tants. As this work preceded Finsch’s fi rst visit
to New Guinea by more than a decade, he was
dependent entirely on others’ accounts for his
information.
In 1878 Finsch resigned from his position in
Bremen to take up a travel grant from the Alexander
132
von Humboldt-Stiftung. This foundation,
established shortly after Humboldt’s death in
1859, had already funded expeditions to South
America and Africa, but Finsch was the fi rst
traveler to receive fi nancial support for a voyage
to the Pacifi c. His initial proposal for a year’s
travel to Micronesia eventually expanded to
over three years, from mid 1879 to late 1882,
and took him to Hawai‘i; the Marshall, Gilbert,
and Caroline Islands; Nauru; New Ireland; New
Britain; New Zealand; Australia; southeastern
New Guinea; Indonesia; and Sri Lanka. During
his travels, Finsch pursued the ethos of “salvage
anthropology,” assembling extensive collections
of stuffed birds and animals, preserved plants,
fossils, cultural artifacts, and human remains
while consistently emphasizing their rapid disappearance
and the urgent need “to save what it
was still possible to save, before the ever-increasing
infl uence of trade and mission had utterly
destroyed the last vestiges of the former natural
life of these islanders” (Finsch 1882: 553–554).
The majority of these collections were incorporated
into Berlin’s Königliche Museen, although
Finsch was permitted to keep “duplicate” specimens.
He also meticulously documented his fi eld
observations through journals, drawings, and
photographs. He published widely on his travels,
both in popular and specialist outlets.
Finsch’s fi eld experiences substantially complicated
his ideas about human physical and cultural
difference. He became less confi dent, not only
in the validity of “racial” diagnostics—skin color,
facial angle, cephalic index—favored by physical
anthropologists, but even in the existence of
clear and constant distinctions between “races.”
Similarly, his initial assumption that the lifeways
of “savage” peoples would display a series of
characteristics consistent with their perceived
developmental stage was tested to the breaking
point by the Tolai of East New Britain, who convinced
him over the course of seven months that
nakedness and cannibalism, seemingly unequivocal
markers of savagery from a European perspective,
could co-exist with equally unequivocal
markers of civilization, including “regulated cultivation
of the soil,” “a great love of music,” and
the use of “a medium of exchange corresponding
to European money” (Finsch 1883: 445).
Shortly after his return to Germany, Finsch became
involved with the Konsortium zur Vorbereitung
und Errichtung einer Südsee-Insel Compagnie
(Consortium for the Preparation and
Establishment of a South Sea Island Company),
later the Neuguinea-Compagnie, a small group
of infl uential Germans interested in establishing
colonies in Oceania. Adolph von Hansemann
(1827–1903), the group’s head, engaged Finsch
to lead an expedition to “the unknown or little
known coasts of New Britain, as well as the
north coast of New Guinea to the 141st meridian,
in order to locate harbours, establish friend-
FIG. 4 (above):
Mounted watercolor
by Otto and Elisabeth
Finsch (1892–97):
Kaiser Wilhelms-Land.
Ahnenfi gur: Finschhafen
(Northeastern New
Guinea. Ancestral fi gure:
Finschhafen).
Dr. O. Finsch: “Beiträge zur
Völkerkunde der westlichen Südsee.”
Originalbilder, Taf. 27, I.
Wohnstätten, Taf. XXVII.
Hand inscribed on reverse:
Wohnstätten, Taf. XXVII (S.240) /
Neu Guinea / “Abumtau Gabiang”
Ahnenfi gur / Isuam, Finschhafen.
Watercolor on paper in annotated
cardboard mount.
Courtesy of the Division of
Anthropology, American Museum
of Natural History, New York. Finsch
Archive, box 31.
PORTFOLIO