Two Years Among the Savages of New Guinea Part 3

Now it is a very difficult matter to determine whence the Papuans of New Guinea originally came. If I may hazard the opinion, I should say they originally hailed from the continent of Asia. My reasons for thinking so are, _firstly_, tribes of the Papuan or Oriental Negro are found in the interior or mountain fastnesses of the Philippine Islands, in the islands of Flores and Borneo (Malay Archipelago), in the Malay Peninsula (at the foot of Siam), in the Andaman Islands (Bay of Bengal), and also in Cochin China; _secondly_, during several months of the year the wind blows from the north-west, and under the influence of these winds the current would flow in a direction by which it would be quite feasible for numbers of Papuans to travel in canoes by way of the Malay Archipelago as far as New Guinea.

In the strict sense of the term the Papuans are without any form of religion, but at the same time have certain beliefs in the supernatural. When one of their tribe dies they believe that his spirit tenants his former home, and if he be a "Taubada," that is to say a person of importance, a neat fence is erected round his grave.

Quant.i.ties of yams, taro, betel-nut, and sometimes his native tomahawks, s.h.i.+eld, &c., are then placed within the enclosure, which is held sacred or "Tabu." Should he perchance die in Queensland, his spirit will not return to his birthplace, but will, according to their belief, be lost; the natives therefore will be wild, and will in all probability kill the first white man they come across, as an equivalent. If, however, payment be made to the relatives of the deceased the natives will be satisfied, and nothing more will be heard of it.

They do not possess any temples of wors.h.i.+p, but have wooden idols or G.o.ds with which they decorate their houses; however, I have never seen them fall down and wors.h.i.+p them, nor, as far as I know, is it their practice to do so. They believe in all sorts of "Devils" whom it is necessary to propitiate, but strange to say they have no idea of any beneficent spirits working for their good. I was present at several funerals or wakes, all of them being of women. When a woman dies beautiful wreaths of wild flowers are placed on the corpse, which is laid on the knees of two of her nearest relatives in the house. Her friends gather round, and weep and wail all night long, making the darkness hideous with their groans, but some of them feel real grief at their loss. At sunrise a canoe is in waiting, which conveys the body to her native place, which may be an island a few miles away. There it is decently interred, with more weeping, and all is over. Their method of going into mourning is very similar to our own. We wear black clothes, whilst they paint themselves black all over like Christy Minstrels, so that it is difficult to recognize them, their natural colour being a nutty brown. The period of mourning generally lasts about two months, and it looks very comical when the mourning is getting washed out. In some parts of New Guinea the women wear a net over their shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s as a token of mourning, but the general custom is to dye themselves black. With all their savagery their different customs resemble many of our civilized ones.

_Marriage._--They have no priests to perform this ceremony. When a man has reached a marriageable age, say twenty, he looks out for a wife. He selects a girl to his fancy, but has invariably to wait a long time before the marriage takes place, and it is very often a difficult matter for a young man to obtain a wife at all. When the day of the marriage has arrived the young couple retire to the house which has been prepared for them, and are thenceforth looked upon by their relatives as man and wife.

They keep the marriage state as inviolate as Europeans do. On the wedding day they give a banquet to their friends, consisting of yams, bananas, betel-nut and the fatted pig, also presents to the bride's family, and, let us hope, live happily ever afterwards.

As a rule the natives have only one wife, but in some instances two.

The men do not talk much to the women, as they look upon themselves as warriors and the women as labourers. It must not be understood from this that the women are ill-treated by them, on the contrary they have a large voice in domestic affairs, and occasionally lord it over their masters. It is not only in domestic affairs, but also in the affairs of state that their influence is felt. It is often the women who incite the men to war, or to deeds of murder, rapine and plunder, and should they hesitate, they rush wildly into their midst, fling their arms about, and harangue them in the following fas.h.i.+on: "What, you are afraid to do this and yet you call yourselves men and warriors! Out upon you, you have not the hearts of men, you are more like a pack of old women; you ought to put on the gra.s.s petticoat, stop at home and do the cooking." The men thus wrought upon must needs obey, or quietly submit to the taunt of cowardice flung in their faces.

The above shows the position held by Papuan women to be anything but that of degraded slaves, as is so often the case in other savage countries. No, the women of New Guinea are determined to have their little say, and take very good care they are listened to.

The children are bright, cheerful, happier and more contented-looking than any I have ever seen. They are always at play, using the spear in sham warfare, with a piece of wood for a s.h.i.+eld, or they busy themselves in fis.h.i.+ng and swimming. Both men and women are always joking and laughing. Life seems to them one long holiday. All their wants, which are not many, are supplied by Dame Nature, their food, clothing, houses and weapons. One stick makes a man a spear, two sticks rubbed together a fire, fifty sticks tied together a house.

