Book
The inhabitants of the Truk Islands: religion, life and a short grammar of a Micronesian people
Aschendorff • Munster I W. • Published In 1927 • Pages:
By: Bollig, Laurentius.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This monograph presents a detailed account of Chuukese ethnography collected and compiled by the author, a Capuchin missionary, from his own observations and supplemented by data from the older islanders concerning former conditions prior to European-Japanese contacts. The work is divided into three parts, the first of which deals with various aspects of Chuukese religion, and the second, entitled 'Land and People,' with other aspects of ethnography, as for example, child rearing, marriage customs, warfare, tribal organization, property, the sailing canoe, various forms of manufacture, fishing, food preparation, weaving, dancing, the men's house, illness, omens, ordering of time, language, physical descriptions of the population, geography, culture history and stories and tales. The organization of the monograph is rather unusual, reflecting perhaps the author's primary field of interest, with the first 91 pages being devoted to an intensive study of native religion -- cosmology, mythology, spirits and gods, relations of spirits to man, and the various functionaries in the society whose roles are religiously oriented -- while the ethnographic data which follow in part II, following p. 91, are more or less haphazardly put together so that, for example, geography and culture history which generally precede the bulk of material in most monographs, in this case will be found near the end of the source. The actual data are nevertheless fairly comprehensive in the general coverage of material culture and certain aspects of social and political organization, but lack specific information in regard to the social and political structure of Chuukese society, as well as kinship. The analysis of religion is outstanding.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Glossary
- Literary texts
- Religious beliefs
- Religious practices
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Chuuk
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 1999
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Oceania
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Micronesia
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Missionary
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 1968
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- ca. 1912 - ca. 1920
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1912-1920
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Chuuk State, Federated States of Micronesia
- NotesAdditional notes
- P. Laurentius Bollig
- Translation of: Die Bewohner der Truk-Inseln. Religion, Leben und kurze Grammatok eines Mikronesiervolkes
- The original German text is not included
- The role of SOURONG, a class of individuals who possessed various arts and skills obtained from the spirits, has been indexed for Friendship (571), while the concept of the arts and skills themselves, the RONG, has been indexed for Incorporeal Property (424) and Sacred Objects and Places (778).
- Translated from the German in 1942 for the Yale Cross-Cultural Survey in connection with the Navy Pacific Islands Handbook Project. Pp. 257-287 of the original, the short grammar, and the index were not translated
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 30016536
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Trukese (Micronesian people)