At Cape Nelson, I was now busy in the erection of my new Station. A
New Guinea Government Station consisted of the R.M.’s house, police
barracks, storerooms, magazine, married quarters, native visitors’
house, police cells and gaol. I had applied for a grant of forty
pounds for building my own house, intending to have one made of native
material, _i.e._ hard hewn timber and a thatched roof; Sir George Le
Hunte, however, said he was not going to have his R.M.’s house like
that, and accordingly instructed the Survey Department to expend three
hundred pounds in getting timber and iron from Australia for a European
house of four rooms. Russell directed me to have cut a number of piles
of hard wood, ten feet in length, upon which the house was to be built.
He, being a surveyor, was also supposed to be an architect; as a matter
of fact, his knowledge of building was about equal to a Berkshire pig’s
grasp of navigation. This is the house that he, after great travail,
designed.
[Illustration]
He altogether forgot windows, railings, and steps; and this, too, for a
house the flooring of which would be ten feet from the ground.
At this time I had, under the supervision of a private of constabulary,
gangs of several hundred Kaili Kaili at work, clearing gardens and
carrying timber for the gaol and barracks; whilst another lot were
searching for teakwood with me, and cutting it into piles for my house.
Amongst my contingent was a short, squat, very powerful man of about
forty years of age, who had at one time been badly wounded in the head,
and at intervals broke into a frenzy of rage with no apparent reason;
this individual was named Komburua. He had engaged to work two months
with me for an axe, upon which he had set his heart, and which tool he
was permitted to use at his work until it became his own. Komburua’s
particular job was to cut the hewn piles to an exact length, as I
measured and marked them. On one occasion, as I moved from one pile
to another to measure it, Komburua seated himself upon the one I was
stretching my tape along; I shifted him with a hard spank with my
open hand, and again leant over my tape. Suddenly I caught sight, on
the ground, of the shadow of an axe flying up above the shadow of my
helmet; like lightning, I jumped to one side, just as that axe came
crashing down on the very spot over which my head had been. Before
Komburua had time to raise his axe again I had him pinned by the
throat, whilst two police, who were but a few feet away, rushing up,
first knocked him senseless with the butts of their rifles, and then,
loading them, stood at my back, as I blew my whistle for the detachment
to fall in--not knowing how much further the trouble was going. From
all directions the men came tearing up, loading their rifles as they
ran, and savagely striking out of their way any native in their path;
while the excited natives gathered in clusters and jabbered, and spears
appeared from nowhere. Poruta soon found out that Komburua’s attempt to
split my skull was due to one of his sudden frenzies of rage, induced
by my spank on his stern, and in no way concerned the other natives.
He was given seven days in leg-irons, as a gentle hint to restrain his
temper in the future, and we resumed our work.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE RESIDENCY, CAPE NELSON]
Komburua afterwards tried to get square with me by poisoning our well
at night, and, but for the accident of heavy rain falling at the
time, thus washing away the greater portion of the poison, the whole
lot of us would undoubtedly have been killed. As it was, we were all
extremely ill; in fact, two men very nearly died, and I, for the life
of me, could not make out what was the cause. The police said sorcery;
I did not know what to think; I had no suspicion of the water, though
I thought of poison; at the same time, I could not understand how
it could have been administered to all of us. One alarming sign was
that not a single native came near us. I took counsel with the police.
“There is something very wrong,” I said, “but we have to find out what
it is, before we can cure it.” “It is sorcery,” said the police. “Well,
we must find out the sorcerer and deal with him; what sorcery can do,
sorcery can undo,” I said. “The proper thing to do with a sorcerer is
to hit him on the head with a club,” said Poruta, “for they are no
good.” “All very fine,” I remarked, “but first catch the sorcerer.”
“You have said it,” said Keke (Keke and the other Kiwais had stronger
stomachs, and were not so bad as the rest of us); “these people know
what they have done to us and are awaiting results; we can’t see them,
but they are certain to have some one watching us. To-night, the
strongest of us will sneak out and catch the watchers in the early
dawn, and then we shall find out what is the trouble.” Keke’s plan
seemed the best; that night, the five strongest men crept out, and, in
the morning, they snapped up a solitary man, whom they discovered in a
tree watching the camp, and brought him in. It was a man named Seradi,
who later served for many years with me in the constabulary; in fact,
he was still serving when I left New Guinea.
