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BARBARA LAWSON, Collected Curios: Missionary Tales from the South Seas. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994, xvi + 313 p., $45.00 cloth.
Between 1883 and 1896, the Reverend H.A. Robertson donated some 125 objects he had collected from southern Vanuatu in the South Pacific to the Redpath Museum at McGill University. Robertson and his wife Christina left Nova Scotia in 1872 to serve as Presbyterian missionaries for forty years on the island of Erromango. Robertson left no record of his method of collecting artifacts. He apparently purchased some items while travelling around the islands on the mission boat but acquired most on Erromango itself. He no doubt employed artifacts to liven up the fund-raising lectures missionaries were required to give during furloughs. The exquisite pandanus skirts, for instance, might illustrate the inherent "modesty" of women in their "pagan" state, and thus their openness to conversion, while clubs and other items of war demonstrated the people's need for Christian peace. He could not take the items back with...