Герман Мелвилл - Typee

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.

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.

I presume this might be translated into “Strong Waters.” Arva is the name bestowed upon a root, the properties of which are both inebriating and medicinal. “Wai” is the Marquesan word for water.

White appears to be the sacred colour among the Marquesans.

The word “Artua,” although having some other significations, is in nearly all the Polynesian dialects used as the general designation of the gods.

The strict honesty which the inhabitants of nearly all the Polynesian Islands manifest towards each other, is in striking contrast with the thieving propensities some of them evince in their intercourse with foreigners. It would almost seem that, according to their peculiar code of morals, the pilfering of a hatchet or a wrought nail from a European is looked upon as a praiseworthy action. Or rather, it may be presumed, that bearing in mind the wholesale forays made upon them by their nautical visitors, they consider the property of the latter as a fair object of reprisal. This consideration, while it serves to reconcile an apparent contradiction in the moral character of the islanders, should in some measure alter that low opinion of it which the reader of South Sea voyages is too apt to form.