The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea

by Robert Wood Williamson

(5) Is a series of notes by Mr. Ray upon the matter contained in the previous appendices.

I am perhaps open to criticism for introducing into a book of my own notes on the Mafulu people such extensive material written by others, and relating to other mountain districts as well as to that of the Mafulu; but my belief as to the probable similarity in many respects between the Papuan-speaking natives of these central mountain districts, and the obvious value and importance of the matter which has been so kindly placed at my disposal, justify me, I think, in introducing it; and indeed I should be doing but ill service to New Guinea ethnology if I did not take advantage of these opportunities which have been offered to me.

Though I am not qualified to discuss these materials from the grammatical and scientific linguistic point of view, there are a few matters to which I should like to draw attention, as affecting statements appearing in this book, and which were written by me before I received this linguistic material.

Regarding the question raised in my introductory chapter as to the extension of the Fuyuge linguistic area so far south as Korona, it will be noticed that a large number of the words in the Mafulu and Korona columns are the same, or very similar. Dr. Strong, in some unpublished MS. notes in Dr. Seligmann’s possession, to which I have had access, says as regards the Mafulu and Korona languages that “there is nothing to show that the two languages may not be for all practical purposes identical,” and Mr. Ray in his concluding notes classes Mafulu and Korona together as dialects of Fuyuge. The village of Sikube, mentioned by Mr. Ray, is, I believe, on the Upper Vanapa river and north of Mt. Lilley, and so is well within the Fuyuge-speaking area as defined by the Fathers.

Concerning the Kambisa (Upper Chirima valley) column, the similarity of many of the words contained in it to those in either the Mafulu or the Korona column is obvious; and it is curious that some of these words appear to resemble the Korona words more than they do those of Mafulu. I also think I may say that the similarity between Kambisa words on the one hand, and those of either Mafulu or Korona on the other, is almost equal to the similarity between Mafulu and Korona; and Mr. Ray classes Kambisa along with Mafulu and Korona as dialects of Fuyuge. So the statement in the introductory chapter that the valley of the Upper Chirima river is included in the Fuyuge area has, I think, stood the test of some detailed linguistic comparison.

The note by Dr. Strong upon what he calls the Kovio language and his Kovio vocabulary both relate to a district which is within the Fathers’ Oru-Lopiku linguistic area; and I venture to repeat the suggestion, made in my introductory chapter, that for the present should adopt the term Kovio for the two areas which the Fathers call Oru-Lopiku and Boboi, though eventually we may be able to distinguish between these two areas.

The Afoa or Tauata area is the Fathers’ Ambo area. The Afoa column discloses a very few words which resemble the Fuyuge words; but it seems obvious that the Afoa language does not belong to the Fuyuge group, and this is the view taken of it by Mr. Ray.

There are two matters in Mr. Ray’s classification in the fifth appendix which I wish to mention. It seems to have been already assumed that the Rev. James Chalmers’ Kabana language could not have been collected on Mt. Victoria; and I would point out that this mountain is quite outside what now appears to be the Fuyuge area. As regards the Afoa language the references by Dr. Strong to Mt. Pizoko and Mt. Davidson bring me back to my observations upon the point in my introductory chapter. If the Fathers are right in putting Mt. Pizoko within the Fuyuge area, it is hardly correct to say (see introductory chapter) that the Afoa language is spoken in the villages on Mt. Pizoko; but it might well be, as quoted by Mr. Ray, that a Fuyuge native in a Mt. Pizoko village spoke Afoa fluently, as this mountain is close to the Fathers’ Fuyuge-Afoa boundary. Also Mt. Davidson is according to the Fathers in the Boboi area; but Dr. Strong seems to have regarded it as Ambo, and to have treated vocabulary matter collected from a native who came from a village “apparently on the slopes of” that mountain as having been taken from an Ambo native. In this case, however, there seems to be some doubt as to where this native did in fact come from; and the eastern slopes of Mt. Davidson are not far from the Fathers’ Afoa boundary.

I think that these linguistic materials, taken as a whole, are, so far as they go, well in accord with the delimitation by the Fathers of the Fuyuge area, except as regards their view concerning Korona, as to which they did not profess actual knowledge, and merely expressed a doubt, and subject to the point that, for linguistic purposes at all events, the Fathers’ use of the word “Mafulu” as representing the whole Fuyuge area is perhaps not desirable, and would be better replaced by the term “Fuyuge,” with subdivisions of “Mafulu,” “Korona,” and “Kambisa,” as given by Mr. Ray; though probably Sikube might be included in either Mafulu or Korona, as geographically it is evidently between these two.