The Pleasantville Press

SOUTH SEA TRIBES FROM ASIA
Marquesans Are Traced Back to India by Hawaiian Scientist After Investigation.

Honolulu, Hawaii.-The flora of the Marquesas Islands prove that the Polynesian race came out of southeastern Asia to its present habitations in the islands of the Pacific, in the opinion of Forrest Brown, botanist of the Bishop museum, who has just returned from 17 months of investigation in the Marquesas in connection with the museum's effort to establish the origin of the Polynesians.

The presence in the Marquesas of the sweet potato and the papaya led Professor Brown to the theory that the Marquesans visited America, as these plants probably had been obtained in semi-tropical Central America. The food plants most common to the Marquesas came, however, from southeastern Asia, probably by way of Malay, Java and India.

Professor Brown said that the original Polynesians probably had inhabited the coasts of southeastern Asia and had been forced to seek new homes in the Pacific by the pressure of tribes and clans from the interior, which drove them literally into the ocean. They took their food plants with them when they migrated, he said. He is not ready to express an opinion as to the route or routes taken by the Polynesians during their migrations which finally landed them in Hawaii.