Although the natives have not practiced textile manufacturing to any extent, they do produce sails which will outlast many a high grade canvas. The sails, used occasionally on their canoes, are made of intricately woven pandanus leaves, each leaf cut and folded to a quarter-inch width, and then laced and relaced. The product is light and amazingly strong and pliable. The sails may be rolled and unrolled with little effort.
Of things mercenary, they have found a market for their hand bags, matting, grass skirts, and model canoes.
Their outstanding artistic achievement is a hand-carved statuette, done in wood, of an old pagan god. The style is bold, and not unlike many of the surrealistic schools of American sculpture.
Incidentally, they produce no musical instruments. The drum, the most universal of all instruments, was not used in the Western Carolines, and even the conch shell trumpet which is found on-some of the nearby islands, is absent at Ulithi.
Ulithians are simple, gentle, charming people. They are happy, but they have experienced many sadnesses because of their contacts with the white and yellow man. The outsider has brought them disease and has taken advantage of their naive and trusting natures. Fortunately, American service forces today have gone to splendid, humane ends to repair these wrongs of the past. A warm, mutual friendship has developed. Individual servicemen working among them have cured their diseases, cared for their spiritual needs, provided them new luxuries.
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