that was needed for human habitation. As a result, early peoples had to take in a wide variety of subsistence items, including most of the useful plants and all of the domestic animals they required. The physical environment has continued to exert a marked influence on Polynesian culture.
Polynesian cultures have been radically altered by Western colonialism. European explorers navigated much of the area in the latter quarter of the 18th century, and the first missionaries arrived in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Britain annexed New Zealand through the Treaty of Waitangi (1840), but interethnic tension arose between the indigenous Maori. Other colonial powers that laid claim to various parts of Polynesia included France, Germany, New Zealand, the United States, and Chile.
Missionary influence on Polynesian peoples increased over time, and Christianity eventually became an integral part of the islanders’ lives. In many areas Christianity was also influenced by local traditions and customs. Quite commonly, villages competed to build larger and more elaborate churches, and first-time visitors to Polynesia are often surprised at the intensity of the islanders’ commitment to Christianity. Many Polynesians were recruited to proselytize other parts of the Pacific, particularly Melanesia.
After World War II, local sentiments for decolonization began to spread. Samoa became the first postcolonial Pacific nation when it gained sovereignty from New Zealand in 1962. It has a parliamentary system, but only traditional chiefs (matai) may vote and run for election. Tuvalu also follows the parliamentary style of government. Three island groups—Tonga, Tahiti, and Hawaii—had traditionally been monarchies. This form of government survives only in Tonga, where a British-style parliament gives special status to traditional nobles. Most of the remaining island groups have gained some degree of independence from colonial rule.
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is the anomaly of the region. The aboriginal population was so decimated by European-introduced diseases and by slavers in the 1860s that it almost became extinct. In 1888 the island was annexed by Chile; its people are now the only Pacific islanders controlled by a Latin American power. Little remains of Easter Island’s original culture. The indigenous Polynesian language (also called Rapa Nui) survives, but most people also speak Spanish. About one-third of the island’s small population is from Chile.
Polynesia has loomed large in the Western imagination for more than 200 years. Idealized images were disseminated around the world from the time of first contact with Europeans: people in Europe avidly read the reports of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1771), Captain James Cook (1773), and other explorers and saw images made by the artists who accompanied them. These provided source material for published and widely circulated engravings. This fascination with an imagined “paradise” continued in the form of fiction—including such novels as Herman Melville’s Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Footnote to History (1892) and In the South Seas (1896)—and visual art, particularly that of Paul Gauguin. Bred by these and other artists and by tourist iconography, musicals, and films, the notions of an almost blissfully carefree and easy way of life, devoid of harsh extremes of any type, played out on islands of great beauty and natural abundance, persisted into the 21st century in the popular imagination. Far from conforming to Western notions of paradise, traditional Polynesian cultures were in fact complex, highly specialized, and adapted to environments that could be quite hostile.
While Polynesia was never the paradise some Westerners supposed, the circumstances of contemporary life also reflect more than a century of colonial disruption to indigenous cultural traditions. Some of these disruptions have been quite severe. For example, French Polynesia was forever changed when it became a nuclear test site, a process begun in 1962 when France’s former testing ground, Algeria, gained independence. The French government built testing facilities on two uninhabited atolls in the Tuamotu Archipelago: Mururoa and Fangataufa. Over the next three decades, 192 bombs were detonated at those facilities. The first series of bombs (1966–74) were exploded in the atmosphere and thereby created a large amount of radioactive fallout. Regional antinuclear protests eventually compelled the French to shift to underground detonation, in which explosions were contained in shafts that had been bored deep beneath the land surface of Moruroa Atoll and its lagoon. Although decreasing the risk of atmospheric contamination, the subterranean testing program has caused the atoll to sink several yards.
The nuclear-testing program also changed French Polynesia’s economy and the distribution of its population considerably. It generated an artificial sense of affluence by bringing in thousands of military personnel, creating a myriad of jobs, and initiating an influx of funding with which to guarantee the region’s loyalty and strategic services. Many French Polynesians left their villages for urban areas, causing the previous era’s self-sufficient subsistence economy to shift to a wage-based system. While French Polynesia came to have one of the highest standards of living in the South Pacific, many people’s livelihoods became intricately tied to the “nuclear economy,” which was exceedingly dependent on a continued military presence. With the end of testing in 1996, the French Polynesian government sought ways to diversify the local economy, aided by several years of financial assistance from the French government. Tourism emerged as one of the islands’ main economic activities. In addition, despite the pro-French messages conveyed by the educational system and the French-controlled media, an antinuclear and pro-independence movement emerged in the islands. Its activities became a major factor in France’s decision to change French Polynesia’s status from that of a territory to that of an overseas collectivity, which included greater autonomy for the islands.
