_The Papuans of
Wakatimi—Colour—Hair—Eyes—Nose—Tattooing—Height—Dress—Widows’
Bonnets—Growth of Children—Preponderance of Men—Number of
Wives—Childhood—Swimming and other Games—Imitativeness
of Children—The Search for Food—Women as Workers—Fishing
Nets—Other Methods of Fishing—An Extract from Dampier._
The Papuans of the Mimika district may be divided into two classes or
tribes: those who live in the villages on the lower waters of the river
and make periodical migrations to the sea; and those who live on the
upper waters of the river near the foot of the mountains and who never
go down to the coast. There is a wide interval of uninhabitable country
between the regions occupied by these two tribes, and communication
between them, if it takes place at all, is very rare; but they resemble
each other so closely, both in physical characters and in their manners
and customs, that a single description will suffice for both.[9] The
other native race of the district, the pygmy people who live in the
mountains, will be described in a later chapter.
[Sidenote: FEATURES OF THE PAPUANS]
The skin of the Mimika native is a very dark brown, almost rusty black,
but a dark colour without any of the gloss seen in the skin of the
African negro. Not infrequently we saw men of a lighter, nearly yellow,
colour, and in the Wakatimi district there were three pure albinos, a
man, a woman and a child. The man and woman were covered with blotches
of a pinkish pigment and were peculiarly disagreeable to look at, the
child, a sucking infant, and the offspring of black parents, was as
white as any European baby, and was called, out of compliment to us,
“Tuana.”[10]
The hair is black and thick and frizzly; it never, or seldom grows
long, so you do not see the ornamental coiffures characteristic of the
natives of some other parts of the island; but they are skilful in
plaiting what there is of it and take some pride in the result. Three-
or four-pronged combs are worn in the hair more as a means of carrying
a useful article than as ornaments. The hair of young children is often
quite fair, but it becomes dark as they grow up; some of the adults
have the custom, common in other places, of dyeing the hair yellow with
lime.
The eye of the Papuan child is the eye of any bright dark-eyed child
here or elsewhere; the white of the eye is white and the iris dark
and clear. But very soon the white becomes bloodshot and yellow, and
the iris blurred. The expression in the eyes is a thing that haunts
one by its forlornness and hopelessness; it cannot be described, but
you may see it in the eyes of certain animals. They show a strong
disinclination to look you straight in the eyes, and when you rarely
make them do so you seem to be looking into an unlighted and empty
space.
The teeth are strong, but not conspicuously white and perfect like
those of some other black races. A good many men file or chip the
upper incisors to a point, but this has not, so far as we know, any
particular significance.
The nose is almost bridgeless and is of a somewhat hooked and fleshy
type with wide nostrils. The _septum_ of the nose is pierced when the
boys are young, and the hole is kept open by a rolled-up leaf thrust
through it; in this way it is gradually dilated until the man is
able to wear a carved ornament of a piece of the bill of a hornbill
or a curved boar’s tusk, with which he decorates himself on festal
occasions. The nose-piercing is attended with a good deal of ceremony,
but we were never fortunate enough to see it; it is done when the child
is about five years old, and the operation is made (according to native
accounts) with a piece of sharpened bone heated in the fire. Small
ornaments are sometimes worn in holes in the _alae nasi_ which are
pierced in all the children, both boys and girls, when they are small
infants.
Many of the people pierce the lobes of the ear, but the custom is not
universal. The ornaments worn in the ear are strings of two or three
beads, or small rings of plaited fibres or rattan, or the claw of a
cassowary. We took with us a large number of Jew’s harps as trade
goods, but the natives did not care for them, and two (the only two, I
believe) that we did succeed in making the people accept, were worn
by them as ear-rings. Another man, a constant smoker, in default of a
better cigar case always carried a cigar in the lobe of his ear.
Tattooing, in the proper sense of the term, is unknown to the Mimika
Papuans, but a great number of them practise cicatrisation or scarring.
