One day, whilst I was busily engaged with my police in the erection of our Station buildings, I being, as I thought, the only European within miles of Cape Nelson, I was told that a diminutive whaleboat, with a white man and a native woman as its sole crew, was crawling up to the Station; and soon Mr. Ernie Patten, late ship’s boy on the Myrtle and prisoner at Samarai, appeared. “What the devil are you doing here?” I asked. “This coast is no place for solitary traders.” “Trading for bêche-de-mer and black-lipped shell with a tribe called Winiapi, just south of the Cape,” he replied, “and been doing well.” “You are mad,” I told him. “I have no village constable at or near that point, and the Winiapi are particularly unsafe at present. I cannot guarantee you even the slightest measure of protection there; in fact, I have a large bone to pick with them on my own account.” “I go at my own risk,” he said, “and there is no law to prevent me.” “Very true,” I answered; “if you are determined to commit suicide, I can’t stop you. I’ll send a message to the Winiapi though, that if you should happen to get killed by them, I will bring all the constabulary, Kaili Kaili, and Mokuru, and fight them at once; the trouble is, that they think they are safe among the gorges, rugged hills, and spurs of Mount Trafalgar. That is the best I can do for you, and I warn you that it is a poor best. Now, what do you want with me? I presume this is not a social call.” “A divorce from my wife,” he replied. “Who married her to you?” I asked. Patten told me, and I looked up the name of the man, and the Gazette notices of those empowered to celebrate marriages, and found it. “The Governor, Council, and all the Courts of New Guinea can’t undo that marriage,” I told him; “or, so far as I know, any Court in the world. In the Royal Letters of Instruction, granting our Constitution, it is expressly stated that no Ordinance permitting divorce shall be passed by Legislative Council. You had better fix up things with your wife, or tell me all about it; has she been going wrong?”
“It was like this,” said Patten. “My wife went ashore in a small canoe we had got from the natives to cook our dinner, and took my revolver with her; she was a long time, and suddenly I noticed that she had gone to sleep alongside the cooking fire. I yelled at her, and threw a piece of ballast that got her in the ribs.” “What did you say to her?” I asked curiously. “I said, ‘You black daughter of a bitch, come and get a hiding.’ She said, ‘You ——! ——! ——! ——!’” (Here some awful language came.) “I got a rope’s end and showed it to her, then I started to pull up the anchor to shove the boat ashore, when she said, ‘You ——! ——! Stop it!’ and ups with the revolver and lets fly at me. I dodged below the gunwale, and every time I put my head up, she lets go at me again; she kept me like that for hours, until I swore that I would not touch her.” “How did you swear?” I asked, wondering what sort of oath this interesting couple would consider binding. He told me; it is not fit to be set down here, being a weird compound of blasphemy and obscenity. “Fetch your wife, Patten,” I told him, and he did so. “Mrs. Patten, what do you mean by potting at your husband?” “I am tired of being hided on the bare skin with a rope’s end,” replied that injured lady. “Well, Patten,” I remarked, “the only thing that I can see for it, is to shove you both into gaol: you, for licking your wife; her, for shooting at you. I can make you both very useful; but, of course, you will occupy separate cells, and will not be allowed to see one another.” Patten and his missus gazed dismally at me, then at one another, and then jawed rapidly together in Suau, a language I don’t understand. At last Patten said, “We want to make it up, please let us off.” Mrs. Patten also clamoured to be let off, and turned on tears. “All right; clear out, the pair of you,” I said; “but don’t let me hear any more of rope’s ending or revolver practice.” Patten then asked me to store the collection of shell and trepang he had already got, and also to lend him some trade goods. The reunited couple then left, to resume their dangerous trade.
The next thing I saw or heard of this pair, was their re-appearance, some time later, in a very distressed condition. The Winiapi had one day seized, tied up and beaten Patten, outraged his wife, and, after plundering his boat, turned them adrift in her; they had then fallen in with a Kaili Kaili canoe, whose crew had assisted them to make my Station. The Winiapi had not killed them, for fear of my vengeance; but had decided that, if they were merely ill-treated and looted, I should not bother my head about such palpably poor and unimportant people.
