Melanesians

“ The religion of the Melanesians is the expression of their conception of the supernatural, and embraces a very wide range of beliefs and practices, the limits of which it would be very difficult to define. It is equally difficult to ascertain with precision what these beliefs are. The ideas of the natives are not clear upon many points, they are not accustomed to present them in any systematic form among themselves. An observer who should set himself the task of making systematic enquiries, must find himself baffled at the outset by the multiplicity of the languages with which he has to deal. ”

“ Unlike the Polynesians, the Melanesians are agricultural in habits, and sedentary. They build artistically decorated houses, are acquainted with the bow and arrow, occasionally make pottery, and construct shapely canoes, though not given to long voyages. The women are modest and chaste, and their religion is principally a form of ancestral worship.
The languages of these islanders betray their compound origin. In form and in the pronominal elements 229 they stand related to the Malayan and Polynesian idioms, and in structure approach sometimes the richness of the former. ”

“ Nevertheless, I doubt very much whether other Melanesians live in the same familiarity with their missionaries—e.g., Carry, wife of Wadrokala, writes thus:—"I tremble very much to write to you, I am not fit to write to you, because, does an ant know how to speak to a cow? We at Nengone would not speak to a great man like you; no, our language is different to a chief and a missionary." ”

“ For a long time he has been our link with the Melanesians themselves whenever there was something to be done by one of themselves rather than by us strangers. Somehow the other scholars get into a way of recognising him as the A 1 of the place, and so also in Mota and the neighbouring islands his character and reputation are well known. The people expect him to be a teacher among them, they all know that he is a person of weight. ”

“ This is clearly shown by an example from Melanesia. The Melanesians believe that men have souls which leave the body at death; it then changes its name and becomes what they call a tindalo, a natmat, etc. Also, they have a cult of the souls of the dead: they pray to them, invoke them and make offerings and sacrifices to them. But every tindalo is not the object of these ritual practices; only those have this honour which come from men to whom public opinion attributed, during life, the very special virtue which the Melanesians call the mana. ”

“ For both the Polynesians and the Malays, as we know them, stand at a decidedly higher level of culture, socially and intellectually, than the Melanesians, and it is hard to understand why with this advantage they should have fallen into a position of linguistic subordination to them, for as a rule it is the higher race which imposes its language on its inferiors, not the lower race which succeeds in foisting its speech on its superiors. ”

“ But I am more than ever convinced that the chiefest part of our work is to consist in training up Melanesian clergymen, and educating them up to the point of faithfully reproducing our simple teaching. We must hope to see native self-supporting Melanesian Churches, not weak indolent Melanesians dependent always on an English missionary, but steadfast, thoughtful men and women, retaining the characteristics of their race so far as they can be sanctified by the Word of God in prayer, and not force useless imitations of English modes of thought and nineteenth century civilisation. ”

“ The Melanesians are a horticultural people; the skill and care with which gardens were kept and planted could not from the first fail to strike their visitors, and marked them off by a distinction that cannot be mistaken from the natives of Australia. The Melanesian 'labourer' carried off to Queensland was amazed to find men who, though black, had no garden, and did not bring back very flattering accounts of white men's cultivation either. A garden of yams carefully trained on reeds, kept absolutely clear from weeds, and beautiful in the leafage of the vines, is a fine sight indeed ”

“ Native Population
The natives belong to the Melanesian race, which is a collective name for the dark-skinned, curly-haired, bearded inhabitants of the Pacific. The Melanesians are quite distinct from the Australians, and still more so from the lank-haired, light-skinned Polynesians of the eastern islands. Probably a mixture of Polynesians and Melanesians are the Micronesians, who are light-skinned but curly-haired, and of whom we find representatives in the New Hebrides. ”

“ Mutual avoidance of mother and son and of brother and sister among the Melanesians. In like manner among the Melanesians of the Banks’ Islands and the New Hebrides a man must not only avoid his mother-in-law; from the time when he reaches or approaches puberty and has begun to wear clothes instead of running about naked, he must avoid his mother and sisters, and he may no longer live in the same house with them; he takes up his quarters in the clubhouse of the unmarried males, where he now regularly eats and sleeps. ”

“ Many islands yielding scholars for the first time; old scholars, with but few exceptions, steadfast and rapidly improving; no less than fifty-seven Melanesians here now from twenty-four islands, exclusive of the Loyalty Islands, and five bright Pitcairners, from twenty-four to sixteen, helpful, good, conscientious lads. There are eight languages that I do not know, besides all the rest; yet I can see that they are all links in the great chain of dialects of the great "Pacific language,"—yet dialects very far removed sometimes from one another. ”

“ The Melanesians are as variable as the natives of New Guinea; the hair may be curly, or even wavy, showing evidence of racial mixture, and the skin is chocolate or occasionally copper-coloured. The stature of the men ranges from 1.50 m. ”

“ G. Friederici [332] has accumulated a vast amount [Pg 139] of evidence based chiefly on linguistics and material culture, to support the theory of Melanesian cultural streams from the west. He regards the Melanesians as having come from that part of Indonesia which extends from the Southern Islands of the Philippine group, through the Minahasa peninsula of Celebes, to the Moluccas in the neighbourhood of Buru and Ceram. From the Moluccan region they passed north of New Guinea to the region about Vitiaz and Dampier Straits, which Friederici regards as the gateway of Melanesia. ”

“ There is probably no place in which the common opinion of Melanesians approves the intercourse of unmarried youths and girls as a thing good in itself, though it allows it as a thing to be expected and to be excused ”

