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Bride in the Solomons
Date not stated
- GenresNonfictionTravel
246 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1944
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22 people want to read
About the author
Osa Johnson
24 books14 followersIn the first half of the 20th century an American couple from Kansas named Martin and Osa Johnson captured the public's imagination through their films and books of adventure in exotic, far-away lands...Photographers, explorers, naturalists and authors, Martin and Osa studied the wildlife and peoples of East and Central Africa, the South Pacific Islands and British North Borneo...They explored then unknown lands and brought back knowledge of cultures thousands of miles away through their films, writings and lectures.
From 1917-1936, the Johnsons set up camp in some of the most remote areas of the world and provided an unmatched photographic record of the wildernesses of Kenya, the Congo, British North Borneo and the Solomon and New Hebrides Islands...Their equipment was the most advanced motion pictures apparatus of the day, some of it designed by Martin Johnson himself.
When the young adventurers left their home in Kansas to explore and photograph these lands, little did they realize that they would provide the world with a photographic record of the African game of unimagined magnitude and beauty...The Johnsons gave the filmmakers and researchers of today an important source of ethnological and zoological material which would otherwise have been lost.
Their photographs represent one of the great contributions to the pictorial history of the world...Their films serve to document a wilderness that has long since vanished, tribal cultures and customs that ceased to exist.
Through popular movies such as SIMBA (1928) and BABOONA (1935) and best-selling books still in print such as I Married Adventure (1940), Martin and Osa popularized camera safaris and an interest in African wildlife conservation for generations of Americans...Their legacy is a record of the animals and cultures of many remote areas of the world which have undergone significant changes.
The outstanding accomplishments and legacy of Martin and Osa Johnson - their films, photographs, expedition reports, correspondence and personal memorabilia - are housed at The Martin and Osa Johnson Museum.
From 1917-1936, the Johnsons set up camp in some of the most remote areas of the world and provided an unmatched photographic record of the wildernesses of Kenya, the Congo, British North Borneo and the Solomon and New Hebrides Islands...Their equipment was the most advanced motion pictures apparatus of the day, some of it designed by Martin Johnson himself.
When the young adventurers left their home in Kansas to explore and photograph these lands, little did they realize that they would provide the world with a photographic record of the African game of unimagined magnitude and beauty...The Johnsons gave the filmmakers and researchers of today an important source of ethnological and zoological material which would otherwise have been lost.
Their photographs represent one of the great contributions to the pictorial history of the world...Their films serve to document a wilderness that has long since vanished, tribal cultures and customs that ceased to exist.
Through popular movies such as SIMBA (1928) and BABOONA (1935) and best-selling books still in print such as I Married Adventure (1940), Martin and Osa popularized camera safaris and an interest in African wildlife conservation for generations of Americans...Their legacy is a record of the animals and cultures of many remote areas of the world which have undergone significant changes.
The outstanding accomplishments and legacy of Martin and Osa Johnson - their films, photographs, expedition reports, correspondence and personal memorabilia - are housed at The Martin and Osa Johnson Museum.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 20, 2021
I was not previously aware of this author or her husband when I pulled this out of an antique store for a dollar -- a signed copy, even! But I was so instantly fascinated by the photographs and glimpses of the text that I read it cover to cover in one sitting the next day, even forgoing two library holds with long wait lists I had picked up at the same time.
This is an account of the couple's two years in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific, specifically for the purpose of getting proof of cannibalism, documenting the culture and customs of various native tribes along the way. These places were little known and less visited by the larger Western world at the time -- to the point that the author is the first white woman most of them have ever seen. Even I had to do some googling to get a sense of place, so I can only imagine how much less the average American would have known when this book was first published.
One thing I found interesting is that while (as far as I can tell) these areas were under colonial rule, the lingua franca, called "bêche-de-mer," is not dissimilar to the language depicted in old cowboy-and-Indian Westerns -- "to do" verbs end in -um instead (me ketchum, lookum, etc), and it also lacks possessive pronouns, so instead of your/my you get "belong you/me." When I've only ever seen that type of dialogue scorned, reading whole, sincere conversations reproduced like that made my head spin.
