A thirty-year stay on various South Sea islands has made me familiar with the land and people. From 1875 to 1882, I became acquainted with Samoa through the Polynesians living around me, and after I had settled on the Gazelle Peninsula in the latter year and been surrounded on all sides by Melanesians, I endeavoured to study this interesting people also, during the course of numerous longer journeys and short excursions.
I was able to complete my observations not only through repeated visits to individual places, but also from questioning the natives working on the plantations in all parts of the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. A wealth of material was available, which enabled me to control and expand my observations. Thus, over the years my records have accumulated, from which individual sections have occasionally been revised and published.
From many quarters I have been called upon to begin the revision of my entire observations and experiences. The late Geheimrat Bastian, with whom I was accustomed to having frequent, long discussions on the usages and customs of the Melanesians, during a visit to Germany in 1894, persuaded me at that time to undertake the work. While this has not seen the light of day until now, it so happened that the more I progressed with the revision, the more aware I became of how fragmentary and incomplete my records largely were. Gaps that could not be filled in were discovered everywhere; throughout, doubts persisted whether this or that record was entirely accurate. Thus for a time the work became loathsome to me, and the manuscript lay for months in a drawer, to appear once more, largely due to the exhortations of my friends in Europe. However, nobody knows better than the author how much is still to be retrieved before we are totally familiar with the natives, their customs and traditions, and their spiritual life.
Nevertheless, I hope that the critics will not judge me too harshly. I would all too happily have given a rounded whole instead of a defective sketch, but despite everything, what I offer to the reader will contain many a new thing and will lay aside old errors. Many customs and traditions are rapidly vanishing through the influence of the Europeans, whether they be missionaries, assistant judges or other colonists. Tools and weapons find their way into national museums, and modern European items take their place. Already natives are coming to me with their sons, to show their descendants the old objects preserved in my collection. When a further twenty-five years pass, in the ethnological museums of Europe one will be able to show the astonished natives of New Britain or New Ireland objects that their forefathers used in war and peace, which will appear just as strange to their descendants as the stone axes and spear tips of their ancestors do to present Europeans. The numerous gaps will only be filled in after we have made closer contact with the individual tribes with which we have only cursorily become acquainted until now; especially after becoming competent in their language. There are still, as much on New Britain as on New Ireland and Bougainville, tribes of whose language we do not know a single word, with whom we have never come into contact. It remains for later researchers to fill in all these gaps.
I do not need to say much about the figures accompanying the text. They are reproduced from individual photographs and will contribute much to the illustration of the contents. Those who desire further pictorial material will find this in the two-volume Papua Album that I have published in conjunction with my friend Geheimrat A.B. Meyer of Dresden.
In conclusion, I must express my gratitude to those who made their observations available to me, thereby placing me in a position to complete the description of the natives, their customs and traditions. First in line are the missionaries of the Mission of the Sacred Heart, who so very willingly gave me information and records for perusal. Also I must thank the commanders of visiting German warships for the courtesy of offering me, from time to time, the opportunity during their cruises to visit such parts of the archipelago as otherwise lie beyond the usual trade routes. I must likewise xxxivthank the firms E.E. Forsayth and Hernsheim & Co. for the many opportunities they gave me to get to know the land and people of the archipelago on the voyages of their ships to the various islands.
Bismarck Archipelago, 1906
R. Parkinson