The Accidental Ethnographer (2b)—Ocean and Isle: New Guinea

One year ago on Round and Square (1 June 2011)—Seinfeld Ethnography: Newman's Mail
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "The Accidental Ethnographer." (Coming Soon)
Click below for other posts from Ocean and Isle:

Isle 1            Isle  2            Isle 3           Isle 4            Isle 5            Isle 6            Isle 7

[a] Sharing...of a sort RF

I am scheduled to give a lecture on today at the Doylestown Historical Society, as part of Doylestown, Pennsylvania's big bicentennial celebration. The subject is the American explorer and evangelist William Edgar Geil (1865-1925). This is part of a larger project that I will be working on this summer in Doylestown with the help of Beloit College anthropology major Megan Nyquist '14. As I did a few weeks ago in preparation for another lecture (on another subject), I am going to spend the next few days posting some of Geil's own writings. This was enormously helpful to me the last time I tried it, and I think it is worth another try. 

William Edgar Geil was a world famous figure in his day, and the reasons he has been lost to history (from his death until now) are as interesting as the underpinnings of his fame. Here is a very brief overview. In a day before anthropology or Chinese (or African or Micronesian) studies had a toehold in world universities, William Edgar Geil traveled the world, took extensive notes, returned to Doylestown, and wrote books. Depending on how you count them, he wrote almost a dozen—many of them thick and substantial in ways that a turn of the (last) century reader would understand, even if many people today would not. He traveled across central Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century, spent a year in Australia and New Guinea, and then found an abiding love for the study of China (which is where I "met" him, in a manner of speaking). He traveled the length of the Great Wall, journeyed the Yangzi River from Shanghai into southeast Asia, visited all of China's provincial capitals, and is the only Westerner to have written a book about his travels to all five sacred mountains of China.

[b] Tree travel RF

He wrote about it all, and he took pictures. The former is not without problem; the latter is easily his legacy. It is all a fascinating picture of an American abroad in a peculiarly resonant time in American history—from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 to the end of World War I. This series will grow as my research does, but let's get started with Geil's own words—a little from each of his published books.

 ***  ***

William Edgar Geil started traveling the world with his trip to the holy land in the mid-1890s, and his first big book detailed his time on The Isle That Is Called Patmos. Geil revved things up considerably with his next trip, which took him to the continent and dotted islands of the South Pacific. Today's excerpt brings us right into the middle of his trip, when he is in every superficial way the consummate ethnographer (observation, discussion, note-taking, and reflection). The passage will also show that Geil was not an ethnographer in the style of the Malinowskis, Meads, and Radcliffe-Browns. That is what makes him so interesting to me—what makes him The Accidental Ethnographer. Let's get to work.

Ocean and Isle—New Guinea
William Edgar Geil (1902)

RUBBER AND RELIGION

This is the largest island on the planet, counting Australia as a continent. New Guinea, or Papua, is some 1,400 miles long, has among mountains, Mount Victoria 13,000 feet above the tide, and other peaks touching the clouds at 10,000 feet. Much of the country remains unexplored, and here is a chance for the adventurous American who desires to invade, scientifically, an important and, by white man, untrodden soil. In this land the humanized and inhuman native meet; here the civilized and uncivilized exchange trade; the Christianized and the heathen are in contact. A most interesting and important island this of the Papuans! One can pass quickly from the region of the Lord's supper to the section where to refuse a morsel of human flesh would be to have no longer the respect of the coffee-colored savage. some islands can never play a very important part in the commerce of the world, nor, through the changed native inhabitants, exert any great influence on the savage residents of other parts of the world, but here both will likely transpire. Aside from the gold and other minerals found in the streams, and mountains, and islands of New Guinea, there are forests of valuable timber, and soil capable of producing enormous returns from sugar-cane growing, india-rubber, cocoanuts, sago, tapioca, and eucalyptus. Bound as it is to become an attractive centre finally for the European in search of wealth and easy living, certain modify the relations of nations in time of war, and a splendid place for investing in missionary enterprise, I take pleasure in informing the Americans of the movements in the realms spiritual here.

