Pygmies, Past And Present

Letter to the Editor rERE is no doubt that there once were pygmies in Western Samoa; but, unfortunately, these diminutive people of negrito type did not leave be hind them any bold, definite, enduring marks on stone, such as characterise other races. Their burial grounds were small and, because they were nomads, widely scattered. Their graves were marked only by heaps of small stones, usually by about 41 ft. x ft.

Some of the pygmies’ graves, which I examined in the Caroline Islands, con tained adzes and shells, but little else.

In Western Samoa, while seeking a source of water, inland in Upolu, and working down to the coast, digging where it seemed likely I might find water for plantation use, I had a hole put down about 32 ft. in a dry watercourse and there I came upon a native oven of burned earth. There we found seven stone adzes, very much smaller than the Samoan adzes of to-day, or the old adzes found in caves.

There are legends of pygmies in Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa and New Cale donia; and, as most people know, there still are pygmies in New Guinea, or some islands off New Guinea, in Madagascar and in the Andaman Islands.

I am, etc., Western Samoa.

H. C. Reed

Mr. William Groves, Director of Educa tion in New Guinea—Papua, arrived in Melbourne on furlough in June.