Partly on account of the migratory habits of the natives, and partly owing to the fact that at no hour of the day until nightfall are all the people in or about the houses, it was never found possible to take a census of a village, but from our observations we arrived at the conclusion that the number of men was decidedly greater than that of women.
The number of a man’s wives was a favourite subject for boasting and they often assured us that they had two or even three wives, but we only knew two men who certainly had two wives; on the other hand we knew a considerable number of men who had no wives at all. It appears that a man may take a wife from his own village or from a village in the same district; thus a Wakatimi man may take a wife from Obota or Periepia, and a Parimau man from Kamura. There were two women at Parimau who were said to come from Wakatimi, but whether they had been voluntarily exchanged or were the spoils of war we were not told.
It was unfortunate that we learnt nothing about the customs and ceremonies connected with marriage. A wedding took place at Wakatimi when we all happened to be absent, and the only definite description that we were able to get of it was that the bride, who arrived from another village by canoe, crawled on her hands and knees from the water’s edge to the village, a distance of about a hundred yards, and most of it through mud.
Beyond question, the happiest time in the lives of the Papuans is their childhood, when they are free to play from morning to night and need not take part in the ceaseless search for food, which occupies so much of the time of their elders. As infants they are carried on the backs of their mothers and very often of their fathers, secured by a wide strap of bark cloth, the ends of which are tied across the carrier’s chest. It is very seldom that you hear them cry and they appear to give very little trouble; their mothers are very careful of the cleanliness of the infants. Very early in life they begin to walk and almost as soon they learn to swim. In fine weather they often spend the greater part of the day in the river and it is a very pretty sight to see a crowd of little Papuans playing together in the water. Sometimes they are joined by the women, who seem to enjoy the fun quite as much as the children. One of their favourite games is to pretend to be a school of porpoises, whose rolling headers they imitate admirably. They very soon become powerful swimmers, and I remember one day seeing a small boy, who cannot have been more than eight years old, swim across a river in tremendous flood, while the party of men who were with him had to seek a place where they could safely swim across half a mile lower down.
GAMES OF THE CHILDREN
There are a number of games too that they play on dry land: they play the universal game of lying in wait for your enemy and suddenly pouncing out on him; they have great battles in which they are armed with miniature bows and arrows, and reed stems take the place of spears, and shrill yells make up for the lack of bloodshed. There is another game which I saw played three or four times in exactly the same manner, and which, by reason of it somewhat resembling a children’s game called “Nuts in May,” is perhaps worth describing. Eight little boys, each one carrying a long flowering grass, stood in two parties of four facing each other a few yards apart. At first they waved their grasses and then danced towards each other, crossed and took the places that had been opposite to them; this they repeated twice. Then they ran round and round in a circle about five yards wide waving their grasses and shouting until they stopped suddenly and sat down in a bunch together. After a rest of about half a minute, they jumped up and ran round again in the same circle, now shouting and grabbing as they ran handsful of sand, which they threw over their heads into the air or between their legs into the face of the one behind; then a sudden stop and again they all sat down in a bunch. After this they jumped up, ran all together for a few yards shouting loudly, hurled all their grasses as high into the air as they could, and the game was ended.
Like the children of more civilised races, the young Papuans are fond of imitating their elders. The boys like to be seen walking about with men, to copy their swaggering walk, and to sit about smoking idly and watch the women at work. The little girls sometimes contrive to make grass garments like those worn by the women; they make small dolls’ houses in which they themselves, or infants still smaller than they, are the dolls, and they like to be seen baling out the canoes or carrying sand for the houses. But in their case pretence is soon changed to reality, and when they are quite young they are made to accompany their mothers in the serious business of life, while the boys are still leading a gay life with no responsibilities. Both boys and girls very early become proficient in the management of canoes, and a child of tender years will confidently steer a canoe through rough water which would end in certain shipwreck for one of us.
THE BUSINESS OF LIFE
The chief business in the lives of the Papuans is that of all animals, human and others, namely, the search for food. But while the civilised races have learnt to foresee wants of the future, and have established a system of agriculture which provides food for everybody and leaves a part of the population free to pursue other occupations, the Papuans take no thought for the morrow, and the search for food becomes literally a hand to mouth business, which occupies the attentions of every member of the community.