I showed Seradi our sick; as a matter of fact, with the exception of
the five men by whom he had been caught, there was not one of us able
to stand. I asked, “What is the matter with these men?” “I don’t know,”
was the reply. “Why are all you people staying away from the Station?”
“I don’t know,” he repeated, which was a palpable lie. “Reeve a rope,
and hang him up,” I said. “What will the Governor say?” asked Keke;
to which I replied, “It does not much matter what he says, for if we
don’t find out what this trouble is, he’ll only have dead men to talk
to.” The police rove a rope over a beam in the ceiling: I may say that,
during our sickness, we were all living together in one big barrack
room. “What are you going to do with me?” asked Seradi, as a noose was
passed round his neck. “Hang you up by your neck until you are dead,
then cut you open and look at your inside to find out why we are sick;
you know, but won’t tell us while you are alive, and the rope round
your throat will prevent the knowledge escaping when you are dead.”
The rope tightened, Seradi choked and held up his hand. “Slack!” I
said. “You want to talk?” I asked him. “Yes,” was his reply, “I don’t
want to put you to all this trouble. Komburua poisoned your well; the
people are staying away until you are all dead, when they will come and
take all your wealth.” “Do the people want to fight us?” I asked. “Oh
no,” he said, “but if you all die, they would like your things.” “Do
you know where Komburua is?” I next asked. “Yes, alone in a bush house
about half a mile away,” said Seradi. “Very good; if you take my police
to him, and help them catch him, I will pay you two tomahawks and make
you village constable of your tribe.” Seradi apparently thought that
this was much better than being hanged, so went off with my five fairly
sound men, and shortly afterwards returned with Komburua. In due time
Seradi got his uniform as village constable, which position he filled
with ability.
Komburua got six months’ hard labour, a sentence he received with
extreme disfavour. His first job was to clean out the spring, and
dig a channel in the rock, in which to lead the water to the gaol.
“Komburua is to drink a pint of water from the well before breakfast
every morning,” I told the police, “then, if there is any more foolery
with our water, he will be the first man poisoned.” He afterwards
became a very good worker indeed, and accompanied me as a carrier on
many an inland expedition. He also became very friendly with me, in
consequence of my curing a periodic headache he suffered from. One day,
as he toiled with a crowbar at the rock of a precipice, up which we
were cutting a new road, I noticed that his forehead was all scratched
and cut, and asked him what was the matter. “There is a devil trying to
break out of my head,” said Komburua. I sent him to sit in the shade
of the gaol kitchen, and gave him some phenacitin tabloids, that eased
his head a great deal quicker than his cutting and scratching had done.
After he had served half his time, I made him prisoners’ cook to the
gaol, a position of which he was very proud (though the prisoners at
first regarded his appointment with eyes askance), and, at his earnest
request, I let him off the pint of cold water before breakfast.
I remember Komburua, on one occasion, frightening fits out of the Chief
Engineer of the _Merrie England_. I was going up the coast in that
vessel, to cut a road from Buna Bay to the Yodda Gold-field. I had with
me about a score of police and some couple of hundred Kaili Kaili: each
Kaili Kaili had an axe, both as a weapon of defence and as a tool for
work. My men--in addition to her own complement--crowded the vessel
uncomfortably; but as my men slept about the decks and it was only
for one night, it really did not matter. The night came, and with it
heavy rain; my unfortunate Kaili Kaili crawled into alley ways, galley,
cabins, in fact anywhere they could get, to be out of the wet. Officers
and crew were perpetually falling over naked bodies in most unlikely
places, and cursing Kaili Kaili and me alike--not that the Kaili Kaili
cared. The Cape Nelson police and myself were the only persons they
would listen to or obey; every one else was merely an objectionable
foreigner. Komburua, in search of a dry spot, discovered the Chief
Engineer’s cabin, that worthy being on watch; he then stretched his
dirty greasy form upon the Engineer’s bunk and went to sleep. Presently
the owner of the bunk came off watch, went to his cabin, and there
discovered a huddled mass of wet cannibal on the floor and Komburua
in his bunk; with curses and blows he shifted the men from the floor,
hauled Komburua from his bunk, and hoofed him out of the cabin.
A few minutes later a steward, falling over the tangled heap of
police and Kaili Kaili sleeping on the floor of my cabin, woke
me up, wailing, “For God’s sake, sir, go to the Chief Engineer’s
cabin; those blank savages of yours are killing him.” “Nonsense!”
