Savage life in New Guinea, the Papuan in many moods

Front matter

AVACE in

6^

641llustranons

Preface

IT is a very great pleasure to me to have the opportunity of writing this boolc for you boys and girls of Great and Greater Britain.

During my recent visit to England, I enjoyed no part of my deputation work more than those occasions which brought me face to face with crowded gatherings of young people. It is a pleasure to feel in touch again, through this book, with many whom I met in this way, and with very many more whom I could not meet, partly because it was necessary for me to shorten my furlough and return to my work in New Guinea.

In serving Christ in a country like this, we meet constantly with novelty and adventure ; we are brought in contact with strange wild people, rude in their habits and crude in their thoughts. It is to such people, in their almost unknown country, that we teach the Christ whom you are taught to love. .

How we teach lawless men to become obedient, inhuman men to love, and savage men so to change their thoughts and lives that they become our fellow-labourers in the extension of Christ's Kingdom, is the story which I gladly avail myself of this opportunity to tell.

You will see that I deal very largely with the Papuan as we find him in his natural state. Guided in his conduct by nothing but his instincts and propensities, and governed by his unchecked passions, there are many things in his benighted life about which it is impossible for me to tell you. But I go on to show you that however bad he is at his worst, the power of

PREFACE

Jesus Christ can transform him into a new creature, and make him a pure-minded, straightforward, and useful Christian man.

New Guinea is such a large country, and the tribes being reached by our Society are so isolated, and differ so widely in language and custom, that it is necessary that you should understand very clearly that what I have to say to you applies only,

A TArUAN GREETING.

so far as I know, to the people amongst whom I have lived and worked for eleven years. When I speak of the Papuan, I use a broad term in this restricted sense. I can only speak with authority of the people I know intimately. The Papuan, as I know him, and generally write of him in your Gift Book, inhabits the eastern extremity of the mainland of New Guinea.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I, The Papuan: an Interview ir

II. The Papuan at Home 26

Chapter I

T)RIT1SH boys and girls! I want to introduce you to my friend, the strange wild inhabitant of New Guinea.

You will be more interested in the customs of the Papuan, and will follow with more advantage the result of his recent contact with civilization and Christianity, if — to begin with — I lead him up to you in person, and let you look him in the face.

Individually he is a bashful little man. Except through the

medium of a book, he would shrink from the ordeal of this

introduction to you. If he had to meet you in the flesh, he

would suggest that I should reverse the order, and bring you

to him. He would like to see you one at a time, on his own

ground ; and feeling in a majority, he would face you boldly.

But perhaps this would be a trying ordeal to you. You would

not like to see yourselves as others see yoti who are not familiar

with your peculiarities. It would annoy you to have a crowd

of men and women summing you up, feature by feature, and

seeing something very strange in your appearance, wherever

3'ou differed from them. For instance, they would have something to say about your very long noses. You would probably resent this. But the Papuan nose is flat, at least that is how we should describe it ; they would say ottr noses are prominent. Then they would have some remarks to make about the colour of your skin. Copper is the proper colour, of course, because the Papuan has been accustomed to see no other. Your blue eyes would look very strange — gaitgait^ they call mine, which means ' foggy,' ' indistinct ' — because all Papuan eyes are black. And so you would find yourself humbled, as your beauty was analysed, and your complexion regarded as bleached, and your features extravagant. This is exactly the process the Papuan would object ta were I to bring him to you, and your unaccustomed eyes were to view him from your standpoint. We shall offend no one in pursuing the course I am about to adopt. I can show you portraits, and describe his personal appearance ; and in strict confidence I can speak to you about his flat nose, and his frizzy hair, and his dark skin, feeling perfectly at one with you, that our noses, and the colour of our skins, and the texture of oiir hair, is much more becoming.

Although the Papuan might criticize you, he is not offensive in his curiosity. He seldom goes to extremes in anything. He is neither gushing in his friendliness, nor surly in his shyness. I am sorry to have to confess that if he were offensive it would be when you were quite alone and defenceless, and when, by publicly attacking you, he could count for certain on the sympathy of the crowd which surrounded him. But as a general rule he is too reserved to be openly nasty. He detests publicity. This is cowardice on his part, rather than modesty. He is very self-conscious ; and shrinks from_ any position which draws special attention to himself. This timidity leads hinL into strange difficulties. You could never, by any amount of coaxing, induce him to tell you his name. If you insisted on pressing him for this, he would get out of the difhculty by fetching a friend, who would give you the information you required. He is never dangerous when he acts solely on his own initiative. It is only when he feels himself supported by public sentiment, and when his action voices popular opinion,

" HE IS NOT REPULSIVE IN APPEARANCE."

that he is likely to break through his reserve, and allow himself to become conspicuous. So you will understand me when I tell you how extremely distasteful it would be to him to stand before you to be gazed at and criticized. He is only aggressive when there is a wild halloo, and a whoop, to cover his temerity. Otherwise he shrinks into the smallest possible space, and seeks the darkest corner, and tries to view you without giving you more than a glimpse of himself in return.

