Gilbert Islands

° Chuuk (Truk) ° Pohnpei ° Ulithi ° Yap

Kiribati

French Polynesia is a collection of 118 islands covering a vast area of the southeastern Pacific Ocean and divided into five scattered archipelagos: Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, Tuamotu Archipelago, Gambier Islands, and the Tubuai Islands. The capital is Papeete, Tahiti (Society Islands).

The larger islands are volcanic with fertile soil and dense vegetation. The more numerous coral islands are low lying. The climate is tropical. Missionaries arrived in Tahiti at the end of the 18th century, and in the 1840s France began establishing protectorates. In 1880 82, France annexed the islands and they became part of its colony of Oceania.

Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands. The Indies and the Philippines to the Solomons. 1944.

The Gilbert Islands became a British protectorate in 1892 and a colony in 1915. (The Gilbert Islands were granted self-rule by the UK in 1971 and complete independence in 1979 under the new name of Kiribati.)

The independent republic of Kiribati consists of a chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean straddling the equator, about one-half of the way from Hawaii to Australia. It includes three major island groups - Gilbert Islands, Line Islands, and Phoenix Islands. Formerly part of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, the Ellice Islands became the independent nation of Tuvalu in 1978, the Gilbert Islands were granted self-rule by the UK in 1971 and complete independence in 1979 under the new name of Kiribati.

November 11, 1876, The Colonies, London, United Kingdom

SOUTH of the Gilbert Islands, and lying almost under the Equator, are a number of low coral islands known as the Kingsmill group; the most elevated of which is not more than from 20 to 30 feet above the level of the surrounding ocean. These islands, which are long and narrow, the largest being about 40 miles long, and in some places only a mile across, are surrounded everywhere with broad reefs, between which are openings at intervals through which vessels can pass.

The population of the group has been variously estimated at from 30,000 to 60,000 souls. The inhabitants are generally described as warlike and ferocious; though those of Pitt Island appear to be of a more docile character than the people of the neighbouring islands. They are of a copper colour, only a shade or so deeper than the Tahitians, and belong to the same light-coloured or Polynesian race. They are of middling stature, well made, and somewhat slender. Their hair is fine, jet black, and glossy; the nose often slightly aquiline, whilst the mouth is rather large, with full lips, and small regular white teeth. They wear both beard and moustache. The women have delicate features, graceful figures, and many of them may bo called decidedly pretty. The people of Pitt Island, or Makin, are even lighter in complexion than those of the other islands; and, moreover, are not addicted to the cruel and desolating wars that characterize the inhabitants of the Kingsmill group generally.

The men of the better class are elaborately tattooed by professional artists, who are held in much estimation and are paid highly for their work. Young men are not tattooed until they arrive ut maturity, and slaves never. The women are but slightly tattooed, the patterns consisting of delicate lines and rows of spots. Their dresses, which are almost superfluous in so warm a climate, consist generally of mats made of narrow strips of the pandanus leaf, plaited together in a very ingenious manner so as to form diamond-shaped or square patterns, which have a pleasing effect. These garments they dye yellow and dark brown. A conical cap formed of leaves is worn on the head as a protection from the heat of the sun. Sometimes the shoulders are covered with a small oblong mat, having a slit in the middle through which the head is passed, after the fashion of a "poncho."

The women wear a handsomely-plaited petticoat of fringe, composed of thin strips of cocoa-nut leaves, which depends from the waist to the knee. In their ears they wear long rolls of the pith of an indigenous shrub. Their necklaces are composed of alternate pieces of cocoa-nut and white shell, ground down so as to form small regular beads. The most singular article of the toilette of the women is a long rope or skein of human hair mingled with beads, which is wound round the waist, and sometimes reaches the extraordinary length of from five to six hundred feet. In battle, the costume of the Kingsmill warrior is peculiar and striking in the extreme. On the head is worn a cap formed of the skin of the porcupine fish, bristling with sharp and dangerous spines, and ornamented with a tuft of feathers at the top. The body is protected by a cumbrous kind of rope armour, made of cocoa-nut fibre closely netted together. Instead of an ordinary club or spear, the Kingsmill islander arms his weapon with the terrible saw-like teeth of the tiger shark. These weapons are made of a light kind of wood, and consist chiefly of swords, some of which are very long, and have several formidable blades projecting from them. They are closely set on both edges with rows of sharks' teeth, and are used with both hands when hewing down the enemy.

