499 



-other tribes on the southern coast, even before the white man's 

 advent. The natives of the district sometimes call themselves 

 by the generic name Mcigi, which term I have occasionally used 

 when I wished to imply that a statement referred to the whole 

 district. 



The Natives of Mailu Island and the Mailu-speaking 

 Inhabitants of the Mainland. — The natives of Mailu Island 

 differ in several points from their fellow-tribesmen, though in 

 broad outline their culture and their social institutions seem 

 to be identical. The bulk of my work was done in a Mailu 

 village on Toulon (or Mailu) Island. Since I made only a 

 few short visits to three points on the mainland, I was unable 

 to do more than to ascertain broadly whether certain state- 

 ments were true of the whole district, or applicable exclusively 

 to Mailu Island. On the other hand, many of my Mailu 

 informants had spent much time on the mainland, and, know- 

 ing the differences and similarities, were able to enlighten me 

 in this respect on many points, and I have always been as 

 careful as I could to state the geographical range of my state- 

 ments. Generally speaking, where there is no special reserva- 

 tion, a statement, though obtained in Mailu village, has been 

 considered by me to hold good for the whole district. 



Ethnic Position of the Mailu; their Relation to the Motu- 

 speahing Tribes: Use of Mofuan Language. — The Mailu are 

 the most eastern of the Western Papuo-Melanesians; in fact, 

 their immediate neighbours on the east belong to the southern 

 Massim stock (comp. next chapter). The social constitution 

 of the Mailu and the essential features of their culture are of 

 the same type as those cf the Koita, described by Seligman in 

 the first section of his treatise as representative of the Western 

 Papuo-Melanesians. 



This masterly outline of a Western Papuo-Melanesian 

 culture and sociology I always kept before me as a model. (5) 



(5) In fact, being obliged to wait in Port Moresby for over 

 three weeks for a boat to Mailu, I had the good fortune to work 

 with Prof. Seligman's own informant Ahma Ova, a man of great 

 natural intelligence, who, moreover, had been trained by Prof. 

 Seligman and C'apt. Barton as an accomplished native ethnologist. 

 Since Seligman and Barton have left the territory Ahiiia has been 

 conducting investigations on his own account for the last ten 

 years. I have been able to obtain a certain amount of informa- 

 tion through my conversations with Ahuia and during two 

 native hunting expeditions at which I was present. Thus I had, 

 on the one hand my own raw materials, and on the other similar 

 materials skilfully shaped into a final form by Dr. Seligman. By 

 comparing the tAvo sets of information I was able to learn in the 

 way of method a great deal more in those few Aveeks than I could 

 have done in many months had I been obliged to depend entirely 

 upon my own efforts unaided by Dr. Seligman's previous 

 "Experience. 



