The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea

by Robert Wood Williamson

No man can sell or exchange either his bush land or his garden plots, and changes in their ownership therefore only arise through death and inheritance. This statement, however, is, I think, subject to the qualification that an owner of bush-land will sometimes allow his son or other male descendant to clear and make for himself a garden in it; but I am not sure as to the point.

On a man’s death his widow, if any, does not inherit any portion of his property, either movable or immovable, but three things are allowed to her. She is generally allowed one pig, which will be required by her at a later date for the ceremony of the removal of her mourning; and she shares with her husband’s children, or, if there be none, she has the sole right to, the then current season’s crops and fruit resulting from the planting effected by her late husband and herself, though this is a right which, after her return home to her own people, she would not continue to exercise; and she is allowed to continue to occupy her husband’s house, but this latter privilege terminates at the mourning removal ceremony, when the house will be pulled down, and its site will revert to the village, and she will probably return to her own people in her own village, if she has not done so previously.

Subject to these three allowances, I may dismiss the widow entirely in dealing with the law of inheritance. I may also dismiss the man’s female children by saying that, if there be male children, the females do not share at all in the inheritance, and even if there be no male children the female children will only perhaps be allowed, apparently rather as a matter of grace than of right, to share in his movable effects; and that, subject to this, everything goes to the man’s male relatives. I may also eliminate the man’s pigs, as apparently any pigs he has, other than that retained for his widow, are killed at his funeral.

On the death of an owner everything he possesses goes, except as above mentioned, to his sons. They divide the movable things between them, but the bush and garden land pass to them jointly, and there is no process by which either of these can be divided and portioned among them. The male children of a deceased son, and the male children of any deceased male child of that deceased son (and so on for subsequent generations), inherit between them in lieu of that son. There does not appear, however, to be any idea in the Mafulu mind of each son of the deceased owner being entitled to a specific equal fractional share, or of the descendants of a deceased son of that owner being between them only entitled to one share, per stirpes. They apparently do not get beyond the general idea that these people, whoever they may be and to whatever generations they may belong, become the owners of the property.

They take possession of and cultivate the existing gardens as joint property. Any one of them will be allowed to clear some of their portion of bush, and fence it, and plant it as a garden, and it will then become the sole property of that one man, and if he dies it will pass as his own property to his own heirs; though, as before stated, if he abandons it, and lets it be swallowed up by the bush, it will cease to be his own garden, and will again be included in the family’s joint portion of bush land, and on his death his heirs will only come into the joint bush ownership.

In this way the ownership of a garden must often be in several persons, with no well-defined rights inter se, and the general ownership of bush land which has never been cleared, or which, having been cleared, has been abandoned and reverted, must often be in a very large number of persons without defined rights. In fact, so far as bush land is concerned, one only has to remember that on the death of an owner it passes into joint ownership of children—that on the deaths of these children fresh groups of persons come into the joint ownership—that this may go on indefinitely, generation after generation—that bush, having once got into the ownership of many people, is hardly likely to again fall by descents into a single ownership—that indeed the tendency must be for the number of owners of any one portion of bush steadily to increase—and finally that there is no way by which the extensively divided ownership can be terminated by either partition or alienation—and one then realises the extraordinary complications of family ownership of bush land which must commonly exist.

As regards both movable effects and gardens and bush land there must be endless occasions for dispute. How are the movable things to be divided among the inheritors, and, in particular, who is to take perhaps one valuable article, which may be worth all the rest put together? How are questions of doubtful claims to heirship to bush and garden land to be determined? How is the joint ownership of the gardens to be dealt with, and how is the work there to be apportioned, and the products of the gardens divided? How are the mutual rights of the bush land to be regulated, and especially what is to happen if each of two or more joint owners desires to clear and allocate to himself as a garden, a specially eligible piece of bush? Such situations in England would bristle with lawsuits, and I tried to find out how these questions were actually dealt with by the Mafulu; but there is no judicial system there, and the only answer I could get was that in these matters, as in the case of inter-community bush boundaries and personal bush boundaries, disputes were practically unknown; though it was pointed out to me, as regards bush land, that the amount of it belonging to any one family was usually so large that crowding out could hardly arise.

If a man dies without male descendants in the male line, then, subject perhaps to some sort of claim of his daughters, if any, to share in his movable effects, his property goes to his nearest male relative or relatives in the male line. This would primarily be his father, if living, but the father could hardly be the inheritor of anything but movable things and perhaps garden land, as the deceased could not be the owner of bush land during the lifetime of his father. Subject as regards movable things and perhaps gardens to this right of the father, the persons to inherit everything would be deceased’s brothers and the male descendants in the male line of any such brothers who had died; or in default of these it would be the father’s (not the mother’s) brothers and their male descendants in the male line, and so on for more distant male relatives, every descent being traced strictly in the male line only, on a principle similar to that above explained.

Male infants, by which term I mean young children, there being of course no infancy in the defined sense in which the term is used in English law, like adults, may become possessed of property by inheritance as regards bush and garden land, and by inheritance or otherwise as regards movable property, but they would hardly be likely to be the owners of houses; and the descent from these infants is the same as that in the case of adults.

No woman can possess any property, other than movable property, and even this is at best confined to the clothes and ornaments which she wears. On the death of a married woman all her effects go to her husband, or, if he be dead, they go to her children or descendants, male and female, equally, If she has no children or descendants, they go to her husband’s father, or, failing him, to such other person or persons as would have been entitled to inherit if her effects had been those of her husband. Her own blood relations do not come in, as she had been bought and paid for by her husband. If the deceased woman were a spinster, then her effects would pass to her father, or, failing him, to her brothers, or, failing them, to her nearest male relatives on her father’s side.