Note 1 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
The word “kannaka” is at the present day universally used in the South Seas by Europeans to designate the islanders. In the various dialects of the principal groups it is simply a sexual designation applied to the males; but it is now used by the natives in their intercourse with foreigners in the same sense in which the latter employ it. A “tabooed kannaka” is an islander whose person has been made, to a certain extent, sacred by the operation of a singular custom hereafter to be explained.