It may be here apposite to make some observations on the slavery which is practised in connection with the bush-tribes of these islands. As already remarked, a wide distinction usually prevails in the Solomon Group between the inhabitants of the coast and those of the interior; and although this distinction is most evident in the case of the larger islands, it also prevails, but to a less degree, in those of smaller size. It is a noteworthy fact that the bushmen are always looked down upon by their brethren of the coast. “Man-bush” is with the latter a term of reproach, implying stupidity and crass ignorance. I have frequently heard this epithet applied to natives who handled their canoes in an awkward manner or who stumbled in their walk whilst accompanying me in my excursions. On one occasion, when trying to obtain stone axes from the natives of Alu, I was referred with a smile to the bushmen of the neighbouring island of Bougainville, who still employ these tools. In the larger islands the bush-tribes and the coast natives wage an unceasing warfare, in which the latter are usually the aggressors and the victors--the bushmen captured during these raids either affording materials for the cannibal feast or being detained in servitude by their captors. But there prevails in the group a recognized system of slave-traffic, in which a human being becomes a marketable commodity--the equivalent being represented in goods either of native or of foreign manufacture. This custom which came under the notice of the officers of Surville’s expedition, during their visit to Port Praslin in Isabel, in 1769,[12] obtains under the same conditions at the present time. These natives were in the habit of making voyages of ten and twelve days’ duration with the object of exchanging men for “fine cloths covered with designs,” articles which were manufactured by a race of people much fairer than their own, who were in all probability the inhabitants of Ontong Java.
[12] “Discoveries to the south-east of New Guinea,” by M. Fleurieu, p. 143, Eng. edit.
The servitude to which the victims of this traffic are doomed is not usually an arduous one. But there is one grave contingency attached to his thraldom which must be always before the mind of the captive, however lightly his chains of service may lie upon him. When a head is required to satisfy the offended honour of a neighbouring chief, or when a life has to be sacrificed on the completion of a tambu-house or at the launching of a new war-canoe, the victim chosen is usually the man who is not a free-born native of the village. He may have been bought as a child and have lived amongst them from his boyhood up, a slave only in name, and enjoying all the rights of his fellow natives. But no feelings of compassion can save him from his doom; and the only consideration which he receives at the hands of those with whom he may have lived on terms of equality for many years is to be found in the circumstance that he gets no warning of his fate.
