Some Experiences of a New Guinea Resident Magistrate

by C. A. W. Monckton

From the Barigi River, I went on to investigate complaints made by a tribe named Notu, situated at Oro Bay on the north-east coast, of attacks made upon them by an inland tribe named Dobudura. The Notu, who were a set of murdering blackguards themselves and a curse to the coast, told me that they had hitherto been on most friendly terms with the Dobudura, but that lately the latter tribe had been raiding them, and killing by torture any people they captured. “We don’t mind fighting,” said the Notu, “and we don’t mind being killed and eaten, for that is the lot of men, but we do object to having our arms ripped up and being tied to posts or trees by our own sinews, and having meat chopped off us until we die!” “I will deal with the Dobudura,” I told them, “but afterwards I am going to make you sit up and squeal; for, to my certain knowledge, you have recently killed and eaten two Mambare carriers; also, I have heard of quite a number of mysterious disappearances of people in the vicinity of your villages.” “Crocodiles,” said the Notu, “they are bad here.” “Yes,” I told them, “two-legged crocodiles. Now, what started your row with the Dobuduras?” “Sorcery,” they said. “Have you scoundrels been playing with sorcery?” I asked. “No,” they answered, and assured me that their virtue in that respect was almost beyond belief; to which I answered that I thought it was!

They then told me that the prevailing drought had badly affected the Dobudura country, and many of that people’s gardens had perished; while a sago swamp, upon which they relied in times of scarcity, had got as dry as tinder and been swept by fire. Some rain had fallen in the immediate vicinity of the Notu villages at Oro Bay and had saved the Notu gardens; whereupon the Dobudura people had ascribed their misfortunes to the work of Notu sorcerers, and set out to make things extremely unpleasant for the Notu. “Is the Dobudura tribe a numerous one?” I asked. “Yes, much more numerous than we are,” they told me. The Notu could muster about three hundred fighting men, and, therefore, I concluded that the Dobudura had probably about four or five hundred men.

At dawn I marched inland in search of the Dobudura country, accompanied by Acland and Walker, and taking with me about seventy Notu armed with spear, club, and shield, to act as scouts and guides, twenty-five constabulary and village constables, and about sixty Kaili Kaili under old Giwi. The track, after clearing the coastal swamp, ran through alternate belts of tall forest and grass, and was well worn and defined; it showed signs of the recent passage of large bodies of men. The Notu marched in front, flung out as a screen of scouts, a position they were not at all keen on occupying. We marched until about noon, when, as we neared the edge of a belt of forest we were passing through, the Notu came running back and got behind the column, saying that the Dobudura were in sight. We emerged on to a grassy plain, and sighted a village surrounded by a thick grove of cocoanut and betel-nut palms; three or four Dobudura were standing, fully armed and plumed, watching for us to emerge from the forest; they had evidently discovered our advance into their country.

They at once gave tongue to a prolonged blood-curdling war-cry “Oooogh! Aarrr!” which was taken up by a number of other men invisible to us; then came the long deep boom of the conch shells and wooden war horns; the beggars clearly meant fight. I ordered the police to kneel in line just inside the edge of the forest, and then sent the Notu into the open to yell their own war-cry, and draw the Dobudura into the open. We could now see dozens of plumed Dobudura heads bobbing up and down in the tall grass, about a mile away; but, though the Notu came tearing back several times in alarm at having discovered a Dobudura scout close to them, no further advance was made by them, though their war-cry was going on constantly. “Those fellows are waiting for reinforcements,” I said, “I’ll take them in detail”; and advanced upon the village, while the Dobudura scouts hung on our flank and rear.

Approaching close to the village, I ordered the police to rush it, which they did, only, however, just as rapidly as the Dobudura vacated it on the other side. I judged, from the number of holes in the ground made by the Dobudura sticking their spears upright in the ground while they rested, that about a hundred and fifty men had been in the village. In the centre of the village there was a platform, about four feet high, stacked with skulls, some quite fresh and with morsels of flesh adhering to them. “Ours,” said the Notu. “See that hole in the side of each skull? That is where they scrape out the fresh brains!” Every skull had a hole in exactly the same place, varying in size, but uniform in position. The village was full of pigs and fowls, which the police and carriers killed. Dobudura scouts still hung about us, but their main body had vanished. A group of four or five of them got up a tree, about five hundred yards distant, and, as we continued our march, watched us and shouted directions and information of our movements to invisible Dobudura ahead. I ordered half a dozen constabulary to fire at the men in the tree, which they did, Walker and Acland also firing; the men dropped rapidly from the tree, but none of them were hit, though the sound of rifles, heard by them for the first time, must have disturbed their nerves a little.