I said; but that wretched steward would not let me have any peace;
so accordingly, cursing deeply all people who disturbed the sleep
of the godly with vain alarms, I paddled along the wet deck to the
Engineer’s cabin. There I found the Chief lying in his bunk, gazing
absolutely horror-stricken at the bloodshot eyes of Komburua peering
through the tangled mat of hair surmounting his hideous visage, while
he thoughtfully felt the razor-like edge of his axe. At intervals
the Chief yelped for help. “What the devil are you up to, Komburua?”
I asked, as my naked foot took him fairly on the stern; “get out!”
“He would not let me sleep in the dry, so I just gave him a fright,”
said that worthy, as he retired, carefully sheltering his stern with
his axe. “I thought the murderous brute was going to split my skull
every second, and dared not move,” said the Chief Engineer; “it’s
disgraceful that the Government should allow you to bring such savages
on board. There’s some whisky in my locker; give me a drink.” “They
are all right, and quite nice people if you are gentle with them; but
if you use coarse sailor language and blows, you offend them,” I told
him reproachfully; then I gave him a drink from his own bottle, and
absent-mindedly carried the bottle away and shared it with the second
engineer and the officer on watch.
About a week after I was first established at Cape Nelson, old Giwi
came in, followed by a strange native who gambolled like a kitten when
he caught sight of the police and myself, and exhibited extravagant joy
in divers ways. He proved to be the sole survivor of ten Dobu carriers,
who had bolted from the Mambare at the time of the massacre of Green
and his men: the other nine had been caught and eaten at intervals
along the coast by the Notu and Okein people. This man, weary and
frightened, had reached Giwi’s village; there Giwi had protected him,
and employed him as an unpaid labourer in his garden--practically a
slave. He told me that he had had a dreadful time chasing the _Merrie
England_ from fiord to fiord, when last she came, but could never quite
catch her; then one morning he had caught sight of the flag flying
over my camp, and had persuaded Giwi to bring him to me for a reward.
I bought him from Giwi for a tomahawk, and as he swore that he never
meant to leave the shelter of the police camp again, I made him cook
to the constabulary. About eight months later, however, as the _Merrie
England_ was going to his home, I seized the opportunity of sending him
there.
I then found out that numbers of runaway carriers from the diggers
of the Mambare were continually being caught and eaten by the tribes
along the coast. The local natives had their own grievance against the
runaways, for the latter used to steal their canoes and also sneak into
their gardens and help themselves to food. North and south I then sent
notices, offering a reward of a tomahawk each for all live runaway
carriers brought to me, and threatening dire vengeance against any
people killing them.
In a month, we recovered some thirty odd runaway carriers in lots
of two, three, and up to a dozen. Seradi then told me of a little
village inhabited entirely by sorcerers, male and female, some seven
miles away, where they had another runaway tied up for some diabolical
purpose. I sent Seradi and half a dozen police to bring me the captive
and arrest the sorcerers; these gentry were not at all popular with the
Kaili Kaili, though, like most natives, they stood in awe of them. The
police returned, carrying in a net a man so emaciated that his bones
were literally sticking through his skin, and his whole body showing
the marks of dreadful ill-usage; he was so weak as to be beyond speech,
and though we dosed him with tincture of opium and brandy, and filled
him up with broth, he died within a few hours. The sorcerers had seen
the police coming and escaped. My men told me that their village was
unspeakably filthy, so I sent them back, in the middle of the night,
to surprise and catch the sorcerers and burn down the village. They
only caught two, whom I sent to gaol for six months, their first job
being to bury the body of their victim. Where their filthy village had
stood, the police left a clean, smoking heap of ashes: the prestige
of sorcerers among the Kaili Kaili slumped from that day, and though
sorcerers in other parts of the Division continued to give trouble,
those amongst the Kaili Kaili people spent most of their time either
hiding in the bush, in gaol, or in explaining to a village constable
and his posse that they were living virtuous and meritorious lives.
The burning of houses was, as a general rule, strictly forbidden by
the Lieutenant-Governor as a punishment, and very rightly so; but I
felt sure that he would approve of my smoking out a lot of miscreants,
such as those I have mentioned, as indeed he did. Sorcery among New
Guinea natives may be divided into two kinds: the sorcerer practising
the first kind belongs to a class of wicked, malevolent assassins,
doing evil for the sake of evil; he is prepared to perform his devilry,
administer poison, or commit any crime for any person paying him to do
so. This class of sorcerer does not pretend to perform anything but
black magic, or to work anything but harm; and the shadow of the fear
of the brute is over the whole tribal life. Sorcerers practising the
second kind are men who make use of a benevolent and kindly magic for
good only. These pretend to possess powers of rain-making, wind- or
fish-bringing, bone-setting, the charming away of sickness, or charming
the spot upon which a garden is to be made to render it productive.