French Polynesia is not the only area in which people have become increasingly urbanized. Towns such as Apia (Samoa), Pago Pago (American Samoa), and Nuku’alofa (Tonga) have attracted many people from rural areas. Many Polynesians have moved to New Zealand (especially Auckland) and the United States (especially Hawaii, California, Washington, and Oregon). By the early 21st century, more Samoans and Cook Islanders were living away from their original islands than on them.
Although colonial history and migration have instigated a great deal of cultural change, the indigenous peoples of this region are also making strong efforts to revive or maintain many of their customs and values. There has been an efflorescence of indigenous Polynesian literature since the 1960s, especially from Hawaii, New Zealand, Samoa, and Tonga. Although the earliest of these works often set indigenous peoples in direct opposition to the colonizers, more-recent literature grapples with the complex nature of colonial relationships and modern identities. Generally rooted in traditional culture, it reflects the continued importance of oral history, storytelling, and indigenous belief systems in the region (see also Oceanic literature; New Zealand literature).
Fluency in Polynesian languages has been an area of focus since the 1970s, and many areas have immersion schools for preschool and older children. Programs in New Zealand and Hawaii, where traditional languages had essentially been lost, have been especially successful. Because of the immersion schools, the Maori and Hawaiian languages are now comparatively healthy. In 1987 the New Zealand government declared Maori an official language of that country and established the Maori Language Commission as part of that legislation. The Samoan, Tongan, and Tahitian languages were never lost, and thus are also fairly robust.
Festival activity, which has always been a significant part of Pacific culture, has provided a vehicle for expressing contemporary indigenous identities. The Festival of Pacific Arts, founded in 1972, has become a major venue for the perpetuation of the region’s arts, music, and dance. With the goal of reviving what was in danger of being lost, the festival is held every four years, each time hosted by a different country. It has become an event that is both cultural and political and that serves to promote Pacific values. The Festival of Pacific Arts is complemented by other, more-local arts festivals, such as the annual Heiva in Tahiti, the annual Teuila Festival in Samoa, and the annual Merrie Monarch Hula Competition on the island of Hawaii.
Navigation over the open sea, often considered another art form, was almost lost but has been revived. In 1973 several people, all based in Hawaii, founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society in order to evaluate various theories of Polynesian seafaring and settlement. They reconstructed a double-hulled voyaging canoe in order to test both its seaworthiness and the efficacy of traditional (i.e., noninstrumental) navigation methods over the long ocean routes that Polynesians had once traveled. In 1975 the society launched the first such vessel, the Hokule’a, and in 1976 sailed it from Hawaii to Tahiti and back. They have continued to sail the Hokule’a as well as other canoes, such as the Hawai’iloa; the construction and sailing of these vessels serve to train students in the ancient arts of shipbuilding and navigation. Polynesians have applied the lessons learned from voyaging to cultural challenges they face today. For example, youths learn to listen carefully to elders, to learn by observing and doing, and to follow cultural rules, all of which have been useful in providing them with a sense of cultural identity.
Linguistic evidence suggests that western Polynesia was first settled some 3,000 years ago, by people of the Lapita culture. It has proved harder to establish when eastern Polynesia was settled. It is possible that some islands were occupied soon after the arrival of Lapita colonists in western Polynesia. However, while the Lapita are best known for their distinctive pottery, eastern Polynesia’s archaeological sites lack ceramics of any kind. Nonetheless, it is clear that the various island groups in Polynesia interacted frequently with one another during the early period of settlement, exchanging luxury goods such as basalt adzes, pearl shell, and red feathers.
One of the principal characteristics of traditional Polynesian cultures is an effective adaptation to and mastery of the ocean environment. The Polynesians were superb mariners—their voyages extended as far as Chile, approximately 2,200 miles (3,500 km) east of Easter Island—but their mastery did not extend merely to the technology involved in shipbuilding and navigation. It also permeated social organization, religion, food production, and most other facets of the culture; they had social mechanisms for coping with the human problems of shipwreck, such as separated families and the sudden loss of large portions of the group. In short, they were well equipped to handle the numerous hazards of the beautiful but challenging Pacific environment.