The boys are particularly bright and quick at learning anything, some of them picking up English readily, although they prefer speaking their own language.

All the women wear a gra.s.s petticoat, sometimes two, made from the palm, having two shades, intermixed brown and a whitish-yellow. It looks most picturesque. They also wear a black band, about three inches deep, round the arm just below the shoulder, and it is so tightly put on that when they wish to remove it they are obliged to cut it, which leaves an ugly mark in the flesh. The men wear simply a leaf of the coco-nut palm round the loins, with leglets, armlets and streamers or "wings" from the shoulders, if they wish to look extra well. They cultivate a tremendous shock of hair on their heads, combing it out and dressing it with coco-nut oil several times a day. The combs are of their own manufacture, which, after using, they stick in their hair in much the same way as European ladies wear a comb. All the men have the lobe of the ear pierced, on the outer rim of which they string small sh.e.l.ls like rings, also the cartilage of the nose is perforated, through which they thrust a long sh.e.l.l, well polished, and fined down to a sharp point, giving it at a distance the appearance of a moustache. Like the heathen Chinee, they are as beardless as boys. The women as a rule wear their hair straight and cut short, the part over the forehead a little frizzy. The married women tattoo themselves from head to foot in an ornamental and conventional design. The girls and men do not practise the art.

They live in villages, all the houses standing in a regular line, well built on blocks, 5 to 6 feet from the ground, the walls made of the sago palm, the leaves of which are put on separately and slightly overlapping one another. The floor is made of "matu" or cane, the face of the roof in the form of a triangle. They keep the ground in front of the houses very tidy, generally sweeping it once a day. The houses are surrounded by numbers of coco-nut trees, and by a curious and happy law of nature the nuts fall princ.i.p.ally at night time; were it otherwise it would be very dangerous, as the coco-nut is anything but soft.

The women are employed in the yam and taro gardens, also in cooking and carrying firewood, besides looking after their babies.

The land is held by a family or tribe, and is divided and sub-divided, each household having a part portioned off, so that many natives are interested in one piece or parcel of land. Such land cannot be sold or parted with without the consent of all the princ.i.p.al owners. This system of land tenure works well until the family or tribe becomes so numerous that the different portions or lots are reduced to a very small area, causing some of the members to seek fresh districts.

Their national food consists of yams, taro, bananas, sago, coco-nuts, fish, birds, pigs, and occasionally human beings. Of course in some districts food is scarce, in others, there is a superabundance.

They commence digging up the yams about the end of April, and in May hold a great yam feast or festival, at which hundreds of natives are present, each of whom contributes pigs, yams, or something else. They think nothing of killing over 100 pigs on one day, and there are cart loads of yams and other food on the ground. They have a very curious method of dealing out the different parts of the pig. They cut up twine (which they make themselves) into various lengths, giving to each representative a length. Each length ent.i.tles the holder to a certain part of the pig, say, a holder of a short length receives the head, and so on.

All the girls are dressed in their best, which means a clean gra.s.s petticoat, with beautiful garlands of wild flowers round their heads and a necklace of beads encircling their throats. It looks lovely. The men paint their faces in the most gorgeous style, using different pigments, and vieing with each other as to who can look the ugliest.

They are also decorated with bands and streamers, and in their own opinion are dressed in the height of fas.h.i.+on. After gorging themselves with food and coco-nut milk, the musicians strike up, using the "tom-tom" a kind of drum, and singing a New Guinea carol; the maidens dance round for hours in a ring, speeches are made by some of the leading men, and the amus.e.m.e.nt extends far into the night, only to begin again the next day. A feast of this description often lasts from a week to ten days, during which time business is at a stand-still, as they will not work at making "copra" or anything else until the feast is over. It is very similar in idea to our harvest feast in England.

Should the yam season fail, which is not often, the natives suffer want, and have to live on sago and coco-nuts. As in most annual feasts the amount of food wasted is great. There is one very good quality about the yams, if stored in a house they will keep good for two years.

They grow sometimes to a length of 4 to 5 feet and weigh very heavy.

The language is not unlike that of the Maories of New Zealand, and, like it, is made up of numerous dialects. When you reach the "Motu"

district, say Port Moresby, the language decidedly changes and differs entirely from that of the south-east or east end.

It is not very difficult to acquire. If you mix with the natives, and take some interest in your task, you ought to be fairly proficient in twelve months, at least, this is true of the language spoken on the south-east coast, with which I am conversant. Like Italian, every word ends with a vowel. The vowels are p.r.o.nounced, ah, eh, e, o, oo, _ai_ as i, _au_ as ow, and _r_ at the beginning of a word, as L.

