It is now known that people had reached the Fijian archipelago as early as years before the birth of Christ. The question is, who were the first settlers? These migrants were relatively new, even though they were different from those of the people already living in the islands of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Hebrides now Vanuatu and New Caledonia.
The first settlers were of Negrito stock with dark skin, woolly hair and other typical features. The newcomers were fairer, had straight or wavy black hair and we can assume were of many type stock. They would seem to have been good sailors and craftsmen and excellent potters who made a distinct type of ware we know as Lapita pottery after its initial discovery in New Caledonia.
Sailors, adventurers, good navigators and consummate craftsmen. The trail of their pots, hooks, obsidian cutting tools and ornaments leads down from New Britain through some of the outer islands fringing the Solomons and Vanuatu, suggesting that perhaps they were not powerful enough to force settlements on the bigger islands which were already supporting large populations of people. In this classic difference between the two groups we see the racial characteristics of what was later to be defined as Melanesian and Polynesian stock.
There is no way of knowing how long they enjoyed Fiji to themselves. But at some stage the Melanesians followed. It is also reasonable to assume that there may have been only a single successful voyage in each instance. Certainly Fijian legends speak of one canoe and one voyage. The canoe was the Kaunitoni and its people were the settlers. The legend says that the first canoe to touch land on the main island of Viti Levu found an indigenous people. The legend also says that the people of the canoe made their way inland from where they eventually spilled to other parts of Fiji.
This would suggest that the most favourable coastal areas were already settled and that there was no room for the new arrivals, leaving them no choice but to move into the less hospitable interior, where over the ensuing generations their population built up and eventually spilled over. We know who the Fijians are today, but we also know that they are not truly Melanesian when compared with what must have been the parent stock back in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands or New Caledonia.
The people of Fiji are larger — much larger in some cases, as in the province of Nadroga where even the women are nearly centimeters 6 ft tall. They speak a different language and enjoy their own material culture.
At the time of European contact Fiji was a feudal society with a chiefly system of the most oppressive kind — unlike the Melanesian system where stature was earned by an individual who produced the most and shared it. In Fiji the chiefs had absolute power of life and death over commoners in contrast to the Melanesian system which opposed such tyranny.
We can try to imagine those first years. The canoe arriving, the hostile reception from the established population, the skirmishing and then the long trek into the interior; the build up of population and then the subsequent probing towards the coast for both peaceful and hostile interaction with the indigenous peoples.
Villages raided, men killed or enslaved and women taken as the prize of victory. Slowly the blood of the distinct ethnic groups would have diffused over both populations, but not to such an extent as to form a homogeneous whole. The kai Viti — the people of Fiji — as they call themselves to this day, were left in possession of the large island archipelago which they began to organize on the Polynesian hierarchical system.
Heads of powerful families could create political states by conquest and tyranny and by Machiavellian policies of alliance and treason. Friends and allies could become bitter enemies overnight. Political states, whose heads were often first cousins and sometimes step-brothers, were often locked in suicidal conflict.
During greater wars minor civil wars would sometimes take place within political confederations and loyalty was something no Fijian chief could count on. Fijians practiced polygamy for both political and personal reasons.
Alliances were consolidated by marriage, but women were also given as tribute or taken as a prize of war. The political advantage gained by marriage was often eroded by political instability at home caused by rivalry amongst the male issue. Thus families rose and fell and states rose and fell. During this long pre-contact period Fiji was visited by Tongans who came on regular trading expeditions; Samoans, Wallis Islanders, people of Futuna and Rotuma.
At some later stage, not long before European contact, there must also have been contract with Micronesia, most probably Kiribati miles to the north. The Fijian people play guitar and sing at every opportunity. Music seems to be everywhere. You are always welcome to participate. It is home to many of our staff. Rural villages throughout Fiji form the core the Fijian community structure.
If you visit Nukubalavu you will be welcomed in a way you have never experienced anywhere else. You will witness true Fijian life and enjoy the Meke dance and singing performance by the village people. The prince who came from Tonga was Ma'afu.
The skeletons are to be sent to Japan for assembling and further research. Lapita pottery found on the surface of the graves was almost years old, he said. Fiji Museum archaeologist Sepeti Matararaba said that the area beside the sea must have been occupied, because a great deal of pottery, hunting tools, and ancient shell jewellery had been discovered. More than 20 pits had been dug following the discovery of lapita in the area.
On 15 July , it was reported that the same teams had uncovered 16 skeletons at Bourewa, near Natadola. The skeletons were found in a layer of undisturbed soil containing pottery from around BC.
Professor Nunn suggests there was abundant evidence that Bourewa could be the first human settlement in the Fiji archipelago, occupied from around BC onwards. These people left evidence of their existence by mainly their elaborately decorated and finely fashioned pottery," Nunn said.
He pointed to Papua New Guinea or the Solomon Islands as the place from where the earliest Fijians came, as the pottery fragments were typical of the early Lapita period in Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, but not readily found on Lapita pottery in Fiji.
The first discovery was made in by a Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman. The second to land on Fiji was English navigator Captain James Cook in , and he also continued to explore the islands during the 18th century. However, much of the credit of the discovery and recording of the Fiji Islands went to Captain William Bligh, who sailed through Fiji in after the mutiny on the Bounty , a British Royal Navy ship. At around the early 19th century, shipwrecked sailors and runaway convicts from the Australian penal settlements were the first Europeans to land and live among the Fijians, while missionaries and sandalwood traders came around at mid-century.
The name Fiji was first conceived by Cook. As European populations in Fiji increased, they gained greater influence on Fijian culture as well, and it was during this time that houses and canoes were built, Western-style clothing was first adopted, confederations were formed and wars were fought on a larger scale without precedent but ended more abruptly.
Christianity had also spread throughout the islands, and cannibalism, which had once been practiced in Fiji, soon ended.
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