Government in Wanggulam

Preface

During my stay among them the Wanggulam were deeply upset by the sudden changes brought about since the arrival of the Europeans only a few years earlier. In this book I discuss the expectation nourished by the Wanggulam and provoked by these changes. Without the help of this discussion I cannot clarify the nature of my relation to the people and consequently I have to postpone the main acknowledgement I wish to make.

This book is based on a thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Australian National University. I would like to thank the University for granting me a scholarship and the staff and students of its Department of Anthropology and Sociology for their comments and criticisms. Before all I have to thank Professor J. A. Barnes, Dr M. Reay and Dr P. Brown, who supervised my work in its different stages. I feel particularly indebted to Professor Barnes since he supervised the final writing up of the material and later gave me the opportunity to prepare the thesis for publication.

I would like to thank Professors J. Pouwer and L. A. Fallers and Dr H. I. Hogbin who acted as examiners of my Ph. D. thesis. Although during the revision I tried to meet their criticisms as well as I could, I realise I have not satisfied all their wishes.

I appreciate the support of Mrs D. A. O’Brien, then a graduate student in anthropology at Yale University, in collaboration with whom I wrote a paper ‘Acculturation Movements among the Western Dani', published in the American Anthropologist, Vol. 66, ii, pp. 281-92. The better part of chapter 4, section III is based on this paper.

I am very grateful to the members of the Bureau of Native Affairs of the Administration of Netherlands New Guinea, the administrative personnel in Mbogondini and the missionaries of the Unevangelised Fields Mission for the support they gave me during my field trips.

I am further indebted to Professor Barnes, Professor S. A. Wurm, Miss H. Leach and Miss S. Baume, as well as a great many other people, who corrected my use of English.

Finally I would like to thank Mrs Y. McMahon for typing the

VI GOVERNMENT IN WANGGULAM second half of the manuscript and Mrs M. L. Ploeg for typing the first half and for preparing the maps and figures.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part, consisting of the introduction and first four chapters, contains a brief description of some main features of the Wanggulam social system and provides the background information to the analysis of Wanggulam government which is presented in the second part consisting of the last five chapters. Some topics mentioned in the first part are very briefly discussed, since I intend to publish more extensive discussions in separate papers later. By contrast, chapter 9, the last chapter of the book, is a rather extensive discussion of theoretical developments in political anthropology since 1940. This discussion was appropriate as a part of a Ph. D. thesis, but seen its length I consider it less appropriate as a part of this book. However, my efforts to reduce the size of the last chapter were largely unsuccessful. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, I wanted to preserve the structure of chapter 9 and found that this necessitated retaining most of its content. Secondly, I based my analysis of Wanggulam government to a large extent on the writings of M. G. Smith. Since I have become more critical of his views since I wrote and presented my Ph. D. thesis in 1965, I had to extend my discussion of his writings to show where I disagreed with him.

Table Of Contents

PREFACE .

LIST OF FIGURES

LIST OF TABLES

Appendix

MAPS

Iran Barat .

Western Dani area .

Wanggulam territory (1)

Wanggulam territory (2) Feasting ground for the Penggu pandanus fan.

Aerial photograph of Wanggulam and surroundings

112 133 168

196 201 208

211 212 213 214 215 216

Figure

Table o

LIST OF FIGURES

Plan of fenced in hamlet

Sequence of prestation during a Wanesulati wedding Flow of payments assembled and distributed during the wedding of a mother and her daughter .

Perenatmendek's closest relatives

Closest relatives of Agalai .

Inhabitants of Mbobigi's and Ngabengga's lanke in December 1961 . "n E a y Jiwaru's closest relatives

Skeletal genealogy of Karoba II .

Mbabuarek's sub-section

Kin relationships Ngwembanik — Atarak — Amianongga — Mbilumu

Partial genealogies of Karoba I ia Rens I.

Evans-Pritchard's diagrammatic representation of the structure of a Nuer tribe

LIST OF TABLES

Composition of Wanggulam parish .