Another important characteristic of traditional culture was a certain amount of conservatism. This is apparent in all Polynesian cultures, even those that are separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, and whose populations were separated two or three millennia ago. For instance, a comparison of material goods such as stone adzes and fishhooks from widely separated groups reveals a remarkable similarity. The same is true for kinship terms, plant names, and much of the rest of the technical vocabulary of the cultures, as well as for art motifs and medical preparations. The ornate and voluminous genealogies, chants, legends, songs, and spells that were passed down and elaborated through the generations show a profound reverence for the past.
Polynesian cultures displayed a thoroughly practical exploitation of the environment. Their languages reflect their systematic observations of the natural world, abounding with terminology for stars, currents, winds, landforms, and directions. Polynesian languages also include a large number of grammatical elements, indicating, for example, direction of motion implied by verbs, including movement toward or away from the speaker, relative positions of objects with reference to the speaker, and direction of movement along a seashore-inland axis.
Polynesians also exhibited a profound interest in the supernatural, which they viewed as part of the continuum of reality rather than as a separate category of experience. As a result, Polynesian cultures placed every person in a well-defined relationship to society and to the universe. Creation traditions told of the origin of the world, setting forth the order of precedence of earth, sky, and sea and their inhabitants, including man and woman. Genealogies fixed the individual tightly into a hierarchical social order. A variety of legends interpreted natural phenomena, while historical accounts often described, with varying amounts of mythological elaboration, the migrations of people before they arrived at the island on which they were located, their adventures on the way, and the development of the culture following settlement.
Violence was an ever-present element of Polynesian cultures. This is reflected in the oral literature and in all aspects of traditional life. Various customs controlled and repressed the direct physical expression of aggression within the kin group and the tribe up to a point, but there were definite boundaries of behaviour beyond which only violence could restore status or assuage injured pride. Punishments for transgressing ritual prohibitions and social rules often incorporated ritual sacrifice or even the death of the transgressor. Intertribal warfare was extremely common, particularly when populations began to outgrow available resources.
Perhaps the most publicized and misconceived aspect of Polynesian culture has been its sensuality. As in many other aspects of life, Polynesian peoples generally took a very direct, realistic, and physical approach to gratification of the senses. Notably, while traditional culture placed clear restrictions on sexual behaviour, the fact that the range of acceptable behaviour was wider among Polynesians than among the Christian explorers and missionaries who reported it has fostered a stereotype of extreme sexual promiscuity. In reality, there was no abnormal focus or concentration on any aspect of sensual gratification, a situation in contrast to that seen in many other cultures where, for example, eating, drinking, or sex has become the focus of great cultural elaboration. In general, Polynesians’ balanced approach to sensual gratification seems just another reflection of a generally straightforward approach to the world.
Settlement patterns and housing
Two major settlement patterns were used in Polynesia prior to European contact: hamlets and villages. Their origin and development reflected factors such as social organization, the distribution of food-crop resources, and defense considerations.
Hamlets, comprising a few households or an extended family or two, were common on the larger volcanic islands, where food resources were diversified and scattered over a range of environmental zones. A typical hamlet settlement pattern was found in the Marquesas Islands of what is now French Polynesia. There, in prehistoric times as at present, the population spread up the sides of the deep and narrow valleys in clusters of perhaps four to five houses, often with gardens, taro patches, and coconut and breadfruit trees in the immediate vicinity.
Marquesan houses were built on rectangular platforms, the height and composition of which depended on the prestige of the owner. Individuals of lower status might have a simple paved rectangle no more than a few inches high, while warriors, priests, or chiefs might live in houses perched on platforms 7 to 8 feet (2.1 to 2.4 metres) high and containing stones weighing several tons each. Most of the household activity took place on the “veranda,” or unroofed front portion of the platform, which was paved with smooth basalt stones that had been transported from streambeds. Houses of chiefs and other individuals of high status often made use of cut stone slabs for decorating the platform. Many also had rectangular pits in the platforms for storing fermenting breadfruit paste (an important delicacy) as well as small caches in which were interred the carefully cleaned and packaged bones of important family members.
