The Kiwai people are somewhat different from the Torres Straits islanders in appearance and customs; their skin is very slightly lighter, and the nose is more arched; they do not use ceremonial masks except for the final stage of initiation, and they build long houses. There are other differences which need not now be mentioned. I think it is very probable that they came down the Fly River and drove some at least of the pre-existing population before them.
A very interesting feature about the Kiwai natives is that they are still in a totemistic stage of culture; in other words, their social life is bound up with a reverence for certain natural objects. A community is composed of certain clans, each of which is associated with a particular class of object; it may be a crocodile, a croton, or a pandanus tree. The animal or bird, or even an inanimate object, is the nurumara, as they call it, of every member of that clan, and a representation of that nurumara or totem is often worn on the person or carved on objects or otherwise employed as a kind of armorial bearings.
The following is a list of all the totems I have been able to record from Kiwai Island:—
- Sibara, crocodile.
- Diwari, cassowary.
- Demauru-uru, a catfish.
- Soko, nipa palm.
- Abiomabio, mangrove.
- Oso, croton or dracæna.
- Oi, coconut palm.
- Dudu-mabu, a reed.
- Korobe, a crab that lives in the nipa palm.
- Mabere-uru, a tree.
- Bud-uru, a kind of fig tree.
- Gagari-mabu, a small variety of bamboo.
- Duboro-mabu, pandanus.
- Nowai-dua, Polynesian chestnut.
- Noora, a stone.
There is a remarkably disproportionate number of plant to animal totems, which is very unusual, and even one of these, korobe, is associated with soko, the nipa palm being the main totem, while the crab that inhabits it appears to be subsidiary.
I have previously drawn attention to the large number of decorative designs on objects from the Fly River and neighbouring coast of New Guinea that are derived from plants. As we had then no information on the subject, I did not venture to offer an explanation, though I did suggest that the decorative employment of animals in Torres Straits and in the Louisiades and neighbouring islands was due to totemism. The distinctive character of the decorative art of this region can now be similarly explained.
Totemism has a restricted distribution in British New Guinea. We could find no trace of it in the Central District either among the Motu stock or among the hill-tribes that we visited. Sir William Macgregor has recently stated that it is prevalent all over the east end of the Possession, but it disappears at Mairu or Table Bay. There is no true totemism in the eastern tribe of Torres Straits. It is true that there were dog and pigeon men in Murray Islands, but the dog and pigeon dances during one of the Malu ceremonies were admitted to have been introduced by ancient culture heros from the western tribe, where I discovered totemism twelve years ago.
Fig. 7. Native Drawings of some of the Nurumara (Totems) of Kiwai
Oi (coconut palm), oso (croton or dracæna), soka (nipa palm), korobe (the crab that lives in the latter), sibara (crocodile), diwari (cassowary). The crocodile is represented by a leg only, and the cassowary by its footprint.