Note 39 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

In Tahiti “every portion of land had its respective owner; and even the distinct trees on the land had sometimes different proprietors, and a tree, and the land on which it grew, different owners.” What our informant further tells us of the present state of things as compared with that of earlier times, shows a remarkable likeness to Gardiner’s statement about Rotuma. Ellis states that “an extent of soil capable of cultivation, and other resources, are adequate to the maintenance of a population tenfold increased above its present numbers.” But a great depopulation has taken place in the course of years. “In the bottom of every valley, even to the recesses in the mountains, on the sides of the inferior hills, and on the brows of almost every promontory, in each of the islands, monuments of former generations are still met with in great abundance. Stone pavements of their dwellings and court-yards, foundations of houses, and remains of family temples, are numerous. Occasionally they are found in exposed situations, but generally amidst thickets of brushwood or groves of trees, some of which are of the largest growth. All these relics are of the same kind as those observed among the natives at the time of their discovery, evidently proving that they belong to the same race, though to a more populous era of their history. The stone tools occasionally found near these vestiges of antiquity demonstrate the same lamentable fact.” According to Moerenhout “landed properties constituted the principal, or rather the only wealth of these people; therefore the power of the chiefs always depended on the quantity and quality of their lands; moreover, the more people they could support, the more sure they were of having subjects.” This writer does not, however, enter into many details39.