Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

Every now and again we ran one thing hard on Murray Island; for example, for a week or so some of us studied “cat’s cradle” games. McDougall soon became fascinated by these, and Myers eventually succumbed. But kamut, as the natives call their string puzzles, is a very different matter from the uninteresting and simple performance to which we were accustomed as children.

Two distinct kinds of operations may be performed with string, namely, tricks and puzzles. The former usually are movements which appear to form knots or ties, but which really run out freely. The puzzles are complicated figures which are supposed to bear some resemblance to natural objects. Our “cat’s cradle” belongs to the latter category, but we have also numerous string tricks.

Some of the string tricks are the same as those practised at home. One was intended to represent some food held in the hand which was offered to the spectator, but when the latter attempted to take it, saying, “You got some food for me?” the food disappeared as the player replied, “No got.” A similar, apparently knotted puzzle terminated in two loops, which represented a mouse’s ears, but on attempting to catch it the whole ran out.

Some of the string puzzles represented divers objects, as a bird’s nest, coconut palm, the setting sun, a fish spear, a crab, a canoe, and many others. Quite a number were moving puzzles—working models, in fact; such were, for example, a sea-snake swimming, a man dancing, and so forth. Some of these were indelicate. The most interesting was a fight between a Dauar man and a Murray Islander. In this kamut, by working the strings, two loose knots collided in the centre and became mixed up, but eventually one knot returns with a loop on it, which is the successful Murray Islander returning with the head of his adversary!

Little songs are sung to many string puzzles as they are being played, which may be the relics of some magical formulæ. Several kamut puzzles illustrate legendary beings such as Geigi, the boy king-fish, or his mother Nageg, the trigger-fish. One represents the taboo grounds of Gazir and Kiam, where some of the Malu ceremonies were held.

We learnt a good many of these kamut, but they were very difficult to remember, owing to the extreme complication of the processes in making the figures, and we had to practise them constantly. Eventually we invented a system of nomenclature, by means of which we found it possible to write down all the stages of manipulation; and we found as a rule the more complex the figure the easier it was to describe. By rigorous adherence to our system it will be possible for others to reproduce the Murray Island figures and to record others from elsewhere. Generally Rivers and Ray first learnt a particular puzzle, and gradually worked out the description by slowly performing the movements and dictating the processes to me, but I did not watch what they were doing.

Then one of them read out the description while I endeavoured to reproduce the puzzle from the verbal description alone. We were never satisfied until it can be so done without any possibility of mistake. We had many fights over the descriptions, and always felt very proud of ourselves when one account was satisfactorily finished. But I can very well imagine that had we been observed some people would have thought we were demented, or, at least, were wasting our time.

One afternoon some of us went to a kaikai, or feast. The word kaikai means food, a meal, a feast, or to eat. It is in use all over the South Seas, and is derived from the Polynesian kai (food). The Miriam (i.e. the Murray Island) name for a feast is wetpur. This was a funeral feast for the son of “Captain Cook,” of Erub; the boy had died about a year previously.

The proceedings opened with a kolap, or top-spinning match. Top-spinning was a great institution in Murray Island during the time of our stay there. On one occasion there were thirty tops spinning at the same time. The men sang songs, and there was great cheering-on of slackening tops, and shouting and jeering when one stopped. At the critical time, as a top was dying, great care was taken to shelter it from the wind so as to prolong its “life” a few seconds longer. At one match we timed the four best tops, and found they span for 27½, 26¾, 25¼, and 24 minutes respectively.