ABSTRACT
Paliau Maloat has been described as ‘the most outstanding figure in the Admiralties … undoubtedly one of the most significant leaders in Melanesia and New Guinea’ (Schwartz 1966:238). Margaret Mead feels that
we will need many more detailed studies before the role of a personality like Paliau's will become clear to us. To be as intrinsically superior to his fellows as Paliau was to every other one of his people lays a burden of loneliness on any man.
(Mead 1956:208)