To Archives

To Contents

Gordon Macgregor's Rotuma Notes
archived at Bishop Museum , Honolulu, Hawaii

Gordon Macgregor, an anthropologist on the staff of Bishop Museum, went to Rotuma in 1932. He spent six months on the island, from January 11 to July 9, making a study of the pre-European history and customs of the island. Although he did not publish anything about Rotuma, he collected a rich body of notes that he organized with the intent of writing an ethnographic monograph (see his outline for the intended ethnography ). Following his retirement, Macgregor deposited his notes at Bishop Museum. A significant portion of them are reproduced here for Rotumans interested in their history and for research scholars. The value of Macgregor's notes are enhanced by his identification of consultants --the people who gave him the information. We have generally followed his categories, although for the sake of clarity have refiled some notes that clearly seemed to fit better elsewhere. The notes were typed onto computer by Hans Schmidt, who added words in brackets for the sake of clarification, and, in places, corrected Macgregor's sometimes erratic transcription of Rotuman.We have gone further in editing the notes by standardizing the Rotuman orthography (when Macgregor was on Rotuma three separate orthographies were in use). Thus we use the Polynesian "g" to stand for "ng;" and "j" to stand for "ch," in accordance with contemporary usage. We have also had to make interpretations where Macgregor's notes were cryptic, or where he made what must have been typographical errors. We have omitted his many sketches since they were generally too crude to scan effectively. Anyone interested in the fine points of Macgregor's field work should therefore consult his original notes archived at Bishop Museum. Our aim is simply to make the main body of this valuable corpus available in a digestible form. To further this goal we have added a column for comments that may prove helpful interpreting the material.

In addition to his notes, Macgregor's tentative conclusions regarding the ethnological history of Rotuman society, culture and language have been included.

Any electronic replication or publication of significant portions of this material must receive clearance from Bishop Museum.

To Archives

To Contents