Plea For Primitive Man
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
Letter to the Editor.
A NOBLE thought prompted Mr. J. N.
Hall, of Tahiti, to express his opinion in the P.I.M. of April, that Central New Guinea should be kept as a sanctuary for primitive man. Considering the large num ber of Pacific Islands people who are giv ing up the ghost, and the great number of depopulated islands in the Pacific, it would be a glorious thing and a service to pos terity to save untarnished by contact with our “splendid precepts but awful ex amples," a race of primitive people, still in the state of Nature.
Preserves are found for many of the fast-disappearing fauna of the earth, so why not a sanctuary for that most in teresting creature, man. If our conven tional missionaries are to Christianise these newly-discovered races, what must happen? The same as with other native races of the Islands. For, as no virtue can be seen by missionaries in their strange beliefs and customs, they will be made to relinquish the whole of their own moral ideas, their dances, and their interesting customs.
Even their thoughts and emotions will be suppressed. Their interpretation of life has been on a different plane to ours for ages past—why not leave it so. They will be compelled to absorb our “model” social and ethical standards. In such cir cumstances, the native pines away. He loses heart and abandons all interest in life, and soon disappears.
I am, etc,,
Charles Reed.
Apia. Samoa, July, 1934.