Note 110 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

In Fiji, according to Williams, the lower classes were formerly heavily oppressed. The chiefs looked upon them as their property, and took away their goods and often even their lives; this was considered “chief-like.” “Subjects” says Williams “do not pay rent for their land, but a kind of tax on all their produce, beside giving their labour occasionally in peace, and their service, when needed, in war, for the benefit of the king or their own chief.” Waterhouse states that many poor men could not procure a wife; they then borrowed one from a chief, and so became his retainers. Fison, speaking of the inhabitants of certain villages, says: “These are of the lowest rank, or rather of no rank at all. They are kaisi, the descendants of “children without a father.” They are vakatau ni were (husbandmen), but they are not yeomen like the taukei. Neither the lands they cultivate, nor the town lots on which they dwell are their own. They are not even tenants. They are hereditary bondsmen, adscripti glebae, whose business it is to raise food for their masters. Their lords may oppress them, and they have no redress. In times of peace they must work for them and in war time they must fight for them to the death”. According to Wilkes, “in each tribe great and marked distinctions of rank exist. The classes which are readily distinguished are as follows: 1. kings; 2. chiefs; 3. warriors; 4. landholders (matanivanua); 5. slaves (kai-si).” In another passage he speaks of “the kai-si or common people”. In Jackson’s narrative, quoted above, mention is also made of these kai-si or inhabitants of “slave lands”110.