The house itself was built on a dais running across the rear of the platform. Composed of a lashed and fitted wooden framework and covered with a thatched roof, the typical house was open all the way across the front and had square ends. The roof sloped from a high ridgepole directly to the platform floor in the rear. Inside, a polished coconut log often ran the length of the house, serving as a community pillow. The floors were covered with mats, shredded leaves, or bark. Belongings were suspended in bundles from the rafters.
In Samoa, on the other hand, the settlement pattern shifted from hamlets to fortified villages after about 1000 ce. These communities, consisting of 30 or more houses connected by a network of paths, were built along the coast. Early houses were built on rectangular platforms much like those of the Marquesas, but, by the time of European contact, Samoan houses were built on oval mounds that were faced with rough stone slabs. The typical house was large and open—oval in floor plan, with a beehive-shaped thatched roof supported by a series of stout wooden pillars. Rather than building substantial walls, people hung rolled mats along the eaves, unrolling them as necessary to protect the inhabitants from sun, rain, or the night air. Houses were arranged in orderly fashion within the villages, which in turn were surrounded by a fortification wall of stone or by wooden palisades.
The Maori of New Zealand constructed particularly large and impressive fortified villages (pas) on hilltops, surpassing those of all other Polynesian cultures. Ditches, palisades, trenches, and terraces protected these forts. The interiors were partitioned off by additional defensive works to facilitate battle even after the outer defenses had been penetrated by an enemy assault. Maori houses were made of timber, rectangular in plan, and generally dug about 1 foot (0.3 metre) into the earth’s surface.
Kinship and social hierarchy
The typical Polynesian family consisted of three or more generations. Polynesian kinship terminology distinguishes between generations, as might be expected in a society so strongly oriented toward tradition and genealogy. There are sets of terms for the grandparents’ generation, distinguishing by sex only; for the parents’ generation, in which parents are distinguished from various categories of aunts and uncles; for members of a person’s own generation, in which the terms permit identification by sex, relative age, and sometimes marital potential (marriage of certain cousin categories is preferred in some Polynesian societies); and, finally, for the children’s generation, in which age and sex are again distinguished.
Kin groups were also the basis for Polynesian social hierarchies. In general, people traced their ancestry through the male line, a system in which children belong to their father’s lineage (patrilineality). After marriage most couples resided with the husband’s family (patrilocality). Thus, a typical family consisted of a senior male, his sons and grandsons, their spouses, and the group’s unmarried children.
However, although patrilineality was the most common method for reckoning ancestry, there were many variations from this system. In Hawaii, Tahiti, and elsewhere, and especially if it was to one’s advantage, descent could be traced through women (matrilineality). Thus, while descent through the male line was notionally preferred, in practice the descent system was often bilateral—traced through either or both parents. Adoption was very common and increased the flexibility of the kinship system by accruing additional parents to a child (and vice versa) rather than replacing the child’s biological parents. Siblings and cousins frequently adopted one another’s children, and grandparents sometimes adopted their own grandchildren. Children were thus able to move freely among all of these families and households.
Lineages were conceptualized and organized in one of two ways. By far the most common, and perhaps the most like the ancestral form of Polynesian social organization, is known among anthropologists as the ramage, or conical clan, type, in which the whole society might be represented in the form of a multibranched tree. In such systems, a group’s ancestry is traceable back to the mythological past, and various lineages are ranked according to their relation to these distant ancestors. The most senior line of descent was typically passed from firstborn son to firstborn son; branches off this main line were founded by junior sons, and these branches in turn produced further branches. The senior line comprised the direct descendants of the gods and therefore carried the maximum traditional prestige. Subsidiary branches were ranked in terms of their proximity to the senior line. When combined with widespread generational and gender ranking, the ramage placed each individual in each branch on a prestige-ranking scale relative to other members of his household, lineage, and community. This form of hierarchical branching-descent-group organization with territorial overtones was found in most Polynesian societies, with appropriate variations for local environmental conditions, cultural history, and, as noted in the previous section, the opportune use of bilateral models of descent.
The other major system that Polynesians used to organize descent groups is known as the descent line. Descent line organization appears to be the result of a breakdown in genealogical ties between the lower levels of a ramage organization. The descent line in Samoa, for example, consists of a group of people tracing descent in the male line from a common mythical ancestor. This group was known as a sa. There was no concern for the genealogical relationship of one descent line to another, nor was there any concern for ranking based on distance from, or proximity to, any particular male line of descent. What passed down through the descent line were titles, each of which had rank and prestige attached to it. Each descent line held a number of these titles, which could be held by men or women and which enabled the lineage to participate in certain ways in the village council (fono). A number of descent lines were represented in each village council, and members of each descent line were spread through a number of villages in a given area. Within a given village, the senior title, as determined by mythological connections, gave its holder the position of chief.
