Mystery Island Vanuatu History

Aneityum Island Physical Cultures and Mission History - Pacific Collections Review

It is the fourth in a research in the Pacific around Vanuatu that has been purchased by Scotish misionaries living on the Vanuatu Island from the 1850s to 1940s. After my stay in Port Vila I traveled to Aneityum, the most southern island of Vanuatu. It' s nearer to the Loyalty Isles of New Caledonia than to many of the countries northerly isles.

It has a relatively small size with a total of about 1000 inhabitants and a strong family. It is very shallow and has no roads. Most of the tourist industries there come from cruisers anchoring in the cove on the southwest coastline, with small vessels taking them to Inyeug or Mystery Island, a smaller island on the island's pre-Aneityum coastline.

Our 12-seater airplane arrived on Mystery Island before taking small craft to the capital Anelcauhaut. The town of Anelcauhaut is home to the first presbyterian chapel in Vanuatu, which was founded in 1852. It was this link with the history of Prebyterian ministers that I explained in earlier contributions that resulted in Vanuatu materials in Scotland's musearies.

The objects came through Reverend James Hay Lawrie, who lived on the island from 1879-96. There was Lawrie at the missionary office in Aname in the northern part of the island. I' d taken pictures with me of the artifacts in Scotland and some photocopies of historic pictures taken by Reverend Lawrie in the 1890s, most of which are in the Mitchell Lib. in Sydney.

On my trip I went with Australian National University explorers who ran an archeological field school on the island. For some years now, field work has been taking place on the island. In this year the old parish priest John Geddie examined the old parish temple and the missions building in Anelcauhaut. A native of Scotland, he grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada, and was in charge of building the first presbyterian school.

Archaeological digs also focused on the area where Geddy's printshop was situated, a grave site filled with nineteenth centurys native and western tombs, an area where ministers bury old saints or taboos, and a marshy area. After our arriving my first job was to see Nelly Nepea Tamalea, who is the farmhand on the island.

Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta have an outstanding system in which field workers from each of the island in the land work as field workers, conducting their own research with the fellowship and also supporting fellows. It was my first chance to exchange some of the photos I had taken with others. At the end, around 100 persons were able to participate.

Historic photographs show footage from all over the island, but also some famous persons, among them Numrang, who was an forefather of the village instructor who assisted me with the project. And then one time I took a small ferry to the northern part of the island near Port Patrick. Not only did I want to see the pictures with more pictures, I also wanted to see the Missionary Base in Aname, where Reverend John Inglis (from the Scotland border) and later Lawrie were stationed.

Next to the Missionshaus there was an ecclesiastical and pedagogical school. The Reverend Inglis came to Aneityum in 1852 as a representative of the Scots mission of Presbyteria and worked with Geddie. It was a customary custom for Vanuatu nineteenth c. ministers as part of a violation of our beliefs and their wish to exercise control over the people.

Even in the same place where the teacher education edifice would have been, is a holy rock that Inglis placed as a threshold after it had been given to him by some of the inhabitants of the island who had become Christianity's new religiousite. In the nineteenth centuary, I found that the island's photography was best known to the younger peoples of the island, while many of the artifacts are no longer produced or used, making them seem more intimate to the elderly.

It was therefore all the more important to me that the artifacts were seen by the fellowship and that they kept some of the materials in other parts of the museum. In 1897 Jack Ketati, who was the first ni-Vanuatu director in the culture center and lived on the island, was particularly enthusiastic when he saw three dancing societies that Reverend Lawrie gave to the NMS.

After the pictures of these 19 th centurys club Jack said to me that he could now hire a woodsman on the island to work on the historic drafts.