The Mafulu Part 4

Average width of ap.r.o.n in inches.

Notes on ground staining and other matters.

36 6 1/2 Background of design unstained, but back fold of ap.r.o.n and fringe stained yellow.

37 [48] 7 3/4 Ditto ditto ditto 38 5 1/4 Only a little irregular yellow staining behind the design. Back fold of ap.r.o.n and fringe stained yellow.

39 6 Background of design (except fringe part) unstained, but back fold of ap.r.o.n and fringe stained yellow.

40 7 Background of upper (zig-zag) part of design unstained, but that of lower (rectangular) part and whole of back fold of ap.r.o.n and fringe stained yellow.

41 10 1/2 Faintly tinted broad horizontal and vertical lines and triangles in figure represent yellow stain. No other staining in the ap.r.o.n.

42 6 3/4 Background of design unstained, but back fold end of ap.r.o.n and fringe stained yellow.

43 6 3/4 No background staining in the ap.r.o.n. The smallness of the amount of decoration and the subst.i.tution of two tails for a fringe are, I think, unusual.

Dancing ribbons are made out of bark cloth by both men and women, but are coloured by men only. These are worn by both men and women at dances, the ribbons hanging round the body from the abdominal belt or a cord, three or four or five of them being worn by one person, and one of these commonly hanging in front. They are generally 2 or 3 inches wide and about 4 feet long, but a portion of this length is required for hitching the ribbon round the belt. I think their ornamentation is confined to staining in transverse bands of alternating colour or of one colour and unstained cloth. Plate 13, Fig. 4, ill.u.s.trates the colouring of two ribbons (each 2 inches wide), the alternation in one case being red and yellow, and in the other red and unstained cloth; and the men figured in Plate 70 are wearing ribbons, though they are not very clearly shown in the plate.

The feather ornaments for the head, and especially those worn at dances, and the feather ornaments worn on the back at dances present such an enormous variety of colours and designs that it would be impossible to describe them here without very greatly increasing the length of the book. The ornaments are often very large, sometimes containing eight or ten or even twelve rows of feathers, one behind another. They can usually be distinguished from those made by the Mekeo people by a general inferiority in design and make of the ornament as a whole, the Mafulu people having less artistic skill in this respect than the people of the lowlands. The ornaments include feathers of parrots, c.o.c.katoos, hornbills, ca.s.sowaries, birds of paradise, bower birds and some others. One never or rarely sees feathers of sea-birds, or waterfowl, or Goura pigeons (which, I was told, are not found among the mountains), as the Mafulu people in their trading with the people of the plains take in exchange things which they cannot themselves procure, rather than feathers, which are so plentiful with them.

The black ca.s.sowary feather is important in Mafulu as being the special feather distinction of chiefs; but, though chiefs are as a rule possessed of more and better ornaments than are the poorer and unimportant people, they have no other special and distinctive ornament.

Plates 44 and 45 ill.u.s.trate some of these head feather ornaments. Plate 44, Fig. 1, shows an ornament made out of the brown fibrous exterior of the wild betel-nut, black pigeon feathers and white c.o.c.katoo feathers, the betel fibre and black pigeon feathers being, I was told, only used in the mountains. Plate 44, Fig. 2, shows one made out of brown feathers of young ca.s.sowary, white c.o.c.katoo feathers and red-black parrot feathers. Plate 44, Fig. 3, shows one made out of bright red and green parrot feathers. Plate 45, Fig. 1, shows one made out of black ca.s.sowary feathers, white c.o.c.katoo feathers, red parrot feathers and long red feathers of the bird of paradise. Plate 45, Fig. 2, is made of ca.s.sowary feathers only. This ornament is worn in front of the head, over the forehead, and is specially worn by chiefs.

Plate 46, Fig. 1, shows a head feather ornament which is peculiar to the mountains. The crescent-shaped body of the ornament, which is made of short feathers taken from the neck of the ca.s.sowary, is worn in front over the forehead, and the c.o.c.kade of hawk feathers stands up over the head.

Plate 46, Fig. 2, shows a back ornament of ca.s.sowary feathers which is specially intended to be worn by chiefs at dances. The custom is to have from five to twelve of these ornaments hanging vertically side by side, suspended to a horizontal stick, which is fastened on the chief's back at the height of the shoulders, so that the feathers hang like a mantle over his back. The mode in which feather ornaments for the back are hung on sticks is seen in Plate 70, where a stick with pendant ornaments is being held by two boys in front.

