Monday, November 4, 2024

BRITISH NEW GUINEA EXPEDITION 1904

 A collection of  51 photographs taken on the Daniels Ethnographical Expedition , one of the most important scientific  expeditions  before  WWl,  is included  in  the latest acquisitions list of  Douglas Stewart Fine Books, Melbourne, for  $7500.

The expedition was led and financed by Major William  Cooke Daniels (1870-1918), a wealthy American retailer  who met the  British anthropologist  Charles Gabriel Seligmann (1873-1940) by chance  on  a fishing trip in England .

Seligmann had taken part in the 1898 Cambridge Anthropological Expedition  to  the Torres Straits  and had  visited  what  was  then  British  New  Guinea . 

The  photographs , which  include  inscriptions in pencil , possibly by Seligmann, were   taken  by photographer  Arthur  Henry  Dunning (1884-l959), are  a  record  of  the  fast  vanishing  traditional culture. 

Daniels and his yacht, the Kori, arrived in Port Moresby on 23 May. Over the next five months, the team visited Hula and the Mekeo and Rigo districts in what is now Central Province, and islands in Milne Bay including Samarai, Tubetube, Muyua, Gawa, Kwaiawata, Iwa, and the Trobriand Islands. They also visited Dogura in Bartle Bay, and Wagawaga, a village on the coast of Milne Bay.

In Port Moresby, Dunning, assisted by the British Resident  Magistrate Francis Rockman  Barton, recorded  three  wax  cyclinders of  lagatoi songs.   

Lagatoi are the double-hulled sailing canoes used in the hiri, the annual trading expedition that Motu / Koita people took to the Papuan Gulf to trade their clay pots for sago; the hiri is still celebrated today and remains an important  symbol  for  the  Motu / Koita people.

(Photos, Expedition,Guinea).