The Occupation of Polynesia.

Very little has been preserved of these remote times and movements, as must be expected among a scriptless people; when we come to more modern times we have much more data to work upon.

In his work Hawaiki Mr. S. Percy Smith states his belief that the Polynesians had reached the Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa Groups by about the fifth century A.D., and that the Samoans and Tongans are descendants of a first migration, a secondary one sojourning in Fiji for some time, whence it settled many of the isles farther east. He traces the ancestors of the Polynesians from India by way of Java, Celebes, Ceram, Gilolo, New Guinea, the Solomons, &c., and so on into Polynesia proper east of the Fiji Group. In a later publication (see Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 22) he seems to show that one migration, that of Ira-panga, crossed the North Pacific to the Sandwich Isles.