Micronesian Religion and Lore

There are far fewer publications on the ethnology of Micronesia than for any other region in the Pacific. This dearth is especially seen in the traditional religion, folklore, and iconography of the area. Haynes and Wuerch have located 1,193 relevant titles. For the first time, these mostly scarce or unpublished materials are now accessible in this essential research tool. The focus is on tradition, which became modified after contact with the West—the adaptation and persistence of these traditions are included in this bibliography.

Traditional Micronesian iconography is largely religious in nature, as is the case with most tribal or preliterate societies. There is also a large corpus of Micronesian myths, legends, beliefs, and practices that may not fit the Western concept of religion, but would be classified under folklore. That distinction cannot be consistently made in Micronesian cultures, nor in most other preliterate, thus prehistoric, societies. The overlap of religion and folklore is pervasive, so the scope of subjects included is broad. The subject matter encompasses magic, sorcery, ritual, cosmology, mythology, iconography, iconology, oral traditions, songs, chants, dance, music, traditional medicine, and many activities of daily life. Only those works that directly treat these subjects in the context of religion or folklore are included in this volume.

DOUGLAS HAYNES is technical services librarian and art historian at the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam. He has authored two editions of Historical Survey of the Spanish Mission Sites on Guam, 1669-1800, with William L. Wuerch.

WILLIAM L. WUERCH is manuscripts librarian at the Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam. He has written many articles about the area and compiled (with Nicholas Goetzfridt) Micronesia, 1975-1987: A Social Science Bibliography (Greenwood, 1989), and (with Dirk A. Ballendorf) Historical Dictionary of Guam and Micronesia (1994).