Composition of Wanggulam parish in denti Residence pattern of full brothers . ; Contributions to uak (bride's father's prestation) Contributions to bride price (kwe onggo, p father's prestation) .

Comparison of the size of the iak assembled for a girl with the size of the bride price assembled during her weddiug

Wanggulam and foreign nbin to or Wanggulam and foreign contributors to bride price Wanggulam and foreign recipients of uak .

Wanggulam and foreign recipients of bride price . Uak for Wauge and Mbukmba .

Contributors to the jowam for Ambenggonok .

Recipients of jowam for Ambenggonok .

43 102 145 146

Case

LIST OF CASES

Tilubagatlak kills Ngerenggaligwe's son .

The position of Wandin . B cu x E Mbobigi, Ikwenggorok (his ion and Erimawe (his sister's son) . :

Oil pandanus feast pond by de Wangan

Penggu . ; Wandin versus Mbabuarek .

Wogogi's dog

Mbilumu tries to abduct Mbukmba .

Wanggulam versus a Ig ;

Jiwaru . :

Ownership of rii ovens dins the pure pandanus feast . RO. ec d Luki versus Xibengrongk e

Preliminaries to fights between Waneeulam ad Tukobak uM & 2 Liokwe recovers his pig .

Opening of Agawak "S

Mbabuarek moves south of the Kun

Jowam taken by Luki after Ambenggonok's killing . Ngwembanik versus Amianongga versus Mbilumu . Jilobo's death

Enggawarek's death .

Ngwembanik kills Engganggok .

Kondaga tries to marry his daughter to Dena Ngobak and Mbunarek try to kill Jikwanak .

SPELLING OF WORDS IN THE VERNACULAR

There is not yet an agreed spelling of Dani, or Ndani, the language spoken in Wanggulam and the surrounding areas, There are differences in the spelling used by various writers, and the spelling I use is different again. I do not claim linguistic correctness, but have tried to follow Dani pronunciation closely without bothering the English reader.

Vowels can be long or short; their quality and that of diphtongs are approximately as follows:

‘a’ as in Northern English: cat (Dutch: af) Í as in English: bell

‘? as in English: reed

'o as in Scottish: go (Dutch: bok) 'u as in English: book

‘au’ as in English: COW

'e as in Australian English: late (Dutch: bijl)

Consonants should be pronounced as in English, but watch: g7 as in: go, never as in: gin ‘ngg’ as in: finger

It would have been consistent if I had used the term ‘Ndani’ instead of ‘Dani’, but I decided to use the latter term to conform with the usage of other writers, for example Bromley (1960 and 1962) and Peters (1965). Further, at the time of my field work, the term ‘Bokondini' was used to refer to the mission and government stations located in the areas where I worked. Since I presumed that after the Indonesian government had taken over the administration of Irian Barat, this name might have been changed into ‘Mbogondini’, I decided to use the latter term. However, after the manuscript had gone to the press, I noticed in the United Nations’ publication ‘A Design for Development in West Irian’ (New York, 1968), that the term Bokondini seems to be still in use.

SYMBOLS INDICATING KIN RELATIVES AND RELATIONSHIPS

To indicate kin relatives and relationships I use the notational system proposed by Colson and Gluckman (1951; p. xx) and recently recommended by Barnes (1967; pp. 122-123). This system employs the following symbols:

E spouse G sibling — younger

M mother D daughter _] marriage tie

F father S son [ sibling tie

P parent C child — parent-child tie

Females are shown by the symbool O, males by the symbol A, deceased persons by the symbols 6 and A. The symbols 5 ; and 57 are used interchangeably. They indicáte the relationship between classificatory siblings, in other words the relationship between members of the same anembeno (see p. 13) who belong to the same generation.

Introduction

This book is concerned with a group of about 500 people living in the Central Highlands of what is now Irian Barat. To themselves and their neighbours these people are known as the Wanggulam. The Wanggulam form one out of six political communities living in a river valley system which they call Mbogoga, after its main river, the Mbogo. Mbogoga is situated in the upper catchment area of the Hablifoeri (see maps I and II. The maps are inserted at the end of the book). The main feature of its topography is a large plateau more than two miles long, called Mbogondini. It is more than two miles long and is raised from 450 to 600 feet above steep valleys through which the mountain rivers flow swiftly. The altitude of the plateau is about 4000 feet above sea level. Mbogoga is surrounded by rugged mountain country, partly uninhabited.

