The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea

by Robert Wood Williamson

The next day is the feast day. The guests are in the special guest houses outside the village, where they are dressing for the dance. They have probably arrived the day before, in which case they may have come into the village to watch the women dancing in the evening; but they are not regarded as having formally arrived. These guests include married and unmarried men, women and children, nobody of the invited community being left behind, except old men and women who cannot walk. The women have brought with them their carrying bags, in which they carry all their men’s and their own goods (e.g., knives, feathers, ornaments, etc.), including not only the things used for the ceremony, but all their other portable property, which they do not wish to expose to risk of theft by leaving at home.

They have also brought special ornamental bags to be used in the dance as mentioned below.

The people of the village in the meantime erect one, two, or three (generally three) trees in a group in the very centre of the village enclosure.

And now come the successive ceremonies of the feast, in which both married and unmarried men and women take part; in describing these ceremonies I will call the people of the community giving the feast the “hosts,” and the visitors attending it the “guests.”

First: All or nearly all the men hosts go in a body out of the village to the guests’ houses, singing as they go. They are all fully ornamented for a feast, but do not wear their special dancing ornaments, and they do not carry their spears, or as a rule any other weapons. Each chiefs ornaments include a bunch of black cassowary feathers tied round his head behind, and falling down over his shoulders, this being his distinctive ornament; but otherwise his ornaments do not differ from those of the rest, except probably as regards quantity and quality. The object of this visit is to ascertain if the guests are ready, and if they are not ready the men hosts wait until they are so. Then the men hosts return to the village, singing as before, and all the guests, men and women, follow them; but they do not sing, and they do not enter the village. The men hosts, on returning, retire to their houses and the view platforms, where also are the women hosts, thus leaving the village enclosure empty.

Second: All the women guests, except two, then enter the village. They are fully ornamented for the feast, but do not wear their special dancing ornaments. They all have large carrying bags on their backs, not the common ones of everyday use, but the ornamental ones; and in these they carry and show off all their own and their husbands’ riches other than what they respectively are actually wearing. They enter at one end of the village enclosure (I will hereafter call this the “entrance end”) by the side of the end emone of the village (this may be the chiefs true emone or it may be the secondary emone), and walk in single file along one side of the village enclosure, and half of them walk round the other end (which I will call the “far end”) in front of the emone there (which also will be either the true one or the other one), and back again along the other side, until there are two rows of them, vis-à-vis at opposite sides of the enclosure, none of them remaining at the far end in front of the emone there. If they are very numerous, there may be lines on both sides of the enclosure, stretching from end to end; whereas if they are few only, they would be in facing lines at the far end only of the enclosure. This is all done silently.

Third: All the women hosts, fully ornamented for a feast, but without special dancing ornaments, then enter the enclosure at the entrance end, and congregate at the far end of it, in front of the far emone and between the two facing lines of women guests, and facing towards the centre of the enclosure. The group of them stretches as far forward towards the centre of the enclosure as their number allows; but it will never extend beyond the special trees, which have been last erected in the centre. This also is done in silence.

Fourth: The two women guests excluded from the general entry now come in. They are presumably the wives of chiefs. They are also decorated for the feast, but without full dancing ornaments. Each of them, however, holds in her mouth something intended to give her a terrible appearance, probably two pairs of pigs’ tusks, one pair curling, crescent-like, upwards, and the other pair similarly curling downwards, or a piece of cloth; but this is only carried by her for this particular scene of the performance, and not afterwards. Each of them also carries two spears, one in each hand. These two women rush into the village enclosure, one entering at each side of the emone at the entrance end. They run along the two sides of the enclosure, one at each side, in front of the lines of women guests already there (between them and the central group of host women), brandishing their spears as they do so, but in silence. When they reach the far end of the enclosure they meet each other in front of the emone there; and then, if that happens to be the true (chief’s) emone, they brandish their spears in a hostile manner at the building, the spears sometimes even striking it, though they do not leave the women’s hands, and there is probably a little pause or halt in their running for the purpose of this attack. They then pass each other, and return as they had come, still brandishing their spears, but each on the opposite side, until they are both at the entrance end of the enclosure. If the emone at this end is the true emone, then the attack is made upon it, instead of upon the other one. They then generally again pass each other, and go round the enclosure a second time, and again attack the emone exactly as before. During the first part of this performance the host women congregated in the far end of the enclosure are all dancing a sort of non-progressive goose step, there being, however, no singing. But, when the two guest women on the return journey of their second circuit reach the front row of the host women, the latter advance in a body silently dancing (but not travelling so fast as the two guest women) down the enclosure, and so following the two guest women, until they are all congregated at the entrance end of the enclosure. The positions of the dramatis personæ up to and including the stage of proceedings lastly described will be better understood by reference to [Fig. 7] and its accompanying notes. At the end of this stage the lines of guest women are still as shown; but the two special guest women and all the host women are at the entrance end of the enclosure.

Figure 7.