The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea

by Robert Wood Williamson

There are certain things which from immemorial custom are regarded as being wrong, and appropriate punishments for which are generally recognised, especially stealing, wounding, killing and adultery; but the punishment for these is administered by the injured parties and their friends, favoured and supported by public opinion, and often, where the offender belongs to another clan, actively helped by the whole clan of the injured parties.

The penalty for stealing is the return or replacement of the article stolen; but stealing within the community, and perhaps even more so within the clan or village, is regarded as such a disgraceful offence, more so, I believe, than either killing or adultery, that its mere discovery involves a distressing punishment to the offender. As regards wounding and killing, the recognised rule is blood for blood, and a life for a life. The recognised code for adultery will be stated in the [chapter on matrimonial matters].

Any retribution for a serious offence committed by someone outside the clan of the person injured is often directed, not only against the offender himself, but against his whole clan.

There is a method of discovering the whereabouts of a stolen article, and the identity of the thief, through the medium of a man who is believed to have special powers of ascertaining them. This man takes one of the large broad single-shell arm ornaments, which he places on its edge on the ground, and one of the pig-bone implements already described, which he places standing on its point upon the convex surface of the shell. To make the implement stand in this way he puts on the point, and makes to adhere to the shell a small piece of wild bees’ wax, this being done, I was told, surreptitiously, though I cannot say to what extent the people are deceived by the dodge, or are aware of it. The implement stands on the shell for a few seconds, after which it falls down. Previously to doing this he has told his client of certain possible directions in which the implement may fall, and intimated that, whichever that may be, it will be the direction in which the lost article must be sought. He has also given certain alternative names of possible culprits, one of such names being associated with each of the alternative directions of falling. The fall of the implement thus indicates the quarter in which the lost article may be found and the name of the thief. Father Clauser saw this performance enacted in connection with a pig which had been stolen from a chief; the falling bone successfully pointed to the direction in which the pig was afterwards found, and there was no doubt that the alleged thief was in fact the true culprit. Presumably the operator makes private enquiries before trying his experiment, and knows how to control the fall of the implement.

Property and Inheritance.

The property of a Mafulu native may be classified as being (1) his movable belongings, such as clothing, ornaments, implements and pigs; (2) his house in the village; (3) his bush land; (4) his gardens.

The movable belongings are, of course, his own absolute property.

The village house is also his own; but this does not include the site of that house, which continues to be the property of the village. Every grown-up male inhabitant of the village has the right to build for himself one house in that village; he is not entitled to have more than one there, but he may have a house in each of two or more villages, and a chief or very important man is allowed two or three houses in the same village. On a house being pulled down and not rebuilt, or being abandoned and left to decay, the site reverts to the village, and another person may build a house upon it.[1] Houses are never sold, but the ordinary life of a house is only a few years.

The man’s bush land is his own property, and his ownership includes all trees and growth which may be upon it, and which no other man may cut down, but it does not include game, this being the common property of the community; and any member of the community is entitled to pass over the land, hunt on it, and fish in streams passing through it, as he pleases. The whole of the bush land of the community belongs in separate portions to different owners, one man sometimes owning two or more of such portions; and it is most remarkable that, though there are apparently no artificial boundary marks between the various portions, these boundaries are, somehow or other, known and respected, and disputes with reference to them are practically unknown. How the original allocations and allotments of land have been made does not appear to be known to the people themselves.

The man’s garden plot or plots are also his own, having been cleared by him or some predecessor of his out of his or that predecessor’s own bush land; and he may build in his gardens as many houses as he pleases. His ownership of his garden plot is more exclusive than is that of his bush land, as other people are not entitled to pass over it. But on the other hand, if he abandons the garden, and nature again overruns it with growth—a process which takes place with great rapidity—it ceases to be his garden, and reverts to, and becomes absorbed in, the portion of the bush out of which it had been cleared; and if, as it may be, he is not the sole owner of that portion of bush, he loses his exclusive right to the land, which as a garden had been his own sole property.