It's Christmas 1897 in Melanesia!

CHRISTMAS, 1897. ___________   MELANESIA.   BEING THE RECORD OF THE MELANESIAN MISSION.   EDITED BY J. R. SELWYN, D.D. Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and late Bishop of Melanesia.   __________________   LUDLOW: Partridge Printer, 58, Broad Street, MDCCCXCVII.

This is a fascinating record of the Anglican Church's mission to Melanesia in 1897.  Here's a brief passage that hints at what kind of anecdotal info that's in the report:  "Soga took some 200 men down to St. George's Island to hunt for turtle. They had a pretty good time, and got between twenty and thirty full-grown ones, and there was a great feast in celebration. What came over them I don't know, but a lot of them took into their heads to have a sort of heathen dance. I believe it was merely by way of a joke to begin with at least, but they rather lost their heads, and with shield and spear they went in for "the shouts of them that triumph" over a sacked village. Capel and some of the teachers were looking on, and protested, but in vain, and at last he said to them "what is all this? are you turned heathen again, and want to call down judgment on yourselves?" and with that he left them. Within a week, several of them were ill, and within another, no less than four of them were dead. Two Chiefs--Charles Vou, one of them, and two men of rank. It seems to me to be rather more than a coincidence." (Italics mine.  HP)
I could go on for days about the theological ramifications here (of a deity that punishes participants in a traditional dance with death)...but I'll spare us all that. Instead I'd rather ponder the wavering back and forth between the traditional lifestyle and that of the missionaries.  The bishop's interpretation of the dance as a religious rite may not be accurate.  From what the bishop writes here, it sounds more like a cultural thing than religious.  IMHO he should have had the good grace to shut up and watch, join the dancing, or just go home and have a nice sherry on the porch. 
Like I've said before in this blog, imagine the native Melanesians to be Pre-Christian Europeans, for example, and the Anglicans to be Roman...and you'll have a picture of what happened across that continent 1500 years ago.  This translates across the globe and throughout history where "world" cultures/religions move into local, formerly independent areas.  In Europe, many of the traditional rites were Christianized, thus making it possible for the people to continue doing what they'd been doing for centuries, but without posing a threat to the new religious authority.
The fascinating 1897 report can be viewed here.

The Big Book, the Bible, the Must-Read of Melanesia

Thirty Years in the South Seas: Land and People, Customs and Traditions in the Bismarck Archipelago

Richard Parkinson

This is the bible for understanding traditional cultures in Melanesia.  I leaned on it heavily in the construction of To One Who Lives on the Mainland.  

Thirty Years in the South Seas is one of the few source books that mentions the German and French colonies in the region. This is important, as most Germans I meet have no knowledge of their former colonies in the South Pacific. Tons of crisp original photos, taken by an expatriate European who really loved and wanted to record the cultures of these islands.  Not one of those uptight guys tossing idols in the lakes...Parkinson was the one fishing them out.

It's a big book --11.6 x 8.8 x 1.2 inches, according to Amazon.  It's dense, too.  416 massive pages of tight text.  Bring your reading glasses. 

Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts by Deborah B. Gewertz

Twisted Histories, Altered Contexts: Representing the Chambri in the World System

Deborah B. Gewertz

This speaks to not only cultures of the South Pacific, but any culture encroached upon by an overwhelming foreign influence.  Think of pre-Christian Europe v. Romans, Incas and Aztecs v. The Spanish, Africa v. the empires of Europe. 

It's an oft-told tale, I'm afraid.  So often the original cultures are twisted out of context until unrecognizable...or forgotten completely.  In Twisted Histories, in which Melanesian villagers are depicted, it's happening in the information age...with photo-journalists and ethnographers to record it.  Hopefully that will be of some help to the native islanders in generations to come.

What we non-islanders can learn from it is how our ancestors (in Europe, in Africa, in the Americas) felt about being enveloped by the world culture which now allows us, their descendants, to discuss this on the internet.

Twisted Histories is one of the many books I read while preparing To One Who Lives on the Mainland. Universally applicable: Everyone should give it a read, if they can find it.

