Reformed Cannibals¹

Abstract

NEW GUINEA, despite the considerable oi- amount of attention that has been paid to it, has still large areas unexplored, and many peoples about whom nothing is known. Extremely little, even in the “Annual Reports of New Guinea,“ has been written about the natives of the D'Entrecasteaux group, the large mountainous islands which lie off the north coast of the south-eastern end of New Guinea, although a good deal of information has been collected about some of the peoples on the adjacent mainland and about the Trobriand Islanders farther east. An ideal opportunity was thus open to Mr. Jenness, a distinguished classical student of Balliol, who was one of the first to obtain the Oxford diploma in anthropology. A further advantage he had was in the collaboration with his brother-in-law, the Rev. A. Ballantyne, who for nine years had been a missionary on Goodenough Island.