The Papuan at Home—His Good Points—Physical Characteristics—Ceremonial Dress—Coast and Hill Tribes—Differences—Local Distribution of the Rami or Petticoat—Its Decrease in Length in the Mountains—Its Disappearance at Epa—Dandyism—The Priceless Chimani—The Shell Armlet—Household Constitution—Rudimentary Government—Courtship and Marriage—The Price of a Wife—Position of Women—Six Ways of Carrying an Infant—Meal Times—Weapons—Clubs—Their Manufacture the Monopoly of One Tribe—Weird Tribal Dances.
CHAPTER XV
PAPUAN MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND SUPERSTITIONS
My object in visiting New Guinea, as the reader already knows very well, was not to prosecute the proper study of mankind, according to Mr. Alexander Pope, but it was impossible to live daily with those unspoilt children of nature without observing a good deal that was curious and noteworthy. I cannot pretend to be a trained ethnologist, and accordingly the notes that I have set down in this chapter on manners and customs make no pretension to any scientific co-ordination. I shall not therefore venture to draw conclusions, nor advance any theories such as would fall within the province of the professed anthropologist. My notes, too, were fragmentary, and often, owing to the stress of our journeyings and the pressure of the work which it was incumbent on me to prosecute, I had perforce to leave unrecorded at the time many things that might be useful to the student of primitive peoples. Such observations, however, as I am able to make, however incomplete, may safely be regarded as at first hand, and it is probable that in the majority of cases they were taken under exceptionally favourable conditions for observing the people just as they are. During our journeyings in the interior we depended on native help alone, and the people whom we employed were not, one might say, scared out of their usual way of life by the presence of a large body of white men. I and my son went absolutely alone into the wilds with no white lieutenant. We cast ourselves, as it were, on the hospitality of the aboriginal Papuan (and cannibal at that), but as the reader has seen, we had no reason to regret our draft on the bank of savage fidelity.
In my second chapter I described the warlike Tugeri of Dutch New Guinea, a tribe whose ferocity has been such a thorn in the side of British and Netherland officials alike. I certainly should not have cared to trust myself with the Tugeri, but with the gentler people of the south-east portion of the island there was comparatively no great risk. My first close acquaintance with the Papuans was with the Motuan tribe, who lived around Port Moresby, and my earliest acquaintances were made among the potters of Hanuabada. The Motuans are fairly numerous, numbering, it is said, about 1400 in the Port Moresby district; they may be taken as the type of coast natives in this quarter, and roughly, for the purposes of this account, I may distinguish between “coast-men” and “hill-men,” taking the former to extend as far up as Epa. The Motuan men are well-grown, standing about 5 feet 10 inches on an average, the height of the women being from about 5 feet 6 inches to 5 feet 8 inches. Their features are very varied, and do not incline to any single type. The colour is of a rich bronze, and they are well and sturdily made. Most of them have mop-like hair very much frizzed, and some wear it tied up, while others have it short and curly, looking almost as if it had been cropped and lying close to the scalp. What we may call the “cropped” hair required little dressing, but to keep the mop hair in order they use a comb like a wide fork with five prongs and a fairly longish handle. With this implement they comb out their hair elaborately.
HANUABADA WOMEN WEARING THE RAMI, OR PETTICOAT MADE OF LEAVES.
For ceremonial dances, and on festal occasions, they wear a wonderful head-dress made of cockatoo feathers, which looks, when it is assumed, like an enormous flat horseshoe, passing over the top of the head and slightly in front of the ears. It conceals the ears entirely when the observer looks the wearer full in the face.
The most cherished ornament, however, is the necklace of dogs’ teeth, which is prized by the Papuans beyond any article of “trade” that the traveller can give them. Not even a knife or an axe is so welcome, nor can the traveller get so much work out of the Papuan for any steel implement as he can for one or two teeth. I knew of a case where a missionary, not with any fraudulent intention, but merely from a desire to test Papuan intelligence, manufactured imitation dogs’ teeth very cunningly out of bone, and offered them to a native. The man, however, had too keen an eye to be done; he weighed the teeth critically in his hand for a moment, and then handed them back with a scornful “No good.”
A further adjunct of their very simple costume is the armlet, which is knitted from grass fibre with a pointed cassowary bone. This primitive needle has a hole running up its entire length through which the grass fibre is threaded, and then the ornament is woven either in a diagonal pattern or in straight horizontal stripes, with strands of various colours. They often actually knit it round the arm or the wrist quite tightly, and when this is done the ornament is permanent, and is never removed until it is worn out. Sometimes they wear a bunch of flowers stuck into the armlet, and these not particularly fragrant, but the Papuans are persuaded that it is quite otherwise, and, pointing to their bouquet, they say with delightful naïveté, “Midina Namu”—“Good smell.” Alas! it is really the reverse, and the wearers of flowers in this manner are by no means pleasant neighbours.