Note 113 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

Regarding the New Hebrides, Hagen and Pineau, after speaking of the chiefs, state that the next class are the warriors, which rank can be obtained by a payment of pigs. They make no mention of a despised or oppressed working class. Inglis, as we have seen above, states that in the isle of Aneityum “there is no large proprietor, no powerful or wealthy chief; every man sits proprietor of his own cottage, his own garden, and his own cultivated patches.” Turner, speaking of the isle of Tana, says: “The affairs of this little community are regulated by the chiefs and the heads of families”; and in Eromanga, according to the same writer, the chiefs “were numerous, but not powerful”. According to Ribbe, in the Shortland Islands (near Bougainville), the chiefs have little power113. From all this we may safely conclude that social life in the New Hebrides is democratically organized.