Since over a quarter of the world's discrete religions are found in Oceania or on the islands of the Pacific Ocean, generalizations about their worldviews do not come easily. Because the languages of Polynesia, and virtually all Micronesia, belong to the Austronesian (formerly Malayo-Polynesian) phylum, it is easier to detect a certain culturo-religious homogeneity across these regions, astoundingly scattered though their isolated protrusions of land may be. In the southwest Pacific, on the other hand, Melanesia harbors the most complex mix of languages on earth, concentrated in larger islands, and reflecting a great variety of small-scale traditional pictures of the cosmos. One may safely concede a common social structure pertains in Polynesia and Micronesia; their peoples are governed by chiefs, with chiefly seniority usually being established through tracing one's ancestry to the leader of the first canoe arriving on a given island. Distinctly hierarchical societies have...