Baiame

“ Langloh Parker, in a letter to me, remarks that Baiame alone is outside of this conception, and is common to all classes, and totems, and class divisions.
"Everything in nature is divided between the classes. The wind belongs to one and the rain to another. The sun is Wutaroo and the moon is Yungaroo.... The South Australian savage looks upon the universe as the great tribe, to one of whose divisions he himself belongs, and all things, animate or inanimate, which belong to his class are parts of the body corporate, whereof he himself is part. ”

“ Ridley "had never spoken before." "If asked who made the sky, the earth, the animals, they always answer 'Baiame'" (Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1872, pp. 268, 269) . Impressed by these replies, Mr. Ridley, in 1856, introduced Baiame as equivalent to our God, or Creator, into certain primers for missionaries (Gurre Kamilaroi, Ridley, Sydney, 1856) . Jehovaka and Eloi, attempted about 1830-40 by Mr. Threlkeld, did not take with the natives, nor did Immanueli, which Mr. Ridley endeavoured to introduce himself. [13] Mr. ”

“ Maui, too,—the Polynesian god who caught the sun with cords of cocoanut fiber, who lifted the sky and smoothed its arched surface with his stone adze, who made the earth habitable for man and then created him, and who now divides his time between fishing for islands with a hook which is called the Plume of Beauty, and resting in the form of a small day-fly upon the under side of a flower,—Maui, who belongs to the length and breadth of the Pacific, once visited Peru. ”

“ It is not true, however, as has been frequently asserted, that the natives have no idea of a Supreme Being, although they do not allow this idea to influence their actions. The Wellington tribes, at least, believe in the existence of a Deity called Baiamai, who lives on an island beyond the great sea to the East. His food is fish, which come up to him from the water when he calls them. Some of the natives consider him the maker of all things, while others attribute the creation of the world to his son Burambin. ”

“ By dark we had crossed Babao Bay, and reached the ship at half-past eight. It may be as well to mention that, looking from Coepang, the valley of Pritie is situated immediately under Timor Peak, the highest over the northern shore of Babao Bay. A small hut, on a projecting shingle point, close to the westward, marks the landing place, where several canoes are generally to be seen hauled up. At high tide a boat can get in; but, as we have already said, there is a long mud flat at low-water.
The Timorees do not bear the character of being very industrious ”

“ Island of Ybabao. Southeast of the island of Baybay, lies the island of Ybabao, or as it is also called, the island of Candaya [also Tandaya] . It is about one hundred and ten leagues in circumference. No one has yet gone through the land, and therefore its width is not known. They say that its population is as large as that of the island of Baybay, and that it is a fertile and well-provisioned island. The people seen by the Spaniards will number about five thousand Indians, who are scattered through the following villages:
The village of Daguisan. ”

“ Its water is excellent, and the whole land is quite fertile and healthful, and abounds in rice, swine, fowls, and palm-wine; and there is much hunting of buffaloes, deer, wild hogs, and birds. A great amount of wax, cotton, and gold is collected in this district, in which articles the natives pay their tribute. Two leagues opposite the bar of the river Taxo is the dense population of the Babuyanes Islands. One island is an encomienda under the control of his Majesty, and is said to contain one thousand men. ”

“ Is he not preparing to lift out of the ocean of darkness this great and beautiful land again, his fish, Te-ika-a-Maui?
O, who will deny the truth of the old gods?
Who can deny the truth of the Sun-god, Maui?
Te Ra, the Sun, is the son of Rangi, but Maui is the Sun-god of human creation; he is the binding link; through him alone is it possible for man to understand the wonder of the golden Sun.
Hine-nui-te-po, the goddess, once devoured Maui, as the Darkness nightly devours the Sun, and now keeps enclosed the world. ”

“ A bayou runs irregularly across this low land, the bottom of which, however, is above the surface of the Big Black at ordinary stages. When the river is full water runs through it, converting the point of land into an island. The bayou was grown up with timber, which the enemy had felled into the ditch. At this time there was a foot or two of water in it. The rebels had constructed a parapet along the inner bank of this bayou by using cotton bales from the plantation close by and throwing dirt over them. The whole was thoroughly commanded from the height west of the river. ”

