“The most remarkable thing about them is the case that each man wears, his only article of clothing; it is made of a long yellow gourd, about two inches in diameter at the base and tapering to about half an inch at the pointed end. It is worn with the pointed end upwards and is kept in position by a string round the waist. As the length of the case—some of them measure more than fifteen inches—is more than a quarter of the height of the man himself, it gives him a most extraordinary appearance. Every man carries a bow and arrows in his hand and a plaited fibre bag of quite elaborate design slung on his back. Two men wore necklaces of very rough scraps of shell and one had a strip of fur round his head. Two others wore on their heads curious helmet-like hats of grass ornamented with feathers.
“One man had a diminutive axe made of a piece of soft iron about three inches long, set in a handle like those of the stone axes. They must have some bigger axes, as they have cut down some very large trees and the marks on the stumps look as if they had been made with fairly sharp instruments. The clearing altogether is very considerable, probably fifty acres or more. The ground is covered with the sweet-potato plant, and in many places ‘taro’ has been carefully picked out. They have a few coarse-looking bananas, some of which they offered to us.
“Their voices are rather high-pitched and one of them, who met us first and called several of the others to come and see us, ended his calls with a very curious shrill jodelling note. When we came away we offered them cloth and beads to come with us and show us a better way, but they were either too frightened or too lazy to do so. We got back to camp after ten hours’ hard going, drenched with rain and covered with leeches, but well-pleased with the success of the day.”[14]
That was the last that we saw for a long time of the Tapiro pygmies, for it was evident that the Kapare River was useless as a means of approach to the Snow Mountains and we had to turn our attention to the country to the N.E. of the Mimika. Moreover, it was impossible to keep the camp there supplied with provisions, as we were at that time entirely dependent for transport on the goodwill of the Papuans.
NATIVES AS CARRIERS
Generally speaking we always remained on excellent terms with the natives and very rarely had any trouble with them. Except that we bought from them the “atap” for our houses, we got little or no help from the people of Wakatimi, but the people of Parimau assisted us in a number of ways. At first, as I have shewn, we had considerable difficulty in persuading them to work for us as carriers; but when they found that they really did receive the payment they were promised, they were willing and sometimes even anxious to carry loads for us, though we often had to wait a few days until it suited their convenience to start. It was a pity that they were never willing to travel further than about three days’ march from their village, but as there were long periods when we were entirely dependent on them for land transport, we counted ourselves lucky in their agreeing to work at all.
Chiefly owing to the help of the natives we were able to make and keep supplied for several months another camp on the Wataikwa River, three days’ march north-east from Parimau. When they went out there first, they were accustomed to receive their pay, cloth and beads or a small knife at the end of the journey; but later, when wages rose, as they inevitably did with every successive journey, it seemed to be absurd to waste perhaps half a load by carrying axes and knives to be given in payment at the end of the march. So a plan was adopted of giving them at the Wataikwa camp a paper authorising them to demand payment on their return to Parimau, and it was a gratifying tribute to the confidence that they had in us that they readily fell in with the scheme. Before starting they were shewn the knife or axe or whatever it was that they would receive for their labour, and at the end they raced back with their scraps of paper to Parimau, covering in a few hours the distance that had taken them three days on the outward journey. Some of the less energetic people in the village, when they saw that their friends received a knife or an axe by merely presenting a small piece of paper to the man in charge of the camp at Parimau, thought that they might easily earn the same reward, and they were rather astonished to find that the small scraps of paper, which they handed in, produced nothing at all or only a serious physical rebuff. But they were so childlike in their misdemeanours that one could not be seriously angry with them.
OUR RELATIONS WITH THE NATIVES
They shewed their confidence in our honesty in another very flattering way. During the period of the most frequent floods at Parimau, when they were liable to be washed away at any moment, the people took most of their movable possessions out of their houses and hid them in safe places in the jungle. But many of them merely brought their goods across to our side of the river and deposited them without any attempt at concealment within a few yards of our camp, apparently knowing that there they would be perfectly secure from theft.