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.