Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

by Alfred C. Haddon

We reached Saibai in the afternoon, and went ashore for a stroll. Saibai is a relatively large low island, but it is scarcely more than a ring-like, vegetated sandbank surrounding a huge swamp. The natives, numbering about one hundred and fifty to two hundred, are a quiet, industrious people, and grow a sufficient quantity of garden produce. We found them very intelligent, and anxious to assist us in gaining information.

We all went after breakfast on Sunday, October 23rd, to attend the morning service, which should have been held at nine o’clock, but was postponed till our arrival. This church was opened about two years ago, and is a very creditable edifice, entirely built by the natives. The walls and roof are of corrugated iron, and the architecture is of the plainest; but the people are deservedly proud of their effort, which not only represents time, energy, and money spent by themselves, but it is also the outward and visible sign of their own advance in civilisation, they feel it to be a bond of union between themselves and white Christians. It is easy to sneer at the plainness—ugliness if you will—of a tin tabernacle, but within an ungainly chrysalis there may be enshrined an incipient butterfly; the psyche of the savage, or barbarian, whether black or white, may similarly emerge from the baldest and stiffest of meeting-houses.

It is often very pathetic to see the evident strivings of these people to be like the white man; to my mind they are too ready to cast away their past, for with the crudities and social unrest of savagery there are flung aside also many of the excellent moral codes and social safeguards of the old order of things. Much native wheat is rooted up with the tares.

After the service I photographed the interior of the church, and later showed the natives photographs and sketches and chatted on various subjects, and altogether had a very profitable day. Before our midday dinner I had completed a census of the island, with the totem of every individual, and as I walked through the village the names of the residents of every house were recorded. There was no time to trace the genealogies as far back as Rivers did for Murray Island and Mabuiag, but still, what was accomplished will enable one to get some insight into the social organisation of the people. Rivers did not enumerate the inhabitants of every house in Murray Island and Mabuiag because the clans were all mixed up, but as we had found in Kiwai the houses were clan-houses, I thought the same might possibly occur here. We found that formerly this was the case, and that the snake (Tabu) and wild sweet potato (Daibau) clans lived on one side of the village, and the crocodile (Kodal), dog (Umai), and cassowary (Sam) lived on the other side. This division of the village into clan groups was said to tend to faction fights, and so the missionary tried to mix them up. There are still, however, distinct traces to be found of clan groupings in the village. I have previously referred to the double grouping of the clans in Mabuiag and Pulu, and a similar dual division is common throughout Australia. On the mainland of New Guinea to the east there is often a dual grouping in a village, about which more information is required, but in this case there is at present no evidence to connect it with totemism.

Ten years ago Maino, the chief of Tut, who is a crocodile-man, as a sign of friendship, exchanged names with me, and on the strength of this, on arriving at Saibai, I claimed to be a crocodile-man also, and in this assertion was supported by Maino. The other crocodile-men at once acknowledged me, for a few minutes after I landed on the island a crocodile-man made me a present of some coconuts, and stated in doing so that we were relatives.

Later on when I was sitting among a group of natives showing pictures and chatting, someone hinted a doubt as to whether an Englishman could have a crocodile augŭd. Wherever one goes one always finds some incredulous person who will not bow unquestioningly to authority. I immediately rolled up my shirt sleeves and showed my vaccination marks, which I happen to have on both shoulders, and I pointed this out as a proof of my pretensions; the evidence at once silenced all sceptical remarks, and carried conviction. The whiteness of the skin of my upper arms, unburned as it was by the hot sun, attracted much attention, especially from the ladies.

I was chagrined to find that my clan, though formerly an important one here, was on the decline, and that a plant clan was now the most numerous. This appears to be the only true plant totem in Torres Straits, and forms another interesting link with the Fly River district. Intermarriage in the same clan is prohibited; but I believe they now kill and eat their totems.

I wanted to obtain a special kind of yellow earth that is traded as paint from this to the other islands and to New Guinea, but we were told that snakes would bite anyone who went into the bush on a Sunday. These snakes must be very degenerate subjects of the Old Serpent, the Father of Lies, if they support so strict a Sabbatarianism.

Unfortunately the triple-crowned coconut palm that I sketched on my last visit here has died, so I could not photograph it as I had hoped to do. When I was making the sketch I was, as usual, surrounded by a bevy of onlookers, and one man said to me, “I wish I could make a coconut palm grow as fast as you draw it!” As I sketched in the neighbouring palms, the bystanders mentioned the name of the owner of each, and thus I learned that every tree is owned by somebody, and in a group of palms several men or women may own various trees. It is common for a man to own land, but not to own all the trees or plants that grow on it.