Samoan synonyms

The Loyalty islanders are Melanesians; the several islands have each its separate language, and in Uea one tribe uses a Samoan and another a New Hebridean form of speech.

The Maoris are Polynesians, and, in common with the majority of their kinsfolk throughout the Pacific, they have traditions which point to Savaii, originally Savaiki, the largest island of the Samoan group, as their cradleland.

The Rarotongas call themselves Maori, and state that their ancestors came from Hawaiki, and Pirima and Manono are the native names of two islands in the Samoan group. The almost identical languages of the Rarotongas and the Maoris strengthen the theory that the two peoples are descended from Polynesians migrating, possibly at widely different dates, from Samoa.

A missionary visiting the Samoan valley found there a tradition of a party who put to sea never to return, and he also found the wood of which the staff was made growing plentifully in the district.

Among the measures and events distinguishing his term as president were the following: The meeting of the Pan-American Congress at Washington; the passage of the McKinley Tariff Bill and of the Sherman Silver Bill of 1890; the suppressing of the Louisiana Lottery; the enlargement of the navy; further advance in civil service reform; the convocation by the United States of an international monetary conference; the establishment of commercial reciprocity with many countries of America and Europe; the peaceful settlement of a controversy with Chile; the negotiation of a Hawaiian Annexation Treaty, which, however, before its ratification, his successor withdrew from the Senate; the settlement of difficulties with Germany concerning the Samoan Islands, and the adjustment by arbitration with Great Britain of the Bering Sea fur-seal question.