The usual places for these markings are the buttocks and the outer
side of the upper (usually the left) arm. On the buttocks the marks
are almost always the same, a cross, about two inches square, on the
left buttock, and a cross surrounded by a circle on the right. The
mark on the arm is about four inches long and sometimes represents a
snake and sometimes a scorpion or a crayfish, but the meaning of it,
and whether or not it had some totemistic significance we were unable
to learn. Some of the women affect a scar between the breasts, which
makes a very unsightly contraction, and we occasionally saw people with
irregular scars all over the upper part of the breast and back, but it
is probable that most of them were the signs rather of former quarrels
than due to a spirit of coquetry.
They are fond of painting their faces with a bright red earth, lumps of
which they sometimes find and prize very highly, and not infrequently
we saw men with their faces smeared black with a mixture of fat and
charcoal, or whitened with powdered sago, but the reason, if there were
any but vanity, for this adornment we did not discover.
[Illustration: CICATRIZATION.]
[Illustration: PAPUAN WITH FACE WHITENED WITH SAGO POWDER.]
The average height of men measured at Wakatimi and Parimau is 5 feet 6
inches. No women were measured, but it would probably be found that
the average height of the women was about two inches less than that of
the men. Such a height is small compared with that of many races, but
the first impression you get of the Papuans is that they are tall, for
they hold themselves well, and all naked people look taller than those
who go clothed. Their legs are thin and rather meagre, due in a great
measure to the large proportion of their lives that is spent in canoes,
but they walk with a good swinging gait and cover the ground easily.
[Sidenote: DRESS]
It is a curious thing that a black man never looks naked; a white man
undressed looks a naked man, so too does a yellow man, but a Papuan—and
nobody could wear much less in the way of clothes than he does—always
seems to be sufficiently clad. The dress of the Papuan men, as has been
suggested above, is scanty in the extreme. They have, or had before
we visited them, no cloth except a very inferior bark cloth made from
the bark of a species of fig tree. Some of the men wear a narrow strip
of this bark cloth, which hangs down in front from a string round the
loins and keeps up an ineffectual pretence of decency.
The more usual covering is the bamboo penis-case, which is kept in
position by pulling the preputium through a hole in the lower end of
the case. There are three or four different patterns of penis-cases,
and they are always ornamented with carved designs. Another equally
common fashion of covering is the shell; this is an oval or roughly
squared segment of a large white sea shell, sometimes as much as six
inches in diameter. It is worn on a string which passes through two
holes bored in it, and is tied tightly round the loins. The convex
surface of the shell faces forwards, and the preputium is pulled
upwards and clipped under the lower margin of the shell. Both the
bamboo case and the shell are useful as a protection against the
leeches and thorns of the jungle.
Small boys go quite naked until they reach the time of puberty, when
for a short period they wear a sort of skirt made from the shredded
leaves of the _pandanus_. Though the men like very much to wear round
their heads strips of our coloured cloth, they do not normally use any
kind of head-gear except on ceremonial occasions, when the men who beat
the drums wear elaborate hats ornamented with the plumes of birds of
paradise. Many of the men wear arm-bands above the elbow and leg-bands
below the knee, made of tightly woven fibre or of fine strips of rattan.
The women are rather more clothed than the men, but it cannot be said
that they are at all overdressed. The usual garment consists of a
narrow belt of bark cloth or grass round the waist, from which there
hang a narrow strip of bark cloth in front, reaching about half way
down the thigh, and a wider strip, somewhat after the fashion of the
tail of an Englishman’s evening coat, extending as far as the knee
behind. In addition to this, many of the women wear a sort of short
waistcoat or sleeveless bodice made of plaited grass or fibre with
tags or tassels hanging down in a sort of fringe from its lower edge.
Newly-married women wear a sort of apron, or rather a long fringe of
shredded leaves, which hangs down from the waist.