A characteristic of the descent line system is its flexibility. Because it depended so heavily on ancestry and tradition for validation of status and title, ambitious individuals could advance the prestige of their titles at the expense of others by displays of wealth and power. The traditions governing title seniority could thus be tampered with to produce the realignment that would allow the advance in status to occur. New descent lines might also be founded through a similar reworking of oral tradition.
Social stratification was an inherent feature of Polynesian society, and cultures generally had social classes that were clearly defined in terms of rights, duties, behaviour, and lifestyle.
In many Polynesian societies, the chief was the person of highest status, yet he was often regarded by his people and generally conducted himself as merely “first among equals.” In most of the more traditional of the societies, the chief could not appropriate the land of his followers, nor did he appear to be too interested in increasing his own group’s holdings at the expense of neighbouring groups. In terms of his clothing and behaviour, little distinguished him from other males. Nevertheless, he was the repository of sacred power for the group, a symbol of its ties with the past, and the vehicle whereby these ties would be perpetuated for coming generations. However, it was possible for a man to rise in prestige by various achievements—by giving gifts, holding feasts, or displaying military prowess, for example.
Many Polynesian societies, such as those on the islands of New Zealand, Hawaii, and Tonga and on the Society Islands, developed complex social hierarchies with ranked lineages and powerful chiefs. These chiefly rankings were derived from the Polynesians’ concept of the inheritance of godliness and, as a result, the chief’s possession of mana. Chiefs also differed from others in their ability to lead in battle, their success in accumulating and distributing large amounts of food and other valuables, and their religious skills in communicating with the gods.
Socialization and education
Polynesian children were generally born into a large and warm family environment. Even before a child could walk, it was turned over for care to the other children of the household, who generally associated in a kind of amorphous playgroup with children of other families. It was in this context that Polynesian children received a great deal of their socialization. A particularly warm relationship existed between children and their grandparents; these relationships were often characterized by humour, bantering, and teasing, all of which provided vehicles for teaching traditional lore and providing technical training and sexual advice.
Education in Polynesian society consisted of training in special crafts and skills, such as canoe making or tattooing. Sacred academies provided training for the priests who were the repositories of the society’s traditions, mythology, and genealogies.
Rites of passage varied in type and importance from society to society, but several were common throughout Polynesia. The birth of a child was a matter of great significance, particularly if the child happened to be a firstborn son of a high-status descent group. Various procedures were called for to announce the birth to the community, to the ancestors, and to the gods and to care for the welfare (both physical and supernatural) of the infant and mother by application of medical and magical techniques.
Among the other milestones marked with ceremonies were the formal presentation of a royal heir, the completion of a tattooing operation or ear piercing in a high-status child, and the formal investiture of a priest or chief. The observances of these occasions were marked with a variety of rituals that quite often included human sacrifice.
Death was universally observed through rituals, which increased in extravagance in direct proportion to the status of the deceased. Feasts and elaborate gift exchanges were also common. The extravagance of funeral rites was surpassed, in some societies, by ceremonies to deify a departed chief or priest. These went on for prolonged periods.
Production and technology
The sea provided most of the protein in the traditional Polynesian diet. Fishing was done by individuals, with spear, line, or net, and also by groups. In the latter case, large numbers of men sometimes spread and hauled in huge nets in bays or lagoons and at other times drove fish toward shore, where they could be captured in nets held in shallow water. In some Polynesian societies (the Marquesas and Samoa, for example), specialists directed the mass fishing efforts and the elaborate religious rituals that went along with them. Sea mammals such as porpoises and whales were also taken.
Polynesians did not confine their fishing exploits to coastal waters, for they were equally at home on the high seas and explored for miles in all directions. The people of Easter Island, for example, were known to fish at Sala y Gómez reef, a journey of some 300 miles (500 km). Good fishing waters were located by visual reference to land bodies or by dead reckoning. Line fishing to depths of 90 feet (27 metres) was not uncommon. School tuna were taken in large quantities on the high seas by means of shiny pearl-shell lures with bone points. The flesh of sharks and rays was a delicacy.
