The Mafulu Part 39

[38] I have examined at the British Museum a belt made by the dwarf mountain people found by the recent expedition organised by the British Ornithologists' Union. This belt is made in hank-like form, remarkably similar to that of my Mafulu belt No. 7, though in other respects it differs from the latter, and it is much smaller. The only other thing of similar hank-like form which I have been able to find at the Museum is a small belt or head ornament (it is said to be the latter) made by Sakai people of the Malay Peninsula.

[39] Chalmers describes a young woman in the foot hills behind Port Moresby who "had a net over her shoulders and covering her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as a token of mourning" (_Work and Adventures in New Guinea_ p. 26). Compare also the Koita custom referred to by Dr. Seligmann (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 164) for a widow to wear two netted vests. The same custom is found at Hula.

[40] See reference to this question in the _Annual Report_ for June, 1906, p. 13.

[41] I shall from time to time have to refer to the croton, and in doing so I am applying to the plant in question the name commonly given to it; but Dr. Stapf tells me that the plant so commonly called is really a codioeum.

[42] The Rev. Mr. Dauncey, of the L.M.S. station at Delena (a Roro village on the coast) told me that in his village it is a common thing for a native to pick up a small white snake about 12 inches long, and pa.s.s it through the hole in his nose; and that the Pokau people sometimes pa.s.s the tip of the tail of a larger black snake into these holes, the intention of both practices being to keep the hole open. In neither of these cases is the practice a part of an original ceremony connected with nose-piercing, such as that of Mafulu; but it may well be that all the practices have superst.i.tious origins.

[43] There is apparently no corresponding ceremony among the Koita natives (Seligmann, _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 72), nor among the Roro people (_Id_., p. 256), and I do not believe there is any such in Mekeo.

[44] I do not think these pigtails are used as ornaments by the Roro and Mekeo people, though Dr. Seligmann says that a Koita bridegroom wears them in his ears on his wedding day (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 78).

[45] Dr. Stapf, to whose inspection I have submitted two of these combs, said they were made of palm-wood--split and shaped pieces from the periphery of the petiole or stem of a palm--and that the material used for binding the teeth of the combs together was sclerenchyma fibre from the petiole or rhizome of a fern.

[46] These earrings are, I think, sometimes found in Mekeo; but they have all come from the mountains.

[47] See note on p. 27 as to the way in which these plates have been produced.

[48] Only the two ends of the pattern have been copied, the intermediate part being the same throughout, as is shown.

[49] I am unable to state the various forms and varieties of these vegetables, but I give the following native names for plants of the yam, taro, and sweet potato types:--Yams include _tsiolo, avanve, buba, aligarde, vaule, vonide, poloide_ and _ilavuide_. Taros include _auvari, elume, lupeliolu, kamulepe, ivuvana_ and _fude_. Sweet potatoes include _asi, bili, dube, saisasumulube_ and _amb' u tolo_ (this last name means "ripe banana," and the reason suggested for the name is that the potato tastes rather like a ripe banana).

[50] Dr. Stapf says the wood is that of a rather soft-wooded dicotyledonous tree (possibly urticaceous).

[51] The Chirima boring instrument figured by Mr. Monckton (_Annual Report_ for June 30, 1906) is rather of the Mafulu type, but in this case the fly-wheel, instead of being a flat piece of wood, appears to be made of a split reed bound on either side of the upright cane shaft.

[52] Hammocks are also used in the plains and on the coast, but only, I think, to a very limited extent; whereas in the mountains, of at all events the Mafulu district, they are used largely.

[53] I had a considerable quant.i.ty of impedimenta, and unfortunately my condition made it necessary for me to be carried down also; and I had great difficulty in getting enough carriers.

[54] Compare the differently shaped mortar found in the Yodda valley and described and figured in the _Annual Report_ for June, 1904, p. 31.

[55] The practice of destroying the pigs' eyes in the Kuni district is referred to in the _Annual Report_ for June, 1900, p. 61.

[56] This is subject to the qualification which arises from the fact (stated below) that a member of one clan who migrates to a village of another clan retains his _imbele_ relationship to the members of his own old clan, although he has by his change of residence obtained a similar relationship to the members of the clan in whose village he has settled.

[57] See _Annual Report_ for June, 1910, which on p. 5 speaks of "several villages round about the Mission, known as Sivu."

[58] Compare the Koita system, under which under certain conditions the son of a chief's sister might succeed him (Seligmann, _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 52). Such a thing could not take place among the Mafulu.

[59] I do not know how far this pig-killer may be compared with the Roro _ovia akiva_, or chief of the knife, referred to by Dr. Seligmann (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 219). The Mafulu pig-killer cannot be regarded as being even a quasi-chief, and his office is not hereditary. It is noticeable also that he is the man who kills the pigs, whereas the _ovia akiva_ only cuts up the bodies after the pigs have been killed by someone else.

[60] I do not suggest that these defences are peculiar to the Mafulu area. I believe they are used by other mountain natives of the Central District.

[61] Though this curious-shaped hood in front of a house is apparently a speciality of the mountains, so far as British New Guinea is concerned, I do not suggest that it does not exist elsewhere. In fact, some of the native houses which I have seen in the Rubiana Lagoon district of the Solomon Islands had a somewhat similar projection, though in them the front wall of the house, with its little door-opening, was carried round below the outer edge of the hood, which thus formed part of the roof of the interior, instead of being merely a shelter over the outside platform, as is the case in Mafulu.