Plaited frames (Plate 47) are worn by men in connection with these head feather ornaments. These frames are flat curved bands, rigid or nearly so, generally forming half or nearly half a circle of an external diameter of about 9 inches, and being about 1 inch in width. They are worn at dances and on solemn occasions. They are placed round the top of the forehead, not vertically, but with their upper edges sloping obliquely forward, and have at their ends strings, which pa.s.s over the ears and are tied at the back of the head. These frames help to support the feather ornaments, and prevent them from falling down over the face. They are made by men only. A groundwork of small split cane or other material runs in parallel curved lines from end to end, single pieces of the material being generally doubled back at the ends so as to form several lines; and this is strengthened and ornamented by interplaiting into it either split cane or some other material obtained from the splitting of the inside fibre of a plant in the way previously referred to. There are varieties of material and of pattern worked up in different designs of interplaiting. Some of the materials are uncoloured or merely the natural colour of the material, and others are in two colours, generally brown or reddish-brown and yellow. These frames display a considerable amount of variety of artistic design.

The feather erections used at special and important dances, and especially those worn by chiefs, are enormous things, towering 6 or 12 feet above the wearer's head, and are generally larger than those of Mekeo. They are held in a framework, which has an inverted basket-shaped part to rest on the head, and downward pointing rods, which are tied to the shoulders. The frames are to a great extent similar to those of Mekeo, but, having a larger burden to bear, they are more strongly made. These feather erections and their frames are seen in Plate 70.

Here, as in other parts of New Guinea, both men and women, but especially men, love to decorate themselves with bright flowers and leaves and gra.s.ses, these being worn in the hair and in bunches stuck into their belts, armlets and leg-bands, and indeed in any places where they can be conveniently fastened.

It is not the practice with the Mafulu for mothers to wear the umbilical cords of any of their children, though apparently the Kuni people do so.

CHAPTER IV

Daily Life and Matters Connected with It

Daily Life.

The early morning finds the wife and young children and unmarried daughters in the house. The husband has been sleeping either there or in the _emone_ (clubhouse), but most probably the latter. The unmarried sons are in the _emone_, except any very young ones, who have not been formally admitted to it in a way which will be hereafter described. 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. The men's work is mainly the yam and banana and sugar-cane planting, each in its season, and the cutting down of big trees and making fences, if they happen to be opening out new garden land. They also sometimes help the women with their work. Or they may have hunting expeditions in the bush, or go off in fishing parties to the river. In all matters the men of Mafulu, though lazy, are not so lazy as those of Mekeo and the coast. In the middle of the day the women cook the meal for everyone in the gardens, this being done on the spot, and there they all eat it. 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.

As regards the daily social conduct of the people among themselves, I was told that the members of a family generally live harmoniously together (subject as regards husbands and wives to the matters which will be mentioned later), that children are usually treated kindly and affectionately by their parents, and that there is very little quarrelling within a village; and what I saw when I was among the Mafulu people certainly seemed to confirm all this.

There are various detailed matters of daily life which will appear under their appropriate headings; but I will here deal with a few of them.

Food.

The vegetable foods of the Mafulu people are sweet potato and other plants of the same type, yam and other foods of the same type, taro and other foods of that type, banana of different sorts, sugar-cane, a kind of wild native bean, a cultivated reed-like plant with an asparagus flavour (what it is I do not know), several plants of the pumpkin and cuc.u.mber type, one of them being very small, like a gherkin, fruit from two different species of Panda.n.u.s, almonds, the fruit of the _malage_ (described later on), and others, both cultivated and wild. The sugar-cane is specially eaten by them when working in the gardens. [49]

Their animal food consists of wild pig and, on occasions, village pig, a small form of ca.s.sowary, kangaroo, a small kind of wallaby, kangaroo rat, "iguana," an animal called _gaivale_ (I could not find out what this is), various wild birds, fish, eels, mice, a large species of snake and other things.

Their staple drink is water, but when travelling they cut down a species of bamboo, and drink the watery fluid which it contains. After boiling any food in bamboo stems they drink the water which has been used for the purpose, and which has become a sort of thin flavoured soup.

Betel-chewing is apparently not indulged in by these people as extensively as it is done in Mekeo and on the coast; but they like it well enough, and for a month or so before a big feast, during which period they are under a strict taboo restriction as to food, they indulge in it largely. The betel used by them is not the cultivated form used in Mekeo and on the coast, but a wild species, only about half the size of the other; and the lime used is not, as in Mekeo and on the coast, made by grinding down sea-sh.e.l.ls, but is obtained from the mountain stone, which is ground down to a powder. The gourds (Plate 51, Figs. 6 and 7) in which the lime is carried are similar to those used in Mekeo, except that usually they are not ornamented, or, if they are so, the ornamentation is only done in simple straight-lined geometric patterns. The spatulae are sometimes very simply and rudely decorated. The people spit out the betel after chewing, instead of swallowing it, as is the custom in Mekeo.

Cooking and Eating and Their Utensils.

They have no cooking utensils, other than the simple pieces of bamboo stem, which they use for boiling.

Their usual methods of cooking are roasting and boiling.