I was on the point of starting with Patten for Winiapi, when the Merrie England hove in sight, with Sir George Le Hunte and Barton, the Commandant, on board; and his Excellency decided to come with me. I took a couple of Kaili Kaili with us to act as interpreters, and, upon our arrival at Winiapi, induced the Governor to allow me to go first into the bush with these two men and endeavour to get into communication with the people, before they skipped for the hills. I had gone some distance inland, when the Kaili Kaili said it was not good enough, and refused to go without the police; accordingly I sent one back with a note for Barton, asking him to send on my detachment. He, Captain Harvey of the Merrie England, and all the constabulary, followed at once, leaving the Governor behind, as the country was too rough and hilly for him; Patten also came with them to point out his assailants. At last I, or rather the remaining Kaili Kaili with me, induced a number of Winiapi to come and talk, while the police silently sneaked up; Barton, Harvey and I, having got the natives engaged in conversation, Patten appeared and indicated about six of the offenders among the crowd. At the sight of Patten they tried to make a bolt, but too late; one of Harvey’s sailor fists shot out and took the man nearest to him in the eye, knocking him over, whereupon Harvey sat upon him and pounded him into submission; several others were caught by the police. War horns now blew and drums beat; but though there was a large crowd of natives at a short distance, they were apparently not inclined to try conclusions with us, and at length we departed, with our prisoners, unmolested. Patten, who had suffered a severe fright, now decided, much to my relief, to confine his trading operations on the north-east coast to localities such as Capes Nelson and Vogel, where village constables were established; but I continued my feud with the Winiapi, after the Merrie England had departed with the Governor and Barton.
They retaliated for the capture of the men responsible for the Patten outrage, by murdering in cold blood an Arifamu man who was friendly to the Government; I then chased them over their hills and looted their gardens, but could not catch a single man, for they were much too smart to meet me in open fight. This time they had their revenge by killing and eating some Mambare carriers, whereupon I seized and destroyed as many of their canoes as I could lay my hands upon; they then built fresh ones and hid them. At last I seized their fishing grounds and boycotted them; threatening with severe punishment any tribe, living to the north or south of Winiapi, whom I might find trading or having any relations with them, and offering a reward for any Winiapi native caught outside his own district and brought to me. The result was, that they became afraid to venture forth in small parties to fish or visit other tribes, lest they should encounter a village constable from an adjacent tribe, who would most assuredly have summoned help and hauled them away to the Government Station. After being thus bottled up in their own district for some time, the Winiapi tribe became rather tired of this state of affairs; and they soon sent their principal chief, with about one hundred followers, to promise to obey the laws in the future, and to request that the chief’s son should be made a village constable.
About this time, April, 1901, I received loud squeals and complaints from the Maisina; they said in effect, “You have broken us and prevented us from fighting other people, but we have lost over thirty men by attacks from the Doriri in the last few months, and very many people by them before that; if others are to be protected from us, surely we should be defended from our enemies.” I was now placed in a very awkward position. The Maisina’s appeal for help was a very natural one: if they were forced to obey the laws and behave themselves, they were quite justified in requiring the power forcing them into that position, to see that others also complied with the same conditions; but I had only fifteen constabulary to police a large Division, and I had no assistant officer, or responsible person, to leave in charge of my Station. The Doriri were a mere name, in so far as Government was concerned; no one knew their strength, the locality they inhabited, or anything else about them. All we knew definitely was that a previous expedition, under Sir Francis Winter, Captain Butterworth the Commandant, and Moreton, R.M., had utterly failed to reach their country or deal with them, and left as a record of its sole result, a surmise by Sir Francis Winter, “that the Doriri were a tribe inhabiting the Upper Waters of the Musa River.” This was a very vague geographical definition, for the Musa River split into three widely divergent branches, namely, the Adaua, the Domara, and the Moni; the Doriri, therefore, might be five, ten, or twenty days’ journey inland, over uninhabited country.
