Robert Wood Williamson

“ But on the other hand, if he abandons the garden, and nature again overruns it with growth—a process which takes place with great rapidity—it ceases to be his garden, and reverts to, and becomes absorbed in, the portion of the bush out of which it had been cleared; and if, as it may be, he is not the sole owner of that portion of bush, he loses his exclusive right to the land, which as a garden had been his own sole property.
No man can sell or exchange either his bush land or his garden plots, and changes in their ownership therefore only arise through death and inheritance. ”

“ The people of a clan and the ailing chief certainly assume that the sorcerers who perform the ceremony under instructions, whether they be of the same community or of some other community, will by their magical powers merely divine the death or recovery of the chief ”

“ One can hardly leave the question of physical communications without also referring to the marvellous system of verbal communication which exists amongst the Mafulu and Kuni and other mountain people. Messages are shouted across the valleys from village to village in a way which to the unaccustomed traveller is amazing. ”

“ The sorcery connected with illness and death is not so simple; and there is no doubt that it is not confined to powers of divination, but includes powers of actual causation. This department of sorcery obviously includes the ceremonial in connection with the supposed dying chief. But it is not confined to this ceremony, as it is generally believed by the Mafulu people that sickness, which does not necessarily end in death, and death itself, can be, and commonly is, brought about by the operation of sorcerers in one way or another through the medium of certain things. ”

“ As the intentions of the ghost towards living humanity are always evil, his visits, whether for procuring food or in consequence of dissatisfaction with his habitat, are feared by the people; but I could not ascertain what was the nature of the injuries by the ghost to themselves of which they were afraid, nor could I hear of any actual instance of a disaster or misfortune which had been attributed to the machinations of such a ghost. ”

“ I could find no direct information as to any belief in ghosts of animals or plants; but the fact that the living edible plants have a ghostly self, upon which the human ghosts feed, seems to involve the idea during the life of those plants; and in that case one sees no reason why the ghost of the plant should not survive the plant itself, just as the ghost of the living person survives him at his death. Also the existence of a ghostly element in human excrement opens out a wide field of ghostly possibilities.
Spirits which have never been human beings are also malevolent ”

“ Concerning the question of justice, it would seem, indeed, that a judicial system is hardly requisite. Personal disputes between members of a village or clan, or even of a community, on such possible subjects as inheritance, boundary, ownership of [115] property, trespass and the like, and wrongful acts within the village or the community, are exceedingly rare, except as regards adultery and wounding and killing cases arising from acts of adultery, which are more common. ”

“ The marriage ceremony, following a parental betrothal, or with parental acquiescence, is a very informal matter, and in fact both the bargaining for the wife and the ceremony of the marriage are in striking contrast to the elaborate system of bargaining and mock raiding by the girl’s family, and the wedding ceremonies, which are adopted in Mekeo. A day is fixed for the marriage, and on that day the boy goes to the house of the girl’s parents, after which he and she and her parents go to the house of the boy’s parents, and the girl is paid for then and there. ”

“ A woman must not give birth to a child until she has given a pig to a village feast; and if she does so it will be a matter of reproach to her. If, therefore, she finds herself about to have a child, and there is no festal opportunity for her to give a pig, or if, though there be a feast, she cannot afford to give a pig, she will probably procure abortion or kill the child when born. I was told by Father Chabot, the Father Superior of the Mission, that among the neighbouring Kuni people a woman would kill her child for extraordinary reasons ”

“ There is not among the Mafulu, as there is in Mekeo, a large body of powerful professional sorcerers, who are a source of constant terror to the other people of their own villages, and are yet to a certain extent relied upon and desired by those people as a counterpoise to the powers of sorcerers of other villages; and a Mafulu native, unless prevented by a fear of outside hostility in no way connected with the supernatural, will travel alone outside his own community in a way in which fear of the sorcerers would make a Mekeo native unwilling to do so. ”

“ A husband who wants to get rid of his wife will make her life so miserable that she runs away from him. But more usually the separation originates with the wife, who, not liking or being tired of her husband, or being in love elsewhere, will run away and elope altogether with another man. In such a case, the husband may retaliate on that other man in the way already mentioned; but that is rather the method adopted in cases of incidental adultery, and as a rule, when the wife actually elopes, she and her paramour go off to some other community, and the husband submits to the loss. ”

