Kamoro

Kamoro communities inhabited the river mouths and coastal lowlands of south-western New Guinea. The waterways of this country supported movement between neighbouring groups and contacts farther west. Trade with eastern Indonesia was recorded from the seventeenth century, placing these coastal communities within exchange networks before European expeditions began collecting their objects.

In 1828 the Dutch vessels Triton and Iris sailed to the south-west coast with orders to establish a settlement. Encounters with Kamoro traders formed part of the voyage, and objects acquired then entered the Leiden museum collections. An armlet from that expedition preserves evidence of an older practice of exchange, rather than an entirely new relationship created by the ships' arrival. The expedition also recorded Kamoro words, among the earliest documented vocabularies of a Papuan language. These exchanges brought different purposes together: Kamoro participants pursued their own trading relationships, while the Dutch voyage served the wider ambitions of mapping and asserting colonial possession.