Chalmers

One person I am always hearing about in my area is James Chalmers. I’d never heard of him before I went to Gulf, but he is a local hero; the missionary who was killed and eaten while spreading the good news to the local populations, well over a century ago.

He is a hero and a martyr, but along with his co-worker Oliver Tompkin, he is also a scar. They died on April 8 1901, but their death seems to weigh heavily on some people, as they seek a formal reconciliation with the descendents of Chalmers and Tompkin*. Different reconciliation ceremonies have been planned, but each one so far has been cancelled for various reasons. Meanwhile, there are many men named James or Tompkin in my village, in memory of these martyrs.

One of the men I work with in the village wrote down the story that his grandmother told him about when Chalmers came to visit. She was seven years old, and this was the first white person she had seen. I have the story in writing, but am still building the language skills to really understand it. A century is not very long, in a strong oral culture.

Others tell of the dream that a leader had before Chalmers visited. They dreamed of a visit from a  guru mere , a thunder-child, and that when this thunder-child visited, that they should not touch him, or the thunder would come. When the man the colour of lightning visited, they did not touch him, but traded with him to receive salt and sugar and sent him on his way. In the coming months, at Goaribari Island, Chalmers and Tompkin went ashore to preach to a hostile group of locals. They were killed and eaten within the day. Some PNG missionaries working with Chalmers were also killed that day, but they rarely feature in the local stories.

The thunder did come, in the form of Australian troops sent in the wake of a Royal Commission into the death of the missionaries. Local stories paint a story of fear and massacre and tell of bullet holes being visible in trees many years later and cartridges being found buried in the earth after generations. Many had already fled the area, in fear of such retribution, but many had also stayed. From the little I know, it seems that even at the time people thought the retribution was out of proportion to the original crime.

More than a century later, these men are largely forgotten in the west, although in the years following Chalmer’s death he was placed on the same pedestal as David Livingstone** and there was a Royal Commision into their deaths. In Gulf Province though they are not forgotten but remembered and given credit for bringing the Gospel to the area, even though it cost them their lives.

  “The Reverend Jame Chalmers in 1895, six years before he was murdered and eaten by cannibals on Goaribari Island in Papua. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of him that he was ‘the most attractive, simple, brave and interesting man in the whole Pacific.’”

Photo and quote from John Ryan (1969) The Hot Land:Focus on New Guinea, Melbourne:Macmillan.

Someone had the remains of a copy in the village, which is where I took this photo, but they did not have the verso page any more.

*My limited internet searching indicates Chalmers had no descendents and Tompkins may not have had any either, but reconciliation with the descendents of their extended family or of their counrty of origin, remains something people desire.

** Cuthbert Lennox (1902) ‘James Chalmers of New Guinea’ London: Andrew Melrose, p v.