The Ngatik Massacre: History and Identity on a Micronesian Atoll

Poyer, Lin (1993). The Ngatik Massacre: History and Identity on a Micronesian Atoll. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. ISBN 978-1-56098-261-6 978-1-56098-262-3.

Abstract: History can be approached anthropologically through local historiography and its implications for modern culture. All the adult males of Ngatick Atoll were killed in an 1837 attack by British and American seamen and warriors from nearby Ponape. During the next decades, Ngatik was repopulated by deliberate and accidental immigrants from Ponape, the Gilbert and Mortlock Isl and s, Europe and America. Political order was re-established on the model of the traditional Ponapean system. A period of violence among the three major population groups--Ngatikese-Ponapean, Mortlockese and white--ended with the arrival of Christian missionaires in 1898. Ngatik today resembles other Micronesian atolls in its subsistence economy. Its social organization, language, and daily customary behavior closely resemble that of Ponape. Ngatikese, however, maintain a distinct cultural identity, despite their heterogeneous biological ancestry and strong Ponapean cultural influences. They define themselves as a cultural community most clearly in contrast to Ponapean culture, and in terms of two sets of behaviors: (1) roles and activities involving titles, feasting, and respect language and behavior (the ideal of egalitarianism dominant on Ngatik contrasts with the perceived hierachy of Ponape); and (2) the Ngatikese sense of themselves as true Christians, involving a rejection of sorcery (set against what Ngatikese see as the habitual use of sorcery by Ponapeans) and a belief in divine protection. This community identity can be understood in terms of Ngatikese historigraphy of the massacre and the immediate pre- and post-massacre periods, as a sort of moral tale. Construction of a Ngatikese view of the past reveals a history as an evolution from 'darkness' (paganism, violence, sorcery) to 'light' (Christianity, peacefulness, democracy), and a view of the Ngatikese as having been punished for their pagan sinfulness via the massacre, and then rewarded, with special divine protection, for accepting Christianity. This study of the meaning of a local history is not a causal explanation of the source of Ngatikese identity, but an effort to underst and persistence of a sense of community identity, despite the absence of a homogenous "ethnic heritage" and consistent pressure to become absorbed into the Ponapean cultural realm.

Extra details:

DOI: 10.2307/2761410
MAG: 2312836208
CorpusID: 154445379
OpenAlex: W2094695230