A Witch's Hand

Front matter

O

A WITCH'S

Curing, Killing, Kinship, and Colonialism among the Lujere of New Guinea

Chapter Four: AUSTRALIAN HEGEMONY RESTORED Return of the Patrol Officers

Patrol Officer Gilbert and Father James’ Patrol to the Sepik, 1949

Seeking a Yellow River Airstrip Site, 1951

Wakaus First Indentured Laborers

The First Official Census of the Lujere, 1956

A Patrol Officers Assessment of the Lujere Colonial Predicament, 1962 Here Come the Missionaries!

The Sola Fida Mission and the First Regional Airstrip, 1958

The Christian Brethren Arrive, 1961

Wakau Village Makes a Move viii

37 37 39 40 44 45 54

Chapter Five: COLONIAL TWILIGHT Establishing the Yellow River (Edwaki) Base Camp A Failed Attempt, 1968 Success, a Triumph of Local Politics, 1971 Here Come the Anthropologists!

The Fast Track to Independence

Chapter Six: THE SEARCH FOR A VILLAGE Gilbert Lewis’s Lujere Experience The Search A Hasty Flight to Edwaki Base Camp Visiting Multiple Lujere Villages Narrowing the Options The Choice A temporary move to Edwaki Base Camp

Settling in at Wakau village Part Two: WHO ARE THE LUJERE?

Chapter Seven: LUJERELAND The Lay of the Land: Low, Wet, Hot, and Humid Colonial Consequences “Isolated and Undeveloped”

The South Wapei Census Division Indentured laborers Villagers’ knowledge of the colonial government Councils and the Southwest Census District Jobs: An unfulfilled wish Rural Airstrips Hunting with Shotguns Scientific Medicine in the Bush Radios and Newspapers Trade Stores and Markets

111 111 111 118 124 129

Tok Pisin Schools and Literacy Yellow River Preparatory School

Chapter Eight: THE LUJERE VILLAGES A Muddle of Terms Population and Gender Lujere Regions Leadership and Authority Ancestral Origins A Man, His Son, and Dog Go Up the Sepik Male Initiation: Myth or Authentic History?

Talk, the Essence of Life A Plethora of Papuan Languages: Namia’s Neighbors ‘The classification gambit Namia

Tok Pisin

Chapter Nine: OLD ENEMIES Traditional Enemies Trading with the Enemy Dressed to Kill The Lujere Fight Shield Slaying the Enemy The Tsila Village Massacre The Yellow River Massacre Prelude to a Cannibal Feast The Massacre The Aftermath

Chapter Ten: WAKAU VILLAGE Wakau Local History Cultural Impact of the Mission A Pragmatic People

181 181

229 229 232 232

Cultural Changes Since Robinson's and McCarthy’s Patrols Dating Local History The People and Households of Wakau Betty Gillam and Jalman’s Medical Clinic Who Lives Where?

Womens Houses Family Bush Camps Mens Houses The House as Cultural Metaphor The Fieldwork Camp The Lower Village: Dramatis Personae Village Rhythms Morning and afternoon The evening dinner Greetings, Old and New The Ancestors’ Stones

Taboos in Daily Life

Chapter Eleven: DISCORD AND DISSENT Domestic Quarrels Disputes Among Villagers Colonial Offenses, Official and Unofficial Klowi’s Crimes Patrol Officers and Villagers Playing Politics The Ten-Cent “Tax”

The 1972 National Election The Power of the Patrol Officer The Ethnologist’s Rant

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Chapter Twelve: CLANSHIP, KINSHIP, AND MARRIAGE The Work of the Patriclans Dual Clan Affiliation Adoption Economic Resources Resource Transmission Kinship Terminology Wakau Kin Terms Joking Relationships Love and Marriage Yaope Takes a Bride Threatening Female Abduction Tsaime and Nemia: A Turbulent Nuptial Scenario An aborted elopement A stick fight ‘The patrol officer’s court Klowi’s stern lectures The bow-and-arrow confrontation A rained-out political meeting The closing nuptial exchange

Nauwen and Kunati’s Marital Woes

Chapter Thirteen: INTO THE BUSH: THE QUEST FOR FOOD Sago, the Lujere Staff of Life Relentless Gatherers Reluctant Gardeners The Fervor of the Hunt Ginger’s Magical Power and Use Hunting Dogs and Wild and Tame Pigs Finding Fish The Omnipresence of Food Taboos

