Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

The Mission Station on Murray Island is on the leeward or western side of the island; but when we went across the island—to Las, for example—we found the continuous wind very refreshing. In Mabuiag the Mission Station is on the windward or south-east side of the island, and we at once felt braced by the change of air. There is no doubt that, owing to this, we could work better, and there was less temptation to slackness than was the case in Murray Island.

Mabuiag is a larger island than Murray, and consists of several hills three or four hundred feet in height, some are about five hundred feet high. It is, roughly speaking, triangular in outline, each side measuring about a couple of miles. Owing to the character of ancient igneous rocks the island is only moderately fertile, and the vegetation has more of an Australian character than has that of Murray Island. There are also small grassy plains with scattered pandanus trees, and here and there a cycad. The somewhat conical rocky hills are mostly covered with trees, with grassy patches on their summits. Water is rather scarce.

The little harbour, with its jetty, is situated at the most easterly point of the island. It is here Cowling has his store. The Mission Station is on the beach on the south-eastern side of the island, at one end of the only village in the island. Formerly the houses were more or less scattered over the island, but the missionaries have induced the natives to congregate in one spot.

Compared with the Murray Islanders, the people of Mabuiag are much better off so far as clothes and European commodities are concerned; but, as already stated, the island is much less fertile—indeed, little native food is now grown, barely enough for daily use.

Mabuiag has been for a longer time, and also far more thoroughly, under the influence of the white man than has Murray Island. Consequently the social and economic conditions have been more modified, and one immediately perceives that the people are more civilised, and it does not take long to find out that they are more intelligent as a whole. The men do more fishing, and are altogether more industrious than are the Murray Islanders.

At first sight one would be inclined to put all this down to the credit of the influence of the white men, but I am by no means sure that this is entirely the case. When the results of our investigations are completed and published it will, we suspect, be evident that the Mabuiag people are naturally more intelligent than the Murray Islanders.

Mabuiag is situated half-way between New Guinea and Australia, and it was the intermediate trading station between the natives of the Prince of Wales group and those of Saibai, who, on the other hand, had trading relations with the coastal people of Daudai, as the neighbouring part of New Guinea is locally termed.

The Mabuiag men were skilful sailors and fishermen, and they combined with this a little head-hunting and a fair amount of trading, all of which occupations tend to develop the intelligence. They also had the advantage of not having a very fertile soil. It was therefore necessary for them to till the ground fairly assiduously if they were to have enough garden produce to sustain life in comfort; this probably assisted towards making them industrious.

Muralug, the largest island in Torres Straits, and one of the nearest to Australia, has very similar physical conditions, but the people were at a much lower social grade. My impression is that they were not so enterprising on the sea as the Mabuiag men, and certainly they were greatly inferior to them so far as general culture and tilling of the soil were concerned. Indeed, most of their time was spent wandering about in the bush and living on what fruit happened to be in season. Macgillivray states that none of the land “by cultivation has been rendered fit for the permanent support of man.” It is possible that the Muralug people, although of the same stock as the Mabuiag folk, were influenced for bad by their neighbours on the Cape York peninsula, while the Mabuiag men were braced by contact with the Papuans of the mainland of New Guinea.