[Illustration: WOMEN OF WAKATIMI.
(_On the left is a widow wearing the bonnet._)]
[Sidenote: WIDOWS’ WEEDS]
The best dressed, or in any case the most dressed, members of the
community are the widows, who wear, in addition to the other articles
of female attire, what can only be described as a poke bonnet. In some
cases the bonnet projects so far in front of the face as to obscure the
features, in some it is of a conical design, and in others it resembles
in shape nothing so much as the morion of a mediaeval man-at-arms.
Like the waistcoats worn by the women, the bonnets are made of
ingeniously plaited fibre, and both of these look well when they are
newly made, but they very quickly become hideous with damp and dirt,
and the wearer is a person to be shunned. The small girls, unlike the
boys, wear a narrow strip of bark cloth tucked between the legs almost
as soon as they can walk. It is perhaps worth mentioning that these
people have the art of sewing; they make eyed needles out of sharp fish
bones, and with strands of fibre they contrive to sew pieces of bark
cloth very neatly together.
There are no milk-producing domesticated animals in the country, so
the women suckle their infants for a very long time, and you may
occasionally see children of (apparently) three or four years old at
their mothers’ breasts; but whether young or old, it is very difficult
to estimate the age of these people. In the course of a year we saw
little children grow into active boys and we saw young men become
middle-aged. I should say—but this is pure speculation—that a man
is old at forty years and a woman at an even earlier age; it seems
probable, too, that the life of a woman is shorter than that of a man.
Partly on account of the migratory habits of the natives, and partly
owing to the fact that at no hour of the day until nightfall are all
the people in or about the houses, it was never found possible to take
a census of a village, but from our observations we arrived at the
conclusion that the number of men was decidedly greater than that of
women.
The number of a man’s wives was a favourite subject for boasting and
they often assured us that they had two or even three wives, but we
only knew two men who certainly had two wives; on the other hand we
knew a considerable number of men who had no wives at all. It appears
that a man may take a wife from his own village or from a village in
the same district; thus a Wakatimi man may take a wife from Obota
or Periepia, and a Parimau man from Kamura. There were two women at
Parimau who were said to come from Wakatimi, but whether they had been
voluntarily exchanged or were the spoils of war we were not told.
It was unfortunate that we learnt nothing about the customs and
ceremonies connected with marriage. A wedding took place at Wakatimi
when we all happened to be absent, and the only definite description
that we were able to get of it was that the bride, who arrived from
another village by canoe, crawled on her hands and knees from the
water’s edge to the village, a distance of about a hundred yards, and
most of it through mud.
Beyond question, the happiest time in the lives of the Papuans is their
childhood, when they are free to play from morning to night and need
not take part in the ceaseless search for food, which occupies so much
of the time of their elders. As infants they are carried on the backs
of their mothers and very often of their fathers, secured by a wide
strap of bark cloth, the ends of which are tied across the carrier’s
chest. It is very seldom that you hear them cry and they appear to give
very little trouble; their mothers are very careful of the cleanliness
of the infants. Very early in life they begin to walk and almost as
soon they learn to swim. In fine weather they often spend the greater
part of the day in the river and it is a very pretty sight to see a
crowd of little Papuans playing together in the water. Sometimes they
are joined by the women, who seem to enjoy the fun quite as much as the
children. One of their favourite games is to pretend to be a school of
porpoises, whose rolling headers they imitate admirably. They very soon
become powerful swimmers, and I remember one day seeing a small boy,
who cannot have been more than eight years old, swim across a river in
tremendous flood, while the party of men who were with him had to seek
a place where they could safely swim across half a mile lower down.
