Xaracuu

The Xaracuu are the Kanak people of south-central Grande Terre in New Caledonia, their Xârâcùù language often called Canala after its chief town. Xârâcùù forms, with Xârâgurè, a distinct branch of the southern New Caledonian languages, heirs to the Austronesian speech of Lapita villagers who first occupied these coasts between 1100 BC and AD 200.

Xârâcùù numerals carry special classifiers, prefixes and suffixes that sort counted things by kind. Shell money, yam stores and ceremonial gifts fixed every clan's rank, and Xaracuu chiefs ruled from great houses topped with the carved flèche faîtière, overseeing taro terraces, lagoon fishing fleets and cycles of feast and feud.

James Cook sailed past in 1774 without landing, and for two generations more the only Europeans seen were passing whalers. Well into the 1830s the Xaracuu valleys still ran by their own clan politics.