War, on all the islands except Makin, appears to be the principal business of these people just as cock-fighting is their chief pastime. Both sexes join in the combat; and the victors make no distinction of age or sex in the indiscriminate massacre that ensues. Although so addicted to fighting, these pugnacious islanders do not seem to indulge in the practice of cannibalism, so prevalent amongst many of the Polynesian tribes. As regards their cock-fighting propensities, Dr. Coulter, who visited the Kingsmill's in a whaling vessel, thus alludes to them:

"In approaching the village we came into contact with a group of about one hundred people, excitingly and ardently engaged in cock-fighting. Being a stranger, and bearing the friendly mark of the chief Wowma, a passage was at once made for me to the inside of the circle, where the poor cocks were eyeing each other; two lay dead that had already been killed, and two were engaged in a cruel conflict. The excitement of the natives appeared when either of the birds were knocked over by the other. There did not appear to do any betting or stakes laid on the combat; the whole affair being evidently got up merely for the satisfaction of seeing the poor birds destroy each other."

Although cock-fighting is a very favourite pastime among the Malays of the Indian Archipelago, it does not seem to be practised by the Polynesians generally; and it may be that this cruel sport has been introduced into the Kingsmills by European runaways who have from time to time resided upon these islands. As regards their social state, the people are divided into three classes the chiefs, the landholders, and the slaves. There does not, however, appear to be any general authority existing throughout the group, excepting in three of the islands, where there is a king who governs the three, and resides on one of them, called Apamama.

In some of the islands the government is carried on by the entire body of chiefs, who take rank according to seniority. In the villages are large council-houses, where the chiefs and people meet on all public occasions. One marked distinction between the Kingsmill islanders and those of other parts of Polynesia is the total absence of the "tabu" system of laws and prohibitions, which obtains generally from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand.

Their religious belief is of a simple nature. They worship a tutelar deity, and also a female divinity of a cruel nature, who, they imagine, kills all the children who die and eats them. A block of coral tied round with fresh cocoa-nut leaves represents the tutelar deity called Tabu-ariki, the homage to which consists in repeating prayers and depositing a portion of food before the coral block. A single cocoa-nut bound with a wreath of leaves, and placed in the centre of a small circle, which is surrounded by coral stones, impersonates the cruel goddess Itivini. They also entertain the belief that after death the departed spirit ascends into the air, whence it is carried away by the winds till it finally reaches the Kainakaki or elysium.

Stone Money Bank. Yap, Micronesia

Their mode of salutation when a stranger arrives is by anointing his forehead with a patch of coloured earth mixed with cocoa-nut oil, and drawing a line down the face. Any one receiving this mark is regarded as being under the protection of the chief or person who gives it. Both their houses and canoes are well constructed. The former are open below and surrounded with a low wall constructed of blocks of coral; the upper portion under the roof forming a sleeping platform or loft. Great feasting and festivities take place at the period of the full moon, when singing and dancing are indulged in. Football, kite-flying, fencing, and swimming matches in the surf, are also favourite amusements with the younger portion of the community.

Two Chiefs of Yap Island, Western Caroline Islands with Three Perforated Sones Rai, or stone money, are large, circular stone disks carved out of limestone formed from aragonite and calcite crystals. Rai stones were mined in Palau and transported for use to the island of Yap. They have been used in trade by the locals and are described by some observers as a form of currency. There are five major types of rai stone monies: Mmbul, Gaw, Fe' or Rai, Yar, and Reng. The considered value of a specific stone is based on its size and craftsmanship and also on the history of the stone. If many people or no one at all died when the specific stone was transported, or a famous sailor brought it in, the value of the rai stone increases. Rai stones were and still are used in rare, important social transactions such as marriage, inheritance, political deals, sign of an alliance, ransom of the battle dead or, rarely, in exchange for food. Many of them are placed in front of meeting houses or along pathways. Ownership is transferred without physically relocating the stones.

Their principal food is fish which they catch on the reefs and in the lagoons in great abundance and the taro, cocoa-nut, and pandanus or screw-pine. Of the nuts of the latter, pounded and prepared, they make a kind of paste, which they call "karapapa," which is put up into rolls from eight to ten feet long, bound with leaves, and made so smooth and round that they resemble pillars of brown stone. This preparation will keep good for years, and is much depended on in times of scarcity. Taro and cocoa-nut are also grated and made into balls as large as thirty-two pound shot, which are baked 111 their ovens. Toddy is their intoxicating drink, which is procured from the spathe of the cocoa-nut palm, and is used at their feasts, when it is handed round in cups made of cocoa-nut shells, or in human skulls.