He is a little man, seldom exceeding five feet four inches in height. His body is lithe and symmetrical ; and since he is usually thin, his stature is deceptive. He looks quite a fine man, as nature made him ; but as soon as you cover him with clothes,

"HE HAS HIS OWN IDEAS OF BliAUTY."

he is transformed into a pigmy. He is not repulsive in appearance, and often bears a calm, dignified, though perhaps inert expression. I have many intelligent-looking men in my tribe, but not one who could be called handsome. I have many who are positively

Ugly. The women are of more pleasing' countenance than their lords ; but here again there is little or no beauty. You must understand I am speaking all the time from our standpoint. The Papuan would not regard my remarks as worth the paper they wxre written upon. He has his own ideas of beauty. He can compare one thing with another ; and doubtless he has his standards of perfection ; but they would differ very widely from ours. I have never studied art from the Papuan position, so that I am unable to tell you which of the

portraits I give in this chapter would be regarded by him as the most ravishing type of beauty.

Their faces are often so grotesquely bedaubed with ochres, and their heads so extravagantly decorated with shells and feathers, that their features are entirely obscured. The colours most in favour for the purpose of personal adornment are red, white and black. The red is an ochre found in patches in the soil, and called sabisabi. The white, poahic, is lime, which they make by burning the white coral which lines their shores. The black, dum^ is made by mixing with cocoanut oil the accretions of soot which they collect from their earthen cooking pots. With these pigments at their disposal there is no limit to the variety of their designs. The red and black are colours very now UNCOxN'VENTIONAL THEIR TASTE IS.'

i6 SAVAGE LIFE IN NEW GUINEA

difficult to reproduce in photography. However, the white will suffice to show you how unconventional their taste is, and I will leave it to you to decide whether the idea of the Papuan in painting himself is to make himself lovely, or hideous. Personally I think his chief idea is neither to beautify nor to •disfigure himself, but to conceal his identity. Just as a bashful boy feels bold from behind a Guy Fawkes' mask, so the Papuan can be conspicuous for a season, when he is freely bedaubed, without feeling self-conscious.

The Papuan derives his name from the character of his hair. I believe the word Papuan " is of Malay origin, and could be translated " frizzy - wig." Whoever first gave him that name must have considered his hair his most conspicuous feature. I ■cannot conceive that a man w^ho has entirely painted his face in black and white, by drawing a dividing line between the two colours diagonally from his right temple, cutting through liis nose, and terminating under his left jaw, with one of his eyes looking very small, and peering out of the shiny jet black, .and the other looking very large, gazing blankly out of the dazzling white — I say I cannot conceive that that man's hair, or his ears, or his nose could be the most conspicuous thing about him. But it must be borne in mind that it is only in liis giddy moods that the Papuan decorates himself to this -extent. He has his serious seasons, when he has to turn his thoughts to something more important than his personal appearance. His huge frizzy-wig, on the other hand, is permanent. He sleeps with it under his head as a pillow by night ; he carries it over him to his garden, as a protection from the scorching sun, by day. So perhaps, after all, his great shock of frizzy hair is his most prominent feature. Moustaches and beards he never wears until after middle life ; and then they are very short and thin. The reason for this is that in youth he pulls the hairs out by the roots, by clipping them, one by one, between small shells. This is a painful and tedious operation, and seldom results in the destruction of all the hairs ; but he shaves himself quite perfectly with nabiia^ a black flint which he finds in

"HE SLEEPS WITH IT UNDER HIS HEAD."

the bush, and which he splits into a convenient razor when he finds he requires one.

The Papuan permanently disfigures himself, through an attempt to add touches and charms to his natural appearance. He bores a hole through the septum of his nose, in which he carries his long shell nose-stick. His ears are usually so cut and torn that the lobe hangs in a festoon several inches long, and almost touches his shoulders. You British boys, at least, Avill judge him lightly with regard to this mutilation of his

B l8 SAVAGE LIFE IN NEW GUINEA

ears, if you will try to imagine the position you yourselves would be in without your pockets. The Papuan wears nothing but a broad leaf round his loins ; and he often carries in the lobes of his ears, what would go into his pockets if he wore clothes. He does not cut his ears, to begin with, with a view to extra carrying accommodation of this kind ; but the habit soon grows upon him to put these elastic bands to some practical use, and it is astonishing how much strain they will bear.