The climate is agreeable with a moderate temperature all the year round. Rainfall is heavy. At the plateau the annual fall is about 130 inches, but this amount may not be representative as it is based upon only three years of observation; moreover rainfall varies in the different parts of the valley. Most of the rain falls in heavy showers in the late afternoon, evening and night. It continues during the drier season in the middle of the year and it is unusual to have two successive days without rain.

The inhabitants of Mbogoga form part of the larger grouping known as the Ndani, or Dani. This name is given by groups living in more westerly areas of the highlands to their eastern neighbours (Le Roux; 1950, pp. 665 ff.). The Dutch administration of Irian Barat and the missions have used the name to indicate a group of people speaking a number of related dialects and languages. The total number of speakers has been estimated to be as many as 200,000 (Bromley; 1960, p. 235). Dani languages are spoken over a large area containing the upper catchment area of the Hablifoeri, the Swart, the upper Nogolo and their tributaries (see map II). The Mbogoga Dani have many contacts with the Swart area and almost none with the Baliem area and it would seem that the watershed dividing them in the south from the Baliem people constitutes a clearer linguistic and cultural boundary than that which divides them from the Swart people in the west. The latter are the closest western neighbours of the Dani at Mbogoga. Their immediate eastern and southern neighbours, the people living between Mbogoga and the Baliem-Hablifoeri divide, seem to resemble them a great deal. The valleys to the north are presently uninhabited. Farther afield, the pattern of population distribution is not clear.

No census has been taken in Mbogoga, but I would estimate the population at 3,000 people. They are divided into six named parishes (Hogbin and Wedgwood; 1953, p. 253). I lived about 18 months in Mbogoga, from May 1960 till March 1961, and from December 1961 till August 1962, spending most of this time among the Wanggulam, one of the six communities. Wanggulam territory is situated on both sides of the Kurip River (see maps III and IV). Most Wanggulam settlements are on the tract of land bounded by Kurip, Luaga and Nganu, which is the core part of the territory. The name Wanggulam derives from that of a creek, Wangguli, flowing through this area. When war seemed likely or was actually going on, the Wanggulam often took refuge in the core area. The last retreat took place in 1960 and since then the Wanggulam have expanded, building a number of new settlements outside the core area (see map III, A). It is not known how far the expansion will go so that part of the parish boundary is uncertain.

These moves followed extensive migrations which had occurred in Mbogoga during the two decades before 1960. In the course of my field work I collected data on fights which had taken place between the Mbogoga parishes during the period 1930-1960. These data show that the localities of the parishes had fluctuated a great deal. It appeared also that at least some of them disposed of more than one territory. The Wanggulam said this was the usual thing and that people went from one territory to the other on account of fighting; when a community suffered heavy losses or when its members were afraid it might suffer losses, they moved to its other territory. Another factor was possibly the availability of cultivable land. During my stay the Wanggulam complained about the yields of their swiddens and they said they intended to go to Abena, their other territory, because its soil was much more fertile. This territory is situated in a valley north of Mbogoga, and was uninhabited during my stay (see map IV).

About 1942 the Wanggulam had fled there to escape from a war in which the Tukobak, their southern neighbours, living on and near the large plateau, had killed at least ten Wanggulam. After they had lived

INTRODUCTION 3 in Abena for two or three years, the Tukobak had attacked again, so that the Wanggulam had to flee once more. Many went to Panaga, in the Swart Valley area, where they stayed another three to five years. Others took refuge in other parts of the Highlands.