When a man of any importance dies, his body is taken to the council-house, washed, and laid out on a clean mat, where it remains for eight days, and every day at noon it is taken into the sun, and again washed and oiled. During this period the friends are engaged in lamenting and singing the praises of the deceased. After this mourning the body is sewn up in a couple of mats, and either buried in the house of the nearest relative or stowed away in the loft. When the flesh is nearly gone, the skull is taken off, carefully cleaned, oiled, and put away. The skulls of their ancestors are preserved by the chiefs as a sort of household deities, to which they frequently offer prayers and entreaties to keep watchful care over their descendants. The skulls are taken down from time to time decorated with wreaths, anointed with oil, and have food placed before them. In voyaging from one island to another, these skulls are invariably ably carried about with them in their canoes, as if members of the family, and treated with every mark of veneration and respect.

On Pitt or Makin Island the funeral ceremonies are still more extraordinary. After the first lamentations, the body is washed and laid out on a new mat spread over a largo oblong dish or tray made of pieces of tortoise-shell fastened together. Several persons seat themselves on the floor of the house opposite to one another, and hold this tray, containing the body of the deceased, on their knees. When tired, they are relieved by others, and in this manner the body is borne by friends and relatives for a space of time varying from four months to two years, according to the rank of the departed. During the continuance of this lying in state, a fire is kept burning in the house day and night, and is never extinguished. At the end of the period the remains are wrapped in mats and buried. The grave is marked with three coral blocks, and the skull carefully preserved as in the other islands.

There are numbers of small islands lying scattered about to the south and west of the Kingsmills, the inhabitants of which do not differ very much in their general appearance and habits from those of the latter. In Pleasant Island the natives manufacture cloth from the fibres of the banana woven on a small loom; also rope from the cocoa-nut husk; and hats from the plaited leaves of the young cocoa-nut, similar to those made by sailors, and known as "sinnett hats." This art has been taught them by the numerous runaway seamen from English and American whalers who have been resident amongst them.

Further to the eastward and nearly due north from the Samoas lie the Phoenix Islands, low coral atolls, inhabited by a quiet, harmless people, considered to be the fairest race in Central Polynesia, much resembling the Samoans in form and features. They are said to have been unacquainted with the use of fire previous to the arrival of foreigners amongst them.

September 12, 1892, Hutchinson News, Hutchinson, Kansas, USA

The Gilbert Islands, which England is said to have just taken under its wing, are fifteen in number and constitutes the southeastern-most group in Micronesia. They are all of coral formation, low and level, and with soil only a few inches in depth. There are at present about 11,000 inhabitants on them, and in that respect they are the most densely populated islands in that part of the Pacific Ocean. The inhabitants are industrious, fairly thrifty, and under the guidance of protestant missionaries are nearly all Christians and have largely adopted civilized customs. As far as trade is concerned, the islanders are most intimately connected with the copra merchants of San Francisco than any other country.

Frigate Bird Chick.

Last winter, the king of the islands was in San Francisco to see if that country would not assume a protectorate over them. It was not regarded as wise for the United States to take any such responsibility.

The only thing that this government will do is to see that American interests in the islands are protected, and that it will do, whoever assumes to control the islands.

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1899. World's Fleet. Boston Daily Globe

Lloyds Register of Shipping gives the entire fleet of the world as 28,180 steamers and sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 27,673,628, of which 39 perent are British.

Great Britain	10,990 vessels, total tonnage of 10,792,714
United States	3,010 vessels, total tonnage of 2,405,887
Norway	2,528 vessels, tonnage of 1,604,230
Germany	1,676 vessels, with a tonnage of 2,453,334, in which are included her particularly large ships.
Sweden	1,408 vessels with a tonnage of 643, 527
Italy	1,150 vessels
France	1,182 vessels

For Historical Comparison
Top 10 Maritime Nations Ranked by Value (2017)

	Country	# of Vessels	Gross Tonnage (m)	Total Value (USDbn)
1	Greece	4,453	206.47	$88.0
2	Japan	4,317	150.26	$79.8
3	China	4,938	159.71	$71.7
4	USA	2,399	55.92	$46.5
5	Singapore	2,662	64.03	$41.7
6	Norway	1,668	39.68	$41.1
7	Germany	2,923	81.17	$30.3
8	UK	883	28.78	$24.3
9	Denmark	1,040	36.17	$23.4
10	South Korea	1,484	49.88	$20.1
Total		26,767	87.21	$466.9