As we continued our march, we found that we were surrounded by a thin ring of Dobudura, who were now quite silent. They gave one a funny feeling—the feeling of being surrounded by a thin invisible net which always gave when pressed, only to close again when we relaxed our pressure. “Master, be cautious; I think we shall find a big fight,” said Barigi. “Keep close together, and your tomahawks ready,” old Giwi told his Kaili Kaili. I detached half a dozen constabulary and told them to sneak through the long grass and break the ring of Dobudura scouts. They left; and soon I heard shots. The police returned, bringing with them the spears, clubs, and shields of two men they had shot; but, hardly had they returned, when the ring reformed. We marched on once more, my flanking police constantly having slight skirmishes with small bodies of the Dobudura, but nothing like a fight taking place. The Dobudura were clearly carrying out some well-defined plan: they were not afraid of us, that was certain, or they would have bolted altogether; neither did they mean to come into open collision with us yet.

At last, still accompanied by the watching ring of men, we came to the bank of a river, upon the opposite bank of which an armed Dobudura was standing, shouting to others behind. “Get me that man alive!” I ordered. Ten police at once plunged into and across the river, and tore after him as he fled. Walker, like an idiot, imagined that he could keep up with the swift police, and went after them, before I saw what he was doing. He paid for his folly, for he got the fright of his life. He was, of course, soon easily out-distanced by the constabulary, who did not for a moment imagine that any white man would be fool enough to try and keep up with them, and suddenly he came to a place where the track divided, and could not tell which one the police had taken; he also now became conscious that the forest around him was full of Dobudura, he could hear their voices, and he did not dare to attempt to return to my party alone, for he had gone too far. Accordingly, at a venture he took one of the tracks, and luckily for him it was the right one, for in a few minutes he walked right into the returning police, who had captured a woman; she turned out to be a Notu woman, captured some time before by the Dobudura. If Walker had taken the other track, he would most certainly have been killed, as the police reported that it was held by a strong force of Dobudura. I gave him a severe lecture, telling him that work of this description was worry enough for me, without its being complicated by the escapades of congenital idiots. “I suppose next,” I said, “if you see a native climb a cocoanut tree like a monkey, you will imagine that you can do it too! If you do try, please take care and fall on your head, and then you will come to no harm.” Walker was extremely annoyed, and said that he did not believe the Dobudura would fight at all.

Village after village we entered, all being deserted at our approach. At one spot on our line of march, a very big Dobudura nearly got Sergeant Kimai, who was slightly away from his men on one flank. The man crept up, and then rushed silently at Kimai with a club; fortunately he caught sight of him, and, dropping on his knee, blew the man’s stomach in at a yard’s distance. My young devil, Toku, and some Kaili Kaili, discovered a Dobudura sneaking up, and the man fled finding that he was discovered; whereupon Toku shot him in the stern with a small pea rifle of mine he was carrying. The man clapped his hand to the place, and went off in a series of jumps, or, as Toku put it, like a kangaroo! Each village we entered had the same platform filled with skulls, some years old, others but a few days; while in some villages an additional decoration in the form of ropes hung with human jawbones was provided. The skulls were all those of people killed and eaten, and were of both sexes and all ages, from that of an infant to that of a senile old man or woman.

At last we came to a big village of two hundred houses, where two men were shot in a skirmish, and a man and a woman captured by the scouting police. The man was sullen and would not answer questions; the woman talkative, when once she found that she was not going to be killed. She told me that most of the men were away fighting the Sangara, but that swift messengers had gone for them, to tell them of our invasion. I gave the man and the woman some tobacco, and then showed them how a bullet would pass through a shield or even a cocoanut tree; then I told them to seek out their chief and tell him that it was useless his fighting me, but that I must stop him fighting the Notu people, and that he had better come and see me himself next day, offering him safe conduct. So off they went.

Platforms of skulls were at each end of this village; hundreds of skulls, and there was one heap of about thirty quite fresh ones, the adhering flesh had hardly had time to go bad. I nearly lost Private Oia here: he had leant his rifle against a tree a little distance away from the main body, and was squatting on the ground, when a Dobudura crept up and rushed him with a club; Oia sprang up towards the enemy, just as the club swung down for his head, and succeeded in catching the blow from the wooden handle on his shoulder, instead of the cutting-stone disc on his head. Oia then tore the club from the man’s grasp and dashed out his brains with it. “These Dobudura may be all right with the spear, but they are no good with the club,” said Oia to me. “Why?” asked I. “If that fool had been close enough to make a side cut at my knee instead of a down cut at my head, he would have got me,” he said; “to use the down cut against a stooping man is folly, as it is so easily avoided!” Oia, like his father, old Bushimai, was an expert in the use of a club. The old man despised a shield, considering it a useless encumbrance, and trusted to his clever manipulation of his club to ward off missiles.