“ The broad reach of the Pará in front of this coast is called the Bahia, or Bay of Marajó. The coast and the interior of the land are peopled by civilised Indians and Mamelucos, with a mixture of free negroes and mulattos. They are poor, for the waters are not abundant in fish, and they are dependent for a livelihood solely on their small plantations, and the scant supply of game found in the woods. The district was originally peopled by various tribes of Indians, of whom the principal were the Tupinambás and Nhengahíbas. ”

“ Being prevented by stress of weather from making the circuit of the land of the Baia, to see whether it were an island or mainland as they had imagined, and finding himself in great straits in twenty-one degrees south, to which high latitude he had persevered in sailing in about a south-westerly direction from the fifteen or twenty minutes south in which lay the aforesaid Baia, he put back to the north-west and north-east up to fourteen degrees, in which he sighted a very extensive coast, which he took for that of New Guadalcanal ”

“ Farther to the northwest from Çubú are Baybay, Bayugo, Abuyo, Cavalian, Tandaya, Bairciogama, and other islets, among these which I have mentioned. They are divided among the same citizens of Çubú. Very few of them have peaceable inhabitants. With them as with the others, it is best to bring about peace in these islands. Rice, cotton, great numbers of swine and fowls, wax, and honey are produced there in great abundance. There are many mines, as has been shown, and the natives say that they are well populated. There is gold in all of these islands ”

“ I made a list of Bisaya words on the Limbang, another among the Idaán at the foot of “Kina Balu.” I was certain of a great affinity between the languages, as men from one tribe could freely converse with those of the other, though their dwellings were a hundred and fifty miles apart; but on comparing the written vocabularies, I found a surprising difference. Just before I left Borneo, I spoke to a Bisaya on the subject: he said, “Repeat me a few words of the Idaán that are different.” ”

“ The bayou curved like a crescent around the point of land on which La Folle's cabin stood. Between the stream and the hut lay a big abandoned field, where cattle were pastured when the bayou supplied them with water enough. Through the woods that spread back into unknown regions the woman had drawn an imaginary line, and past this circle she never stepped. ”

“ The Abai, its largest affluent, rises at Gish Abai, near the north-east foot of Mount Denguiya, some 60 miles from the lake. The Portuguese colony settled in this region towards the end of the sixteenth century certainly visited the sources of the Abai; but they were first described by the Jesuit Paez, who tells us that the water, oozing from a marshy field, is collected in a limpid lake, supposed by the natives to be "unfathomable" because they cannot reach the bottom with their spears. ”

“ It is known, that on the Malayan Peninsula, in Luconia, Borneo, and most of the larger islands of the Eastern Seas, there are occasionally found in the mountainous tracts a scattered race of blacks entirely distinct from the rest of the population. Some have conceived them to be the aborigines of these countries; others considering them as of the African race, adduce them in proof of an early and extensive intercourse between Africa and these islands. I shall content myself with observing, that they appear at the present day to form the bulk of the population of Papua or New Guinea. ”

“ LAOS, n.p. A name applied by the Portuguese to the civilised people who occupied the inland frontier of Burma and Siam, between those countries on the one hand and China and Tongking on the other; a people called by the Burmese Shans, a name which we have in recent years adopted. They are of the same race of Thai to which the Siamese belong, and which extends with singular identity of manners and language, though broken into many separate communities, from Assam to the Malay Peninsula. ”

“ The rest of the population was composed of a heterogeneous mass of natives mingled with a number of Chinese, a few Arabs, and a large fluctuating population of traders from Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea, Siam, and the other innumerable isles of the archipelago. These were more or less connected with praus laden with the rich and varied merchandise of the eastern seas. As each man in the town had been permitted to build his house according to his own fancy, picturesque irregularity was the agreeable result. ”

