affiliation with Polynesia is shown, however, in another class of origin-myths to which we may now turn.
If there is little interest in the beginning of the world in the Melanesian area, the same cannot be said of the origin of mankind, for on this subject there is considerable and widely variant material. Three types of myths may be recognized: one, that in which mankind is directly created by some deity or pre-existing being; second, that in which man comes into being spontaneously or magically; and, third, that where mankind descends to earth from the sky-land.
In the Admiralty Islands it is said[5] that Manual was alone and longed for a wife; so he took his axe, went into the forest, and cut down a tree, and after he had fashioned the trunk into the figure of a woman, he said, "My wood there, become a woman!", and the image came to life. In the Banks Islands a somewhat more elaborate tale is told.[6] Qat was the first to make man, cutting wood out of the dracaena-tree and forming it into six figures, three men and three women. When he had finished them, he hid them away for three days, after which he brought them forth and set them up. Dancing in front of them and seeing that they began to move, he beat the drum before them, and they moved still more, and "thus he beguiled them into life, so that they could stand of themselves." Then he divided them into three pairs as man and wife. Now Marawa, who was a malicious, envious fellow, saw what Qat had made and determined to do likewise. So he took wood of another sort, and when he had fashioned the images, he set them up and beat the drum before them, and gave them life as Qat had done. But when he saw them move, he dug a pit and covered the bottom with coco-nut fronds, burying his men and women in it for seven days; and when he dug them up again, he found them lifeless and decomposed, this being the origin of death among men.[7] According to another version from this same area,[8] while the first man was made of red clay by Qat, he created the first woman of rods and rings of