They understand massage to a certain extent, and are usually highly
respected and estimable members of the community to which they belong;
and to interfere with this second class in the practise of their arts,
would be not only cruelly unjust but decidedly unwise.
Once I had a frantic row with a Missionary Society over a member of
the class of rain-makers. This old fellow I knew to be an eminently
respectable old gentleman, and famed for many miles as a rain-maker;
in fact, I had more than a suspicion that upon occasions my own police
had paid for his services in connection with the Station garden.
Well, to my amazement, I one day received a complaint from a European
missionary, that the old fellow was practising sorcery and levying
blackmail. I knew the charge to be all nonsense, and my village
constables laughed at it; in fact, they regarded the story in much
the same light as a London bobby would a tale to the effect that the
Archbishop of Canterbury was running a sly grog shop in Wapping; but
missionaries always made such a noise that I had to investigate. I
found that there had been a drought in a Mission village, miles away
from where the old boy lived, and the natives’ gardens were perishing:
the local rain-makers tried their hands, but with no result; the
missionary turned on prayers for rain, no result; then the people got
desperate, and decided that the services of my estimable friend must be
engaged. Accordingly, to the wrath of the missionary, they collected
pigs and a varied assortment of New Guinea valuables, and sent them
with a deputation to beg him to save their gardens. He accepted the
gifts, and oracularly replied to his petitioners, “When the south-east
wind stops, the rain will come.” They went off home satisfied; as
a matter of fact, the wind had dropped before they got back and
the welcome rain set in. Having ascertained the facts, I of course
refused to interfere with the rain-maker; whereupon the missionary
complained to Headquarters that the R.M. was undermining the work of
the Mission by encouraging sorcery, and I was called upon for the
usual report. I reported that my time was already so fully occupied
that I had none to spare in “attending to harmless disputes due to the
professional jealousy of rival rain-makers.” The missionary choked with
outraged and offended pride at being put on the same plane as a native
rain-maker, and Muzzy squeaked about “contemptuous levity” in official
correspondence.
One day, I met an old chap laboriously carrying a heavy round stone up
a hill to a yam garden. “What are you doing with that?” I asked. “I
have got a job making the yams grow in the garden up here,” he said,
“and I’m planting this as an example to the yams, of the size to which
they are to grow.” “It’s lucky for you that they are not to be any
larger,” I remarked. “If this man had got his yams in a month sooner,”
said the yam expert, “I’d have taken a stone much larger than this; but
he always was a fool.”
The professions of rain-maker, taro-grower, fish-bringer, etc., in
fact all the callings followed by the benevolent sorcerers, are, I
believe, hereditary, passing from father to son: the men really have
some sound practical knowledge, though smothered in a mass of charms
and incantations; for instance, the taro-grower knows exactly what type
of vegetable should be grown in different soils, he knows the proper
time of year for planting, he can tell the husbandman when to cut away
the sprouts, and when he should get fresh seed; he can say where corn
will be a success, and where bananas, sweet potatoes, taro or yams.
The fish-bringer knows when to expect the different fish, and where
to look for them; his reward depends upon results, for if his charms
and incantations didn’t give adequate satisfaction, the professor
would soon be regarded as “no good,” and deserted in favour of a more
successful practitioner.
[Illustration: TOKU, SON OF GIWI]
So far as the healing powers of the benevolent sorcerers are concerned,
I can vouch for those of one man myself. I was suffering from a severe
attack of lumbago, brought about by marching in wet khaki all day and
sleeping in wet blankets at night; it had begun with a very bad attack
of malaria, which I had squashed by means of twenty-grain doses of
quinine, but the lumbago remained. A son of Giwi’s named Toku, who was
thirteen years of age, was my personal servant at the time: the young
devil disappeared, and I thought that the crankiness and bad temper of
a sick man had been too much for him and that he had bolted. I maligned
Toku, however, for on the following day he came back, accompanied by
his father and the latter’s medical adviser. “My father says this man
can cure your pains,” remarked Toku. “Then for goodness’ sake let him
start work, for I can’t be made worse,” was my answer. The “doctor”
then produced two large flat stones, hung all over with charms, and,
after chanting an incantation or two over them and removing their
embroideries, demanded that they be made red-hot in the kitchen fire;
then he directed the police to make a large fire, and heat many other
stones. His directions having been carried out, he commanded that a
large iron tub that stood in my room, and which was used by me as a
bath, should be filled with hot water, and that I was to get into it.
