household pets.

The introduction of firearms changed the native political scene and increased the scope and destructiveness of warfare. For a time the rulers of Mbau in eastern Viti nearly monopolized the supply of muskets and white men. This established their political supremacy over rival leaders. Larger and stronger political and military alliances, some resembling small kingdoms, developed for purposes of defense or aggression. As warfare grew more frequent, new diseases entered the islands and trade in liquor advanced.

After the third decade of the nineteenth century better elements began to enter Fiji and ensuing culture contact was not so consistently deplorable. Bêche-de-mer traders and whalers began to visit the islands for trade goods and supplies. Some began to settle at the east end of Viti Levu. Missionaries came in the 1830's and the Christianization of Fiji began.

Internal conflict between rival chiefs, attacks on French, British, and American ships, with subsequent reprisals, continued and intensified. By mid-century, rivalry between the local kingdoms of Mbau and Rewa reached a peak. At this time the powerful ruler of Mbau, Thakombau, who dominated a large segment of eastern Viti Levu, had become hard pressed by his Rewa enemies. Thakombau submitted to the missionaries who had been pressing his conversion. With his support of the missionaries, the native struggles became a religious war between Christianity and paganism as well as between nativism and westernism. Thakombau's cause was rescued in 1855 when King George of Tonga brought an army of 2,000 warriors to Fiji and combined his strength with that of the kingdom of Mbau. Thenceforth Thakombau remained the paramount chief in eastern Fiji and for some twenty ensuing years ruled under the dominance of Tongan princes. Another Tongan chief, Ma'afu, arrived in 1848 and set up a political domain that rivaled the kingdom of Thakombau.

Throughout these struggles and particularly with the conversion of Thakombau and the leadership of the already Christianized Tongan chiefs, native religion, including cannibalism, rapidly declined. Meanwhile, English, Australian, and New Zealand settlers were augmenting earlier trade contacts. Plantations and trade centers developed, and in 1857 a British consul was appointed and set up at Levuka on the east coast of Viti Levu. A few years later Thakombau sought relief from the payment of indemnities to foreign powers and from internal harassments by an offer to cede his dominions to Great Britain. The initial offer was declined and the British consul was recalled in 1860.

The next ten years saw a continuation of political and military turmoil stemming from rival interests of native rulers, Tongan interlopers, and European immigrants. A second appeal to the British government resulted in an unconditional deed of cession on October 10, 1874, which marks the beginning of Fiji's status as a British Crown Colony.

POPULATION

Over 300,000 people live in the Fiji Islands. Of these about 140,000 are native Fijians. The others are arranged in the following divisions: [4]

When Fiji became a British Crown Colony in 1874 the population was entirely native except for a handful of outsiders. At that time the population has been variously estimated at approximately 200,000. Shortly thereafter a measles epidemic reduced their number severely. This, with other epidemics and maladies for which they had little or no immunity or resistence, continued the decimation until by 1905 there were only 87,000. During the next decade they held their own, until in 1919 the influenza scourge brought them to their lowest level of 83,000. This was the last serious setback to their number; since that time the population has been on the upgrade.

A present threat to Fijian population, in the opinion of many, stems not from disease but from the Indian presence. This began in the latter part of the nineteenth century when Indian immigration of indentured laborers began. The influx went on until 1916 by which time some 40,000 to 50,000 Indians had come to Fiji and very few had returned to India. Since then, the Indians have increased more rapidly than the Fijians until they now outnumber them. This situation has, of course, created numerous problems beyond the scope of this paper.

It is significant to point out that intermarriage or interbreeding between Fijians and Indians is relatively slight. The amount of mingling of Fijians with Europeans or Orientals cannot be demonstrated statistically, but it has not been extensive. The Fijians, on the whole, retain pretty much of their prehistoric racial make-up.

RACIAL BACKGROUND

It is well established that the Fijians are a mixed people, derived mainly from Melanesian and Polynesian sources. Both of these parental strains in turn are commonly believed to be racial blends. Hooton describes the Melanesians as Oceanic Negroes whose composition includes Negrito, Australoid, "plus convex-nosed Mediterranean plus minor fractions of Malay and Polynesian."[5] Birdsell sees the same three strains in Melanesia which he believes contribute to the Australians, namely Negrito, Murrayan, and Carpentarian, plus a small amount of Mongoloid. He believes they differ from Australians in being "basically negritic in their genetic composition as a result of the rain forest environment."[6] Polynesians, however, are usually thought to be derived from Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid strains in which the Caucasoid component is more often the strongest.

The composite character of the Fijians has been variously explained as far as order and time of the contributing elements are concerned. One theory regards a Negroid stock as aboriginal to which a Polynesian strain was later added. An early explanation of this sort is that of Fornander who held that the ancestors of the modern Polynesians coming from southeastern Asia via Indonesia in the early centuries A.D. made a prolonged stopover in Fiji as they moved eastward. This left a Polynesian imprint on the native Fijian physical appearance as well as on their language and culture.[7] Later on, Churchill added a second movement of Polynesians from the west about a thousand years later. This was used to explain a certain amount of Mongoloid elements that needed accounting for in western Polynesia.