Part Three: MAGIC, MURDER, AND THE LUJERE IMAGINATION

Chapter Fourteen: STORIES FROM AN IMAGINARY PAST Mental Worlds The Storytellers’ Tales Why Dogs Eat Shit A Pond Python Eats a Mother and Her Baby Filial Love: The Cassowary Mother and Her Human Son The Turtle Moon and the Naughty Children The Selfish Husband and a Magical Skirt A Cannibal Demon and the Villagers’ Revenge Wararu and the Spirit Woman The Origin of Frogs A Tale of Two Brothers Water-Snake Woman Is a Good Wife

Chapter Fifteen: THE LUJERE CURING FESTIVALS Modes of Therapeutic Intervention The Lujere View of Sickness The Lujere Spirit World Souls, Spirits, and Ghouls Tracking Down the Wowi Spirits The Ways of Ritual The Wowi-Spirit Curing Festivals Mauwi’s Na Wowi Curing Festival Day one: Preparations Day two: The exorcism An outsider’s perspective Ritual phallocrypts in the upper Sepik Basin Mokadamis Aewal Wowi Curing Festival

Preparations xiii

The aewal wowi ritual horns The concluding rituals

Wakau’s Aewal Wowi Curing Festivals ‘The first curing festival

The second curing festival

Chapter Sixteen: ‘SANGUMA’:: THE TERROR OF MAGICAL RITUAL

MURDER IN OCEANIA ‘Sanguma’ as Magical Ritual Murder Sorcery and Witchcraft Geocultural Distribution of ‘Sanguma’

Ethnographic Descriptions of ‘Sanguma’in Papua New Guinea ‘The first descriptions by Codrington and Seligman ‘Sanguma in the eastern islands

Hogbin'’s Guadalcanal description Ludvigson’ Espiritu Santo Island description Fortunes Dobu account ‘Sanguma in the Sepik region Bateson’s Iatmul account Roscoes Yangoru Boiken description Gesch’s Yamuk village (Middle Sepik) description Kulick’s Gapun and Juillerat’s Yafar descriptions Scorza’s Tumentonik village (Torricelli Mountains) description Morren’s Telefolmin description ‘Sanguma’ in Papua (former British New Guinea) Knauft’s Gebusi (Western Province) description Burton-Bradley and Julius’ Motu village (Port Moresby) description Matlinowskis Mailu description ‘Sanguma in the north coastal region St. Lehner’s Markham-Ramu plain description Hogbin'’s Wogeo Island description

Kosters Banara (Bogia area) description xiv

380 382 384 385 388

‘Sanguma in the Highlands Berndt’s Jate (eastern Central Highlands) description

Stewart and Strathern’s Wiru and Hewa (Southern Highlands)

descriptions Ethnographic Descriptions of Sanguma’ in Indonesia ‘Sanguma in North Maluku province Bubandts Halmahera Island description ‘Sanguma in West Papua province Helds Waropen description ‘Sanguma in Papua province Wirzs Marind-Anim description Ethnographic Descriptions of Sanguma’ in Australia ‘Sanguma’ in South Australia Spencer and Gillen’s Arunta description ‘Sanguma’ in Western Australia Tokinson’ Jigalong description ‘Sanguma in the Northern Territory Reids and Warners Murngin accounts

Conclusion: The Cultural Extent and Mapping of ‘Sanguma’

Chapter Seventeen: ‘SANGUMA’ AND SOCIETY Lujere ‘Sanguma’ The Apprenticeship of a ‘Sangumaman’

Positive Roles of a ‘Sangumaman’

The Origin Story of Lujere Sanguma’

An Iwani Sorcery Trial in Lumi Etymology of ‘Sanguma’and Its Conflicting Referents Don Laycock and Sanguma’

Margaret Mead and ‘Sanguma’

Is ‘Sanguma’ Real?

Father G. J. Kosters Accounts E E. Williams's Accounts

408 408

Dr. Beckers Surgical ‘Sanguma’ Patient Iwanis Double ‘Sanguma’ Murder The Queen v. three ‘sangumamen The villagers’ version of the murders ‘Sanguma’ and the Law Reo Fortune’s 1932 Critique of the Sorcery Ordinance of 1893 The Sorcery Act of 1971 Sanguma’ Witch Hunts in Papua New Guinea Today The 2015 Repeal of the Sorcery Act

Chapter Eighteen: THE AFFLICTED AND THEIR CURERS Patients’ Curing Options Medical Services through the Administration and Mission Litabagi’s Wakau Medical Patrol Home Remedies, Physical and Ritual Pourame and Oria’s Family Health Crisis Magical Curers Male Magical Curers Female Magical Curers Magical Curing Practices Magical Curers and Their Patients Klowi Treats Twanauwi of Mauwi Hamlet Menetjua Treats Tschorai Eine’s and Tschorais Curer Treatments A ‘Sangumaman Treats Ime A Curing Clinic Mangko Treats Kaukobu of Gwidami Three Weari Curers Treat Klowi Sickness, Curing, Placebos, and the Male Curers The Curer Paradox and Self-Referential Magic

Psychosis or Devil Possession?