Mollusks and crustaceans were important as food, and mollusk shells were made into a wide variety of tools and ornaments. Clams, cowries, and various snails and conches were collected, generally by women and children, along the reefs or shorelines and in shallow waters. Shrimps were captured with fine nets, while lobsters were collected by men who dived to pry their spiny prey loose from underwater crannies. The octopus was enticed from its hiding place by an ingenious lure made of leopard cowrie shells. Various types of seaweeds and algae were also collected and were highly prized for their salty taste. There was, in short, nothing edible in the sea that was not food for the Polynesians.
Although Polynesians were mariners above all, they were also devoted to horticulture and arboriculture, producing the staples of the Polynesian diet and most of their condiments in gardens and groves. The major native crops were yams (Dioscorea species), taro (Colocasia esculenta), breadfruit (Artocarpus communis), bananas (Musa species), sugarcane (Saccharum species), coconuts (Cocos nucifera), and Tahitian chestnuts (Inocarpus edulis). These crops achieved different levels of importance in various Polynesian societies, depending on cultural factors and environmental conditions. The Hawaiians, for example, relied heavily on taro, building extensive irrigation systems to grow the variety that requires muddy soil and planting the “dry” variety in the uplands. Breadfruit was not of great importance in Hawaii, but in the Marquesas and Tahiti it was the major staple, although taro was by no means neglected. In these islands breadfruit was allowed to become overripe and was then beaten into a pulp, wrapped in hibiscus-leaf bundles, and stored in large, well-drained pits in the ground. This stored breadfruit paste would ferment but remain edible and nutritious for years, its sour taste being highly prized for imparting flavour to the rather bland fresh breadfruit paste.
The most important Polynesian food plants were tropical cultigens that could not survive in the colder climates of Easter Island (subtropical) and New Zealand (temperate). On Easter Island, for example, legends maintain that the earliest settlers brought germinating coconuts but that the plants subsequently died. This deprived the Rapa Nui not only of a variety of condiments and a rich source of vitamins but also of the coconut leaves that were used elsewhere in Polynesia for thatch and baskets and of the husk fibres that were used to make fishing line and netting. In New Zealand not only the coconut but also the breadfruit, yam, and banana were unsuccessful. The radically different flora and fauna of New Zealand, however, offered foods that partially replaced those that the climate would not support.
As with the coconut, most food plants in Polynesia also provided materials for other purposes. The breadfruit tree furnished wood for the hulls of dugout canoes, and the milky sap of the fruit itself was used in caulking the gaps between the planks of larger canoes. The black mud of the taro patches was used to stain wood and stone carvings. The pandanus fruit was highly prized as a kind of chewing gum, as well as a major component of floral necklaces and headpieces, to which it contributed its strong and pleasant colour. Pandanus leaves, when bleached, became the raw material for weaving fine mats. The candlenut was used for torches. Its oil was a cathartic, and its wood furnished certain canoe parts.
Traditional Polynesian technology relied for the most part upon five substances: wood, stone, vegetable fibre, shell, and bone. Canoes, houses, domestic utensils, weapons, religious sculpture, and a host of other incidental tools were fashioned from wood with stone or shell adzes; stone-flake knives; files made of coral, sea urchin, or rough stone; and drills of bone, stone, or shell. Fine carving was done with stone, shell, or animal teeth, particularly those of rats or sharks. Fine-grained basalt stone was the hardest material available to Polynesians and was used to produce a variety of adzes.
The components of complex items were skillfully fitted together and lashed with cordage made from various types of vegetable fibre, such as hibiscus bark, pandanus-leaf fibre, coconut fibre, or banyan bark. Huge double-hulled canoes, 100 to 150 feet (30 to 45 metres) in length, were built of numerous small wooden components held together only by fitting and lashing, yet they were able to withstand the pounding of wind and waves for thousands of miles.
Vegetable material also furnished a major source of clothing in the form of the beaten bark (tapa) of the paper mulberry tree or the banyan. This material was pounded out into small sheets that could then be assembled to produce loincloths, capes, skirts, and headdresses. Items made from bark cloth were decorated by painting and watermarking and by attaching feathers, shells, animal teeth, and other ornaments. Finely woven mats were also used as apparel in western Polynesia.