[Sidenote: GAMES OF THE CHILDREN]
There are a number of games too that they play on dry land: they
play the universal game of lying in wait for your enemy and suddenly
pouncing out on him; they have great battles in which they are armed
with miniature bows and arrows, and reed stems take the place of
spears, and shrill yells make up for the lack of bloodshed. There is
another game which I saw played three or four times in exactly the same
manner, and which, by reason of it somewhat resembling a children’s
game called “Nuts in May,” is perhaps worth describing. Eight little
boys, each one carrying a long flowering grass, stood in two parties
of four facing each other a few yards apart. At first they waved their
grasses and then danced towards each other, crossed and took the places
that had been opposite to them; this they repeated twice. Then they
ran round and round in a circle about five yards wide waving their
grasses and shouting until they stopped suddenly and sat down in a
bunch together. After a rest of about half a minute, they jumped up and
ran round again in the same circle, now shouting and grabbing as they
ran handsful of sand, which they threw over their heads into the air or
between their legs into the face of the one behind; then a sudden stop
and again they all sat down in a bunch. After this they jumped up, ran
all together for a few yards shouting loudly, hurled all their grasses
as high into the air as they could, and the game was ended.
Like the children of more civilised races, the young Papuans are fond
of imitating their elders. The boys like to be seen walking about
with men, to copy their swaggering walk, and to sit about smoking
idly and watch the women at work. The little girls sometimes contrive
to make grass garments like those worn by the women; they make small
dolls’ houses in which they themselves, or infants still smaller than
they, are the dolls, and they like to be seen baling out the canoes
or carrying sand for the houses. But in their case pretence is soon
changed to reality, and when they are quite young they are made to
accompany their mothers in the serious business of life, while the
boys are still leading a gay life with no responsibilities. Both boys
and girls very early become proficient in the management of canoes, and
a child of tender years will confidently steer a canoe through rough
water which would end in certain shipwreck for one of us.
[Sidenote: THE BUSINESS OF LIFE]
The chief business in the lives of the Papuans is that of all animals,
human and others, namely, the search for food. But while the civilised
races have learnt to foresee wants of the future, and have established
a system of agriculture which provides food for everybody and leaves a
part of the population free to pursue other occupations, the Papuans
take no thought for the morrow, and the search for food becomes
literally a hand to mouth business, which occupies the attentions of
every member of the community.
They have no cultivation in the Mimika villages, and even at those
places such as Obota (see p. 88) where there is some cultivation,
the crops that they raise are not nearly sufficient for the whole
population, so it can easily be imagined that an improvident people
living in a country constantly liable to sudden floods, which swamp
the land for weeks at a time, is frequently faced with a prospect of
complete starvation. At first you are inclined to think that the whole
of the business of collecting food falls on the shoulders of the women,
while the men sit at home and do nothing. This is certainly true of a
great many days in the year, but certain tasks can only be performed by
the men, such as hunting for game in the jungle, and felling trees to
make the canoes, without which the people must inevitably starve.
Their working day begins fairly early, and by about eight o’clock the
village is almost deserted by the women, who have all gone off in
canoes to fish or collect sago. As a rule, two or three women go in
each canoe, taking with them a few children, a dog or two, several
fishing nets, rolls of matting, some spears and arrows, a little food,
a bamboo filled with fresh water, if they are going down to the river
mouth, and always a fire burning in the stern of the boat. The usual
destination of the women is the muddy creeks among the mangrove swamps
not far from the sea; there where the water is brackish and the tide
rises and falls several feet they find in the mud banks large mussels
(_Cyrena_ sp.), which contain a good deal of food, and the shells of
which are useful as knives and scrapers. Hopping all over the mud are
seen hundreds of curious little fish (_Periophthalmus_ sp.), whose eyes
seem to be starting out of their heads; these little creatures climb up
the steepest mud banks, and even up the stumps of trees.
[Illustration: PAPUAN WOMAN AND CHILD.]