In addition to the Wanggulam their easterly neighbours living on the north bank of the Mbogo, and their southwesterly neighbours living on the upper reaches of the Kurip river, also fled Mbogoga. During the absence of these three parishes, the Tukobak were in their turn defeated by people living east of Mbogoga and they fled westwards to the vacated upper part of the Kurip valley. Little by little they returned eastwards to their former territory near the large plateau, making swiddens in areas formerly cultivated by the Wanggulam and by other Mbogoga groups. Before the Tukobak had returned to the large plateau, the Wanggulam returned in small groups to Mbogoga, first settling down in the upper reaches of the Kurip and afterwards returning to their former territory near the Wangguli. The expansion which took place during 1960-1962 occurred in areas which the Wanggulam had cultivated before 1942, but which in the period between 1942 and 1960 had been cultivated by the Tukobak. During my stay the Tukobak were still moving eastwards. In 1960 they started to leave the areas on and near the large plateau because they disliked living close to the government post and moved to their second territory.

In the course of my field work the Wanggulam still often referred to the fights with the Tukobak and the time spent away from Mbogoga. In other parts of the book I present more data on these subjects.

The Wanggulam provided me with most of my information. There are no indications that there exist marked differences between Wanggulam and the other Mbogoga Dani, but I cannot confirm that the analysis of Wanggulam society would apply without modification to the other communities. My concentration of interest on the Wanggulam is due to a number of factors; to explain these it is necessary to describe the relations between the Mbogoga Dani and the Europeans in their vicinity.

Regular contacts with Europeans started in 1956 when missionaries of the Unevangelised Fields Mission established a station and an airstrip on the plateau at Mbogoga. Three years later the then Dutch administration set up another station also on the plateau. Missionaries, government officials and the natives themselves refer to the site of these stations as Mbogondini, which was originally the name of a tract of land on the plateau.

The attitude of the Mbogoga Dani towards their European neighbours was not unfavourable. The new arrivals had an abundance of highly valued objects (such as cowrie shells, bush knives, and steel axes), and the Dani were eager to work on the projects undertaken by the Dutch administration and the mission in order to acquire some of these goods. When I arrived in May 1960 the flow of Western goods had not been large and only a few men owned steel axes or bush knives, but by March of the following year nearly every man owned one or the other, or both. Soon all men owned them and Mbogoga started to become an export centre for these objects, which were bartered to people of other valleys for valued products of their own culture. The government employed many more people than the mission, and its station was the only government post in the western Dani area. Hence the Mbogoga Dani were in an exceptionally favourable position. The introduction of Western goods led to other important changes in the traditional economy. The Wanggulam assert that the introduction of the steel axe enabled them to clear larger tracts of land and also put them into a better position to open tracts covered with jungle. Mr. S. Smit, the local Government Medical Officer, supported this assertion and said that, in the few years since the establishment of the Mission Station, he had observed a great improvement in the general physical appearance of the people living in Mbogoga, which he attributed to the increased food supply.!

The missionaries had little success in their attempts to put an end to the frequent fighting between the political communities of Mbogoga, but the government managed to end warfare within a year after its arrival. It did not need a great display of force and there were no casualties. The ban of fighting was the only restriction the government imposed on the activities of the Dani. There were no regular patrols through Mbogoga itself. The natives were not required to work for the government, and people who did not work regularly at Mbogondini had only occasional contact with government officials.

The efforts of the missionaries to spread the Christian faith did not

1 If the assertion of the Wanggulam be correct, their response contrasts with that of the Siane (Salisbury; 1962, p. 109), who did not use the more effective steel tools to increase the size of their gardens. This may be connected with another difference between Siane and Mbogoga Dani; Salisbury shows that the diet of the Siane was and is “more than sufficient" (1962, p. 81), while it seems that before the arrival of the Europeans, the diet of the Wanggulam was insufficient, so that it is understandable that they felt the need to enlarge their gardens, while the Siane did not.

