Pre-Colonial Renga

It is unfortunate that the early Western settlers in Renga were so little interested in the aboriginal society and so greatly interested in exploiting the islands and the people for corporate profit. The ravages of the colonial period have left only a few clues concerning the almost unique way of life that much have prevailed there prior to the coming of white men. The few linguistic characteristics of the Renganese recorded by early settlers, combined with the corrupted remains of the aboriginal culture, serve to give us some reasonable ideas about what this way of life may have been.

The arrival of human society on the islands of Renga is a quite recent event; indications are that the first humans arrived about 950 BCE, though perhaps somewhat earlier. It is a near certainty, based on genetic analysis, that these people were immigrants from lands to the north, specifically Indonesia. Linguistic and cultural remnants suggest that they may have come from the island we now know of as New Guinea, linked with the speakers of Arapesh. There have been many speculations about how and why these intrepid travelers came such a distance (almost three thousand miles) to settle in such an isolated and comparatively unfriendly place. It is now generally accepted, if not widely known, that the Indonesians were among the earliest and most fearless of world travelers. In small boats they dared to sail far beyond the sight of land and settled the islands of the South Pacific and explored the west coast of South America long before Columbus made his more famous voyages. While Renga is far from the usual trade routes of the Pacific Islanders, there are indications that these first Renganese voluntary colonists. Domesticated crop plants on Renga were likely brought with them as seeds and roots.

While the relationship with contemporary Arapesh speaking peoples is speculative at best, studies of this culture offer the best possibility for gaining insight into early Renganese society. The strong sense of community, of sharing, and the negligible differences between the roles of men and women appear to have been very much like the Arapesh. It is clear from accounts of early European settlers that the society which greeted them on their arrival lacked a notion of private property and disguised trade as ritual gift giving. Like descriptions of the Arapesh, the Rengan people appear to use community ritual to support collective decision-making. Personal animosity and strong individual leadership were rare and the subject of social sanction.

Students of anthropology will not need to be told that many of these similarities are superficial do not necessarily correlate with similarities of basic structures. At the same time, some of the apparent dissimilarities may spring from common roots. Although scholars now generally accept these historical links, an assumption that we can extend our understanding of the Arapesh to other aspects of aboriginal Renganese culture is risky at best. Hundreds of years of divergent development and significant differences in the climate and natural environment will inevitably have made these two societies different. Perhaps the separation from the home islands, the long ocean voyage, and the mysterious reasons for the journey to Renga hold significance at which we can only guess.

One of the most interesting facets of early Renganese culture is its apparent polyandrous nature. While there is evidence that it may have been polygamous as well and that the early Renganese preferred monogamy, the presence of polyandry would make this culture rare indeed. Initially, some archeologists suggested that the presence of polyandry argued for contact with peoples to the west, on the African continent, as this is an area where such social structures are known to exist. In the absence of any other archeological or genetic evidence, the trend has been to presume that this structure emerged on its own, perhaps from sex imbalances or other factors present in the population when the islands were settled. The similarity with structures of polygamy found among the Arapesh, combined with the Renganese apparent lack of strong differentiation in the roles of men and women may have made this a relatively comfortable and logical development.

The consequences of polyandry and the lack of strong differentiation between the sexes appear to have been significant. Beliefs that we can infer were held by the native Renganese often run directly against what we in the West accept as facts about the nature of the sexes. What's more, the Renganese appear to have maintained a peaceful, complex and stable society for centuries based on these assumptions. There have been efforts to discount this aspect of early society on Renga as being central to the apparent social health, crediting diet, climate and genetic factors instead. The studies which attempted to support these alternative theories have failed to achieve much credibility, much less success. Still, there is a resistance to accepting the apparent social model as potentially stable over such a long period of time. Perhaps it is the challenge to some of the West's deepest beliefs that has kept anthropologists and archeologists from accepting the circumstances at face value. As society in the US and Europe have accepted the equality of women, there does appear to be more willingness to accept what would appear to be the simplest description of the family structure of the early Renganese.

