In the early 20th century, most westerners still thought of the South Pacific as an innocent place - one untouched by industrialization, international politics, capitalization, or foreign culture. During the 18 and 19th centuries, however, European nations had been busily claiming various islands for themselves, and had established colonies. New, foreign sources of authority overlay the native Melanesian's own civil structures. Plantations sprang up which drew young men from villages near and far. Hunters-gatherers quickly became laborers.
Ethnographic Shifts in 1920s South Pacific
Mytinger and Warner worried that globalization was encroaching upon the people of the South Pacific islands. The face of the population was changing.
Aside from European colonists from France, the UK, Germany, the US and Australia, an international mix of settlers from all over the world called the islands their home.
Sizeable communities of Chinese, Japanese, and Indians established themselves in Melanesia as workers, fishermen and shopkeepers. Malaysians, Filipinos, Koreans, and Puerto Ricans set up housekeeping in the islands as well. Even a few African Americans, Arabs, and Native Americans were recorded as having made their way to the islands through trade, labor migrations, and exile.
Political and Religious Shifts in Melanesia
Missionaries from competing Christian denominations arrived to evangelize the natives and claim the souls of these "new" lands for their denominations. The Missionaries also founded native schools, built hospitals, and tried to provide a counter-weight to the overwhelming power of the planters and their colonial office allies. The effect of which was, however, that traditional religions, mythological systems and practices were undermined.
To make things worse, in the armistice treaty 1918 that marked the end of World War I, Germany was forced to forfeit its South Pacific colonies to the victors - England, France, Australia, and the US.
Thousands of German settlers were disenfranchised -- sent packing back to Europe, or left to live as exiles in the islands that had been their homes -- often without resources of any kind. Once again power, law, alliances and language shifted under the feet of the Melanesians.
Anthropologists' and Ethnographers' Concerns
Still to come, though unseen by the struggling people of the islands, was the encroaching Japanese Empire, and World War II. Ethnographers and anthropologists around the world feared that soon much of the native Melanesian culture would be lost.
Like the people of Europe, the Americas and other parts of the world, distinctive ethnic groups and tribal variations would soon be blurred beyond recognition. Travel and intermarriage - between island tribes themselves as well as between natives and outsiders - would change the culture and ethnicity of the islands irreparably.
In 1926 two women tried to turn back time, to capture and record the native Melanesians and their culture in their true, historic state - as they had been since the islands were first settled -- before the outside world stepped in and changed it forever.
The many threats to the Pacific Island culture may lead us give up hope that, even in 1926, the true life of the islands could be captured. Fortunately for us, Mytinger and Warner took the back roads, lived the life of the people they visited, and were able, even in that changing environment, to find what they sought: Historic Melanesia.
Sources:
Keesing, Felix M., The South Seas in the Modern World, John Day and Company, 1945.
Mytinger, Caroline, Headhunting in the Solomon Islands and around the Coral Sea, The MacMillan Company, 1942.
