Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

As the procession was forming outside the chapel after the service, Ontong (who also had attended Mass) and I took the middle places, and helped carry the coffin to the grave, but after a short distance I was asked to desist, as I was taller than the others, and the equilibrium was disturbed.

The grave had been dug by natives, who stood by clothed in their usual fashion and decked with native finery, thus supplying a dramatic contrast between the ceremonial of an ancient Church and the religious and physical nudity of the savage.

At 8.30 a.m. we were back in the house for breakfast. By early afternoon Father Guis was groaning under an attack of fever. He was ill the previous Friday, and thought he was quit of it for a time; but his devotion to the deceased Brother had overtaxed his physical strength, and this, combined with the severe strain on his feelings, brought about a relapse. Truly the Fathers appear to be fighting against fate!

Soon after our midday meal I started on horseback with Father Guilbaud to the village of Ziria, where he was to conduct the Benediction. It is characteristic of the practical straightforward simplicity of this fraternity that the priest wore a large grey wide-awake hat, flannel shirt, corduroy trousers, and carpet slippers. We had a pleasant ride of somewhat under an hour, mainly along the sand beach.

After tea in the Mission house, Father Guilbaud and I went to the chapel, where a chair and prie-dieu were allotted me close to the altar rails, and in full view of the congregation. Opposite sat two Sisters, in charge of some small girls, and a third Sister presided at the harmonium. It was very pretty to see the naked little boys trotting hand in hand up the altar steps, bowing, and then darting to the right and squatting on the floor. Clothing among the males was almost a negative quantity; indeed, there was a marked absence of European dress of any description. Most of the bucks had painted their faces with red, black, and white pigments, the effect of which was certainly grotesque, and some were almost as much decorated with native finery as if they were going to a dance; one or two of the girls had freshly oiled themselves and were decorated with shell ornaments. The women folk all sat on the Sisters’ side of the chapel, and the men on the opposite side. The youngest children sat in the front rows, and in increasing ages further back, so that the old people were near the door.

Father Guilbaud preached a sermon in the native language, evidently on the Communion, and he had on the altar rails a large coloured picture-card illustrating the Last Supper; in the upper corners were two small pictures, one of Elijah being fed by ravens, and the other of a Catholic Communion Service. From time to time the good Father pointed with a small stick to details in the pictures. Believing so firmly as I do in visual instruction, I was particularly pleased with this innovation.

After the sermon came the ceremonial part of the service, and it was charming to see two Papuan lads act as acolytes, with their mop of black frizzly hair, copper-coloured skins, long red cassocks, and short white cotta, going through the service in a most devout and seemly fashion. When service was over the acolytes disrobed behind the altar and stepped forth, two all but absolutely nude savage dandies with shell ornaments and painted faces. It is to be hoped the grace in their hearts was of a more permanent character than the brief adorning of their persons with the garments of Christian ceremonial. A pleasant ride back in the cool of early evening completed a most enjoyable day.

A little later in the week we again visited Ziria, when we took some measurements of the natives and bought a few “curios,” mostly lime gourds. We exhibited the phonograph to the Sisters living in Ziria, and gave one rehearsal in the schoolroom, and another in the marea or club-house of the village, to excited audiences.

Ziria is quite an interesting village; some of its houses are similar to those lower down the coast, but others I recognised as belonging to a type characteristic of the Papuan Gulf. The people here certainly more resemble the coast people further east than those to the west, but they have a character of their own, and some appear to resemble the “typical Papuan” which Guillemard describes, and which he met with in the extreme north of New Guinea. This transitional area between the east and the west is marked, amongst other ways, by the men’s costume more resembling that of the Gulf men. The bark-cloth belt trails behind on the ground, and the young men wear, when they are ibitoe, a rather narrow tight wooden belt. One lad I saw wore his so tight that above the wooden belt and below the breast-bone and ribs the abdominal wall protruded like an inflated pouter pigeon’s crop; about an inch and a half below this belt was the tightly drawn ordinary bark-cloth belt, and in the interspace between the two belts the flesh exuded as a prominent ring. Another example of tight-lacing is given in the accompanying photograph.