Roasting is usually effected by making a fire, letting it die down into red-hot ashes, and then putting the food without wrap or covering into the ashes, turning it from time to time. They also roast by holding the food on sticks in the flame of the burning fire, turning it occasionally. Stone cooking is adopted for pig and other meats. They make a big fire, on the top of which they spread the stones; when the stones are hot enough, they remove some of them, place the meat without wrap or covering on the others, then place the removed stones on the meat, and finally pile on these stones a big covering of leaves to keep in the heat. Stone cooking in the gardens is done in a slightly different way; there they dig in the ground a round hole about 1 foot deep and from 1 1/2 to 2 feet in diameter, and in this hole they make their fire, on which they pile their stones; and the rest of the process is the same as before. This hole-making process is never adopted in the village. The only reason for it which was suggested was that the method was quicker, and that in the gardens they are in a hurry. Of course, holes of this sort dug in the open village enclosure would be a source of danger, especially at night.

Boiling is done in pieces of bamboo about 4 inches in diameter and about 15 or 18 inches long. They fill these with water, put the food into them, and then place or hold the bamboo stems in a slanting position in the flames. This method is specially used for cooking sweet potatoes, but it is their only method of boiling anything. Water, which they keep stored and carry in bamboo receptacles and hollow pumpkins, is boiled in bamboo stems in the same way. The bamboo storage vessels are generally from 2 to 5 feet long, the intersecting nodes, other than that at one end, having been removed. The pumpkins (Plate 52, Figs. 2 and 3) are similar to those used by the Roro coast people and in Mekeo, except that the usual form, instead of being rather short and broad with a narrow opening, is longer and narrower, some of them being, say, 3 feet long, and often very curved and crooked in shape.

Their only eating utensils are wooden dishes and small pieces of wood, or sometimes of ca.s.sowary or kangaroo bone, which are used as forks, and pieces of split bamboo, which are used for cutting meat; but these latter are used for other purposes, and rather come within the list of ordinary implements, and will be there described. They also use prepared pig-bones as forks; but these again are largely used for other purposes, and will be described under the same heading.

The dishes (Plate 52, Fig. 1) are made out of the trunk of a tree called _ongome_. The usual length of a dish, without its handles, is between 1 and 2 feet; its width varies from 9 inches to 1 foot, and its depth from 3 to 6 inches. It is rudely carved out of the tree-trunk, [50] the work being done with stone adzes--unless they happen to possess European axes--and it generally has a handle at one or both ends. It is not decorated with carving in any way. The common form of handle is merely a simple k.n.o.b about 3 inches long and 1 1/2 inches wide. But it is sometimes less simple, and I have a dish one of the handles of which is divided into two projecting pieces about 7 1/2 inches long and joined to each other at the end. The handle is always carved out of the same piece of wood as is the dish; never made separately and afterwards attached. The wooden forks are simply bits cut from trees and sharpened at one end, and they are without p.r.o.ngs. Their use is only temporary, and they are not permanently stored as household utensils. The ca.s.sowary and kangaroo bone implements (Plate 25, Fig. 3) are also merely roughly pointed unp.r.o.nged pieces of bone, and otherwise without special form. When eating _en famille_ they do not always use these pointed wooden and bone sticks, but very commonly take the food out of the dish with their hands only; but if the family had guests with them they would probably use the sticks more, and their hands less. The men and women often eat together, sitting round the dish and helping themselves out of it, though, if there are too many to do this conveniently, pieces will be handed out to some of them.

Various Implements.

Besides the cooking and eating implements above described and other things, such as weapons of war and of hunting and fishing, and implements for manufacture, agriculture and music, which will be dealt with under their own headings, there are a few miscellaneous things which may be conveniently described here.

Bamboo knives (Plate 51, Fig. 5). These are simple strips made out of a special mountain form of bamboo, and are generally 8 to 10 inches long and about 1 inch wide. One edge is left straight for its whole length, and the other is cut away near the end, very much as we cut away one side of a quill pen, so as to produce a sharp point. The side edge which is used for cutting is the one which is not cut away at the end; and when it gets blunt it is renewed by simply peeling off a length of fibre, thus producing a new edge, bevelled inwards towards the concave side of the implement, and making a hard and very sharp fresh cutting edge. The point can of course be sharpened at any time in the obvious way.

Pig-bone implements (Plate 51, Fig. 2). These are the implements which are often used as forks, but they have straight edges also with which they are used as sc.r.a.ping knives, and they are utilised for many other purposes. The implement, which is, I think, similar to what is commonly found in Mekeo and on the coast, is made out of the leg-bone of a pig, and is generally from 5 to 8 inches long. One side of the bone is ground away, so as to make the implement flattish in section, one side (the outside unground part of the bone) being somewhat convex, and the other (where the bone has been ground away) being rather concave. Some of the joint end of the bone is left to serve as a handle; and from this the bone is made to narrow down to a blunt, rather flattish and rounded point, somewhat like that of a pointed paper-cutter. The side edge is used for sc.r.a.ping, and the point for sticking into things.

