[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

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INTRODUCTION
When Dr. Haddon did me the honour of asking me to prepare
the ï¬Åeld-notes of my friend, the late Bernard Deacon, for publica-
tion, my inexperience of the difficulties of such a task led me to
accept his offer with enthusiasm. I had been permitted to read
the letters which Deacon had written to him from time to time,
and from them I realized something of the importance of his
discoveries in Malekula. In 1914-I5 Mr. John Layard carried
out an intensive study of the islands Wala, Atchin, and Rano
which lie off the north-east coast of Malekula, and spent one
fruitful week at South-West Bay, but apart from this no trained
anthropological researches had been made in this part of the
New Hebrides, and our knowledge of its people and their cultures
was restricted to the records of such men as Boyle Sommerville
and of missionaries who had visited or lived there, and to the
specimens of Malekulan craftsmanship which are to be found
in museums. Thanks to these something of the ritual life and
of the artifacts of this people was known; concerning their
social, economic, and political life, the anthropologist had to
conjecture. Furthermore, these records told mainly of the
natives inhabiting the south-eastern part of the island, particularly
of those living in the neighbourhood of Port Sandwich. About
the people of the west, the north, and the interior our ignorance
was almost complete. Unfortunately this is still true to a very
great extent of the extreme north——that is of the tribe or tribes
called by the Europeans the Big Nambas—and of the inland
districts, but the year which Deacon spent in the northewest
and in the region around South-West Bay resulted in a mass of
anthropological material which reveals much about the life of
the natives of these two areas.
Deacon left England in the autumn of I925 and began work
early in the following year. He ï¬Årst settled at South-West
Bay and there obtained what information he could from the
few remaining natives belonging to the neighbouring districts
of which this place now fonned the focal point. During the time
XXX]
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