IDNO

P.99733.VH

Description

Sotia of the Armed Native Constabulary in full fighting gear, parading with bayonets fixed to their Enfield rifles, and dressed in white barkcloth malo loincloths girded high up under the ribs in the challenging or come-and-get-me malowala fashion, with their waists girded by liku overskirts, probably in deference to their being Christian. Several wear itaubebatinivuaka or boar tusk pendants, highly fashionable in the 1870s, when they were imported to Fiji from Tanna and elsewhere in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) by the labour traders. The men mostly wear their hair comparatively short - it was not until after the 1876 “Little War” in the highlands of Vitilevu that they were encouraged to grow it in the flamboyant pre-Christian Fijian way. Note the miniature drummer boy.
Waitovu camp, a mile north of Levuka, Ovalau? circa 1875-1876?
See P.87342.VH, P.99737.VH. [Fergus Clunie, 14/7/2003]

Physical Condition: Print mounted onto card.

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Ovalau Island; Near Levuka; ?Waitovu

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

?Dufty, Francis Herbert (Dufty Brothers, Levuka)

Collector / Expedition

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Date

circa 1875 - 1877

Collection Name

von Hügel Collection

Source

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.99725.VH to P.99758.VH were in the belted folder now numbered C539/1/. This was formerly kept in paper archive Large Box G; VH1/4/5. It has now been transferred to the photo archive. The lists describing the contents of this box have been returned to the Paper Archive.

Related Image: This print or negative appears to be a unique image within the MAA Photograph Collections. [JD 8/1/2012]

This print has been catalogued with the support of the Getty Grant Fund. [A. Nadin, 4/9/2003]