Adventurer, Academic, Industrialist: Louis Pierre Ledoux 1936 New Guinea Expedition
In early 1936, on recommendation by American anthropologist Margaret Mead, Louis Pierre Ledoux, recent Harvard University graduate, headed to the lower eastern Sepik River of Papua New Guinea to study the Murik people.
The results of his self-funded expedition is an extraordinary collection of hundreds of artifacts, photographs, manuscripts, diaries, and letters left untouched for 85 years.
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LOT 127:
Letter from Father Joseph Schmidt to Ledoux 1938
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Letter from Father Joseph Schmidt to Ledoux 1938
Letter from Father P. Joseph Schmidt to Louis Pierre Ledoux, dated 1 Feb. 1938., and remittance memo from Louis Pierre Ledoux to Schmidt date May 20.
Original, handwritten letter, starts in English thanking Louis Pierre Ledoux for his letter and confirming that he had passed the photos on to the people of Murik, who were pleased. Letter continues in German, stating that the photos had gone yellow and were not very well organized but that the images were good and pretty. It continues that some men and women had died in the war. It ends with wishes for all the best, and kind regards, signed P. Jos. Schmidt.
Letter is written in English and German, with a combination of old scripts, both Kurrent and Sutterlin. Kurrent was a German cursive script based on medieval scripts and used widely in Germany until mid 1900s. Suetterlin was developed around 1911 and taught in schools until around 1939 when it was replaced with the modern German cursive script. Father Schmidt (SVD) was based in New Guinea in the 1920s through the 1930s. His findings on the Murik were published: Schmidt, P. Joseph. “Die Ethnographie Der Nor-Papua (Murik-Kaup-Karau) Bei Dallmannhafen, Neu-Guinea.” Anthropos, 18/19, no. 4/6, 1923, pp. 700–732.
Date: 1930's
Material: Paperwork
Provenance: Louis Pierre Ledoux Collection
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