[Caroline Islands]:

$650 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[GILBERT ISLANDS PRIMER, BEING A PRINTED SHEET OF ALPHABET AND SYLLABLES]. An unusual imprint, an early product of what is generally considered the first printing press in Micronesia. In 1852, a group of Protestant missionaries, sent under the auspices of the Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and led by Luther Halsey Gulick, the son of early missionaries to Hawaii, arrived on what is today the island of Pohnpei (formerly Ponape). The missionaries quickly saw the need for a printing press to aid in their project of religious conversion and, effectively, cultural conquest. The first press did not arrive, however, until 1856 from Hawaii, where it was no longer needed at the mission there. It was from this "miserable apology for a hand-press" and a stock of insufficient type (or possibly from a more serviceable press that may have arrived in 1857 along with a fresh supply of type) that this one-page rudimentary primer was printed on the island of Ponape for the use of Hiram Bingham, Jr., at his mission at Apaiang on the Gilbert Islands in teaching native students to read.This passage, taken from The Story of the Morning Star, Bingham's published account of his missionary activities, suggests the possible uses to which the primer may have been put:"Only thirteen letters (a, e, i, o, u, b, k, m, n,...(ng), r, t, w) are needed for writing the Gilbert Island language. We had taught a few children to spell ba, be, &c., when one day I heard a lad whom we

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