Ultimate shoulder rides

Tahitian culture is rich in shoulder riding. It all stems from the fact that in ancient times Tahitian royalty were carried on the shoulders of men especially bred for the purpose. The reasoning being that if a royal foot touched the ground that land automatically belonged to the royal person, therefore the peasant who the land belonged too was disspossesed. Since they had no animals to ride they used slaves and travelled about their land in that way, often with the slaves running, other slaves followed behind to replace exhausted bearers. Tha custom was called 'vaha' and, as you can see by the clip, is still evident in ceremonial events to this day.

Thanks Scotty, to illustrate the point I have uploaded a picture to wom. To my knowledge this is the only painting of this particular custom, its by a british artist called Robert Smirke who visited Tahiti in roughly 1870. What is interesting is how small the slaves were compared to the other visible Tahitians on veiw.