ИСТИНА

The focus of the paper will be on the perception of Maclay (a semi-divine figure named after an early Russian anthropologist Nicolas Miklouho-Maclay) in oral histories and legends of the Papuans of the Rai-coast, Madang province of Papua-New Guinea. I argue that most of oral history texts came to life after the WWII and were shaped by Australian dominance in the region. The materials from the Archive of United Lutheran Mission let us find another history of the Rai-coast and “western” – “local” relations. In legends and oral stories collected in 1940s and thereafter the image of Maclay is good (he is a culture hero), the image of Germans is bad (they are invaders and oppressors) and the image of Australians is “likely realistic”. In documents of the Lutheran Archive the figure ‘Maclay’ is a figure of an average European, who were mostly Germans at that time, but the evaluation of what Maclay (=Germans) was (were) doing was positive. The good example of this is a short story of Maclay written down from Bilibili people in 1906 and the story of Siar revolt written down in 1970s by Mary Mennis. Archival materials give us a quite different view on this event with totally different evaluations of what had happened. The introduction of those materials to local people may let them make peace with the past through understanding of the roots of the mythologisation of Germans in their legends.