With the assistance of several men, I doubled my groaning carcase
into it; whereupon the “doctor” sang an incantation or two over me,
called for the pile of hot stones the police had been heating, and
dropped them one by one, fizzling and sizzling into my bath, thus
raising the temperature of the water until I was in a cloud of steam.
“Ask him, Toku, whether he wants to boil the something liver out of
me,” I demanded. The “doctor” paused in listening to a long harangue
from Private Bia, in which that worthy orderly was pointing out, in
blood-curdling language, the precise spot in his ribs where he meant to
send his bayonet home, in the event of his ministrations killing me.
“Tell your master to have patience, he will soon be better,” he said to
Toku; “I am hunting the evil spirit out of him.”
The boiling operations completed, the “doctor” made me lie flat on
my face, and then plastered my back with hot wet clay, upon which he
plentifully spat; then he had brought from the kitchen his red-hot
flat stones, and, wrapping them in cloth made of mulberry bark, he
clapped them on the clay plaster. First the clay steamed and seemed
to scald right through me, then it burnt hard and set up a steady
roasting heat, but it certainly chased away my lumbago. I had, at
the time, a Pondicherry Indian as a cook; and he--attracted by my
language--appeared, gave a glance at what was happening, and then came
back shortly afterwards with some heated flat-irons and flannel, with
which he too proceeded to rub my back. The next day I was well, bar a
feeling of stiffness and a general sensation of having been scorched.
“What pay do you want?” I asked the “doctor”; “I will pay you well.” He
had meanwhile been living in the barracks, and had been entertained by
the police with tales of what would happen to him if I died. “I want
those things that your back was rubbed with by the cook,” he said,
meaning my flat-irons; “they will get me a great name.” Accordingly I
gave him the flat-irons; and I venture to say, that to this day there
will be found on the north-east coast of New Guinea an eminent and
famed medical practitioner, using among his stock-in-trade a set of
flat-irons.
About a year later I nearly lost Toku, the boy by whom my highly
satisfactory attendant had been summoned, in a peculiar way. I was
returning from the second Doriri expedition, and we were marching
before a strong rear-guard, behind which no one was permitted to lag;
Toku was carrying my belts with a very heavy revolver, and I was
marching at ease in the middle of the column. I noticed a rare or new
orchid in a tree, and sent Toku up to get it, signing to the rear-guard
as they came up to pass on with the column; Toku came down with the
orchid, and we caught up to the rear-guard, through which I passed,
not noticing that the young imp had sneaked back to the tree to catch
an iguana he had seen in it. Suddenly I missed Toku, and halted the
line to search for him; I found him absent, and hastily retraced my
steps with several of the police. We heard a shot, in the direction
of which we ran, and found the imp seated upon the corpse of a fully
armed native, and holding my smoking pistol in his hand. “I killed
him, master,” said the young villain. What had happened was this:
Toku had dodged behind the rear-guard and caught his iguana; then, as
he descended the tree, he had been snapped up by one of the numerous
natives, who were hovering on our rear and flank out of sight, in
readiness to snap up any stragglers. The man had clapped his hand over
Toku’s mouth to prevent him calling out, and had then started to carry
him off into the bush beyond earshot of my force; Master Toku, having
one hand free, had contrived to draw my revolver, and pressing it
against his captor’s head, had fired and blown the skull to fragments.
I regret to say that the hero was hoisted upon the back of a policeman,
and soundly spanked by me for “lagging behind the rear-guard, and
nearly losing my belts and revolver.”
“Fine boy of mine that,” remarked old Giwi to me when he heard the
tale, “nearly as good as I was in my youth; the people tell me that
it was a very large strong man he killed; I think I had better see
about arranging wives for him.” “You will do nothing of the sort, you
match-making old begetter of strong sons,” I said; “he will remain
looking after my shirts and things for two years, and be whacked at
intervals for his good; then I will draft him into the constabulary,
and, when he is a second-year man, I will find the price of a really
good wife for him.”