“ The whole of the bush land of the community belongs in separate portions to different owners, one man sometimes owning two or more of such portions; and it is most remarkable that, though there are apparently no artificial boundary marks between the various portions, these boundaries are, somehow or other, known and respected, and disputes with reference to them are practically unknown. How the original allocations and allotments of land have been made does not appear to be known to the people themselves. ”

“ On a man’s death his widow, if any, does not inherit any portion of his property, either movable or immovable, but three things are allowed to her. She is generally allowed one pig, which will be required by her at a later date for the ceremony of the removal of her mourning; and she shares with her husband’s children, or, if there be none, she has the sole right to, the then current season’s crops and fruit resulting from the planting effected by her late husband and herself, though this is a right which, after her return home to her own people, she would not continue to exercise ”

“ Having planted a certain crop in a garden, they let it go on until it is exhausted, the period for this being different for different crops; but afterwards they never again plant the same crop in the same garden. When a crop is exhausted, they may possibly use the same garden for some other purpose; but as a rule they do not do so, except as regards the use of old potato gardens for banana and sugar-cane. When fresh gardens are wanted, fresh portions of bush are cleared; and the old deserted gardens are quickly re-covered by nature with fresh bush, the growth of vegetation being very rapid. ”

“ Concerning the situation as between one community and another, as they regard themselves as quite distinct and unrelated, the only question which seems to arise is that of the ownership of, and rights over, the intervening bush and other land. The boundaries between what is regarded as the preserve of one community, within which its members may hunt and fish, clear for garden purposes, cut timber, and collect fruit, and that of an adjoining community are perfectly well known. The longitudinal boundaries along the valleys are almost always the rivers and streams, which form good boundary marks ”

“ The nose-piercing is generally done at one of the big feasts; and, as these are rare in any one village, you usually find in the villages many fully-grown people whose noses have not been pierced; though as to this I may say that nose-piercing is more generally indulged in by chiefs and important people and their families than by the village rank and file. It commonly happens, however, that a good many people have to be done when the occasion arises. Each person to be operated upon has to provide a domestic pig for the big feast. ”

“ There is no system of head-hunting, or of killing victims in connection with any ceremonies, or of burying alive,1 or of killing old and sick people, though the ceremonial blow on the head of a reputed dying man must sometimes be premature.
Abortion and infanticide, however, are exceedingly common, the more usual practice being that of procuring abortion. Although sexual immorality so largely exists, and young unmarried women and girls are known to indulge in it so freely, and it is not seriously reprobated, it is regarded as a disgrace for one to give birth to a child ”

“ Art and design, other than the arrangement of feather ornaments, is, in fact, apparently confined to the very simple designs scratched upon some of their broad abdominal belts, smoking pipes and lime gourds and perhaps occasionally on one or two other things, and to the plaited designs displayed in the manufacture of other abdominal belts and of arm and leg ornaments and plaited forehead ornaments and feather frames, and to the very simple linear patterns in which some of their network is made, and the ground-staining and pattern-colouring of their perineal bands, dancing aprons and ribbons. ”

“ First, I was told that the Mekeo clan Inawae of the Mekeo village Oriropetana, whose clan badge is the goura pigeon, and who are not allowed to kill and eat it, and whose bird totem it appears to be, say that they are descended from the goura pigeon, and that an ancestor of theirs, though himself a man, had all the powers and faculties of movement of those birds, and that he used to dance with them, and so learnt the dance and taught it to his people. ”

“ Village pigs are the individual property of the householders who possess them, there being no system of community or village ownership; and, when required for feasts and ceremonies, each household has to provide such pig or pigs as custom requires of it. They are bred in the villages by their owners, and by them brought up, fed and tended, the work of feeding and looking after them being the duty of the women. ”

“ But, even if they also have another distinct and more primitive ancestry of their own, not associated with the Papuo-Melanesian types, or even with the pure Papuan types, found on the coast and in the plains, one would imagine that contact with these types would have caused the Mafulu people to learn something of the more advanced art which these other peoples display and that we should not have to record a sudden drop from artistic designs embodying curves and natural imitative art to a system confined to straight lines, zig-zags, and spots. ”

