Dr. Hogbin's Reply

Marriages In The

Solomons

Letter to the Editor I SHALL be grateful if you will grant -*■ me spacci to reply to the letter by Mr. Norman Deck, published in your August issue, criticising certain state ments alleged to have been made by me at a lecture delivered to the Anthropolo gical Society of N.S.W.

He accuses me of jumping to the con clusion that the customs throughout the island of Malaita are everywhere the same. I can assure him I have done no such thing. My own firsthand knowledge of the island is confined to the To’amba ita-speaking people of the northern end, and at the lecture referred to, as well as in the various papers I have communi cated to scientific journals, I have been careful to make explicit statement of fact.

Then he implies that I did not seek information regarding the policy of the South Sea Evangelical Mission from its members while I was staying in Malaita.

Mr. Deck called on me, I think, twice, when his vessel, the Evangel , was visiting Malu’u, where I lived, and we discussed mission policy in certain par ticulars at length. Further, I had many conversations with the native catechist, Shem.

The position with regard to “bride price” in North Malaita I do not propose to discuss here. I have already given a brief summary of my views in the jour

nal Oceania (1934). These have been criticised at length in the same place by Mr. Deck (1935), and I have myself re plied to him there. I have also gone into the matter in detail in a book which I am now completing. I hope to have this published in a few months, under the title Experiments in Civilisation.

My remarks about “illegal” marriages performed by native clergy according to Christian rites referred, not to Malaita, but to Ysabel, and the organisation con cerned is the Melanesian Mission, not th£ South Sea Evangelical body. I have not studied the Ysabel natives, myself; but, during my last visit to the Solomons in 1933, I was informed by the then District Officer, Mr. Fowler, and also by the Judi cial Commissioner, Mr. Hubbard, that in the Protectorate marriages are legal only if performed “according to native cus tom” or by the Resident Commissioner or a European minister of religion regi stered by the Administration.

In Ysabel, so they said, the Melanesian Mission has abolished marriage by native custom (which included payment of “bride-price”) and substituted instead a ceremony performed by a native minister of religion, who is, of course, not regi stered. The result is that at the present time no one on the island is legally mar ried, though every couple has the bles sings of the Church. I may say that when I visited Fiji last year I inquired at the High Commissioner’s office whether this is, in fact, the position. It is!

I am, etc.,

H. Ian Hogbin.

University of Sydney, September 6, 1937.