Chapter Nineteen: DEATH IN WAKAU 479 Rampant Pneumonia 479 A Hunting Camp Visit 484

A Graveyard Ritual 485 The Death of Ukai 485 Ukai’s wake 488 Ukai’s burial 490

The Death of Kairapowe 494 Saying Goodbye 496 Magical versus Medical Curing 498 Curing Modes and Techniques 499 The Lujere Separation of Local and Introduced Curing Systems 501 Sanguma: Some Final Thoughts 502

Appendix: ATIRE’S CHRONIC ABDOMINAL ILLNESS: A CASE-STUDY LOG OF MAGICAL AND MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS 503

List of Illustrations

Unless otherwise indicated in the text captions, all photos are by William E. Mitchell.

Figures

Figure 1. Richard Thurnwald amid his boats and assistants on the upper Sepik River, January 1914.

Figure 2. Richard Thurnwald’s photo of Lujere men and boys on the Sand River, November 1914.

Figure 3. A Mosstroops photo of the Sepik River, marked up to show the seaplane landing area where men and supplies could be off-loaded.

Figure 4. A Lujere headman with a traditional pipe, as photographed by a Mosstroops member.

Figure 5. The Aukwom aid post orderly on the porch with some patients below. Figure 6. A Lujere man stands on the porch of a traditional-style men’s

house (iron), one of two in Nami village.

Figure 7. Nakate and Manwai ready a canoe to cross the Yellow River.

Figure 8. View south from Wakau’s upper village, looking over lower village roofs towards the ‘kuna? plain, the West Range, and Victor Emanuel Range.

Figure 9. A Wakau village fight shield. Australian Museum, Sydney.

Figure 10. Aerial view of Wakau village, looking north.

Figure 11. Mothers visiting at Oria’s wife’s house, across from my office. Kwoien’s wife Wariyeh with her newborn son is on the right.

Figure 12. Enmauwi smokes a traditional mero pipe as his daughter Wea plays with the stem of Nimo’s mero.

Figure 13. Nurse Betty Gillam and the medical orderly Jalman set up for a medical clinic.

Figure 14. Wawenowaki (Klowi’s wife, second from right) relaxes with family and friends on the front veranda of her traditional house.

Figure 15.K___ bush camp, a two-and-a-half-hour hike from Wakau.

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72 139

145 147

155 209 230 23/1 236 238

243 245

Figure 16. Klowi’s bush camp in the fens, across the Sand River.

Figure 17. The interior of Klowi’s bush camp.

Figure 18. The abandoned men’s house (irom) in Wakau, once the men’s sleeping quarters.

Figure 19. The new men’s house in the upper village of Wakau.

Figure 20. Villagers outside my office listening to a tape recording of a curing ritual.

Figure 21. My office, with its two indispensable and faithful assistants:

an Olympia typewriter and an Aladdin lamp.

Figure 22. Wakau men returning home late afternoon with their hunting weapons. Note the old, abandoned iron in the background.

Figure 23. Wakau women returning home with firewood.

Figure 24. Boys spinning tops in the lower village.

Figure 25. Airas daughter Yawori holds a toy bow as boys spin their tops in the lower village. The path connects the lower and upper villages. Figure 26. A boy astride an archaic grinding stone near the end of the upper village.

Figure 27. Breakfast with Joyce, Elizabeth, and Ned in my screened-tent dining area.

Figure 28. An Iwani villager receives a ballot from PO Lanaghan.

Figure 29. Aire casts his ballot assisted by the Iwani ‘luluai’; in the middle distance, women line up for a ballot. The house belonging to the ‘kiap is in the rear.

Figure 30. Leno striding angrily by the lower iron, bush knife in hand. Figure 31. Tsaimi, face blackened to express his powerful emotions, holds the ‘kiap’ baton inlaid with the Queen’s coin portrait to give to Leno. Figure 32. Leno and Tsaime at PO Lanaghan’s informal court.