One of my best young men, who came to me when he was a little boy, has, I regret to say, spoilt his ears in this way. Many years ago, soon after we came to Kwato, Muroro one day said to me —

" Master, may I go to my village ? The news has come that my father is dying." I gave him permission. After a week's absence Muroro returned. To my disgust the lobes of his ears had been cut, and were kept open by a piece of cocoanut leaf, which had been rolled up tightly and inserted.

I ordered that out, and brought Muroro to task. He was silent for a long time, and would give no explanation of his conduct. At length, when my patience was almost exhausted, and it seemed as if nothing would induce him to confide in me,, he looked up from the floor where he was sitting, and said :

" Truly, my master, I deceived you. I did not go to my village because my father was ill. I went to have my ears cut."

You can imagine my disappointment. One of my most hopeful boys had first of all deceived me ; then he had gone away from my station to participate in a heathen practice ; and again he had disfigured himself for life.

Once Muroro had opened his lips he became more communicative.

I asked him, What was in your mind, when you left me to do what 3^ou knew would displease me ? "

Master," he replied, " I could put up with taunts and sneers no longer. Ever since I came to you I have endured reproach, until it became unbearable."

What reproach became unbearable? " I asked.

Then Muroro told me how in New Guinea there were two kinds of pigs : the tame pig and the wild pig. The tame pig was called " sarai," and was much more than a domestic pet.

Indeed until the sarai was grown up, and suggested pork, it was an honoured member of the family circle. As a little sucking pig, it was brought up side by side with the baby, being treated with exactly the same maternal care and attention. When it grew up, its ears were split, to denote that it was not an outcast, but some man's valuable property. The wild pig, which was called " suana," kncAV no such distinction. It, poor thing, rooted about in the bush for its food, with its ears intact. If any man caught it, there was no mark to protect it : it was common property, and was killed and eaten by its captor. To be called " sarai," a tame pig, was a delicate compliment ; to be called "suana," a wild pig, was a most offensive insult.

I talked very seriously to Muroro. He saw how disappointed I was in him ; and I think, after I had done with the little fellow, he wished with all his heart that his ears were sound again, and that half the stupid tribe would come and call him " suana," as loudly as they could shout. I told him I wanted my boys to break from all these heathen practices, and not to be ashamed to be taunted, because they took a higher stand for Christ's sake.

I need not tell you all I said to Muroro. You see for yourselves the opportunity this gave me, in a heathen country, and to a child of savage parents, to say that what I had come to teach him would often put him in this position, and that he would grow up a strong boy, and develop into a strong man, if he would ask Christ to help him to live a new life, and not to fear the sneers of those who desired to remain in darkness. I told my little boy that the time would come, I hoped, when to be called " a pig " of any kind would be no compliment, and when he would be heartily ashamed of this disfigurement.

Some years later I took Muroro in your steamer, the John Williams^ to Sydney. He was no longer a little boy. He had grown up to be a strong. Christian youth. We went together to see a great cricket match. The Englishmen were playing the Australians ; and over 30,000 people were assembled to watch the game. In that vast crowd of white people, there were a few others, besides Muroro, who had dark skins. He had no cause to feel conspicuous, or ashamed, on that account. There was one player there, like him in that respect, whom you all know — a prince, and the greatest cricketer amongst all those notable players from both sides of the world. But there was only one man in that multitude, with the lobes of his ears torn. Muroro knew that. He came to me one day in Sydney, and referring to his ears, he said —

Father, you told me I should one day be ashamed of this :

cannot you take me to some wise man who could sew them up for me ? "

From any other standpoint than his own, the Papuan adds nothing- to his beauty by regarding jet black as the proper colour for the teeth. He dyes them permanently by means of tadi^ a rotten timber, which he finds in the swamps. He grinds the tadi to powder, and lays it on his closed teeth when he goes to sleep at night. A few applications, and he never has any necessity to clean his teeth again !

It is impossible to speak about the appearance and characteristics of these people, without referring to their personal uncleanliness. It is a disgustingtheme to dwell upon, but we have to suffer the continual in-

A WOMAN SHAVING A MAN's HEAD.

convenience of it, often at very close quarters, and you have no true portrait of the men and women I am describing if so prominent a feature is omitted. I will gladly make it as light as I can for you.

