Although the ancient Polynesians were the greatest navigators of their time, handing on to succeeding generations records of voyages and sailing directions which are still preserved by their descendants in Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand, there is no definite tradition that they ever came into contact with the peoples of the American continent. Evidence recently collected by ethnologists indicates, however, that such contact was almost certainly established, though much controversy has arisen over its extent and manner of occurrence.
Most ethnologists now agree that during the first and second centuries A.D., the early Polynesians began migrating from Indonesia into the Pacific, voyaging in their outrigger sailing canoes through the Caroline, Marshall, and Gilbert groups to Samoa and the Society Islands, and possibly through the Solomons to Fiji. From Samoa and the Society group, including Tahiti, they carried out further colonizing expeditions during the ensuing centuries.
Hawaii was first settled about 500 A.D., the Marquesas during the tenth century and New Zealand about 1200 A.D., although the main Maori-Polynesian migration to New Zealand did not take place until 150 years later. One early navigator, Hui-te-Rangiora, is reported to have sailed far south into the region of Antarctic ice without discovering land. Other seafarers voyaged eastward to occupy Mangareva, Pitcairn, and Easter islands, where they erected the great ancestral statues that have captured the imagination of scientists, artists, and writers from the Western world.
For these prolonged voyages the Polynesians built great double canoes, lashed together with a platform between and equipped with broad lateen sails of coconut or pandanus leaves. These craft were usually built up in several sections, cut from local timber or from the great pine logs that some times drifted down from the coasts of California and Oregon. For the largest canoes, which often exceeded 100 feet in length, a keel of one or more pieces was laid, the sides consisting of planks lashed or sewn to it.
The craft were frail but buoyant, and generations of experience, added to bravery and enterprise, had made the Polynesians the greatest ocean pathfinders of their time. They lacked nautical instruments, but their profound knowledge of the stars and of flights of birds, of ocean currents and prevailing winds, of cloud formations and the changing color of the sky, kept them on their main course. Their custom of sailing in squadrons, spread over a wide front by day and gathered together at night, increased their chances of sighting land.
Among the plants which were in general use among the early Polynesians the yam, taro, coconut, banana, breadfruit, and bottle gourd are derived from species native to Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, and were probably introduced into the Pacific islands by human agency. Only the sweet potato, which is grown in island groups as far apart as Samoa, the Marquesas, Hawaii, and New Zealand, seems to be a native of South America. That its introduction occurred through contact between the Polynesians and South American Indians is fairly certain, according to James Hornell, a leading authority on Pacific exploration.
In Peru and Ecuador the sweet potato goes under the names kumar, komal, or kumal, which have as their counterparts in Polynesia the terms kuma’a in the Marquesas; ’umara in Tahiti; kumara in New Zealand, the Cook Islands, the Tuamotus, Mangareva, and Easter Island; kumala in Tonga; ’umala in Samoa, and ’u’ala in Hawaii. This practical identity of name indicates that the tuber must have been transported by man from its South American home to one of the Polynesian groups, whence it was gradually distributed to other island areas.
The transfer must have taken place at a very early date, probably between 600 A.D., when the Polynesians completed occupation of the Society Islands, and 1250 A.D. when, according to tradition, the sweet potato was introduced into Hawaii. Toi, who arrived in New Zealand with the first Maori settlers about the year 1200, knew of the vegetable and sent back a canoe to Raiatea, his home island near Tahiti, for some seed plants. Its diffusion to the furthermost parts of Polynesia must have been completed by the end of the fourteenth century, as the great age of Polynesian voyaging ended around that date.
Two theories have been presented to explain how the plant was introduced into the Pacific islands. One group of ethnologists suggest that Polynesian voyagers, after reaching the coast of Peru, were able to return home, carrying with them tubers and their Quichua designation. The second theory suggests that the transfer was made by Inca seamen, who are described by Spanish explorers of the sixteenth century as using large, navigable rafts made of balsa logs and equipped with yards, masts, and sails. Though the ancient Peruvians were little inclined to maritime exploration, there is detailed record of a long western voyage made in the fifteenth century by an Inca prince, Tupac Yupanqui, who discovered an island chain now believed to be the Galapagos group.
If Polynesian explorers succeeded in reaching South America before the end of the twelfth century, the only route they could follow with favorable winds and currents would have been via Mangareva and Easter Island. After resting at Easter Island, the seafarers would soon fall in with the northbound Peru or Humboldt current and make a landfall in Peru or southern Ecuador. If they were hospitably received by the Incas, they might have obtained supplies of food, including the sweet potato, from them and learned that the Peru current continued in a northwest direction and merged with the westbound South Equatorial current. By following these directions the Polynesians would have reached the Marquesas, where one branch of the equatorial current veers southwest, thus aiding their return to the Society Islands.
The odds against the completion of so epic a voyage, dependent on the favor of weather and currents and the friendship of the arrogant Incas, are heavy indeed. The Quichua legend of a force of naked brown warriors who invaded Peru from the sea and worshipped a stone god gives the theory some support. But Hornell favors the idea that transmission of the sweet potato resulted from an involuntary drift-voyage of Inca seamen whose balsa-raft may have been dismasted and blown out to sea during a coastwise voyage.
Carried northwest by the Peru current, the helpless craft would have drifted on the South Equatorial current toward the Marquesas. There, assuming the Polynesian natives were friendly, the voyagers would have taken their uneaten potatoes ashore and planted them, handing on to the Marquesas their Quichua designation. That the castaways ever returned to Peru is indeed unlikely. In any event, life in the Marquesas might well have been attractive enough to hold them there.
Support for the drift-voyage theory is furnished by the historic case of the British full-rigged ship Dagonar, which capsized but did not sink after its cargo had shifted in a storm near the Juan Fernandez Islands, 500 miles off the Chilean coast, in September, 1913. The crew was taken off by the French ship Loire and the Dagonar was abandoned. During the ensuing 170 days the derelict drifted northwest on the Peru current, then west and southwest on the equatorial current, which carried it past the Marquesas and Tuamotus. Finally the ship, whose course had been noted at various times by passing vessels, stranded on. a reef off Mopiha in the Society Islands, after covering a distance of 5,500 miles. Though the drift-voyage of the Dagonar is the longest in the records of modern shipping, there is no reason to assume that it had no precedent.