Still, something had to be done, if the prestige of the Government was to be upheld; and I knew that every tribe was now watching to see what that something would be. “I will soon go to the country of the Doriri and break them,” I told the Maisina, “but you must find me carriers.” “If you go to the land of the Doriri,” was the unbelieving reply, “we will find you carriers.” “Yes,” I said, “and you will bolt at night, leaving me in the lurch, as you did when Sir Francis Winter trusted you. Now, you are distinctly to understand this: when I go after the Doriri, I am going to find them and fight them; if you people desert and prevent me from finding and fighting them, I shall come back and fight you instead, and anything the Doriri have done to you in the past will be as nothing in comparison to what I shall make you suffer.” “We will see,” said the Maisina, “when you go after the Doriri, instead of talking.”
Shortly afterwards the Merrie England came in, with the Governor, Sir Francis Winter, Captain Barton, and a strong force of constabulary on board. I went to Sir George Le Hunte, taking with me a list of the more recent Doriri outrages. “Something must be done at once, sir, to stop these marauders; I can go with my men, but I am not strong enough; also it is work requiring a second officer,” I reported. His Excellency and Sir Francis Winter discussed the matter, and then the Governor said, “You can have Captain Barton and his police, for the Doriri apparently require attention urgently. Discuss the matter with the Commandant.” “What are you going to do when you find the Doriri, Monckton?” asked Barton. “Demand the surrender of the men responsible for the more recent murders,” I replied. “I won’t bother about anything that took place more than two months ago.” “If you don’t get them, what then?” asked Barton. “Shoot and loot,” I answered laconically. “I don’t think we should do anything of the sort,” said Barton. “I think that we should warn the people that they must not raid the coastal tribes.” “Rats!” I said. “They would regard us then as fools, and promptly come and butcher a score or two more of people living under my protection. The only way you can stop these beggars hunting their neighbours with a club, is to bang them with a club.” Sir George and Sir Francis sat silently listening to our conversation, and afterwards in our official minutes of instruction I found this embodied: “In the event of your finding the natives, and their opposing you, you will take such steps as may be necessary to bring them into submission; if they do not show opposition, you will use your best efforts to bring them into friendly intercourse, but in any case you will arrest or require the delivery of the principals concerned in the recent murders of the Wanigela natives (nine people). I have carefully considered the different views I have heard expressed as to this, and I am satisfied that, under the circumstances, the right course is to exercise the power of the Government by doing its duty in bringing them to trial if possible, whatever views may subsequently be taken of their having been accustomed to make their murderous raids without knowing that they were breaking the laws of a power of which they knew nothing ... it will produce a more lasting effect than merely telling the natives that they are not to do it again and returning without any visible results.” “Thank the Lord for that,” I remarked to myself, as I read the instructions; “if we had gone in and been defied by the Doriri, as we inevitably shall be, and then had contented ourselves with telling them to be good children, I should have been the laughing-stock of every tribe on the coast, and especially the Maisina.” This was my first experience of Barton’s extremely humane and, as I thought, mistaken feelings. “Is it not better,” I once urged him, “that a blood-thirsty cannibal should be hanged, or some of his crime-stained followers shot, than that a peaceful district of husbandmen should be raided, their houses burnt, and men, women and children slaughtered and eaten? Not to speak of the indescribable suffering and torture, both mental and physical, that the wretched victims often undergo.” Barton agreed, but it did not alter his nature: he was a man who instinctively shrank from inflicting suffering in any form; if he had been a surgeon, and a patient had come to him suffering from cancer, rather than cause him pain by using the knife, he would put off the inevitable until too late to be of any material benefit, and thus the patient would have died.
GRAVE OF WANIGELA, SUB-CHIEF OF THE MAISINA TRIBE