[GILBERT ISLANDS PRIMER, BEING A PRINTED SHEET OF ALPHABET AND SYLLABLES]

[Caroline Islands]

Published by [Ponape, 1858

[1]p. on a 7 3/4 x 9 1/2-inch (19.7 x 24 cm) sheet. Light foxing and staining. Very good. An unusual imprint, an early product of what is generally considered the first printing press in Micronesia. In 1852, a group of Protestant missionaries, sent under the auspices of the Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and led by Luther Halsey Gulick, the son of early missionaries to Hawaii, arrived on what is today the island of Pohnpei (formerly Ponape). The missionaries quickly saw the need for a printing press to aid in their project of religious conversion and, effectively, cultural conquest. The first press did not arrive, however, until 1856 from Hawaii, where it was no longer needed at the mission there. It was from this "miserable apology for a hand-press" and a stock of insufficient type (or possibly from a more serviceable press that may have arrived in 1857 along with a fresh supply of type) that this one-page rudimentary primer was printed on the island of Ponape for the use of Hiram Bingham, Jr., at his mission at Apaiang on the Gilbert Islands in teaching native students to read. This passage, taken from THE STORY OF THE MORNING STAR, Bingham's published account of his missionary activities, suggests the possible uses to which the primer may have been put: "Only thirteen letters (a, e, i, o, u, b, k, m, n,.(ng), r, t, w) are needed for writing the Gilbert Island language. We had taught a few children to spell ba, be, &c., when one day I heard a lad whom we had never taught, saying over with great rapidity, â Ba, be, bi, bo, bu; ka, ke, ki, ko, ku; ma, me,' &c. I was very much pleased.We took great pains to teach him; and soon he learned to read and write his own language very fast." Note, too, the almost identical alphabets and syllables featured in this passage and those in the present primer. Alden suggests that Bingham's wife, Minerva Clarissa Bingham, may have created the text. An extraordinary survival and a fascinating piece of printing history, this humble piece of ephemera is a striking example of the cultural exceptionalism that drove missionary attempts to impose Anglo-American ideologies of print and alphabetic literacy on the native inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. John Eliot Alden, "A Press in Paradise: The Beginnings of Printing in Micronesia" in PAPERS OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, Vol. 38, no. 3 (1944), pp.269-83. Richard E. Lingenfelter, PRESSES OF THE PACIFIC ISLANDS, 1817-1867: A HISTORY OF THE FIRST HALF CENTURY OF PRINTING IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS (Los Angeles, 1967). J.F. Coakley, "Printing Offices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1817-1900: A Synopsis" in HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN, Vol. 9, no. 1 (Spring 1998), pp.5- 34. Hiram Bingham, Jr., THE STORY OF THE MORNING STAR, THE CHILDREN'S MISSIONARY VESSEL (Boston: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1866), pp.58-62. E.F. KUNZ, ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGES OF THE GILBERT ISLANDS (Sydney, 1959). Seller Inventory # WRCAM6687

Bibliographic Details

Title: [GILBERT ISLANDS PRIMER, BEING A PRINTED ...
Publisher: [Ponape
Publication Date: 1858