Missionary Lives PACIFIC ISLANDS MONOGRAPH SERIES Robert C. Kiste General editor Linley Chapman Manuscript editor EDITORIAL BOARD David Hanlon ReneeHeyum Alan Howard Brij V. Lal Norman Meller Donald Topping Deborah Waite Karen A. Watson-Gegeo The Pacific Islands Monograph Series is a joint effort of the University of Hawaii Press and the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawaii. The series includes works in the humanities and social sciences that focus on the insular Pacific. Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 6 Missionary Lives Papua, 1874-1914 DIANE LANGMORE Center for Pacific Islands Studies School of Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific Studies University of Hawaii UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS : Honolulu Contents Figures viii Tables ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xxiii Prologue 1 1 "Few Are Powerful or Highly Born" 8 2 "Whom God Has Called" 32 3 "The Object Lesson of a Civilized Christian Home" 65 4 "Books and Quinine" 89 5 "Though Every Prospect Pleases" 108 6 "Preaching, Teaching and Knocking Around" 134 7 "The Gracious Influence of Wise and Thoughtful Womanhood" 163 8 "Brothers in the Faith" 185 9 "The Sinister Trio" 211 10 "A Peculiar People" 241 Abbreviations 267 Appendixes 1 Chronology of Missionary Activity in Papua, 1874-1914 271 2 LMS and Methodist Wives in the Papuan Mission Field, 1874-1914 275 3 Biographical Register 283 Notes 319 Bibliography 361 Index 397 vii Figures The Pacific Islands endpapers 1 "The pious pirate hoists his flag" xvii 2 Papua New Guinea in the southwest Pacific region 2 3 LMS district and main stations 4 4 Sacred Heart Mission districts and main stations 5 5 Methodist Mission district circuits and head stations 6 6 Anglican Mission main stations 7 7 Cheshunt College students 50 8 The first mission house at Port Moresby, built 1874 66 9 The mission settlement, Port Moresby 66 10 Methodist mission house, Dobu 67 11 Polly Dauncey at home at Delena 71 12 First mission house at Dirimu, and missionary's wife 72 13 The LMS steam launch, Miro 103 14 Ben Butcher's launch, Moana 106 15 Breakfast on the beach for the Daunceys 142 16 Pioneer missionary Henry Schlencker and his wife, Mary 143 17 The Reverend Henry Schlencker (LMS) and mission students 155 18 Sacred Heart priests, brothers, and students 157 19 Mission students with Mrs. Butcher 165 20 Methodist missionary sisters with William Bromilow 169 21 Mr. and Mrs. Bromilow with Papuan converts 195 22 Mission spheres of influence in Papua, 1914 218 23 "The cocoa-nut religion" 238 24 "Faithful beyond death" 256 25 Long-serving Anglican missionary Alice Cottingham 259 viii Tables 1 Country of origin of missionaries 9 2 Socioeconomic origins of missionaries 13 3 Growth of SHM, 1895-1914 152 4 European missionaries, male and female 163 5 Length of service of women missionaries 178 6 Census of European work force, 1908 235 7 Length of service of missionaries 251 8 Reasons for termination of missionary careers 254 9 Deaths in the missions 255 ix Preface BETWEEN 1874 AND 1914, 327 European missionaries lived and worked in Papua. They belonged to four missions: the London Missionary Society (LMS), the Sacred Heart Mission (SHM), the Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (AWMMS), and the Anglican Mission. For the first decade of that period the LMS, first into the field, worked in a land free of control by any foreign government. During that time they were the main agents of European culture, as well as Christianity, in the country. After Britain declared a protectorate in 1884, the mis- sionaries shared the former role, and to some extent the latter, with a small force of government officers. But throughout the period to the First World War, the number of European missionaries in the colony was comparable to that of government officers. 1 In 1889 the head of the Sacred Heart Mission boasted that at the headquarters of his mission alone-Yule Island-there were more Europeans than at the adminis- trative center of Port Moresby. 2 Moreover, by their pattern of settlement-at mission stations scat- tered along the coast, among the islands, and to a lesser extent inland, rather than at centralized district stations-and by the priority they gave to learning the languages of the people among whom they settled, the missionaries were generally in a stronger position to exert sustained influence on the Papuans than were the government officers. 3 Conflict between the two groups sprang frequently from the jealousy of the offi- cials at the missionaries' influence. The only other Europeans to have much influence on Papuan life and culture during this period were the few traders and miners who had chosen to live with Papuan women. But their influence, though un- doubtedly more intimate, was also more circumscribed and less disrup- tive, since, unlike the missionaries, miners and traders did not come with the avowed intent of changing the lives of the Papuans. xi xii Preface David Knowles has observed that history, when it touches men, "touches them at a moment of significance, whether they are great in themselves, or ... stand in great places, or like the men of 1914 are 4 matched with great issues." Whether or not the men and women who came to Papua as missionaries were great in themselves, it is clear that history touched them at a moment of significance, when traditional Papuan societies were experiencing for the first time, a sustained and powerful onslaught from an alien culture and an alien religion. Because of their central role in this process, if for no other reason, the mission- aries must be seen as crucial actors in the colonial history of Papua. What sort of influence the missionaries exerted in Papua, as else- where, depended on what kinds of people they were. As well as bring- ing a new religion, they brought a vast amount of cultural and intellec- tual baggage that was determined by their backgrounds, both secular and religious, their personalities, and the era in which they came. In the modern historiography of the Pacific, missionaries have been accorded a prominent place, as a sampling of recent publications shows. Even general histories have recognized their significance as one of the earliest and most influential agents of change throughout the 5 Pacific. Douglas Oliver's classic general study charted the arrival of the pioneer missionaries and their dispersal through the Pacific and briefly contrasted some aspects of their style of work and their reception. A 6 more recent general history by K. R. Howe extended Oliver's work. Benefiting from his own insights and those of his colleagues who, over the last three decades, have rejected the imperial view of Pacific history in favor of an island-based interpretation, Howe gave greater play to the active role of the Islanders in responding to the