With the obvious exception of child-bearing, it seems that women and men in this society had largely similar and even interchangeable roles. The exception was hunting, which was maintained as an exclusively the province of non-child bearing members of the social group. That is, hunters were predominantly male, but pre-pubescent girls could participate. After menarche, females could no longer participate in hunts, this life-taking activity being deemed in contradiction with the life-giving role of birth. Based on archeological evidence, child-rearing, garden work, construction, animal domestication, and cooking were not apparently gender specific. Nor, if the few surviving myths and tales can be credited, was leadership a gender specific role or responsibility. There is no record of the use of surnames. For reasons obvious when you consider the practice of polyandry, any lineage that was recorded was maternal only.

Concepts of good an evil, as understood by the early Renganese, can only be the realm of speculation. Drawing on their ancestral roots, it is possible that they maintained a belief in the embodiment of evil, the boogie man. However, in New Guinea, this role is played by real people in the form of sorcerers from another tribe. There the role was to cause harm to an individual or to cause an individual to desire to do harm. In this way the Arapesh account for bad events and actions in a society which assumes that humans are naturally loving, caring, and community-oriented beings. However, on Renga there was no "other" to account for and embody this evil. It appears that while the conception of human nature is similar to that of the people of New Guinea, the embodiment of evil took a less human or even material form. Little is known of the entities which the Renganese thought of as evil spirits. While there were representational forms of depiction, there are no known images or sculptures of these spirits. An examination of surviving folk tales suggests these spirits were not purely evil. In their role as agents of action through well-meaning people, they might inadvertently cause harm because the rules of their existence are so different from those of humans. In other tales they are inscrutable tricksters effecting change.

One of the arguments against the historical relationship with the Arapesh is the relatively vivid dissimilarity in the role of individual responsibility. New Guinea tribespeople tend to presume on the goodness of human nature in a way that can seem to disconnect an individual from the consequences of his or her actions. This does not appear to be the case for Renga. While this awareness does not appear to have manifested in structures of guilt or liability, it does show up in anticipatory processes, such as decision making. It is perhaps one reason why the Renganese were so reluctant to follow individual leadership and relied more heavily on the collective.

This may or may not relate to another oddity of early Renganese life: the relationship with place and land. The notion of private property, as is often the case with indigenous people, was unknown. When early European settlers inquired about ownership of a piece of land, they were likely to learn which fauna or flora dominated that part of terrain. This was often interpreted as the Renganese saying that a certain plant or animal "owned" a piece of property. However, what they were actually hearing was the analysis of the ecosystem of that locale. The Renganese appeared to have a relatively sophisticated understanding of ecological systems and saw themselves as a part of that. However, perhaps because of their relatively recent immigrant roots, they did not see themselves as belonging to the land in the way that their Arapesh ancestors did. Instead, they seem to have seen themselves as living with the land and its biosphere.

Scholars of modern Renganese history and society will be understandably both intrigued with and wary of these speculations about pre-colonial Renga. With this history so thoroughly trampled and deliberately suppressed by the colonial powers, it can be speculation at best. At the same time, the parallels of belief and social practice with contemporary culture in Renga are hard to ignore. Giving credit to these speculations could go a long way towards explaining a governmental system and social structure which is otherwise hard for those of us from the West to accept as authentic. Already, Rengans are pointing proudly to this heritage. Yet, the insights of historical anthropology, archeology and genetics cannot explain everything; it would be a mistake to assume so. The culture which I have described here came into violent contact with some of the most corrupt influences of European imperialistic culture. Renga was occupied by Britain at the height of its expansion. The people were enslaved, in practice if not by name, and their culture and language systematically destroyed for the sole end of enriching foreigners. The independence of Renga was won by the strength of a political movement that owes as much to Enlightenment thought as to any remnants of indigenous culture. The early formation of the sovereign government was molded largely by Western political ideologies.

The intermixing of race and culture that resulted from this historic collision, especially in so small and isolated a society, has produced something that is in itself unique. It may share structures and values with an aboriginal culture which was perhaps equally unique, and there are certainly more differences than similarities. In the next section, you will see just how severe the impact of colonialization was for Renga.