If the Papuan youth’s life were only devoted to empty show it would be bad enough, but there is another and darker side. His parents and elders may care little what he does with his time; nor do they worry about his education, except in one particular. They never allow him to forget that he must avenge wrongs inflicted upon his family. Of forgiveness they know nothing, and the youth as he grows up is taught that for every wrong he must exact payment.
One of the first cases tried after a Court of Justice had been established in Papua illustrates this. A young man from a village near Port Moresby was charged with murdering a woman and two children. He admitted that he had killed them, but said it was “payment” for the people of the woman’s tribe having killed his father. He was quite a small boy at the time, but his uncles had repeatedly told him of the deed, and that he would not only have to take a life for a life, but if possible get something on the credit side, and so win a name for himself. With this in view they taught him to handle the spear and the club, and when he was a man and proficient, sent him to find his victim. It mattered nothing to him that the first persons whom he met belonging to the offending tribe were a woman and two children. He killed them all three and gloried in his deed of shame. He had however to reckon with our first Governor (Sir William MacGregor), who, being in the neighbourhood, had the offender marched off to Port Moresby, and there, during a long term of imprisonment, he had an opportunity of learning something of the new order of things introduced under British Government.
It is difficult to believe that this bloodthirstiness dwells in youths who are so vain, and so easily captivated by bits of finery, and have such queer ideas of what should be done with English things when they do get them.
I once took a youth to Sydney. Of course Papuan dress, or want of dress, would not do there, so I had to fit him out in a suit of clothes. The garments were not by any means worn out when we returned to Delena, but for a time they passed from my view. Later Master Poha was strutting about in the well ventilated vest, while two of his relatives divided the remainder of the suit between them. I cannot say that either looked fully clothed, but they were not so conspicuous as the boy at Port Moresby who used to stalk about in a silk hat.
That hat had a history. A high Government official found that his servant had packed it amongst his things when he was leaving London, and having no use for it in Papua, he handed it over to a youth who had taken up his quarters in the back premises of Government House. That youth was not only the introducer of a new fashion, the observed of all observers, but he was the envy of his companions, as he strutted around clothed in a top hat, and a very broad smile. Of course the hat lost its gloss, and took on the shape of a concertina, but that did not detract from its usefulness, and the last I heard of it was that the elder brother of the owner borrowed it to take on Hiri (the trading expedition), because, as he put it, “He should be cold without any clothes.”
The Papuan youth, however, with all these faults is a loyal, brave companion. He can be relied upon when accompanying a white man on a journey. The tighter the corner the more he shines, and many others as well as ourselves would have ended their days in Papua long ago had not our boys stuck to us in time of need.