Smoking pipes are in the ordinary well-known form of Mekeo and the coast, being made of sections of bamboo stem in which the natural intersecting node near the mouthpiece end is bored and the node at the other end is left closed, and between these two nodes, near to the closed one, is a flute-like hole, in which is placed the cigarette of tobacco wrapped up in a leaf. They are, however, generally not ornamented; or, if they are so, it is merely in a simple geometric pattern of straight lines. I obtained one pipe (Plate 51, Fig. 1) of an unusual type, being much smaller than is usual. A special feature of this pipe is its decoration, which includes groups of concentric circles. This is the only example of a curved line which I ever met with among the Mafulu villages, and it is probable that it had not been made there.

Boring drills (Plate 51, Fig. 4) are also similar to those of Mekeo and the coast, except that there the fly-wheel is, I think, usually a horizontal circular disc, through the centre of which the upright shaft of the implement pa.s.ses, whereas in the Mafulu boring instrument the fly-wheel, through which the shaft pa.s.ses, is a rudely cut flat horizontal piece of wood about 9 or 10 inches long, 2 inches broad, and half an inch or less thick, and also that in Mafulu the native point, made out of a pointed fragment of the stone used for making club-heads, adze blades and cloth-beaters, is not generally replaced by a European iron point, as is so commonly the case in Mekeo and near the coast. These drills are used for boring dogs' teeth and sh.e.l.ls and other similar hard-substanced things, but are useless for boring articles of wood or other soft substances, in which the roughly formed point would stick. [51]

Fire-making. This is a question of process, rather than of implement, but may be dealt with here. To produce fire, the Mafulu native takes two pieces of very dry and inflammable wood, one larger than the other, and some dry bark cloth fluff. He then holds the smaller piece of wood and the fluff together, and rubs them on the larger piece of wood. After four or five minutes the fluff catches fire, without bursting into actual flame, upon which the native continues the rubbing process, blowing gently upon the fluff, until the two pieces of wood begin to smoulder, and can then be blown into a sufficient flame for lighting a fire.

Carrying bags. These are all made of network. I shall say something about the mode of netting and colouring them hereafter, and will here only deal with the bags and their use. They are of various sizes,

(1) There are the large bags used by women for carrying heavy objects, such as firewood, vegetables and fruit, which they bring back to the village on their return in the afternoon from the gardens and bush. These bags are carried in the usual way, the band over the opening of the bag being pa.s.sed across the front of the head above the forehead, and the bag hanging over the back behind. They are curved in shape, the ends of the bag being at both its top and bottom edges higher than are the centres of those edges, so that, when a bag is laid out flat, its top line is a concave one and its bottom line is a convex one. The network at the two ends of the top line is continued into the loop band by means of which the bag is carried. The usual dimensions of one of these bags, as it lies flat and unstretched on a table (the measurements being made along the curved lines) are as follows--top line about 2 feet, bottom line about 3 feet, and side lines about 18 inches. But when filled with vegetables, firewood, etc., they expand considerably, especially those made of "Mafulu network," of which I shall speak hereafter. These bags are uncoloured. (2) There are similar, but somewhat smaller, bags, in which the women carry lighter things, and which in particular they use for carrying their babies. They frequently carry this bag and the larger one together; and you will often see a woman with a big bag heavily laden with vegetables or firewood or both, and another smaller bag (perhaps also slung behind over the top of the big one, or hanging from her head at her side, or over her breast), which contains her baby, apparently rolled up into a ball. These bags also are uncoloured. (3) There are other bags, similar perhaps in size to No. 2, used for visiting and at feasts, dances and similar occasions, and also sometimes used for carrying babies. The top line of one of these is generally about 2 feet long, the bottom line a trifle longer, and the side lines about 1 foot. These are coloured in decorative patterns. (4) There are small bags of various sizes carried by men slung over their shoulders or arms, and used to hold their betel-nut, pepper and tobacco and various little implements and utensils of daily life. These are sometimes uncoloured and sometimes coloured. (5) There are the very small charm bags, only about 2 inches or a trifle more square, which are used by both men and women (I think only the married ones) for carrying charms, and are worn hanging like lockets from the neck. They are sometimes coloured.

Plate 53 gives ill.u.s.trations of three of these bags--Fig. 1 being a woman's ornamented bag No. 3, and Fig. 2 being a man's ornamented bag No. 4; but this last-mentioned bag is rather a large one of its type, the usual difference in size between Nos. 3 and 4 being greater than the two examples figured would suggest. The patterns of both these bags, and especially of the larger one, are more regular than is usually the case. The bag shown in Fig. 3 will be dealt with hereafter under the heading of netting.