INTRODUCTION 5 meet with much response from the Dani till the first months of 1960, when a missionary visited Mbogondini from Ilaga (the western boundary of the Dani), accompanied by a number of native evangelists. Their crusading had a sharp impact upon the Mbogoga Dani. The religious movement that followed is described in O'Brien and Ploeg (1964). The fortunes of this movement, which flourished throughout the period of my association with the Wanggulam, profoundly influenced my relations with them. They saw me as a European, and the conspicuous luxury of my house and surroundings, compared with their own, helped to maintain this distinction. They appreciated my stay more because I provided them with Western goods — just as the other Europeans did — than because I invited them into my house, ate and smoked with them, and tried to cooperate in their activities. They saw me not as an observer, but as a participant, a man who played a role in the developments since 1956. The Dani feared that the Europeans, including myself, would leave if they did not accept the Christian faith, and they knew that this departure would cut off the possibility of their attaining the things they valued in the European way of life. Consequently they were eager to show that they followed a ‘Christian’ line of behaviour. Most people were reluctant to tell me about their feelings regarding conversion. They expected and evidently wanted me to promote their welfare, and they interpreted my stay among them as another opportunity to show the sincerity of their conversion.

Although I denied this and people said they accepted the sincerity of my denials, I wonder whether the Wanggulam were really prepared to believe that my record of their way of life was intended to inform my readers, rather than to allow them to pass judgment. My efforts to explain the reasons for my stay were unsuccessful. The reasons I advanced were not easily believed, for they did not suit the needs of the Wanggulam. I gained the impression that my investigations provided the people with confirmation of the illusions currently being nurtured by the religious movement. I had to be very careful not to be put into the position of a moralist telling the Wanggulam how they should and should not behave. People often asked me to tell them about the mission teachings, and they seemed not to believe me when I said that I was not a Christian. It was difficult to get information on central topics like the views of the Wanggulam about their pre-contact culture, because they were too willing to say simply that it was “bad” while their new way of life was "good". Some of the information I obtained was given in the form of confessions. Questions about traditional rites and about wars and fights were often regarded as invitations to tell about sins of the past. Failure to confess, the Wanggulam felt, might have serious consequences. Sometimes after a number of their close kin had died people came to tell me about their ancestors (who were considered as ‘bad’, since their spirits were believed to have instigated their progeny to warfare) in order to prevent further bereavements. In such cases I felt I could not accept this information and, although I tried to explain why I did not accept it, people may have felt cheated. A few men explicitly told me that the Wanggulam were not convinced that the high hopes provoked by the presence of the white man would be soon fulfilled. That these statements were correct was indicated by further data (see p. 63). I disliked the position I was in. Simply to acknowledge the support and friendship the Wanggulam provided me with, would ignore the disappointment the people probably felt about the meagre advantages (a number of steel axes, a few clothes, salt and cowrie shells) which resulted from my prolonged stay among them.

Other difficulties hampered the collection of material. Wanggulam are not willing to tell each other the truth about their affairs, and they have developed an expert ability to lie with a very friendly face and a very trustworthy manner. The habit of lying led often to exasperating situations: it was unwise to rely upon any promise; it was difficult to obtain precise information about coming events; and it was necessary to check almost all information. People did not expect me to tell them the truth either, so they were easily inclined to discard as apocryphal any explanation I gave for my inquiries. People were rather laconic about the frequent lying. They did not openly condemn lying, and they did not get angry when they discovered that others had lied to them. It seems to me that this attitude is characteristic of Wanggulam society and possibly of the whole region. As it took a long time before I could obtain reliable data from the Wanggulam it seemed likely that short contacts with other groups would yield little. This was another reason for limiting my investigations to Wanggulam.

The second difficulty was my imperfect command of the Dani language. Before arriving in Mbogoga I knew about the language only from an elementary grammar,? and I had to build up a vocabulary and extend my knowledge of the grammar while in the field. The Wanggulam and I did not have a lingua franca as an aid to communication and as a means whereby I might study their dialect. During the last

2 Mr. F. C. Horne, missionary of the Unevangelised Fields Mission, lent me this extremely useful grammar.

INTRODUCTION 7 part of the field work I could understand most of the answers to my questions, and I had a limited understanding of conversations between Wanggulam, but sometimes I had difficulty in framing a question, and I never reached the proficiency in the language I desired.

