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. |
