They also wear anklets of feathers and strings of beads, and in some of their dances I have seen them decorated with huge bunches of grass, which hang from between the shoulders and sweep the ground. Some also affect a light band at the knee, and light cane anklets which rattle as they dance.
Indispensable to the men is the little bag which carries their few personal possessions: their betel-nut, their lime gourd and knife, the invariable adjunct of the delightful vice of chewing betel—as every traveller in the Malay Archipelago knows—and the “Paw-paw,” a fruit with which a little European tobacco is often eaten. The coast women carry a much larger bag of knitted fibre, which may be best described by saying that it resembles a hammock with the ends tied together; in this they carry potatoes and wood, and sometimes it is borne upon the head, the centre of it being brought over so that it is supported by the forehead, while the tapering ends hang down over the shoulders. At other times it is carried round the neck.
The chief costume of the women of the coast tribes is the extraordinary petticoat made of grass or of a wide-bladed weed, each leaf of which would be about 3 inches wide. The blades composing this garment fall down perpendicularly from a waistband, to which layer after layer is attached, until the “Rami” has that fine spread which used to be attained by more civilised women by a contrivance which I believe was called a “dress-improver.” As we went inland and rose gradually higher and higher in the mountains, we observed that the “Rami” was growing shorter and shorter, until at length, just after we had passed Epa, it disappeared altogether; and one may reasonably consider the absence or presence of this garment as the great symbol of division between the coast natives and those of the highlands proper.
Among the men, both highland and lowland, the great symbol of dandyism is the “Chimani,” or nose ornament. This is made from a section of a shell about ⅜ of an inch thick in the middle, and tapering most beautifully towards the ends. It is accurately made, perfectly round and polished, and a good example would be about a span long. A fine “Chimani” very often has two black rings painted round it, about 1 inch distant from the end. These things are manufactured by the coast people, and they drift by exchange through the whole country. Very few young blades can afford to possess one, and accordingly it may be lent, either for a consideration or as a very special favour. The possessor of one of these ornaments could easily buy a wife for it, and sometimes it is paid as a tribal tribute by one who may have to pay blood-money, or is unable to give the statutory pig as atonement for a murder.
Another shell ornament is the armlet, made from the lower part of one species of a conical shell; a section of this adornment would present the figure of a pointed oval, and, according to the part of the shell from which the armlet has been cut, its ends either meet or overlap without touching. To it they sometimes attach European beads or little fragments of tin. Its manufacture entails a great deal of work and a long continued grinding on stone or other hard substance. Sam had a very fine one which he presented to a man in order that that man might buy a wife, and my head-man’s generosity will be understood when I mention that one of these armlets fetches £5 at Port Moresby. A very affluent person will wear one on each arm, or two on one arm, as I sometimes observed was the case among the coast natives. This occurred chiefly at Hula.
As regards households and tribal government, the Papuan customs are simple in the extreme; there is no augmentation of households on the patriarchal system of the sons bringing the wives under the parental roof. Each household consists of the father, mother, and children. The sons when they marry set up a separate establishment, and when all have married the grandparents usually remain alone.
BUYING A WIFE: A NEW GUINEA WOOING.
The suitor is depicted making an offer for the girl seated in the hammock beside her father.
The men marry after they are eighteen and the girls much younger, for they are considered ready for double-blessedness at fourteen. In the case of the men, there are exceptions to this rule, for we met an experienced young gentleman of fourteen, Kaukwai, who confided to us, with an air of deep wisdom, that he had already had two wives and had dismissed them both.
In the villages there was no clearly defined form of government. There was, of course, invariably a chief, but his authority was not great, and nowhere did I see an autocrat, except Mavai, with whom the reader is already well acquainted. There is no regular council of elders, but in isolated instances the younger men may go to the elder for advice. The villagers, however, are wonderfully conservative in their institutions, and marriage between distant villages is uncommon. The man who dares to bring a wife from a distance gains great credit for an enterprising person. At Amana, for instance, we found an interpreter who had married a Foula woman, and this person was accounted strong-minded. He had either learnt the Foula dialect from his wife or had acquired it while he was staying at Foula courting her.