[62] Dr. Haddon refers (_Geographical Journal, Vol. XVI._, p. 422) to conical ground houses with elliptical and circular bases found in villages on the top of steep hills behind the Mekeo district and on the southern spur of Mt. Davidson, and says that in some places, as on the Aduala affluent of the Angabunga (_i.e._, St. Joseph's) river, the houses are oblong, having a short ridge pole. I think that the elliptical houses to which he refers have probably been Kuni houses, to which his description could well be applied, and that the oblong houses have been Mafulu. The villages with very narrow streets, and the houses of which are, he says, built partly on the crest and partly on the slope, are also in this respect typically Kuni.

[63] This photograph had to be taken from an awkward position above, from which I had to point the camera downwards to the bridge.

[64] See also description of suspension bridge over Vanapa river in lower hill districts given in _Annual Report_ for June, 1889, p. 38.

[65] Compare the Koita system under which the owner of the house owns the site of it also, and the latter pa.s.ses on his death to his heirs (Seligmann's _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 89.)

[66] See note 1 on p. 128.

[67] Father Egedi describes in _Anthropos_ a Kuni method of preparing a fruit similar to the one described here, and which also gives rise to terrible smells. The tree is referred to by him as being a bread-fruit; and Dr. Stapf thinks that the _malage_ may possibly be one of the Artocarpus genus, of which some have smooth or almost smooth fruit, and some are said to have poisonous sap, and the seeds of many of which are eaten, or of some closely allied type.

[68] The information obtained by me at Mafulu did not go beyond the actual facts as stated by me. I cannot, however, help suspecting that there is, or has been, a close connection between the building of anemone and the holding of a big feast, and that the latter may be compared with the tabu ceremonial of the Koita described by Dr. Seligmann (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, pp. 141 and 145 _et seq_.). Indeed there are some elements of similarity between the two feasts.

[69] Compare the Roro custom for the messengers carrying an invitation to important feasts to take with them bunches of areca nut, which are hung in the _marea_ of the local groups of the invited _itsubu_ (Seligmann's _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 218).

[70] See note on p. 256 as to the use by me of the terms "grave,"

"bury" and "burial."

[71] _Ibid._

[72] It is the custom among the Kuni people when any woman (not merely the wife of a chief) has her first baby for the women of her own village, and probably of some neighbouring villages also, to a.s.semble in the village and to attack her house and the village club-house with darts, which the women throw with their hands at the roofs. At Ido-ido I saw that the roofs of the club-house and of some of the ordinary houses had a number of these darts sticking into them. The darts were made out of twigs of trees, and were about five or six feet long; and each of them had a bunch of gra.s.s tied in a whorl at or near its head, and some of them had a similar bunch similarly tied at or near its middle. See also Dr. Seligmann's reference (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 298) to the Roro custom for warriors, when returning from a successful campaign, to throw their spears at the roof and sides of the marea. In Mekeo there is no corresponding ceremony on the birth of a first child; but men, women and children of the village collect by the house and sing all through the night; and in the morning the woman's husband will kill a pig or dog for them, which they cook and eat without ceremony.

[73] Dr. Seligmann refers to this custom among the Roro people (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 256), and there is no doubt that it exists among the Mekeo people also. Father Desnoes, of the Sacred Heart Mission, told me that in Mekeo, though the pig used to be given when the boy adopted his perineal band at the age of four, five, six, or seven, it is now generally given earlier. The pig is there regarded as the price paid for the child, and is called the child's _engifunga_.

[74] Seligmann's _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 67.

[75] Seligmann's _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 71.

[76] _Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 21.

[77] In Mekeo such a devolution of chieftainship is the occasion for a very large feast.

[78] This ceremony is different from the Mekeo ceremony on the elevation by a chief of his successor to a joint chieftainship, of which some particulars were given to me by Father Egedi; but there is an element of similarity to a Mekeo custom for the new chief, after the pigs have been killed and partly cut up by someone else, to cut the backs of the pigs in slices.

[79] According to Dr. Seligmann, among the Koita the forbidden degrees of relationship extend to third cousins (_Melanesians of British New Guinea_, p. 82); whereas it will be seen that among the Mafulu it only extends, as between people of the same generation, to first cousins. But a Mafulu native who was grandson of the common ancestor would be prohibited from marrying his first cousin once removed (great-granddaughter of that ancestor) or his first cousin twice removed (great-great-granddaughter of that ancestor).

[80] But see p. 178, note 1.

[81] Half-a-dozen years ago, before open systematic killing and cannibalism were checked, it was a Kuni custom, when a woman died in her confinement, to bury the living baby with the dead mother. I have not heard of this custom in Mafulu, and do not know whether or not it exists, or has existed, there; but as regards matters of this sort the Mafulu and the Kuni are very similar. My statement that there is no burying alive must be taken subject to the possibility of this custom.

[82] This custom is found elsewhere.

[83] From Dr. Haddon's distribution chart in Vol. XVI. of _The Geographical Journal_, it will be seen that the Mafulu district is just about at the junction between his spear area and his bow and arrow area.

[84] I have never seen the animal called the "Macgregor bear," and I do not know what it is. The Fathers a.s.sured me it was a bear; but in view of the great unlikelihood of this, I consulted the authorities at the Natural History Museum, and they think it is probably one of the marsupials. It is named after Sir William Macgregor. It is found in the mountains, where the forest is very thick.

[85] Compare the Motumotu (Toaripi) practice of rubbing the dogs'

mouths with a special plant, referred to by Chalmers (_Pioneering in New Guinea_, p. 305).

[86] The birds of paradise which dance in trees include, I was told, what the Fathers called the "Red," the "Blue," the "Black," the "Superb" and the "Six-feathered." Those which dance on the ground include the "Magnificent."