Their musical instruments are very primitive, but their singing is good, as they keep capital time, and have very fair voices. They are very fond of singing, their songs generally being an account of a canoe's journey, of how they got on, or about some fight that took place years ago, and occasionally about the only girl they ever loved.

They make incantations to the wind, as it is believed the winds are influenced thereby.

The natives living on the south coast manufacture different kinds of pottery, such as cooking-pots, dishes, bowls, water-jugs, and the like.

They are also very clever at making fis.h.i.+ng-nets, mats, baskets, lime-bottles, and last, but not least, canoes. As we have our s.h.i.+pwrights, so they have special men who understand canoe-building. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how well they make them, considering the rude tools they have to work with. They manufacture large quant.i.ties of sago. They do not, however, make it in a granulated form, but bake it into cakes, covering them with a frame of woven leaves, this being the handiest form for carrying it about with them in their canoes. When it is required for the "table" it is made up into small dumplings, placed in the pot and boiled. The process of manufacture is as follows:

They cut down the sago palm, and remove the crown with its huge fronds.

A tall tree with a smooth white bark is selected, the bark split in a straight line from top to bottom, and stripped off in one piece. They then spread out the piece of bark flat on the ground along-side the sago trunk, covering it with the large green leaves of the wild plantain. The bark of the sago-palm is split into three or four long strips, reaching from end to end of the trunk, and the white pith is exposed the whole length of the tree. A number of women sit in front of the tree, each with an adze-shaped weapon made of bamboo, with which they chip out the pith, which falls in white flakes on the clean plantain leaves.

The pith is carried away in baskets made of plaited coco-nut leaves to the river or sea, as the case may be, where it is to be washed. It is then shot into a bin about six feet square, built of logs and lined with plantain leaves. A staging of poles is erected in the water and troughs made of the leaf stalks of the sago palm are fixed upon it.

They are placed in a sloping position upon the staging, the larger ends uppermost. The sago pith is now put into the trough, into which is fixed a strainer made of that delicate textile that envelopes the unexpanded fronds of the coco-nut palm. It is washed with water and kneaded with the hands, while the water runs away in a milky stream, and the woody fibre and other solid particles are arrested by the strainer. The water runs out of the bottom of the trough, and is caught in a deep receptacle where the heavy sago sinks to the bottom in a form resembling white clay. Sago, manufactured in this way, will keep good for a considerable time.

When yams are scarce, the natives have to depend almost entirely on sago and coco-nuts.

CHAPTER IV.

A STORMY TRIP.

A Christmas under a burning tropical sun, such as I spent in 1887, seems unnatural. What a contrast to a Christmas in England!

"Outside fall the snowflakes lightly, Through the night loud raves the storm, In my room the fire glows brightly, And 'tis cosy, silent, warm.

"Musing sit I on the settle, By the firelight's cheerful blaze, Listening to the busy kettle Humming long-forgotten lays."

In New Guinea you eat your Christmas dinner in the open air, with the thermometer at over 100 in the shade. All nature seems weighed down by the oppressive atmosphere. One feels too enervated for any exertion, beyond imbibing cool drinks or smoking a cigar in a cane lounge.

About this time a fleet of pearl-sh.e.l.ling boats had come to New Guinea from Torres Strait, and were working in the Louisiade Archipelago. The water was rather too deep for them, as they had been accustomed to eight to ten fathoms. One or two of their divers were paralysed, and the whole of their fleet in a few months left for their old quarters, evidently having had enough of New Guinea waters. Not long after their departure one or two good patches of pearl-sh.e.l.l were found, which the New Guinea pearl divers took advantage of. It was fortunate for them, the Torres Strait fleet had already left the scene.

Just before Christmas Day, some of the Torres Strait boats had anch.o.r.ed in China Straits, remaining until after Christmas, so that we had a good muster of white men.

We held our Christmas festivities on the Island of Samarai. The dinner was tastefully laid out on rudely-constructed tables, set in the open air, under the canopy of Heaven. The tables were decorated with beautiful bouquets of wild flowers.

The bill of fare was exhaustive of the delicacies procurable, and was as follows:

Soup--Real Turtle.

Fish--Kingfish.

Joints--Roast Lamb & Peas (Kid).

Joints--Roast Pork.

Joints--Cold Corned Beef.

Entrees--Turtle & Scalloped Oysters.

Sweets--Omelette, Fruit Pie.

Vegetables--Yams, Taro, Spinach.

Cheese.

Dessert--Bananas, Pineapples, Mangots, Paw-paws, Coco-nuts, Oranges, etc.

Wine & Spirits--Lager Beer, Whisky, Sherry, Port.

We had quite a representative gathering, consisting of captains, mates, traders, fishermen and divers--fifteen in all.

Several New Guinea natives, clad in their native garments, waited at table, and first-cla.s.s waiters they are. Captain Runcie, of the S.S.