[Sidenote: FISHING]
The commonest type of fishing net is made in an oval framework of
wood, or strips of rattan, about 5 feet long by 2 feet wide; the net
is a close mesh of native string stretched tightly across the frame,
except at the middle, where it sags a little. The usual method of using
this kind of net is to grasp it at both ends and by wading through the
shallow water to scoop up small fish much in the same way as shrimps
are caught. There is another more ingenious method of using it, which
sometimes results in large capture of little fish. When the tide
is high the bushes along the river bank and many of the drooping
branches of the trees are submerged; the natives approach quietly in
their canoes, cautiously push the net under the submerged vegetation,
and then with a sudden jerk lift it up out of the water, in this way
capturing numbers of small fish which had been sheltering or looking
for food among the leaves.
Another form of fishing net—though there is no netting in its
construction—is made of long, thin strips of bamboo tied parallel to
each other at intervals of about half an inch, forming a sort of screen
or trellis-work, which can be rolled up if necessary. Strong wooden
stakes are driven into the mud at the mouth of the creeks which join
the river in many places, and at high water the screens are fastened to
the stakes in such a way as to touch the bottom and close the entrance
of the creek; the water can run back when the tide falls, but not the
fish which are sometimes caught in considerable numbers.
The larger fish are all obtained by the men, who either catch them with
a hook and line, or spear them in the shallow water near the river
mouth, or along the sea shore. We saw very few hooks; one or two were
made of rough metal, the others were neatly fashioned from fish bones,
and all of them were plain without barbs. Now they have a large number
of steel fishhooks, which they greatly value.
The commonest types of fish-spear are made of thin bamboo or a light
wood about ten feet long, and they end in three or four sharp prongs
of bamboo or hardened wood. They also use a barbed spear of which
the head becomes detached from the shaft, when it becomes fixed in a
fish; a light line connecting the shaft with the head causes the shaft
to act as a drag on the movements of the fish, which can easily be
followed up and killed; this kind of spear is only used for the larger
fish, saw-fish and the like, but I never saw it in use. Considering the
enormous number of fish that there are—at the mouth of the river the
water is sometimes seen to be seething with large fish—it cannot be
said that the men are very clever with their spears.
They also shoot fish, using single- or three-pointed arrows; you may
see a man standing quietly in a pool of water like a heron waiting for
the fish to come up to him, or stalking a shoal of fish stealthily
from the bank; in either case he will probably shoot arrow after arrow
without effect, for they are absurdly indifferent marksmen with the bow.
The most primitive methods of all of catching fish I saw practised one
day coming down from Obota. A native paddling in the bow of my canoe
saw a large fish near the bank, towards which he steered the canoe.
When he judged that he was near enough to it, he hurled himself flat on
to the water with a resounding splash that drenched everything in the
boat, and a thud that would have stunned the fish at once had it not
darted off an instant earlier.
The sight of a fish, however small it is, always rouses a Papuan to
action. When we were travelling with natives, we sometimes came to
pools where small fish had been left by some receding flood. Instantly
their loads were thrown down and everyone darted into the water with
sticks and stones and shouts and as much enthusiasm as if the fish had
been salmon and a full meal for everyone.
There is another method of fishing which was observed by the navigator,
Captain Dampier, in use by the natives of this region. It is so
remarkable that, although we did not see it employed by the people of
the Mimika district, I shall make no excuse for repeating it here:—
“They strike Fish very ingeniously with Wooden Fiss-gigs and have a
very ingenious way of making the Fish rise: For they have a piece of
Wood curiously carv’d and painted much like a Dolphin (and perhaps
other Figures;) these they let down into the Water by a Line with a
small weight to sink it; when they think it low enough, they haul
the Line into their Boats very fast, and the Fish rise up after this
Figure; and they stand ready to strike them when they are near the
Surface of the Water.”[11]
There are times when the natives get more fish than they know what to
do with, and other times when no fish can be caught; but they have no
idea of laying up a store for the lean times. It is true that they char
some in the fire and keep them for a few days before the fish putrify,
but if they learnt to smoke some of their surplus supply, they need
never go hungry.