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William ELLIS

Lettre autographe signée sur le peuple premier des Vazimba à Madagascar

Hoddesdon Herts 28 février 1871, 13,5x21cm, 4 pages sur un double feuillet et un simple.

Autograph letter signed on the Vazimba pepople of Madagascar

Unpublished autograph letter signed by William Ellis, four pages in black ink on one folded leaf and one single leaf.
Interesting letter by Rev. William Ellis, missionary for the London Missionary Society in Madagascar and author of the earliest preserved photographs of the island.
A beautiful testimony of Ellis' ethnographic approach far from the "theory of the savage" commonly conveyed in European societies. He gives his interlocutor precious information on the Vazimba, still unidentified in the 19th century and described by first explorers as a warlike pygmy people living in the Malagasy mountains. Ellis is very critical of the fantasized descriptions of his predecessors and favors the direct testimonies of the inhabitants keeping the memory of this extinct people.
Author of several books on Malagasy history, Ellis describes in detail the legends on the Vazimba believed to be the island's first inhabitants, characterized by their small size and reddened skin. Ellis doubted the accounts of explorers Flacourt (1648) and Abbé Rochon (1768), who referred to this people as "Kimos" or "Quimos" and described them as a "dwarf race". He relies more on the testimonies of the island's inhabitants collected during his travels among the Hovas and the Betsiles, reporting the fear and respect that Vazimba spirits and burials still inspired. The letter gathers and criticizes current knowledge on the subject and mentions the experience of his successor, Rev. Charles Jukes of the London Missionary Society, for whom he celebrated a mass sending him to proclaim the Gospel on July 8, 1866.
In this letter, he mentions a hypothesis later confirmed by modern scientific research: the Vazimba are one of the founding communities of the island at the origin of the Malagasy language and culture.
"[…] By the Hova's & others who spoke of them, they were called Vazimba. They were said to be smaller in stature and lighter in colour than the Hovas, & to be regarded with superstitious feelings by the other inhabitants, who hold their tombs in extreme veneration & frequently offer at their tombs sacrifices or gifts to the spirits of the Vazimba.
During my own intercourse with people on the coast & in the interior I made repeated enquiries, but never met with a native who had seen a Vazimba. Their graves I saw frequently in my journeys among the people in the interior. I saw also many of their tombs at which offerings had been recently presented and found that many of the people regarded them with superstitious fear and seemed exceedingly afraid of doing any thing likely offend them. The Hovas didn't appear to know anything of the name of Kimos all elapses of whom I enquired call the diminutive race Vazimba & spoke of them as the ancient or earliest inhabitants of the country. […] My friend informed me that the Betsiles do not speak of the Vazimba as remarkable on account of their small size or light colour, many of the Hovas are of quite a light colour. [...] 
My own opinion is that the Vazimba are the dwarf of which early writers speak & that they are not as diminutive as they have been represented to be.
As our missionaries now occupy the Betsiles country, I have no doubt we shall soon have reliable accounts of the Vazimba relating of their present condition as well as their traditions of the past. If the foregoing statements should prove in any way revocable it will be gratifying so."
A fascinating and well-documented study on the customs and origins of Madagascar's inhabitants by one of the main historians of the island in the 19th century. In the intimacy of private correspondence, these pages reveal the evolution of ethnology and the diverse questionings raised by the missionaries' visits to the island.

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