bailers, but the true significance of canoes in Pacific 

 cultures can best be measured by their use as ritual 

 symbols. Traveling the Pacific includes many examples 

 of ceremonial objects derived from canoes. Some are 

 paddles, carried in dance. Others are headdresses, or 

 dishes for food or oils. 



The notion of voyage, represented by a canoe, 

 could be a metaphor for major transitions that take 

 place in human life. In some cultures, ritual canoes 

 were made never to be sailed, but to be used only in 

 initiation ceremonies marking the passage from youth 

 to adulthood. One particularly beautiful example 

 from the Museum's collections is a "spirit canoe" from 

 New Britain. Canoes could also be used as coffins or 

 grave markers, vessels for the voyage from this life to 

 the next. 



The First Settlers 



Most of the Pacific islanders' voyages of discovery 

 occurred before European ships ventured beyond the 

 sight of land. New Guinea's first settlers arrived about 



Breadfruit. Artocarpus communis, is a ma|or staple food of tfie 

 South Pacific. Introduced in prefiistoric times from Malaysia, ttie 

 breadfruit tree provides fiber for clotti. wood for furniture and 

 canoes, and juices for caulking and glue, as well as foodstuff. A 

 single tree, wfiicfi may grow to 60 feet, can bear as many as 800 

 grapefruit-size fruits in one season. John Awerson 



40,000 years ago, crossing at least 40 miles of ocean 

 on some kind of watercraft. By AD 800, all the major 

 Pacific islands were inhabited. 



Since little physical evidence has survived, the 

 details of Pacific prehistory aren't well known. Schol- 

 ars agree that the islands were settled from southeast 

 Asia — not from South America, a theory popularized 

 by Thor Heyerdahl who sailed that way on his raft 

 Kon Tiki. However, the exact number of migrations, 

 and the paths of each, are still open to debate. 



For two hundred years, western observers have 

 divided islanders into groups called Melanesians, Mi- 

 cronesians, and Polynesians, basing the distinctions 

 largely on physical appearance. But there's disagree- 

 ment over how closely the darker-skinned Melane- 

 sians and the lighter-skinned Polynesians are related. 

 Traveling the Pacific provides visitors with maps and 

 labels describing the main theories of island settle- 

 ment currently being debated. 



What was it like to be an early Pacific voyager, 

 to travel without maps or compass? To help give you 

 some idea of the accomplishments of these great 

 sailors, our staff has developed a computer game. 

 You'll pretend to be the navigator of a canoe setting 

 out from Samoa. You'll choose provisions, crew, direc- 

 tion to sail, and time of year. With skill and luck 

 you'll reach another island. Without them, you might 

 drift off course, perish in a storm, or simply run out of 

 drinking water. 



A New Guinea Village 



After so much time at sea, visitors will perhaps be glad 

 to set foot ashore. The next stop in Traveling the Pacific 

 is a village on the Huon Gulf, on the northeast coast 

 of the large island of New Guinea. Here, the sea 

 supplies a bountiful harvest offish, but resources of 

 the land — garden crops and domesticated animals — 

 play a larger role in sustaining human life. The 

 environment here, and the traditional cultures that 

 inhabited it, were entirely different from those on • 

 small islands like the ones we've seen so far. 



Now, through exhibitry's magic, you'll travel 

 back in time to 1910, when A.B. Lewis, a Field 

 Museum curator, visited New Guinea and gathered 

 thousands of objects to form the core of our unparal- 

 leled Pacific collection. We've selected several hun- 

 dred of them to illustrate the roles that men and 

 women played in Huon Gulf culture. Objects and 

 photographs illustrate the cultural setting of 1910; 

 labels point out continuities and contrasts with life 



today. ^ 



Continued on p. 19 



