Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

There do not appear now to be any ordinary totem restrictions on Murray Island, as there certainly were till very recently in Tut, Mabuiag, and other of the western islands of Torres Straits, and as certainly there are still in Kiwai.

In Kiwai a man may not kill or eat his nurumara. The children inherit the father’s nurumara, and the wife assumes that of her husband, as she has to go and live with him in the clan house. This custom accounts for the exchange of women when a man marries; thus it is usual for a man’s family to give a suitable girl in exchange for his bride, and so the balance of the sexes is approximately maintained.

Dedeamo, my interpreter, was a croton; his wife was originally a coconut, their little boy was a croton. When I asked Dedeamo what was his wife’s name he refused to tell me. One frequently finds that people in a low stage of culture decline to tell you their own names, lest you should obtain power over them, but one can generally get from them the names of other people; this good man evidently thought it was wiser to be on the safe side.

The Hon. B. A. Hely, the Resident Magistrate of the Western Division, has recently published a memorandum (Annual Report B. N. G., July, 1897, to June, 1878, C. A., 119-1898) on totemism in Kiwai and elsewhere in the neighbourhood, in which he says that when a tree is the nurumara of a clan, the members of that clan do not eat the fruit of that tree or use it for building or other purposes. For instance, the soko people roof their houses with sago leaves instead of the customary nipa palm. He adds: this custom is broken through in Kiwai villages, but it is maintained on the mainland. The duboro-mabu people make their mats of banana leaves instead of employing the leaves of the pandanus. The gagari-mabu people do not use bamboo. It is believed that the killing, eating, or using for any purpose of a nurumara would result in severe eruptions on the body.

Mr. Hely also informs us that in fighting or dancing the representation of the man’s nurumara is painted on his chest or back with clay or coloured earth, and it is a fixed law in battle that no man should attack or slay another who bore the same cognisance as himself. A stranger from hostile tribes can visit in safety villages where the clan of his nurumara is strong, and visitors from other tribes are fed and lodged by the members of the nurumara to which they severally belong.

At Iasa we bought an oval board about three feet in length that has a face carved on one side. It is called gope, and is hung up in houses to bring good luck; it is sometimes placed in the bow of a canoe for the same purpose. During the evening we spent there a similar but much smaller one (seventeen and a half inches in length) was pointed out to me by a native in the east end-room, and I managed to secure it also; but in the course of my confidential talk the following day I discovered that this was not a gope, but a madubu, or bull-roarer; they had previously spoken of it as a gope as some boys were near, and these were not permitted to know about the madubu. In my memoir on The Decorative Art of British New Guinea I had hazarded the suggestion that the gope is derived from the bull-roarer, and the evidence now appears fairly conclusive on this point.

One function of the madubu is to ensure good crops of yams, sweet potatoes, and bananas. I was not able to find out the whole ceremony, but gathered that a fence is made in the bush—one man goes first and makes a hole, and others come later with the madubus. When the natives were telling me about this I asked to be allowed to see a madubu, and one was brought. It was a thin ovoid slat of wood, very roughly made. I offered a round metal looking-glass for it, which was accepted. Two others were brought me on the same terms, one being a smaller specimen. I was particularly requested not to let women or children see them, and not to show them to the Saguane people, as “they no savvy that thing.” Of course, I carefully kept my promise to this effect.

A few years ago Chalmers sent a bull-roarer to England from the mouth of the Fly River, which was labelled “Buruma-maramu, a bull-roarer: when used, all women and children leave the village and go into the bush. The old men swing it and show it to the young men when the yams are ready for digging (May and June).” The name evidently signifies “the mother of the yams,” buruma being a variety of yam, and maramu is “mother.”

The bull-roarer is also employed in the initiation of boys into manhood. I gather that there are two initiation ceremonies; at the first the madubu is shown to the initiates in a tabooed and fenced-in portion of the bush. The second moguru ceremony takes place in the rainy season or north-west monsoon. The boys to be initiated, koiameri, are taken to the bush, and the orara is shown to them. This is a wooden image of a nude woman, which was described to me as “god belong moguru”; a smaller form of it is known as umuruburo, this is a thin flat board cut into the shape of a human being. During the ceremony the men are decorated, and wear a head-dress made of cuscus skin; or some wear on their heads long, doubled-up strips of the skin, decorated with feathers. The skin head-dresses, marari, like the images, must not be seen by women. I managed to secure both forms of headgear.