Again I find I have digressed. Muzzy once remarked to me--after telling
me the same story for about the fiftieth time--that he trusted he was
not getting into his “anecdotage.” As a matter of fact he was, but I
was wise enough not to tell him so; now I sometimes wonder whether I am
not going the same way.
I have written about benevolent sorcerers as opposed to the ordinary
ones in New Guinea. The latter are about the most malevolent and
malignant brutes unhung: they undoubtedly possess certain powers, such
as a rough knowledge of the poisonous properties of some plants or
fish for internal administration; and how to set up a virulent form of
blood poisoning ending in tetanus, by the application to a wound--or
the weapon causing the wound--of either a dried serum obtained from
decomposing human bodies, or from the mud of a mangrove swamp. The
statement that New Guinea natives poison their spears or arrows has
frequently been made, and as often denied, but seldom has any direct
evidence been adduced that they do so poison them. Personally, I am
of opinion that the actual fighting man never stoops to use poison;
but I think in some cases he pays a sorcerer, or perhaps his wife or
father does, to “strengthen” his arms, and that then the sorcerer does
poison them. For instance, on the Stuart-Russell expedition, Russell
lost a carrier by death and buried him: when I picked up Russell, we
found the body of that carrier had been disinterred and was acting as
a pincushion for dozens of spears; sharp slivers of wood had also been
inserted, these being intended for use as foot spears or stakes to be
planted in the ground to catch the unwary traveller’s leg.
New Guinea sorcerers, in my experience, kill their subjects by two
methods: firstly, by material means, that is, by the administration
of actual poison; secondly, by esoteric means, that is, by working on
the fear of the intended victim. Sir Francis Winter once told me that
though he had tried many murder cases in which sorcery was alleged,
he had never found any direct evidence that the sorcerer had caused
the death; notwithstanding the fact that in some cases the sorcerer
had actually admitted his guilt. To this I reply, that poisoning by
animal or vegetable poisons is always very difficult to trace, or
bring home to the prisoner; even when the poisons used are common or
well known, and when highly skilled chemists are employed to detect
them. In New Guinea there were no chemists, and the poisons used were
probably either very rare or quite unknown to science. The second
method to which I referred, as being employed by the sorcerer, namely,
that of fear, was worked in this way: the sorcerer sent a message to
his intended victim, telling him that he had bewitched or poisoned
him, thus so preying upon the mind of the unfortunate receiver of
the threat as to cause him either to fret himself into a fever or
commit suicide--usually the latter. In New Guinea the law warranted
a magistrate sending any native convicted of sorcery to gaol, for a
term of six months. This was all very fine; but the sorcerer always
over-awed the witnesses by saying, “I may get six months, but then I
shall be free again and you will pay.”
Among the Binandere people on the Opi River were two distinct tribes,
speaking different dialects. Tabe, the village constable of the lower
tribe, who was quite one of the most intelligent of the natives, once
gave me an instance of the manner in which the emotions will overcome
the habits of order and control instilled into the Papuan. I sent him
to arrest a noted sorcerer: after a struggle, in which many men took
part, he effected his object; then, securing all the sorcerer’s charms
and drugs, he placed them in a canoe, together with the sorcerer, now
securely tied up with native ropes, and started for the Government
Station at Tamata. On the way thither, among the chattels of the
sorcerer, a small net was found into which was plaited twenty-seven
small pieces of wood. Inquiry on the part of the village constable
elicited the fact that it was the sorcerer’s tally of lives, claimed to
have been taken by him, or of deaths induced by his arts. The sorcerer
bragged to Tabe that among the number were certain relations of his,
whom he named; and he also threatened that he would add some more,
including Tabe’s wife and children, when his six months were done.
Whereupon Tabe, incited by this threat and also by the relations of the
dead people, decided to try his own methods of curing a sorcerer, which
he did by sinking him in twelve feet of water for an hour. He then made
inquiries as to whether there were any others requiring his treatment;
an inquiry which resulted in the immediate and hasty departure of
several prominent sorcerers of the community. Proceeding to Tamata, he
surrendered himself on a charge of murder laid by himself, and in which
the principal evidence was his own statement.
