It is so to-day, in Vait-hua where the whites are not.  I have had my trousers lifted from my second-story room in a Manila hotel by the eyed and fingered bamboo of the Tagalog ladron, while I washed my face, and stood aghast at the mystery of their disappearance with door locked, until looking from my lofty window I beheld them moving rapidly down an estero in a banca.  I have given over my watch to a gendarme in Cairo to forfend arrest for having beaten an Arab who tripped me to pick my pocket, and I have surrendered to the rapacity of a major-general-uniformed official in Italy, who would incarcerate me for not having a tail-light lit.  In San Francisco, when robbed upon the public street, I have listened while the police suggested that I offer a fee to the “king of the dips” and a reward to certain saloonkeepers to intercede with the unknown-to-me highwaymen for the return of an heirloom.

Yet through the darkest nights in Vait-hua I slept serenely, surrounded by all the possessions so desirable in the eyes of my neighbors, in a house the doors of which were never fastened.  There was not a lock in all the village, or anything that answered the purpose of one.  The people of this isolated valley, forgetting their brief encounter with the European idea of money and of the accumulation of property, had reverted to the ways of their fathers.

Before interference with their natural customs the Marquesans were communists to a large degree.  Their only private property consisted of houses, weapons, ornaments, and clothing, for the personal use of the owner himself.  All large works, such as the erection of houses, the building of large canoes, and, in ancient days, the raising of paepaes and temples, were done by mutual cooperation; though each family provided its own food and made provision for the future by storing breadfruit in the popoi pits.  Neo, like the long line of chiefs before him, had gathered a little more of the good things of life than had the majority, but he was in no sense a dictator, except as personality won obedience.  In the old days a chief was often relegated to the ranks for failure in war, and always for an overbearing attitude toward the commoners.  Such arrogant fellows were kicked out of the seat of power unceremoniously.

“Our pure republican policy approaches so near their own,” said the American naval captain, Porter, a hundred years ago.

Men were honored for their artistry, highest place being given to the tattooers, the carvers, the designers, and builders of canoes, the architects, doctors, and warriors.  Men and women rose to influence and chiefly rank only by deeds that won popular admiration.  These people were hero-worshippers, and in the bloodiest of the old days those of fine soul who had a message of entertainment or instruction were tapu to all tribes, so that they could travel anywhere in safety and were welcome guests in all homes.