Home furnishings consisted mainly of vegetable material in the form of mats for sleeping and sitting, as well as for protection from the weather, and of baskets for holding personal belongings and food. Coconut shells and bottle gourds provided handy, durable containers.
Property and exchange
The concept of personal property was well developed in traditional Polynesia. Each individual, regardless of rank, had a variety of possessions such as tools, clothing, ornaments, and other items. Other types of property, however, were owned by extended families or descent groups in common and were used for the common good. These included items too large to be produced or managed by a single person alone, such as a large double-hulled canoe or a fishing net several hundred feet in length, as well as facilities and land intended directly for community use, such as a ceremonial ground, a fortification, or a large breadfruit-paste storage pit.
The rules pertaining to land ownership and the means of production were complicated; they generally depended on the form of social organization used in a given community. In some Polynesian societies, land was vested in a corporate descent group. In other societies, however, changes in social organization exerted pressure on such groups, which were ultimately forced to surrender their land to increasingly powerful and autocratic chiefs. Thus, in Hawaii, perhaps the most sociopolitically complex of all the Polynesian societies, a large mass of completely landless commoners existed.
The Polynesian system of exchange of goods and services may be summarized by two terms: redistribution and reciprocity. The redistributive system was essentially a vertical system with goods moving up from the lower strata of the society to the chiefs and other high-ranking persons and then being apportioned and redistributed, so that all would share in more equal fashion in the productivity of every kinship group or region. Redistribution crosscut a complex, shifting web of reciprocal obligations (often “horizontal,” or between those of similar status), which is still very much at the heart of Polynesian culture. Goods and services rendered, even if not requested, create an obligation for a return in kind.
There were no markets in Polynesian cultures, nor was there any standard medium of exchange. All exchange was in the form of barter, often under the general supervision of some senior family or kin-group member. Thus, for example, a portion of the fish catches made on a minor fishing expedition by coastal residents would be passed inland to residents at central villages, who might return dry taro for the fish. The services of any of the numerous specialists in Polynesian cultures (tattooists, fishermen, and wood carvers, for example) were also paid for in goods, usually over and above the cost of the specialist’s keep during his period of service. Early European visitors to Polynesia who were able to analyze the importance of reciprocal exchange and put it to their own use generally fared quite well, although they sometimes found themselves overwhelmed by the increasing size of the obligations they had undertaken. In 1813 Captain David Porter of the U.S. Navy, for example, won the friendship of the chief of Taiohae, Nuku Hiva, with a gift of sperm whales’ teeth but within a few months found himself fighting a tribal war essentially on behalf of the same chief in order to live up to his obligations.
Polynesian belief systems emphasized animism, a perspective in which all things, animate and inanimate, were believed to be endowed to a greater or lesser degree with sacred supernatural power. That power, known among Polynesians as mana, could be nullified by various human actions, and many of the region’s tapu (“prohibitions” or “taboos”) were intended to prevent such behaviours.
As is typical of animist cultures, religious concerns permeated all aspects of life. Polynesian chiefs had great mana—so great, in fact, that in some societies, if a commoner touched the chief’s shadow, only that person’s death could compensate for the injury to the chief’s mana. In much of Polynesia it is still considered to be in very poor taste to step over a person’s legs, pass one’s hand over a person’s head, or stand with one’s head higher than that of a person of high rank, because these actions are believed to sap a person’s mana.
Women had great mana, the evidence of which was their ability to reproduce. Many tapu were created to ensure the mutual protection of women’s mana and the mana of other people and objects. In the Marquesas, for example, a tapu prohibited women from entering canoes under normal conditions because their mana and that of the canoe would compete. Men had lesser mana and needed to protect it carefully; in many societies, men preparing for war or other hazardous or demanding undertakings had to go through a period of purification—eating only certain foods and often going into seclusion to protect their powers from defilement. Some chants and songs were so sacred that every syllable had to be pronounced correctly. The penalty for major violations of these tapu was often death.
Mana was possessed not only by people but also by buildings, stones, tools, and all other things. Certain groves, trees, temples, and tracts of land were considered sacred and could not be entered by ordinary people because they were pervaded by the mana of a high-status person or god. If anyone inadvertently stepped over a tool left on the ground, it was thus rendered profane and would often be discarded. Violations of these and other lesser tapu were believed to result in supernatural punishment, manifested in bad luck or some form of illness.
