The ordinary Dubu is a rough platform about four feet high and built upon stout piles. More elaborate ones are to be seen in some districts, and these are decorated with weird designs and strange carvings, with flanges reaching out right and left and long beams carved like gigantic bullocks’ horns and decorated with gaudy tassels that add a quaintness to them; they stand some ten feet off the ground, whilst others have posts rising fifteen feet above the ground and ending in a half-moon design, but these bigger ones are not used for the girls to dance on, but are kept for ceremonial purposes.
THE DUBU AT RIGO, BRITISH NEW GUINEA
A score of girls, dressed up to the nines in their twine skirts (reaching about as far down as a Parisian ballet girl’s dancing costume) and completely tattooed, suddenly begin prancing through the village, swinging in their hands a long string at the end of which is a ball. By practised movements {55} they make it curve in grotesque shapes around their bodies, and all the time this is going on they are swinging their skirts backwards and forwards by a peculiar movement of their bodies, from their waists. This extraordinary performance of pirouetting maidens goes on for some time to the accompaniment of drums. Then, at a given signal, they mount the Dubu and discard their skirts, and stand unadorned before the spectators who, as I said before, are nearly all women. Then married women anoint them, whilst others bring them baskets of areca nuts and yams. The yams they cut up in pieces, and whilst doing so go through graceful movements which display their figures to the best advantage. Then suddenly, at another given signal, they start pelting the onlookers with the nuts, which are scrambled for by the women amid laughter and screams of delight; they are like children at a fair, and almost as simple. When all the nuts are finished the girls slip on their skirts and jump down, and so ends this, the most terrible dance of the modest maids of Papua. There is another famous dance which takes place on the departure of the Lakatois for the annual trading expedition up the Gulf.
Professor Haddon, in his book the Head Hunters, relates an amusing thing he saw at Veifaa, {56} of which this dress incident reminds me. He says that though the natives in this place are never seen in any but native costume, the missionaries have insisted on the women wearing calico gowns whilst attending divine service, and it was an amusing sight, he continues, to see the girls and women arriving at the church, for—on entering the courtyard—they pulled these European costumes over their half-nude bodies; but it was still more comic to see the way they pulled themselves out of them directly the service was over. He adds, that in spite of their scant clothes and the above peculiarity, the women are extremely modest.
Tattooing cannot be said to be as general in New Guinea as in many other places, but in some districts the women are particularly well tattooed, the whole of the upper part of their bodies being completely covered with intricate designs. The methods of making the patterns vary, but as a rule, the woman lies on the ground whilst two others work them out with a stick dipped in burnt resin. When the whole is finished it is pricked in by means of a sharp thorn attached to a stick and bound tightly to it with fibre. Most of the women have extraordinary designs on their thighs, which they make a point of showing when they are dancing.
TATTOOING, BRITISH NEW GUINEA
CHAPTER VI
Outrigger canoes, their appearance and construction—The famous Lakatois—How the natives catch their fish; and a few words about fish that climb trees—A trip down the coast, and an unpleasant experience.