During the past few weeks, while I have been writing your book, I have been visiting my out-stations. Fifteen years of personal contact with very dirty people have done nothing to lessen the nausea I feel in their presence. With the clear blue sea washing their coral-bound shores within a few feet of their houses, with cool pure mountain streams running out into bays in or near every village, there is no excuse for the unspeakable filth in which these people live. There is only one explanation to give : they like dirt. I have to fight sometimes, with all the determination I can command, not to let my work suffer because of the annoyance this causes me. I have landed at a village sometimes, and have been welcomed by the people, and have sat amongst them, and have spoken of the love of God to them ; and as I have done my work, face to face with my begrimed, sore-stricken, skin-diseased, reeking congregation, my heart has sickened, and the temptation has come to me to cut my words and my visit short, and to get into my boat and go on to the next village. This is an experience common to all missionaries in this country, and in some other countries also. A friend of mine, who is a missionary in India, once told me much the same story of his people as I am telling you of mine. My sensitive friend's natural aversion to personal contact with such people as I have described, was one day reproved by the thought that Christ must often have worked amongst very dirty people, in the slums of Jerusalem. He told me the idea had come to his mind, that probably some of the children Christ blessed, and upon whose heads He placed His kind hands, were unwashed and unattractive, like these, and not the bright clean spotlesslydressed curly-headed boys and girls who figure in the fancy pictures you see, depicting the scene where Christ, rebuking the disciples, said, " Suffer the little children to come unto Me."

I am sorry to say the Papuan is no cleaner in his mind than he is in his body. We are here to cleanse him, and we shall never succeed if we permit ourselves to be overcome and nauseated by his present filthy condition. It is one of our first duties to instil into the minds of savages the necessity for personal cleanliness. It is a hard lesson to teach. I often wish their noses were as prominent a feature as they think ours are. Then perhaps they could not endure themselves so complacently.

The Papuan's sense of taste and his sense of smell are anything but what we should call delicate. His taste in food is not a subject I can deal with fully, to any advantage, in a book like this. The people near where I live have only just renounced cannibalism, and I wish they had put aside with it other customs which are almost as repulsive.

The Papuan is practically a vegetarian ; fish and pork being his very occasional luxuries. His daily bread is taro and yam ; and these almost tasteless vegetables he eats with no other relish than a good appetite.

Within quite recent years his dietary has been very largely augmented by the introduction of new fruits and vegetables, such as pineapples, new species of bananas, water melons, pumpkins, sweet potatoes and Indian corn ; so that he is much better off m this respect than he was ten years ago. He has many varieties of sugar cane, and finds as much delight in chewing this juicy fibrous stick as you English boys find in struggling.

till your jaws are stiff, with a piece of liquorice root. Strange to say, however, he has to acquire a taste for sugar in the manufactured form.

On one occasion when I took one of my boys to the Colonies, the people with whom I stayed for a few days told me that they feared Sedu was light-fingered. They had noticed some sweetmeats which they kept in a box in the dining room, growing fewer in number as the days passed by. I told my friends if they wanted to punish my little boy, they had only to insist on his eating the sweets. I was sure he would never pilfer in that direction. Now if they had found the mustard-pot empty, and the pickled onions disappearing mysteriously, I should have been a little concerned myself as to Sedu's powers to resist the temptation to take what did not belong to him.

In this particular Papuans are much like other dark races of the South Pacific, in whose countries civilization has been too rapidly introduced. I once had dinner with a Rotama man, on board his pearling lugger. So far as I could see, he dined off pickles, and sauces, and chutneys, of various kinds. I was relieved to find a small tin of meat, and a few biscuits, casually thrown in, from which I made my meal.

Again, the Papuan's sense of smell is immature. He is, however, fond of perfumes ! Not being skilled in extracting essences, he wears in his armlets scented leaves, the odour of which is positively repulsive. I have had to request my congregation to oblige me by leaving their savours outside the church on Sundays, because I could not preach in the heavy sickening atmosphere they created.

When first we came to Kwato, we were one day rummagingthrough some boxes of lumber, and came across a small bottle of scent. Some natives were assisting us, and we handed the delicate perfume to them to smell. One man regarded it cautiously, and after sniffing it, passed it on to the next, with a grimace which clearly showed he wanted no more. Our own boys had witnessed this, and had heard us express our astonishment that they should not find this new smell agreeable. Some weeks later, we were sitting after our evening meal on our verandah, and one of the boys came to us with something in his hand. He was followed by a retinue of house-boys, who were there to support him. " Master," said the spokesman, apologizing for the intrusion, " you remember the panepane that the Sariba men did not like ? We have found a panepane in the kitchen, which we all consider fragrant." He handed to us a tin of emery powder ! The dull dead earthy smell was a delicate perfume, which, he said, they could appreciate.