In connection with this man’s action, the following is an instance of
the power ascribed to and claimed by a sorcerer, which is generally
accepted by the natives as true. Some sorcerers possess the power of
transmitting their spirits to a crocodile, whereupon the crocodile
becomes a devil with power to assume the shape of any person known
to the sorcerer; the devil-crocodile then, at the instigation of the
sorcerer, waits near a village, until it sees the man against whom
it is to act, go alone down a track or to a garden; then it assumes
the shape of a young married woman or girl well known to the intended
victim, and follows him. Upon a sufficiently secluded spot being
reached, the sorcerer-cum-crocodile-cum-girl approaches the man and
endeavours to induce him to have sexual intercourse: should he do so,
he will not discover his error until evening, when he will feel a
desire to go to the river, there to vanish for ever. It is not until
the sorcerer claims the result as his work, that the people know what
has become of him, and that he has fallen a prey to the crocodile.
Sometimes the shape assumed by the witch-crocodile is that of a
well-known and good-looking young man, and then a young married woman
or girl is seduced. In such case the woman’s first male child will be
taken by the crocodile, and the disembowelled body be later discovered
floating in the water. Occasionally, I have been told, the most careful
of persons and the most moral are entrapped by the actual shape of
husband or wife being assumed by the crocodile; and so any one may be
tricked to his or her death.
From the point of view of a native constable, thoroughly believing
in all this, and infuriated by the loss of those dear to him, it is
an injustice that a sorcerer claiming occult powers of this awful
description should be lightly punished, and then released to seek
vengeance by the exercise of dreadful esoteric means. Should he not
rather, he argues, be sought out and killed in a public, violent, and
showy manner, that will deter others from following in his footsteps?
Absurd though sorcerers’ claims to such powers be, as the foregoing
instance portrays, yet sorcery or witchcraft on the north-east coast
is no child’s play, and the shadow of the fear of it is over the whole
tribal life. Much of it, I am convinced, is due to the administration
of poison, but a great deal more is effected by suggestion; and, to my
mind, there is little difference in the measure of guilt of one who
hits his enemy on the head with a club, and of him who secretly gives
a poisonous drug and causes death by physical means, or of him again,
who, by acting on a man’s fears, administers a moral poison to the mind
and frighten his victim to death.
Some sorcerers claim to possess the power of sending forth their
spirits to work evil during the dark watches of the night or while
they slept. The Binandere people hold that the spirit of a sorcerer is
the only really dangerous one, for though two other kinds of spirits
exist, namely, “devils” and ghosts of the dead, such ghosts and devils
are innocuous; in fact Oia, a son of Bushimai’s, once told me that he
considered they served a useful purpose in frightening the women and
children from straying out of the village at night. Most New Guinea
natives have a great dread of the dark; not so, however, the Binandere;
a man of that tribe thinks nothing of travelling all night along lonely
unfrequented paths by forest, jungle, mountain or swamp, devil-haunted
though he believes them to be: whereas a Suau, Motuan or Kiwai would
die of funk. The Suau believes that when a man is asleep, his spirit
has gone forth from him, and they are very careful how they wake one
another, in order that time may be allowed for the sleeper’s spirit to
return; the Binandere does not care two straws how rapidly or noisily
he stirs up a sleeper.
I remember once an epidemic of measles breaking out at Paiwa on Cape
Vogel, and the cheerful sorcerers persuading the people that it would
continue until a live man was cut open by them, which was accordingly
done. On another occasion, at the back of Collingwood Bay, Oelrichs,
who was then my Assistant R.M., heard of a case where they shoved
lawyer vines, with thorns like this ➳➳➳➳ down the throats of some
of the people, and then tore them up again. I caught the natives
responsible for the cutting open of the man, really by a great streak
of luck. The relations of the murdered man had complained to me about
the affair; but when I came with the police, the whole of the people
had run away from their villages to some bush refuge. We searched and
we hunted, but no sign of them could we find; until at last we found
a man crippled by elephantiasis, struggling along a track. When we
caught him, he was without food and in a great fright, thinking that we
should kill him; I questioned him as to the whereabouts of his people,
but could get no satisfaction. Then, telling the police to leave him a
supply of cooked food, I gave him a stick of trade tobacco and a baubau
or native pipe, and marched on; a few minutes after we left him, we
heard yells, and sending back I found that he was willing to guide us
to the refuge of his people. “They left me,” he said, “to be killed or
to starve; you have given me food and tobacco, and if your men will
carry me, I’ll show you the hiding place.” Promptly he was picked up
and carried; and in two hours, we were marching for the coast with the
murderers on a chain.