NATIVE CUSTOMS.
There are three types of natives, Malay, Papuan, and Polynesian, each
more or less mixed with the others. The word "Papuan" is derived from
the Malay "Pua-Pua," or "Papuas," which, translated, means
frizzle-haired. The distinguishing characteristic of the true "Papuan"
is his frizzled hair, which, strange to say, grows naturally in small
tufts. So far as I am aware no other race has this strange peculiarity.
The "Papuan" is also much darker and fiercer than the others, and has
thickish lips and rather a broad, flat nose. The "Polynesian" is by far
the most intelligent of the three races. He has, moreover, fine,
clear-cut, aquiline features, and is more amenable to the influences of
civilization.
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.
Quantities of yams, taro, betel-nut, and sometimes his native
tomahawks, shield, &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 worship, but have wooden idols or
gods with which they decorate their houses; however, I have never seen
them fall down and worship 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
breasts 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 fashion: "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 grass 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 shield, or they busy
themselves in fishing 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 grass 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
shells like rings, also the cartilage of the nose is perforated,
through which they thrust a long shell, 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 principally 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 principal 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 entitles 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 grass
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 fashion. 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 amusement 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 pronounced, 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 fishing-nets, mats, baskets,
lime-bottles, and last, but not least, canoes. As we have our
shipwrights, so they have special men who understand canoe-building. It
is astonishing how well they make them, considering the rude tools they
have to work with. They manufacture large quantities 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.