UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII LIBRARY ACQUISITIONS DEPARTMENT 2550 The Mall Honolulu, HI 96822 The University of Hawaii Library would like to add to its collection for research purposes the title listed below. We would be very grateful if you would permit us to have it photocopied. To meet copyright requirements, please complete and sign one copy of this form and return it to my attention in the enclosed self-addressed and stamped envelope. Your denial of permission will, of course, be honored; however, if no reply is received within 60 days, we will assume your consent. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Title to be photocopied: Karl Semper's Die Palau-Inseln im Stillen Ocean:[English translation] I hereby grant permission to the University of Hawaii Library to photocopy the above title. Permission granted Restrictions: None Indicated Signature: Copyright/Form Karl Semper's Die Palau-Inseln im Stillen Ocean Translated by M. L. Berg Many things that are grand and picturesque existed here once, but there are no traces of them left today; everything has vanished. — Gauguin Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than if we should look through each other's eyes for an instant? ... What I have read suggests nothing so ineffably grand and informing as this would be. -- Thoreau . -V- Contents List of illustrations and maps vii Preface ix Translation of Die Palau-Inseln 1 Footnotes 339 Index of Proper Names 366 Index of Palauan Words 380 -vn - List of Illustrations and Maps Morata-Coello's map of Palau 119 Village map of Aibukit (Ngebuked) 146 Island map of Peleliu 243 Village map of Nasias (Ngesias) 244 Village map of Ardellolec 245 A short biography of Woodin 311 Arakalulk (Rechelulk) in 1906 313 -V i i i - ·■ .·. ■ 4. 3 : ■■ .· 1 . : . : - . · , • ^ ■ ' •M ti" re-snr· . ;· t- м вг^-зфвй^Ь’ Топ<г 51й.у th er e w a s ? ìe*ii«g Preface Karl Semper's Die Palau-Inseln im Stillen Ocean (Leipzig 1873) ranks as the finest detailed first-person account of Belauan (or Palauan) culture. Semper was in Belau (or Palau) a decade before the famed ethnographer Johann S. Kubary, who paid his first visit there in 1871, and nearly a half a century before Augustin Krämer carried out his thorough ten-month investigation from June 1909 to April 1910 as part of the German South Sea Expedition of 1908-1910. Unlike members of the Russian and French scientific exploring parties that sailed through Micronesia in the first half of the nineteenth century, Semper remained on one island group and gained his knowledge through personal observation and reflection, rather than through informants. Unlike the nineteenth century trading captains active in the western Carolines, such as Andrew Cheyne, who plays an important role in this narrative, Semper had the leisure, the concern and the objectivity to write a concise description of Belauan nature and culture as he witnessed them. It was not until Krämer's results were published (Palau, 5 volumes, 1917-29) that a fuller account of Belauan culture became available. Die Palau-Inseln is a most readable account of Semper's, partly involuntary, stay in Belau from March iq62 through late January 1863. The main reason for his unexpectedly long stay there was a leaking ship, the Lady Leigh, whose captain, Edward Woodin, could not afford a better one. The book is invaluable as a glimpse of trading carried -X- on by Woodin and Cheyne, as well as the interstate feuding that characterizes so much of Belauan history. It contains the only known descriptions of some customs, feasts and ceremonies, and it has the first known description of others, such as the celebration for the birth of the first child and its mother, and the activities of priests for indigenous cults. The specific images of plants and animals used in his long, engrossing descriptions of nature and the concise narration of events that gets in what is most essential reveal what craftsmanship Semper put into distilling the information scattered throughout his many notebooks and diaries into a precise, novelistic autobiography that offers much to those interested in German Romanticism on the one hand and serious discussion of culture change and a humane appreciation of Belauan life on the other. Karl Semper was born in Altona on 6 July 1832. He enrolled at a school for naval cadets in Kiel in 1848, followed by the Polytechnic Institute in Hannover and then the University of Würzburg in 1854, where he studied zoology. He traveled to Manila in 1858. With the exception of his ten-month stay in Belau, he remained in the Philippines until 1855, visiting Bohol Island in 1863-64 knd Mindanao in 1864. I After returning to Europe, Semper became a lecturer in zoology at the University of Würzburg and was named Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in 1869. Two years later, he assumed direction of