“ All the tribes still in Apo Kayan call themselves Kenyah, as also those of the eastward flowing Tawang, Berau and Kayan (or Bulungan) rivers and those of the upper Limbang and Baram flowing northwards. The Kenyahs of Apo Kayan live along the Iwan, a tributary of the Kayan river (or Bulungan) ; to the north-east is another tributary called the Bahau which seems to have been the original home of the Bahau people since the tribes of Borneo habitually take their names from the rivers along which they live. ”

“ An incomplete list aids in making clear the fact that groups of islands hundreds and even thousands of miles apart have been peopled centuries past by the same organic race. Either complete or fragmentary Maui legends are found in the single islands and island groups of Aneityum, Bowditch or Fakaofa, Efate, Fiji, Fotuna, Gilbert, Hawaii, Hervey, Huahine, Mangaia, Manihiki, Marquesas, Marshall, Nauru, New Hebrides, New Zealand, Samoa, Savage, Tahiti or Society, Tauna, Tokelau and Tonga. ”

“ The whole of the great island of New Guinea, the Ke and Aru Islands, with Mysol, Salwatty, and Waigiou, are inhabited almost exclusively by the typical Papuans. I found no trace of any other tribes inhabiting the interior of New Guinea, but the coast people are in some places mixed with the browner races of the Moluccas. The same Papuan race seems to extend over the islands east of New Guinea as far as the Fijis. ”

“ The mouths of the rivers Ananam, Kabatuan, Mengkabong, Tawaran, Sulaman, Abai, and Tampasuk are all shallow, and unfit for European vessels; the deepest having but nine feet at low water, and with the exception of the Ananam, Kabatuan, and Abai, are much exposed during both monsoons, and are rendered dangerous by the numerous sandbanks that lie off their mouths. The Ananam in Gaya Bay, and the Kabatuan in Sapangar Bay, are only suited for native craft. The Abai has more water, and, its mouth being sheltered, small vessels, at certain times of tide, might enter ”

“ Then the island comes to the surface and Maui, the beloved grandchild of the Polynesian god Kanaloa, is praised.
It was part of one of the legends that Maui changed himself into a bird and from the heavens let down a line with which he drew up land, but the line broke, leaving islands rather than a mainland. About two hundred lesser gods went to the new islands in a large canoe. The greater gods punished them by making them mortal. ”

“ He told me that the best harbour in the island was at a place called Babao on the north side of Kupang Bay; that there were no inhabitants there, but plenty of buffaloes in the woods, and abundance of fish in the sea; that there was also fresh water: that there was another place, called port Sesial, about 20 leagues to the eastward of Laphao; that there was a river of fresh water there, and plenty of fish, but no inhabitants: yet that if I would go thither he would send people with hogs, goats and buffaloes, to truck with me for such commodities as I had to dispose of. ”

“ But to this day every alae bird wears the symbol of punishment for telling its secret—a tuft of red feathers on the top of its head.
MAUI'S KITE.
Maui, the great demi-god of Hawaii, was restless. Time hung heavy on his hands. Uneventful days of quiet had fallen upon the land. Adventure seemed to be in hiding, and no exploit invited to service this active youngster's shining spear or magic club. Idleness grew more and more unbearable.
Now Laamaomao, god of the winds, dwelt not far above Rainbow Falls in the beautiful gorge of the Wailuku and to him Maui confided his discontent. ”

“ Many go every year to the islands off the eastern end of Ceram and to the neighboring coast of Papua, and sometimes along its northern shores to Geelvink Bay. These long voyages indicate that the Bugis are now what the Malays were when the Portuguese first came to the East, namely, the great navigators and traders of the archipelago. They carry to all these localities English calicoes and cotton goods of their own manufacture, also Chinese gongs and large quantities of arrack. ”

“ The languid picturesqueness of Bahia is best personified in the typical Bahiana, black or near-black in color, wearing many bracelets and similar ornaments of tin and wire, sometimes gilded, her immense hips heavy with bulky skirts only a trifle less gay in color than her waist, shawl, and turban, placidly smoking a big native cigar and carrying on her head a small stool or a tiny table, legs-up like a helpless turtle, with perhaps 353a closed umbrella lying flat on top of that, on her way to squat on the one and lean on or raise the other in church or market. ”