The natives’ community house is in the centre of most South Sea island villages. All discussions, feasts, and gatherings are held here, the traveller is free to use it, and the peddler finds it at once a hotel and show room.
CHAPTER XXIII
AUSTRALIA’S ISLAND WARDS
MOST people associate Thursday Island with its great neighbour New Guinea, the second largest island on the globe. Of what we might call mainland New Guinea I have already written in my book on Java and the East Indies. You will recall that it is divided into Dutch New Guinea, Papua, and former Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land. Both Papua and the former German possessions are now administered by Australia. Besides former Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land, the Territory of New Guinea embraces the Bismarck Archipelago and some of the Solomon Islands. Germany owned also the Marshall and the Caroline Islands, lying north of the Equator, which are now governed by Japan, while former German Samoa is under the jurisdiction of New Zealand. Australia has the responsibility of looking after nearly one hundred thousand square miles of territory outside the Commonwealth, and although she is determined to remain an “all-white” continent, she has under her jurisdiction thousands of primitive coloured peoples.
The natives of former Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land are, if anything, wilder and more savage than those of Papua. Thousands of them go naked save for breech cloths of bark for the men and short petticoats of woven grass for the women. Along the extreme northern coast are tribes that are entirely nude, with the exception of a shell necklace and a few bird-of-paradise feathers stuck in their woolly hair. Some tribes paint themselves in stripes of white, red, yellow, and black, and others scar themselves with flints or by fire.
I have photographs of native houses recently taken in New Guinea. Some of these houses are of great size, and many families live under one roof. The buildings are frequently set upon piles, a platform of poles being first constructed, a skeleton framework built upon this, and mats of woven leaves or grass fastened to it. The mats are so arranged that they can be raised or lowered to keep out the mosquitoes and the flies, which are exceedingly troublesome. In other parts of the island there are houses built in the trees, to which the people retreat in times of danger.
The different tribes are frequently at war with one another, and the missionaries tell me that sometimes these feuds go on between tribes and villages for generations. Cannibalism exists in some localities, though not to a great extent. The British have observed it among the people along the Gulf of Papua, and it is found also in northern New Guinea. The ordinary food of the natives is about the same as that of the Samoans, their chief diet being the yam, the taro, which is a kind of potato, and the banana.
The islands of the Bismarck Archipelago have some tribes stranger even than those of New Guinea. On one of them, according to good authorities, the girls are kept in wicker cages from the age of six or eight years until they are married. The cages are built inside large houses set aside for the purpose. The girls are let out once a day to bathe, but otherwise they are not permitted to leave their traps. Their food is handed in through the bars, and they pace up and down at times like caged lions. These cages are under the charge of the old women of the tribe, who see that the girls do not flirt with the passers-by or peepers-in. The young men have the right to look at the cages now and then, and probably, after making proper presents to the guards and the parents of the girl, one may woo the maiden of his choice through the bamboo meshes.
I am told that these girls do not suffer in health from their imprisonment, and that notwithstanding their seclusion they make very good wives, and later on are by no means averse to having their daughters caged up as they were. In this hot climate the people mature rapidly, and the marriageable age for a girl is eleven or twelve years. The unmarried damsel of fifteen is considered an old maid.
New Britain, the principal island of this group, is three hundred and fifty miles long. New Ireland, the next in size, is about two hundred miles long and only twenty miles wide. New Britain is traversed by a mountain chain whose tallest peak is The Father. It is seventy-five hundred feet high and is an active volcano.