Pygmies & Papuans: The Stone Age To-day in Dutch New Guinea

by A. F. R. Wollaston

THE ISLAND RIVER

On the second day after leaving the Utakwa we entered the Island River by one of its many mouths, and after we had gone up it a few miles we realised that in the matter of size it is to the Utakwa as that river is to the Mimika. The banks are low and swampy and mostly covered with mangroves for several miles from the coast. Further on the banks are a few feet above the level of high water and we saw many trees that looked like good timber trees and others of considerable beauty, notably a wide-spreading acacia-like tree (Albizia moluccana), and a very graceful palm (Oncosperma filamentosum) like a Betel-nut palm growing in clumps by the waterside. We noticed also a number of Bread-fruit trees (Artocarpus sp.) bigger than any I have seen elsewhere, but none of them appeared to bear fruit.

We steamed up the river for one hundred and twelve nautical miles to the Swallow, the depôt ship and base camp of the Dutch exploring expedition. The river at that point is about three hundred yards wide, but the current is swift and there are many shallow sand banks, which make further navigation impossible for a ship as large as the Valk.

A PAPUAN WITH TWO TAPIRO PYGMIES.

The Dutch expedition had been established for several months in the country and had made very considerable progress towards the North. From the Swallow they had proceeded up the river two days’ journey by steam launch and six days beyond that by canoes as far as the river was navigable, a distance of more than one hundred miles. Thence they had gone North, and in nine marches they had reached a height of ten thousand feet at a point which appeared to be on the watershed of the main mountain range of the island. One of the principal objects of the expedition was to cross New Guinea from South to North, and it was hoped that from the furthest point they had reached they would soon arrive at one of the upper tributaries of the Kaiserin Augusta, the large river which enters the sea in German territory. They were at that time busily occupied in transporting supplies up to their furthest camp with a view to continuing the journey, but shortly afterwards the expedition was crippled by sickness and the project was abandoned. We spent two days alongside of the Swallow transferring to her the stores and many of the men that we had brought from the Utakwa and taking away the sick and time-expired members of the Island River expedition, amongst them being Lieut. Van der Wenn of the Netherlands Navy, who was attached to the expedition as surveyor.

On our way down the Island River we saw many things which we had missed on the way up, because we had entered the river and steamed up through several hours of darkness. First we came to isolated houses by the river bank of the same type as the Mimika houses, but larger and better built; near them we saw a few natives, who appeared to be very shy and retreated hastily into the jungle when the steamer approached.

Lower down, when we were within about thirty miles of the sea, we came to a large village of fifty or sixty houses, some of which were raised on piles near the edge of the river and the others were built in the trees, where they presented a most astonishing appearance. They are square and apparently well-made houses with ridgepole roof and walls of “atap,” the entrance is by a hole in the floor which is reached by a vertical ladder of bamboo from the ground. One house was at a height of certainly not less than sixty feet above the ground in a very slender tree, and the position of the inhabitants, when the wind blew, must have been far from enviable. Unfortunately the sun was low and directly behind the village so that I was unable to obtain photographs of the tree-dwellings. The people there showed no fear of us, but stood on the bank and shouted and waved their spears.

A few miles further down the river we came to another large village of yet a different character. The houses there were all built on piles, but while a few of them were of the usual small size, the majority were quite unlike anything else we had seen in that part of New Guinea. They were huge barn-like structures raised on piles ten or more feet above the ground, and the length of some of them must have been from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet. It was quite evident that these were communal dwellings, indicating a social system entirely different from that of the surrounding districts, and it was very tantalising to pass them within a few yards and not to be able to visit them. The village extended for about a mile along the East bank and the natives that we saw must have numbered at least a thousand. The men were all entirely naked and the women were only dressed in the scantiest strip of bark-cloth. In other respects they appeared, as far as one could tell from such a rapid survey of them, to be very similar to the Mimika Papuans in their features and their short hair and their absence of adornments.