[c] Divided RF

DIFFERENCES AND DIFFICULTIES

New Guinea, like ancient Gaul, is divided into three parts; part German, part Dutch, part English. In British New Guinea the territory has been divided into four ecclesiastical sections. There are four missionary societies at work, and lest there be over-lapping and contests for converts, the last Governor laid down boundaries past which the enthusiastic worker is not to go in making converts to his brand of Christianity. This strikes one as a most sensible arrangement, at least while the supply of heathen continues abundant. This plan has its weak points and can be objected to by the very earnest advocate of Churchianity rather than Christianity. But to one on the spot it has every appearance of being desirable, and might be recommended, until the stock of savage sinners becomes scarce. Then it will be early enough to open up the whole country to free trade in converts. The rivalry and competition between denominations is delightfully avoided, but the contrasting of methods and especially results, counting carefully the strategic points in each mission enterprise, is going on may be reckoned to accomplish good results. The London Missionary Society has the south coast from East Cape to beyond the Fly River, including some islands. The Roman Catholics come into the midst of this with Yule Island and up the Saint Joseph's River, with everything named after the Saints; in New Britain they have their lighters and other vessels named after the Saints as here. One time Gabriel was pulling Saint Peter out of the mud, and on another occasion Saint Peter got adrift and went astray and was taken in tow by another saint and gotten back; but to return to the geography of missions here. The Church of England have the north coast from East Cape to the German boundary; and the Wesleyan Methodists a small spot near East Cape, on the mainland, and all the islands east of Papua.

[d] Concentrated RF

Among the difficulties, I will mention but a few. The absence of large centres of population is considered a chief difficulty by some, but it has its advantages. The population of British New Guinea is estimated at 500,000 Papuans, extending in a thin line along the coast. In the back country I found large spaces without a village or hut. Recently a valley, 10,000 feet hight, has been found thickly inhabited, and it is not unlikely that the sum total of the inhabitants will finally be declared larger than I have given. There is one village of some 3,000 natives, but mostly the villages number a few hundreds. One at Port Moresby, or rather three very close together, Hunt says has 1,400 natives. These are semi-marine villages. Of course there is need for more workers of the vigorous stamp in a sparsely settled region. Where the population was massed there is bred vice and opposition, compact concentrated opposition to the advance of truth; there is no over-crowding in New Guinea.

 A real difficulty is the large number of dialects. One missionary tells me that in his district there are seven different languages in use. The lack of easy communications by land prevents frequent intercourse between tribes. But more so the innumerable dialectic disagreements. Captain F.W. Walker, who has been appointed to take Chalmers' place, will have to learn two or more languages in going from East Cape to the Fly River. Indeed, at East Cape, some twenty-five miles from where he now is, a different language is spoken, and an amount of work little dreamed of is necessary in translating. In Samoa, in Fiji, in Tonga, one translation of the Bible is sufficient, but here many are required. The London Missionary Society College at Vatorata is teaching in the Motuan exclusively. The Motu tongue is used for trading along the south coast for probably 200 miles. But very slow progress can be made with but twenty students and twenty-three babies in the midst of that splendid plantation of over 200 acres of land capable of producing sufficient food for 200 students. The idea of quality is in force there, and it is held a few good students are better than many inefficient ones. But the fact is not uppermost that more desirable still is a large number of good pupils. That the institution now has all the students of the better grade is unbelievable. There is much material about just as good as is now in the classes. 

[e] Other RF

The college was established by the herculean efforts of Dr. Lawes, who is still at the head of the institution. We have confidence that when he returns to Vatorata a larger work will at once be inaugurated. It may be that a lack of funds to put the fine farm on a paying and supporting basis the the reason for the smallness of a big thing. If so, we will anticipate with great pleasure hearing soon that Vatorata has 200 students instead of twenty. Mr. Riley, the helper or assistant to Dr. Lawes, has gotten more work out of the natives than move folks. I saw the students complete a fence, which took them other years one month, in two and a half days! That there is danger in letting things go too easily in dealing with the native races, I am convinced, and seeing the ex-savages hustle about Vatorata in more lively fashion than at some other places, I am inclined to expect to see the pushing along, more vigorously, of the Papuans, tried.

Click below for other posts from Ocean and Isle:

Isle 1            Isle  2            Isle 3           Isle 4            Isle 5            Isle 6            Isle 7 

 

Notes
William Edgar Geil, Ocean and Isle (Melbourne: Wm. T. Pater & Company, 1902), 200-203.

Bibliography

Geil, William Edgar. Ocean and Isle. Melbourne: Wm. T. Pater & Company, 1902.

[f] Inclined RF