Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

After the evening meal we sat on mats by the light of lamps in the village inclosure, and yarned and played “cat’s cradle.” Soon the bell sounded for prayers, and Enocha came with his service-book, and several others gathered together. Pasi started the hymn, read the lesson, and prayed, of course, all in Murray Island language.

Very soon after this the small boys arranged themselves round some branched posts which had been planted in the sand so as to inclose an oval space, and clamoured out for tamar. Tamar is a sort of market that was introduced here by Loyalty Islanders from Lifu and Mare, and which appears now to be firmly established, though its popularity waxes and wanes from time to time. I heard of it ten years before, but never witnessed it, so I was very pleased at the present opportunity.

A crowd soon collected, made up chiefly of children, and a fire was lit in the centre of the area. We sat apart, as this was our first appearance at a tamar. There was a great deal of noise and fun going on. The game is as follows. The players bring firewood (i.e. coconut-palm leaves and other fuel) and food; the “master” (of ceremonies) goes round the circle, standing in front of each player in turn. The latter holds up the object he has brought, saying, “Tamar,” and mentions what he holds up. The “master” asks, “Where did you get this?” And a reply is made which is supposed to be a true answer, but as a laugh often followed, I suspect some humbugging went on. This took some time. Then a prayer was made!—why, I don’t know; it seemed very comical in a game—and then “New man, new man!” was shouted out, and Pasi, Rivers, and I went into a circle near the fire, and a small mat was placed there too. Several brought us coconuts as a present, which were placed on the mat. Then the “master” pointed a glowing fire-stick at me, and said words to this effect: “You see this fire-stick; you go home and look after wife belong you. If you do not bring firewood and food next time, you will be thrown into the sea.” The tamar concluded after Rivers had been similarly introduced, and Rivers and I very shortly turned in, as we were very tired; but Pasi stayed up, as he wanted to hear the small boys practise their songs!

We were up early next morning, and got the local legend of the disreputable Iruam from Pasi and Gadodo. Soon after an early breakfast of wild sweet potatoes and green coconuts, and an attendance at morning prayers, I took my camera and notebook, and went along the beach to pick up some information of which I had previously gained clues.

Soon after starting I heard about an ancient fighting custom associated with Ziriam Zogo, at a place called Meket. There was a turtle-shell mask, which no woman was allowed to see, that was kept in a hole in the rock. I asked Pasi to sketch the mask for me in the sand; then I asked another man to do so. Of course I did not let either look at the other man’s representation until they had finished. As I found they differed, I made further inquiries, and found that an old man named Wano, who lived closed by, knew all about the ceremony; so he was fetched, and he drew a diagram on the sand. By dint of much questioning and pantomimic action, I found out something about the ceremony and the character of the mask. This consisted of a turtle-shell face, with pearl-shell eyes surmounted by a turtle-shell crescent about three feet across, decorated on each horn with a black-tipped feather of the white Torres Straits pigeon and two seed rattles. Attached to the chin of the mask was a rope about six feet long, to which a large number of human lower jawbones were tied. Before I left Murray Island Wano made a rough wooden model of the mask for me.

After a fight a number of men would come here with bows and arrows and clubs, especially with the former. The men formed a circle and danced with appropriate shooting gestures; two men painted red and wearing dance-petticoats danced in crouching attitudes in the centre, and all sang a weird song. One of the central dancers would wear the mask and would carry in his right hand a club, and in his left a bleeding, decapitated human head. The other man supported the rope of human jawbones.

At the back of my old friend Mamai’s house at Warwe was a shrine of stones and shells, on which were two stones called Zabarker. Zabarker was formerly a woman who came from New Guinea, and Mamai told me her short, but not very edifying story. She is now a somewhat pyramidal black stone resting on a saucer-shaped stone of granite, which represents her canoe. The upper stone is a piece of the local lava, but the granite occurs only in the western islands, some hundred and twenty miles or more away, or in the hill of Mabudauan, in New Guinea, also about the same distance from Murray Island. I now find there are quite a number of these foreign stones in the island, which evidently point to some forgotten migration from, or former intercourse with, the western islands.

A little further along the coast is the ancient and efficacious Wag Zogo, at the small cape called Tur Pit. In a sandy-bottomed recess in a block of lava on the foreshore lie an oval and a spherical granitic boulder, named respectively Neiu and Sager. Some four or five men used to take a number of plants called geribe and coconut leaves, which they pointed repeatedly at the stones, and “a big wind” would immediately come from the south-east. As long as the leaves remained there, so long would the wind continue. Here again we find foreign stones, which I was informed came from New Guinea. I asked if they could make a south-east wind during the north-west monsoon, but I was informed that the ceremony could only be done during the south-east season. In this, as in other cases, I found that the impossible was never attempted. A rain charm would not be made when there was no expectation of rain coming, or a south-east wind raised during the wrong season.

The sun beat fiercely on the sand beach, and the heat and glare, combined with the talking and excitement, tired us much, so we went back to Las and lay down for an hour or two in the cool, dark house. After another meal of boiled yams and a coconut drink, I went along the shore in the opposite direction and photographed an oblong stone on the beach, that was once a man named Iruam, who deservedly came to a bad end.