Mana and tapu were not the only forces that Polynesians had to be wary of, however. The universe was believed to be peopled with spiritual beings of various types, many of whom were malevolent. In addition, a host of gods of varying degrees of importance existed. These ranged from the great gods of the Polynesian pantheon, such as Tangaroa, Tu, and Lono, to strictly local gods who were deified priests or chiefs of great renown. All of these spirit-beings had to be worshipped in their own way. Worship of the gods involved sacrifices (including human), chants and recitations, feasting (often with great prodigality), ritual sex (to promote fertility), and other elaborate practices, often preceded by long fasting and abstinence.
Magic flourished in Polynesian society; everyone engaged in actions to ensure success in love, war, planting, or fishing or to bring misfortune to rivals. Magical specialists could be consulted when the problem at hand was too great or complicated to be solved by ordinary magic. Some magical practices have survived in Polynesian cultures to the present time.
Polynesian performance art was highly developed and, like the region’s indigenous languages and literature, enjoyed a resurgence in the late 20th century. Of sculpture, painting, textiles, and many other freestanding art forms, little of what once existed has survived to the present day. This is mainly due to the perishability of much of the material (e.g., wood, tapa [bark] cloth, basketry, and featherwork) and the dispersion that took place during the era of European contact, when such items were traded for firearms, liquor, iron tools, and trinkets.
Each Polynesian society developed its own particular area of artistic endeavour—monumental stone sculpture on Easter Island and the Marquesas; wooden carvings in New Zealand, the Marquesas, and Hawaii; highly decorated bark cloth in Samoa, Tonga, and Hawaii; fine mats in Samoa and Tonga; and feather cloaks in New Zealand and Hawaii. In this development, a vocabulary of art motifs, styles, and artistic principles was elaborated, which differs somewhat from culture to culture. Certain types of motifs nevertheless are widely distributed in Polynesia. For example, a number of small geometric decorative elements, such as a toothed pattern or units of diagonally sloping lines, are found in most cultures and in many media, including tattoos. Stylized floral and animal elements are also widely distributed. In eastern Polynesia, an anthropomorphic figure and an anthropomorphic face with bulging eyes and protruding tongue are prominent in all types of sculpture.
Architecture was highly developed almost everywhere in Polynesia, but only the ruined stone structures of the eastern Polynesian islands remain to bear witness to the Polynesians’ considerable architectural skill. The stone temples of Easter Island, the Society Islands, and the Marquesas, even in their ruined state, display striking proportions and design; clever use of stones of different colours, shapes, and textures; and the evidence of sound combination of practical engineering with artistic objectives. For more-detailed treatment of the arts of Polynesia, see Oceanic art and architecture; Oceanic music and dance; Oceanic literature.
Learn More in these related Britannica articles:
Oceanic art and architecture: PolynesiaIn the prehistoric cultures of Polynesia, two conspicuous themes figure largely: the ceremonial ground (the
marae/ ahucomplex, known by varying local terms) and personal ornaments. The ceremonial ground was a place of worship. It usually took the form of an enclosure ( marae), which was…
Oceanic art and architecture: PolynesiaBy comparison with the art of Melanesia, Polynesian art appears modest in scale and relatively simple in both form and imagery. This is a somewhat deceptive impression, however; the rapid adoption of Christianity in Polynesia led to the obsolescence and destruction of many types…
Oceanic literature: Polynesia and MicronesiaPolynesian and Micronesian oral literatures are similar in structure, but they vary in detail from island to island. Little is known about the Micronesian texts, however, and work on the interpretation of Polynesian oral literature has been hindered. Authentic oral texts were…
construction: Primitive building: the Stone AgeIn Polynesia and Indonesia, where such houses are still built, they are raised above the ground on stilts for security and dryness; the roofing is often made of leaves and the walls are largely open to allow air movement for natural cooling. Another variation of the…
Stone Age: Oceania…the Oceanic peoples, especially the Polynesians, has been the subject of many theories. Scholars reject ideas involving a lost continent (
e.g.,Lemuria, Mu) or direct relations with the Middle East ( e.g.,the Ten Lost Tribes, migrations of Children of the Sun from Egypt), early India ( e.g.,Indus Valley–Easter Island connections),…
More About Polynesian culture21 references found in Britannica articles
- Pacific Islands
- Pacific Ocean
- settlement by Lapita culture
- In Oceania
- cultural development