In the following chapters I will describe the main features of the traditional culture of the Wanggulam. During my stay among them the people were in the process of abandoning many of these features and the fact that some were being retained while others were being abandoned makes for difficulties in presentation in this book. Initially I intended to refer in the present tense to those cultural features still retained during the first part of my stay, and in the past tense to features being abandoned at that time. This procedure proved to be impracticable since it led to a very tangled and confusing use of tenses. In chapter 4 for example, when discussing supernatural beings and powers, I had to use the past tense to describe the discontinued ceremonies and rites, but the present tense to describe the spirits and their attributes, since people still believed in the existence of the spirits. I have therefore decided to use the present tense throughout except when referring to specific events which took place in the course of my field trips. By using this method of presentation I have avoided some tangled use of tenses, but I have not completely avoided inconsistencies. In several instances I mention that fights and battles were a thing of the past during my stay, only to refer to them in the next paragraph in the present tense as if they were still in existence. To prevent confusion therefore I indicate several times in the course of the argument which of the features under discussion were still retained and which were being abandoned.

Chapter 1 Material Culture And Mode Of Livelihood

Mbogoga material culture is simple, but most of the materials — with the notable exception of the stone adzes and axes — are very efficient. Many tools are not durable, but are made for the occasion and abandoned afterwards. Manufacturing techniques are on the whole simple. Spinning is unknown: ropes and strings are made by twisting bark fibres. Weaving is known, but rarely practised. A number of fairly elaborate methods of plaiting, netting, and knitting are known and used in the manufacturing of bags, bands, and armour. Pottery and basketry are unknown. Decorating devices are simple, and moreover are not used extensively. Carving occurs only on arrows used for fighting. The motifs are not very elaborate. Bags, and other plaited and knitted articles, are decorated with orchid and other fibres (see Le Roux; 1948, p. 389) with a very limited colour variation.

In this overall simplicity Mbogoga material culture resembles the cultures of the highlands of East New Guinea, but — especially with regard to ceremonial dresses and objects — it is less colourful and less elaborate (see Read; 1954, p. 9).

The main garment for men is a penis gourd. Most men wore until 1962 one or more headbags, covered with a mixture of soot, resins and pigfat. Most wore also one or other form of ‘neckwear’, either simply a few strips of flattened bark, or parts of insect nests, or bands set with shells, or strips of bailer shell. By 1962, under the influence of the religious movement, men tended to abandon both bags and neckwear. The main garment for women is a skirt. There are two types; one is made of a long cord to which are tied freehanging cords up to 15 inches long. The other type, used by married women only, consists of long flat plaited bands, adorned with orchid and other fibres. The bands are wound horizontally around the hips. The first part of the marriage ceremonies consists of dressing a girl in a skirt of this type.

Mbogoga Dani live in small hamlets. There are two types of houses with only minor differences in construction. I will refer to these types

MATERIAL CULTURE AND MODE OF LIVELIHOOD 9 as men's houses and women's houses, mainly because the adult men spend the night in the one type and the women and children in the other. Both types are circular, with a conical roof covered with thatched grass. The wall is made of a double row of vertical, adzed planks. The diameter of a house is about 14 feet.

The houses of a hamlet are arranged according to a plan: there is one men's house in a hamlet, situated at the apex of a long yard. The women's houses are on the long sides of the yard facing each other. The number of women's houses varies from one to six. About half of the Wanggulam hamlets were fenced in at the time of my field work.

FIGURE 1: PLAN OF A FENCED IN HAMLET

The yard (see figure 1, A) with the houses is surrounded by a garden in the form of a horseshoe (B), so that the groundplan of the hamlet is roughly elliptical. The whole is enclosed by a heavy fence, about seven feet high. The yard is closed off from the garden by a lower fence with a few crossings. There are two gates in the outer fence (C), in most cases aligned with the two doors of the men's house (D). Women's houses (E) have only one door leading towards the yard. The size of a yard of a hamlet with three women's houses is about 40 by 15 yards, and the length and width of the hamlet itself are about 60 and 40 yards respectively.