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Hi chevra,
Welcome to Massechet Gittin!
The first perek deals exclusively with the questions as to whether and when a currier who is bringing a severance document (whether a severance of marriage document to a wife or a severance of servitude document to a slave) is required to declare that he had personally seen the writing and signing of the document he is delivering. There are many different opinions offered in our Mishnayot as to whether and when this requirement is in place, and by and large these opinions are tied to a fundamental disagreement as to what the purpose of the currier's declaration is to begin with:
(1) Some hold that (even though this is not explicit in the currier's declaration that "in my presence it was written and signed") the purpose of the declaration is to affirm that the writing and signing had been done "lishma", i.e. for the express purpose of effecting the divorce of this particular woman. (The "lishma" requirement is derived from the Biblical phrase "and he shall for her a writ of divorce"). The opinions in our perek which require the declaration only in instances when the currier is coming from a place where people are not trusted to be expert in the laws of writing a gett - such as in "chutz la'aretz" - are in this school of thought.
(2) The other school of thought identifies the purpose of the currier's declaration to ensure that the validity of the signatures on the gett is not challenged. The idea here is that when a document is delivered in the same locale where the signatories live, if anyone were to challenge the validity of the signatures the signatories themselves would refute them. But when the document is being delivered in a place in which the signatories are unknown and are unlikely to ever show up, the document is potentially going to be subject to challenge. The currier's declaration is, according to this school of thought, made and accepted as a firewall against any such challenge. The opinions in our perek which map the declaration requirement not on an "Eretz Yisrael - Chutz La'aretz" axis, rather based on considerations around typical inter-area traffic patterns, are in this school of thought.
The fifth Mishna reflects a fascinating debate about the Jewish status of Cuthim (the same group known as "Samaritans") in Jewish society, and the assumptions around their degree of competence in Jewish law. You can find a primer on Cuthim here.
Mishnayot 4 and 6 establish similarities and differences between the sending of a divorce document and the sending of a manumission document. This is a rather unfortunate twinning. What links them in this coldly detached legal discussion is that both are issued without the consent of the recipient, both dramatically change the recipient's economic and social status, and both legally unlink the recipient from the sender of the document.
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