the newly established Zoological and Anatomical Institute in Würzburg. He traveled to the United States in 1877, where he lectured in Boston and went crosscountry as far as the west coast. Semper later directed the Zoological and Zootomical Institute of Würzburg beginning in 1889. He died in Würzburg on 30 May 1903 at the age of 61. As Director of the Zoological and Zootomical Institute, Semper published the journal Arbeiten aus dem Zoo!ogisch-zootomisehen Institute. Besides Die Palau-Inseln, his writings on Belau include "Die Bildung der Korallenriffe auf den Palaos im Stillen Ocean," Die natürlichen Existenzbedingungen der Thiere, Volume II (Leipzig 1880), 39-93; "Falsche Benennung eines Inselvolkes (Pelew Inseln)" and "Ueber die Palau-Sprache," Correspondenzblatt der deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Volume II (1871), 14-5, 63-6; and "Ueber das Aussterben der Palauinsulaner und dessen mutmasslichen Ursachen," Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, Volume IV (1887), 373. His most important books are Reisen im Archipel der Philippinen (Leipzig 1868 and Wiesbaden 1870-92); Die Philippinen und ihre Bewohner (Würzburg 1869); and Die Verwandt­ schaftsbeziehungen der gegliederten Thiere (Würzburg 1875). When Germany acquired the Carolines from Spain in 1899, Germans took a renewed interest in Semper's book and in Belau, the westernmost group in the Carolines. Die Palau-Inseln was reviewed in a popular colonial paper at the start of German rule in the Carolines and recommended for its insight into Belauan culture. The reviewer also mentioned that the book's author had been decidedly and undeservedly neglected up until that time (Dr. A. Kirchhoff, "Die Palau-Inseln im Stillen Ocean," Deutsche Kolonialzeitung, 14 September 1899, 341). An abridged edition of the book entitled Auf den Palau-Inseln: Ein Südsee-Idyll (Berlin 1924) was eventually published; its text is identical with pp. 22-223 of the 1873 Leipzig edition. The last chapter of Die Palau-Inseln provides a happy ending to Semper's adventures in Belau, but leaves us wondering whatever happened to Captain Woodin and Arakalulk (Rechelulk), an outstanding, high-ranking villager who had been Semper's guide and invaluable assistant in Aibukit (Ngebuked). As it happened, things turned out well for both men. Captain Woodin did manage, finally, to reach Hobart Town, Tasmania, where his family awaited him (See p. 311). Arakalulk attained his goal of becoming Mad, the head chief of Aibukit. The man who had been Mad when Semper had stayed there died during an 1871 flu epidemic, which struck when Kubary was there; he was succeeded by Arakalulk the same year. After German officials were stationed in Belau beginning in 1905, Arakalulk emerged as their staunch ally because of his previous friendship with that earlier solitary German scientist. When District Officer Georg Fritz, who was acting chief administrator for the western Carolines and northern Marianas at that time, visited Belau for two weeks in November 1906 on other business, he visited Aibukit. Here, he spoke with and photographed Semper's old friend (See p. 313). Fritz describes their meeting in a report published the following year ("Eine Reise nach Palau, Sonsol und Tobi," Deutsches Kolonialblatt, 15 July 1907, 662-63): "Arakalulk is now an old man over eighty. But he extends his friendly feelings for Semper towards all Germans. It is comforting to see how dreamy his gaze becomes and how softly he repeats the name Semper whenever old memories are awakened." Arakalulk died in 1908. The complete 1873 Leipzig edition of Die Palau-Inseln has here been translated. Page numbers of the original text are found between diagonals and are placed to show where a particular page begins. The Leipzig edition did not have any indices,and footnotes, marked with single (*) or double (**) asterisks, were placed at the bottom of the pages. This translation has an index of proper names and an index of Palauan words added by the translator. Footnotes are not placed at the bottom of the pages. Instead, Semper's shorter footnotes are placed within square brackets ([]) in the text, as are modernizations of Palauan words, identifications of people and places and other miscellaneous information furnished by the translator. Semper's longer footnotes have been relegated to the back of the book. These footnotes are indicated by single asterisks in the text and are followed by an S in the footnote section. Longer footnotes added by the translator are marked with double asterisks in the text and followed by a T in the footnote section. Square brackets have been used in the footnote section to set off the translator's own comments. For help in the course of this translation, I would like to thank Dr. D.A. Ballendorf, Director of the Micronesian Area Research Center, for encouraging me in my work, as well as Mrs.