Off The Beaten Track In

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Off The Beaten Track In The Western Pacific

Serious students of the social customs of Pacific Islands people will be interested in two recent American publications, although neither is likely to attract readers of lighter Islands fare.

IHE first— Kapingamarangi—Social and Religious Life of a Poly dan Atoll —is by Kenneth P. lory, of the Bernice P. Bishop aseum in Honolulu.

In spite of its long name, the total id area of the islets that make up i oval-shaped atoll of Kapinga irangi is 260 acres. These acres, manage to support a pulation of 500.

Hie atoll is an outlier of the roline Islands and is thus now t of the US Trust Territory of Pacific Islands. But with the t of the Carolines it previously i a Japanese period, a German iod, and a Spanish period.

Is inhabitants are interesting :ause they are the descendants of ynesian castaways who must have fted there centuries ago and en root in this no-man’s land ween Micronesia and Melanesia, is 1,500 miles west of Polynesia, per, lying just above the Equator 154 deg. 46 min. E. longitude and >ut 400 miles north of Rabaul. It hus one of a string of Polynesian* •ulated outliers that occur along windward sides of the Bismarck ihipelago and the Solomon Islands.

"here have been several Bishop seum expeditions to the atoll >o known as Greenwich) since the t in 1947 which was led by the Sir Peter Buck. The most in king fact to emerge from the ts is that although separated by ance and time from their home 1, the people have managed to in much of the ancient Polynesian r of life.

Tie second of the anthropological ks is Choiseul Island Social icture, by H. W. Scheffler a nber of the Department of hropology at Yale University. lr. Scheffler conducted his fidd le on Choiseul, the most north terly of the islands of the British

Solomon Islands Protectorate, in the 18 months between November, 1958, and April, 1961, but had previously spent a year at the Australian National University in Canberra.

The approximately 6,000 Choiseul ese are typical Melanesians, sur rounded by other large and small islands of typical Melanesians. They have been missionised since early this century, and were in contact with Europeans through traders and 3D nrpasinnal labour rprrnitpr for an occasional labour-recruiter tor half a century before that.

Today, however, in comparison with their Melanesian cousins of neighbouring New Guinea they are somewhat out of the main stream of advancement.

There are only two small Euro pean plantations on the island; the islanders’ main cash income comes from selling copra to Chinese traders —the Choiseulese being the largest producers of native copra in the

Bsip.

Politically, the islanders have had a Local Council since 1948; and more recently they took part in the election of a member to the new Legislative Council.

This work, however, is more con cerned with the Choiseulese as they were about the turn of the century than as they are today. (RAPINGAMARANGI; published by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu.

Sus9.So. Choiseul Island Social

STRUCTURE; published by University of California Press, SUS 7.)