It would be possible to extend this chapter indefinitely, if I were to point out to you the many directions in . which the Papuan differs in his ideas and tastes from civilized people. Centuries of gradual development have given to us our present sentiments, and have resulted in the taste and delicacy of our ideas to-day. We can only expect from savages crude habits and immature tastes, and it is not to be surprised at that when we judge him from our own standards, he cuts a very grotesque figure, and is often altogether wanting in delicacy and refinement.

Chapter II

^ I ^HE dwelling house of a Papuan consists of an inside and an ^ outside. To some extent this might be said of all houses ; but the Papuan, when he is at home, lives outside as well as inside. While a part of his house is under a thick thatch, a considerable part of it is constructed in the form of a low platform, which is often entirely without cover. It is here he sits and whiles away many an hour, while his wife busies herself in the garden, or having returned from the mountains with the daily supply of food and firewood, prepares the evening meal. He meets his friends here ; and hears or relates the current gossip of the country side. Here he sits and lazily chips his long shell nose-stick into shape, or silently and seriously manipulates his lime and pepper-pod and betel-nut ; he chews the nasty blood-red mess, and under its stimulating influence, feels generous, or surly, as the mood takes him ; or he purposes a night's fishing off the coral reefs, and brings his long net out, and skilfully runs over it and mends any rents he may find.

This platform, which seems to correspond to our sitting-room, is usually four or five feet off the ground, and is approached by means of a rude ladder.

The house proper, or that part of it under the roof, is merely a weather-proof apartment, used chiefly for two purposes — first,

A LOGEA HOUSE. 27 as a shelter from the heav}^ rains and strong winds which so often prevail in this part of New Guinea ; and second, for the safe storage of the owner's property. His open air sitting-room, or platform, has no furniture. He sits on the floor. Crossing his nimble legs under him, he descends quietly and firmly upon his extremities, and folded up in this way looks both compact and comfortable without a chair. His one indispensable necessity is his tobo^ or basket. This is a commodious and ingenious arrangement in three tiers, one fitting into the other, which contains, besides his betel-nut and lime gourd, a shell knife, a few pieces of aromatic bark, such as cinnamon, and latterly, since white men have visited his country, his own bric-a-brac is perhaps augmented by a rusty tin matchbox, a few nails which he has picked up, a small glass bottle, a piece of black twist tobacco, and other valuables of the same kind.

There is only a low aperture by which he enters his house from the platform. There are no windows, so that on the brightest day the house is dark. Nearly every night a fire burns inside this almost air-tight apartment, and the smoke has to find its way out through chinks in the walls, and to filter slowly through the thick sagoleaf thatch. Everything inside the house is stained a dark umber with the smoke of years. A partition about three feet high divides the house in two ; the front portion being reserved for the male members of the family, and the back — which is smaller— being at the disposal of the women. A house is never occupied only by a man and his wife and familj' . Aunts, uncles, and cousins of many removes are included in the family circle. Relationships are not so simple as they are Avith us. On the wife's side especially, the ties are very close. For instance, if you were a New Guinea boy, or girl, your mother's brother would rank as your father, and her sister as your mother ; your first cousins on your mother's side would actually be your brothers and sisters ; and so on. So that if you enquire of a New Guinea householder how his family is made up, you find it includes relations having strong claims upon

Tllli TOBO, him, though they are only distantly connected from our benighted way of thinking.

The Papuan's house is very small considering the number of people it has to accommodate.

I was once returning to Kwato, from my out-stations, in a native canoe, and was trying my hardest, or to be more correct, I was urging my fourteen paddlers to try their hardest to get me home betbre Sunday. To do this it was necessary to travel by night. Everything went well until about midnight, when the sky became overcast and the rain descended in torrents. Never mind the rain ; we had to get home. We had thirty miles to go, and refreshed by the cool downpour, my paddlers bent their shiny backs to their work. They dug their paddles deep, and with every stroke they yelled in unison. The canoe almost jumped out of the water. My old friend, Josia Lebasi, was in charge of the expedition ; the boy I had picked up at Suau ten years ago, when I first came to New Guinea ; the boy who accompanied Savage and myself, when we went west to buy the land at Orokolo, nine years ago, and who has never left me all these years, except for six months, when he went to help Tamate on the Fly River. Lebasi saw the rain was not likely to stop, and between ourselves I think he had secret orders from my wife not to let me do anything foolish, so he crawled forward and said to me respectfully,