The Island of the Colorblind

I did not believe, till my visit, that the natives of Wellington Island were cannibals; then I had ocular demonstration. It seemed with them an ungovernable passion, the victims being not only captives, but presents to the chiefs from parents, who appeared to esteem the acceptance of their children, for a purpose so horrid, an honor. Wellington Island…is, in fact, three islands, bounded by a reef. One of them is inhabited, and the other two are uninhabited spots, claimed by different chiefs, as if to afford a pretext for war, and the gratification of their horrible passion for human flesh.

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The legendary history of Pingelap is told in the Liamweiwet, an epic or saga which had been transmitted to each generation for centuries as a recitation or chant. In the 1960s, only the nahnmwarki knew all 161 verses; and if Jane Hurd had not transcribed these, this epic history would now be lost.

But an anthropologist, however sympathetic, tends to treat an indigenous chant or rite as an object, and may not be able to fully enter its inwardness, its spirit, the perspective of those who actually sing it. An anthropologist sees cultures, one wants to say, as a physician sees patients. The penetration, the sharing, of different consciousnesses and cultures needs skills beyond those of the historian or the scientist; it needs artistic and poetic powers of a special kind. Auden, for instance, identified with Iceland (his first name, Wystan, was Icelandic; and an early book was his Letters from Iceland )  – but it is his linguistic and poetic powers which make his version of the Elder Edda, the great saga of Iceland, such an uncanny recreation of the original.

And it is this which gives unique value to the work of Bill Peck, a physician and poet who has spent the last thirty-five years living and working in Micronesia. As a young doctor with the U.S. Public Health Service, he was shocked by his first experience in Micronesia as an official observer of the atomic tests, and appalled by the treatment of the islanders. Later, as commissioner of health for the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (as Micronesia was called), he attracted energetic and romantic physicians (including John Steele and later Greg Dever) to help him develop new health services (now the Micronesian Health Service) and train native nurses to be physician’s aides.

Living in Chuuk in the early 1970s, he became increasingly conscious of the ancient traditions and myths of the Chuukese, and had a ‘conversion experience’ when he met Chief Kintoki Joseph of Udot. He spent several weeks with the chief, listening, recording. This, he says, was

…like discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Book of Mormon…Chief Kintoki would sit quietly, almost in a trance, nodding rhythmically as he recalled a prayer or chant. Then, gesturing, he would recite it dramatically in Ittang, his voice rising and falling as the glory or awe or fright of his vision impelled him… Chief Kintoki said to me, ‘Each time I recite these poems I believe, for the moment, that I am the ancient prophet who first revealed them.’

This encounter opened a new dedication for Bill – to record and preserve, to recreate for posterity, the songs and myths of Chuuk and of all the Micronesian cultures (though only a fraction of his work has been published, in his Chuukese Testament and I Speak the Beginning, as well as a handful of articles and poems). His is a voice, a scientific and poetic transparency, as remarkable as any in Micronesia. In Rota, where he has retired to live and write (and where I met him), he is an honorary citizen, the only non-Chamorro ever accorded this honor. ‘Here I am,’ he said as I finally left him, ‘an old doctor, an old poet, in my eighty-third year, translating, preserving the old legends for the future – trying to give back to these people some of the gifts they have given me.’

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