“ No one could entertain the idea that anything was ordered from a selfish motive, for any advantage to himself, or that anything was forbidden without some very good reason. This familiarity with a superior, which is natural with Melanesians, is accompanied, especially in Banks Islanders, with a very great reserve about anything that touches the feelings or concerns character. ”

“ If A injures B, B burns down C's hut, or makes a hole in his canoe, or sticks a spear in the pathway so that C is nearly sure to run against it. B lets C know that he has injured him, and the reason of it; when C is expected to settle the account with A, the first aggressor. On the whole, the New Britain people are the least attractive of all Melanesians whom I know. They are very dirty, and do not possess the skill in fashioning pottery, or carving wooden bowls, of their neighbors in the Solomons and the Admiralty Islands. ”

“ No opportunity is made for family prayers before the table d'hôte breakfast; and at least one part of the Sunday is spent in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, or in a different way from the home use. And if this be so with good respectable folk among ourselves, what must be the effect of altered circumstances on our Melanesians?
'It is not easy to keep up the devotional life on shore at home, or in the islands, or on board ship with the same regularity. And where the convert must be more dependent than we ought to be on external opportunities, the difficulty is increased. ”

“ In the Viti, for example, both prefixes and suffixes are employed, and the possessive is added to the noun. The root words are monosyllables or dissyllables, and drawn from the Papuan idioms, and the phonetics are much richer than the Polynesian.
These facts go to show that the Melanesians are physically and linguistically a mixed people, a compound of the woolly-haired black Papuas, whom we may suppose to have been the aborigines of Melanesia, with the smooth-haired, light-colored Malays, who reached the archipelago as adventurers and immigrants. ”

“ Bizygomatic breadth locates them nearer to the Polynesians than to the narrower-faced Melanesians. Strongly developed malars are common, and they tend to project laterally more than frontally. Widest faces appear among the eastern people. ”

“ A Florida Vunagi kept order in his place, directed the common operations and industries, represented his people with strangers, presided at sacrifices and led in war. He inflicted fines, and would order any one to be put to death. At Saa in Malanta the chief, Maelaha, is such by virtue of descent, a remarkable difference existing in many points between this people and Melanesians generally; the people work in his gardens, plant for him, build a house or canoe for him at his word. He inflicts fines, and can order a man to be put to death. ”

“ Bright glittering ones are no use, few Melanesians would take them as a gift. Some islanders like large beads, as big or bigger than boys' marbles. These are some hints to any kind people who may wish to contribute in kind rather than in money.
'Mr. Codrington has given these fellows a great taste for gardening. Much of their spare hours (which are not many) are spent in digging up, fencing in and preparing little pieces of land close about the station, two or three lads generally making up a party, and frequently the party consists of lads and young men from different islands. ”

“ Codrington in The Melanesians, and who apparently is not regarded as having been of divine rank, but is rather a specially powerful, but perhaps semi-human, spiritual individual, who, though not having originally created mankind and the animal and vegetable world and the objects and forces of nature as a whole, has had, and it would seem still has, considerable creative and influencing powers over them all. ”

“ Yet most unfortunately it has come to pass that the religious beliefs of European traders have been conveyed to the natives in the word 'devil,' which they use without knowing what it means. It is much to be wished that educated Europeans would not use the word so loosely as they do. ↑ Professor Max Müller, in his Hibbert Lectures of 1878, did me the honour of quoting the following words from a letter. 'The religion of the Melanesians consists, as far as belief goes, in the persuasion that there is a supernatural power about belonging to the region of the unseen ”

“ Many a voyager, not an observer, carries away as a sort of joke the story that the natives think their shadows are their souls, who could not tell exactly what he means by the word 'soul' which he uses himself. It may suffice to make the statement that, whatever word the Melanesian people use for soul, they mean something esseutially belonging to each man's nature which carries life to his body with it, and is the seat of thought and intelligence, exercising therefore power which is not of the body and is invisible in its action. ”

“ White visitors have not meant to do the natives wrong, but they have in fact harmed them, and have not earned moral respect at any rate generally from them. Europeans have from the beginning of intercourse with Melanesian natives kidnapped them, and have persuaded themselves that they were doing them a service by bringing them into what is called contact with civilization ”

“ The belief in other spirits not ghosts of the dead, appears equally clear in the account given of the sacred stones and places, which correspond to those of the northern islands of the same group, and in the 'minor deities' said to be the progeny of Nugerain, and called 'gods of the sea, of the land, of mountains and valleys,' who represent the wui of Lepers' Island and Araga. There does not appear to be anywhere in Melanesia a belief in a spirit which animates any natural object, a tree, waterfall, storm or rock, so as to be to it what the soul is believed to be to the body of a man. ”

“ It has been said in Chapters V and VI that there is not known in these Islands of Melanesia any initiation or 'making of young men'; there is only the entrance into the various societies. The nearest approach to such initiation seems to be found at Saa. A chief's son in that part of Malanta goes early to the oha, canoe-house and public hall, while common children still eat and sleep at home ”

“ It is probably true that in every account of Melanesian affairs given to the world tribes are spoken of; but a belief that every savage people is made up of tribes is part of the mental equipment of a civilized visitor; when one reads of the 'coast tribes' or the 'bush tribes,' nothing more is meant than the people who inhabit the coast or the inland part of some island. ”

“ This seems to stand foremost as the native looks out upon his fellow men; the knowledge of it forms probably the first social conception which shapes itself in the mind of the young Melanesian of either sex, and it is not too much to say that this division is the foundation on which the fabric of native society is built up. There are no Tribes among the natives; if the word tribe is to be applied as it is to the Maori people of New Zealand, or as it is used in Fiji. No portion of territory, however small, can be said to belong to any one of these divisions ”