Loss Of Native Lore

Why Blame The Missionaries?

Prom Our Own Correspondent.

Papeete, May 5,

THE critics of the early Protestant missions in the islands of the Pacific constantly bring the accusation that the loss of native lore is due to missionary influence. This may be true, insofar as the interdiction of certain elements of native custom and tradition was made necessary to bring the native mind to an understanding of the funda mental doctrines of the Christian re ligion.

Our observation leads us to believe that the abandonment of the ancient traditions is due more to the impact of modern civilisation in the younger gen erations of Polynesians.

The acquirement of the great mass of poetic narration—full of metaphor and allusion, which must be carefully inter preted—was an undertaking of years.

The young people of the Islands, lured by the innovations and pastimes intro duced by the European, have not been willing to give the time necessary to study of what appears to them to be of no utilitarian value.

The steady abandonment of the study of the Latin and Greek classic literature in our colleges and universities and the absolute ignorance of the average European citizen of the primitive litera ture of his own ancestry, are similar developments.

The corroding secular civilisation of

the white man had been at work for nearly a century before the anthropolo gists came upon the scene. The early missionary—as the only buffer between the primitive native and the horde of exploiters, blackbirders, thugs and plunderers, who held high carnival in the Islands until orderly government was established—had heavy demands upon his time and strength. Yet it is the early missionaries—Nott, Williams, Ellis and John M. Orsmond—to whom

we are indebted for our knowledge of the customs, ritual, traditions and early history of the Society Islands.

The ethnologists and anthropologists were asleep while the harvest was wait ing to be garnered. They should cen sure themselves—not the missionaries.