Page:Picturesque New Guinea.djvu/335

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF POTTERY TRADE
125

in bulk, weighing 2 or 3 cwt. From the time of the return of the trading canoes, the Motuans keep collecting things until the next season. The most industrious woman, the one who cultivates best on the plantations and makes the most and best pottery, is sure to have her husband's praise, and she "has of the fruit of her hands, and her own works praise her in the gates."

It is to be hoped that in the future when a civilized power governs these children of nature, they will not do away with the present occupations and systems of trade, and let us hope the missionaries will remember that Anglicising is not Christianising, and Christianising should have little to do with Manchester. For myself I think the natives with a little bit of loin cloth better off far than our whitewashed Europeanized, shirted and trousered natives. Leave them alone in their trading and their pottery, and leave them alone on their lands. Why deprive them of these?