missionaries and their message. He presented a persuasive comparative analysis .of the relative success of missionaries in different parts of the Pacific, demon- strating the significance of local factors such as the presence or absence of an indigenous elite, chiefly patronage, institutionalized religion, a centralized society, and a general openness to strangers in explaining the influence of the missionaries in Hawaii, Tahiti, Fiji, Tonga, and the Loyalty Islands, as compared with Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, or even Samoa, where Christianity was readily accepted but rapidly assimilated into traditional forms. Recent regional studies have also scrutinized the part played by mis- sionaries in the postcontact history of particular islands or archipela- 7 goes. Hezel's study of the Caroline and Marshall islands traced mission- ary activity in that area from the first ill-fated attempts of the Jesuits to reach Palau at the beginning of the eighteenth century through the set- tlement of workers of the American Board of Commissioners for For- eign Missions (ABCFM) on Pohnpei and Kosrae and their eventual Preface xiii expansion, by 1880, through eastern Micronesia. He documented their struggles against "heathen customs" such as kava drinking, hostile chiefs, established religion, and rival European interests. Macdonald, in his study of Kiribati and Tuvalu, traced "the impact of foreigners and 8 foreign influences," including Protestant and Catholic missionaries, and explored the reasons for the failure of the ABCFM workers in the northern Gilberts in contrast to the rapid success of the LMS, and later of the Sacred Heart missionaries, in the southern Gilberts and the Ellice Islands. Dening described the advance and retreat of the envoys of various mission societies, both Protestant and Catholic, who made their way 9 onto the islands and beaches of the Marquesas. He analyzed the diffi- culty they faced in transferring a religion without a sustaining cultural system and showed the confrontation of ideas as the intruders crossed the cultural boundary of the beach into the new island world. Gilson, in 10 his study of the Cook Islands, considered the factors making for the remarkably early success of the LMS missionaries in the southern islands compared with other parts of the Pacific. The most thorough scholarly appraisals of mission activity in the Pacific are probably to be found in recent studies of particular missions. Unlike the early triumphalist accounts of missionary successes written by apologists to encourage supporters, these, in varying degrees, are sympathetic but dispassionate accounts of the foundations of various missions, their growth and development, and, generally, indigenous responses to them. Gunson provided a definitive study of the evangeli- cal missionaries, the "messengers of grace" who arrived in the South 11 Seas between 1797 and 1860. He placed them firmly in their socioeco- nomic and religious context, assessed their motivations, analyzed their preconceptions and assumptions, and then followed them into the field, observing their reactions to the peoples among whom they labored as well as their perceptions of their successes and failures. A more compre- hensive but less analytical study of missionary activity in Oceania is that 12 of John Garrett. In a lucid chronological narrative he traced the courses of the various bodies, Protestant and Catholic, now represented by the Pacific Conference of Churches, from their origins to their emer- gence as a series of distinct churches. 13 Latukefu provided a case study of a theme that recurs in the works of Gunson and Garrett and other studies of missionary interaction with chiefly societies-the role of missionaries in local political activity. He traced and critically evaluated the part played by the Wesleyan mission- aries in the development and adoption of the constitutional monarchy in Tonga. Wiltgen's study of the founding of the Roman Catholic church in xiv Preface 14 Oceania is a detailed scholarly narrative that identified the main actors in the drama of missionary expansion as it unfolded in the Pacific. His presentation of the metropolitan church that sent the mis- sionaries is solid and sure, but his evocation of the island world that received them is more shadowy. Laracy, in his study of one particular group of Roman Catholic missionaries, the Marists in Melanesia, focused on "the relationship between forces of indigenous and exotic 15 origin." While Wiltgen's study presented this interaction mostly from an exotic viewpoint, Laracy described the encounter more from the side of the missionized Solomon Islanders, with a thorough analysis of pre- contact society and an assessment of the impact of the intruders on the Melanesians and their culture. Two recent studies have described the endeavors of the Anglicans in 16 Melanesia: Hilliard presented the gentlemen of the New Zealand- based Melanesian Mission, at work in northern Vanuatu, the Santa 17 Cruz group, and the Solomon Islands; Wetherell looked at Australian- based missionaries, generally of humbler rank, in Papua New Guinea. Both followed the course of these Anglican missions from their precari- ous foundations to their metamorphoses by the 1940s into indigenous churches, albeit still largely controlled by expatriates. Each paid some attention to the personnel of their respective missions, their social ori- gins, their religious formation, and their responses to the cultures that confronted them. All these studies, and numerous other books and articles, have con- tributed richly to our understanding of mission activity in the Pacific. But most of them chose not to make the missionaries, either as individu- als or as a social group, the primary focus of their analyses. The general histories have been concerned mainly with the shifting patterns in inter- actions in the Pacific, with charting the intrusion of various foreigners, and with the adaptations made by both sides after the impact of con- tact. Painting on such a broad canvas they could not delineate in any detail the protagonists of the contact situation. Regional studies too, generally committed to a decolonized view of Pacific history, have tended to focus on indigenous responses, active as well as passive, to the intrusion of missionaries and other foreigners. Modern studies of mis- sionary organizations in the Pacific have, in varying degrees, examined the personnel of the mission or missions under consideration, but their interest has generally been subordinate to their dominant theme-the establishment and growth of these institutions. The missionaries them- selves-their objectives and aspirations, their ideals, convictions, and opinions, their actions and responses-are rarely the central concern of such studies. Other types of historical work can also shed light on the missionaries.