I also laughed out loud at one instance where they meet with a chief who asks Martin Johnson if he has a lot of wives ("You gottem plenty Mary belong you?") to which he replies, "Oh, just this one here, but she's trouble enough for plenty!" and the chief takes great pity on him and is like, hey buddy, don't worry, I can trade you a couple of mine real cheap if you want.
Martin, full of unholy joy: To think I spent thirty-five dollars on your wedding hat, when I could get two women here for a dollar's worth of tobacco! That ought to keep you in your place for a while.
(Osa does not mention her response, but I like to imagine she gave him a look that clearly conveyed, "What a funny joke! You know what else is funny? How easy it would be to murder your malaria-prone ass out here and feed you to the sharks." Also...THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS ON A HAT? In 1910??)
There is a lot of beauty to be discovered, but there are more than a few jarring customs revealed during the Johnsons' trip -- long before they get their proof of cannibalism, they see little girls being sold with intent to fatten and eat them; another tribe buries its elderly members alive when they become "useless and senile." Also jarring is the number of times the author refers to the native people as looking/acting "stupid" when they show little expression or, in the case of those hired to work for the handful of white people in the area, have minimal response to orders.
However, for the most part Osa Johnson, who was very young at the time, really is just someone who's as much anthropologist as documentarian. She gets justifiably Huffy and Annoyed whenever she's forbidden from seeing something in a village because she's a woman, but she is genuinely interested in both learning about the people and their customs and sharing that knowledge with the greater Western world, and it makes for a fascinating read. I also caught some glimpses of her history with Martin that made me really excited to read about in more depth in her first book, I Married Adventure.
Highly recommended if you can adjust your expectations of well-meaning cultural sensitivity to 1940s standards, and well worth it for the number of photographs.
This is an account of the couple's two years in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific, specifically for the purpose of getting proof of cannibalism, documenting the culture and customs of various native tribes along the way. These places were little known and less visited by the larger Western world at the time -- to the point that the author is the first white woman most of them have ever seen. Even I had to do some googling to get a sense of place, so I can only imagine how much less the average American would have known when this book was first published.
One thing I found interesting is that while (as far as I can tell) these areas were under colonial rule, the lingua franca, called "bêche-de-mer," is not dissimilar to the language depicted in old cowboy-and-Indian Westerns -- "to do" verbs end in -um instead (me ketchum, lookum, etc), and it also lacks possessive pronouns, so instead of your/my you get "belong you/me." When I've only ever seen that type of dialogue scorned, reading whole, sincere conversations reproduced like that made my head spin.
I also laughed out loud at one instance where they meet with a chief who asks Martin Johnson if he has a lot of wives ("You gottem plenty Mary belong you?") to which he replies, "Oh, just this one here, but she's trouble enough for plenty!" and the chief takes great pity on him and is like, hey buddy, don't worry, I can trade you a couple of mine real cheap if you want.
Martin, full of unholy joy: To think I spent thirty-five dollars on your wedding hat, when I could get two women here for a dollar's worth of tobacco! That ought to keep you in your place for a while.
(Osa does not mention her response, but I like to imagine she gave him a look that clearly conveyed, "What a funny joke! You know what else is funny? How easy it would be to murder your malaria-prone ass out here and feed you to the sharks." Also...THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS ON A HAT? In 1910??)
There is a lot of beauty to be discovered, but there are more than a few jarring customs revealed during the Johnsons' trip -- long before they get their proof of cannibalism, they see little girls being sold with intent to fatten and eat them; another tribe buries its elderly members alive when they become "useless and senile." Also jarring is the number of times the author refers to the native people as looking/acting "stupid" when they show little expression or, in the case of those hired to work for the handful of white people in the area, have minimal response to orders.
However, for the most part Osa Johnson, who was very young at the time, really is just someone who's as much anthropologist as documentarian. She gets justifiably Huffy and Annoyed whenever she's forbidden from seeing something in a village because she's a woman, but she is genuinely interested in both learning about the people and their customs and sharing that knowledge with the greater Western world, and it makes for a fascinating read. I also caught some glimpses of her history with Martin that made me really excited to read about in more depth in her first book, I Married Adventure.
Highly recommended if you can adjust your expectations of well-meaning cultural sensitivity to 1940s standards, and well worth it for the number of photographs.
Displaying 1 of 1 review