Young American Artist Documents Melanesian Ethnic Diversity

Here's my article on Caroline Mytinger, originally written for, but not posted on Suite 101. Enjoy!

Caroline Mytinger’s Portraits Recorded Melanesian Ethnic Groups

In 1926 two young American women undertook a journey to Melanesia, seeking lands untouched by the outside world. They ended up creating a priceless ethnographic resource.

Artist’s supplies, a few clothes, a ukulele, and $600 cash was all they carried. The women were Caroline Mytinger -- a portrait painter and amateur ethnographer, and her companion Margaret Warner – owner of the ukulele and the expedition’s technician-cum-secretary. 

Mytinger and Warner spent the next four years making their way from island to island living with the Melanesians, They lived in the grass huts of their hosts, ate sago, sweet potatoes and roasted wild boar.  They paddled in dugout canoes and climbed muddy jungle paths.  They suffered local infirmities including the ulcerous “fish mouth.” Everything the women experienced was documented in prose and on canvas.

The term “Headhunting,” used in the title of both of her books, is a typical example of the artist’s earthy humor.  Mytinger referred to the process of securing a sitter and capturing their likeness as “taking a head.”  Warner played hostess during these sessions; She sang, strummed her ukulele, or simply kept up a happy banter -- entertaining the guest-sitter while Mytinger concentrated on painting.

Mytinger and Warner held a different view of the Melanesians than many of their generation.  Their attitude was that preindustrial societies and their populations should be protected and studied, rather than evangelized, urbanized and industrialized.  Mytinger and Warner took particular care to understand the Islanders’ knowledge of the natural world, their views on honor, morality and civil society, and their attitudes toward humanity’s place in the universe.  Their own mistakes of etiquette -- the unintentional gaffs of which all travelers are guilty -- are recorded with self-deprecating humor in Mytinger’s witty prose.

Upon returning to the United States in 1930, Mytinger displayed her Melanesian portraits at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, under the guidance of anthropologist Margaret Mead.  Later the collection went on the road, exhibiting at a number of venues.  Mytinger eventually bequeathed 23 of her Melanesian portraits, as well as over 40 sketches, to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley, California.  A great number of them can be viewed online at the museum’s website.

Anyone interested in the history of the South Pacific should seek out a copy of Mytinger’s Headhunting in the Solomon Islands around the Coral Sea or New Guinea Headhunt.  Originally published in 1942 and 1946 respectively, the two books remain a key source for information on the various peoples, cultures, and locales of Melanesia. 

Luckily, The Narrative Press brought Headhunting in the Solomon Islands around the Coral Sea back to print in 2001, with a trade paper edition.  As of this writing New Guinea Headhunt is still out of print, but since Mytinger’s books sold briskly during her lifetime, many are still available today used.

More information can be found at: 

http://www.headhuntrevisited.org/home.shtml

http://hearstmuseum.berkeley.edu/exhibitions/mytinger/

Sources:

Mytinger, Caroline, Headhunting in the Solomon Islands around the Coral Sea, The MacMillan Company, 1942.

Mytinger, Caroline, New Guinea Headhunt, The MacMillan Company, 1946.

Six Philippino Fighter Pilots Against Fifty-four Japanese Raiders

Friends: This post, an old favorite from an earlier blog, is my way of bringing the fire from my old internet hearth to my new one.  Enjoy!

"Fighting Filipino pilot. Manila. Captain Jesus Villamor, commanding officer of the 6th Pursuit Squadron, Philippine Army Air Corps, is pictured getting out of plane after returning from a flight to Batangas Field. The youth, who leads a daredevil squadron of six Filipino pilots in erstwhile training planes who took on fifty-four Japanese air raiders over Batangas and shot down two, said he "got so mad" he forgot to be scared. One of the Filipino pilots was wounded and parachuted to safety and another was killed, Captain Villamor said, when seven Japanese planes "rode him down." He is the son of the late associate justice of the Philippine Supreme Court and trained as a pilot at Randolph and Kelly Fields" Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-USE6-D-009642 (b&w film nitrate neg.)]