“ At death the ghost leaves the body, and becomes, and remains, a malevolent being. There is no idea of re-incarnation, or of the ghost passing into any animal or plant, though, as will be seen hereafter, it sometimes apparently becomes a plant; and there is no difference in their minds between the case of a person [267] who has died naturally and one who has been killed in battle or otherwise, or between persons who have or have not been eaten, or who have or have not been buried, though in case of burial there are the methods of getting rid of the ghost ”

“ Each of them also is entitled to have an emone (here again not a true emone) in his village, but in fact their numbers often make this practically impossible, and you rarely see more than two or three emone in one village.
The above are all the chiefs and notables of the clan. There is no such thing as a war chief.
Aristocracy in its various forms is not a condition to which a man attains on getting older—it is attained by inheritance. ”

“ The Mafulu sorcerers are a somewhat less powerful people; but they claim, and are supposed to have, certain powers of divination, or actual causation, or both, of certain things. So far as I could learn, the sorcerer’s supernatural powers would never be exercised in a hostile way against anyone of his own village, or indeed of his own clan, or even, as a rule, of his own community. Apparently the sorcerer’s victim is nearly always a member of some other community; and the sorcerers [277] of a community do not appear to be in any way either feared or shunned by the members of that community. ”

“ At three, four, or five o’clock all the people of the village have returned to it, except perhaps when they are very busy taking advantage of good weather for making new clearings or other special work. In the evening they have another meal cooked in the village. At every meal in the village the pigs have to be fed also, these sharing the food of the people themselves, or feeding on raw potatoes. Unless there is dancing going on, or they are tempted by a fine moonlight night to sit out talking, the people all terminate their routine day by going to bed early. ”

“ Serious illness or death of either an adult or an infant, if not caused by visible accident, is by the Mafulu, as by other natives, generally attributed, subject to limitations, to the sorcerers. The belief of the Mafulu as to this arises if the victim, being an ordinary person, is comparatively young, or in the strength of life, say under forty or forty-five, or if the victim, being a chief or a member of a chief’s family or a person of very high position, is even over that age, unless he is very old, and old age is recognised as the natural cause of his illness or death. ”

“ Every human being, male and female, has during life a mysterious ghostly self, in addition to his bodily visible and conscious self; and this ghostly self will on his death survive him as a ghost. There appears to be no idea of this ghostly self leaving the body in times of sleeping or dreaming; though, if a man dreams of someone who is dead, he thinks that he has been visited by that person’s ghost. ”

“ If he is not already betrothed, and is matrimonially inclined, he has various expedients for accomplishing his desires. A boy who wants to marry, and does not know where to seek a wife, will sometimes light a fire in the bush, or better still in an open space (not in the village) , when the air is still, and wait until a slight breeze blows the flame or smoke a little in some one direction; and he will then select a community or village which lies in that direction as the spot in which to seek a wife. ”

“ The forest tracks in particular are often quite unrecognisable as such to an inexperienced white man, and are generally very narrow and beset with a tangle of stems and hanging roots and creepers of the trees and bush undergrowth, which catch the unwary traveller across the legs or body or hands or face at every turn, and are often so concealed by the grass and vegetation that, unless he be very careful, he is apt to be constantly tripped up by them ”

“ A native who, after the recent death of another, is travelling in the mountains, and there finds a young fungus of this species only just starting into growth, will think that it is probably the ghost of the recently departed one. ”

“ The women cook the breakfast for the whole family inside the house at about six or seven o’clock, and then take the food of the men to the emone. After breakfast most of the men and women go off to the gardens and the bush. The women’s work there is chiefly the planting of sweet potatoes, taro and other things, and cleaning the gardens; and in the afternoon they get food from the gardens and firewood from the bush, all of which they bring home to the village; also they have to clear off the undergrowth from newly cleared bush. ”

“ Williamson has shown strong evidence that the Mafulu and probably other adjacent mountain tribes are essentially a pygmy—that is to say a Negrito—people who have been modified to some extent by Papuan and possibly Papuo-Melanesian influence, both physical and cultural. He has marshalled his data with great skill, and has dissected out, as it were, the physical and cultural elements of the Negrito substratum. It only remains for other observers to study Negritos in other parts of New Guinea to see how far these claims can be substantiated. ”