Figure 33. Kairapowe washing sago by the Sand River with Oria’s daughter Womkau.

Figure 34. Men carry a wild boar shot by Klowi to the ‘kunai’ house.

Figure 35. Klowi in the upper village with a recently shot Victoria crowned pigeon.

Figure 36. Mangko with boys and the cassowary he shot with his bow and arrow. Figure 37. The boys and youths who created the na wowi masks.

Figure 38. Lijeria quietly awaits the beginning of his na wowi curing festival. Figure 39. One of the na wowi masks approaches Lijeria, seated.

Figure 40. Na wowi mask carriers, lwowari, Purkenitobu, and Katweli, practicing their moves.

Figure 41. A na wowi mask kneels next to Lijeria for the curing climax.

Figure 42. A na wowi mask parades across the village plaza, followed by chanting children and women.

Figure 43. Men playing aewa/ wowi horns encircle afflicted victims. The

“grandfather” horn is the undecorated one and the others known as the “children.”

Figure 44. Orana and Anwani are treated near the four aewal wowi placed

on the ground.

Figure 45. Decorated aewal wowi horns perform for Maruwami’s curing rituals. Figure 46. Chest x-ray slide of victim's thoracic cavity with three casing wires.

246 246

247 248

254 259 257

279 280

280 301

303 307

369 37/1

3/5 380 383

389 435

List of Illustrations

Figure 47. Partial lineup of Wakau families for Litabagi’s medical patrol; Mowal far left, next to Mangko and Kairapowe chatting.

Figure 48. Aid post orderly Litabagi gives oral amodiaquine to Oria’s sister’s baby.

Figure 49. Oria makes an aewa/ wowi curing bundle for his sick wife. Figure 50. Oria covers Pourame for the curing ritual.

Figure 51. Warajak helps Oria complete the aewa/ wowi curing ritual for Pourame.

Figure 52. Ime with K___ and Kowali, her mother’s brother, holding a betel bespattered bundle.

Figure 53. Yabowe, supported by her father, is treated by Ari.

Figure 54. As Klene clings to a rafter for support, Ari tugs on his belly skin. Figure 55. Little Manwe is held down by his mother as Ari treats him. Figure 56. Ari explores Manwe’s belly as his helper leans down with a curing bundle.

Figure 57. Enaru squeezes Lijeria’s flesh as his helper waits with her curing bundle.

Figure 58. Men plan and prepare Ukai’s gravesite.

Figure 59. Two young women bring water to the gravesite for the men to wash the body.

Figure 60. Meyawali and Mowal closing Kairapowe’s grave with palm branches. Figure 61. The author with his cargo and two local boys on the Yellow River airstrip awaiting his MAF chartered plane to Lumi. Photo by Ray Lanaghan.

Tables

Table 1. PO Oakes’s Lujere village census data, 1956

Table 2. Lujere shotguns, radios, and male literacy in Tok Pisin

Table 3. CMML Yellow River primary school students

Table 4. PO Lanaghan’s Lujere village census data, November—-December 1971 Table 5. Lujere enemy villages by cardinal direction and language

Table 6. Wakau population by marital status, 1972

Table 7. Wakau population by age and gender, 1956 and 1972

Table 8. Key to map 6, women’s houses and men’s collective houses in Wakau village

Table 9. Iwani village males convicted of offenses 1955-1971

Table 10. Variability in Lujere curing modes and techniques, 1971-72

Maps

Map 1. ‘The island of New Guinea, with the Sepik area framed in the center box.

Map 2. The Lujere homeland and some of the Sepik cultures with ethnographic studies, 1972.

Map 3. The Sand and Yellow (Gelb) river basins during German control.

Map 4. PO George Oakes’s patrol map of villages in South Wapei Census Division, 1957.

xxi

447 448 450 451 453

462 466 467 468

469 470 491

492 495

242 273 499

Map 5. Lujere villages visited by Barry Craig on his 1969 collecting trip. 127 Map 6. Wakau village women’s and men’s houses in November, 1971. Drawing by Dan Holbrow. 241

Map 7. Orias map of his land across the Sand River with sago stands and creeks. 291 xxii

List of Abbreviations

A$: Australian dollar

ADC: Assistant District Commissioner ADO: Assistant District Officer

AIB: Allied Intelligence Bureau

ANGAU: Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit AN&MEF: Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force CMML: Christian Missions in Many Lands

CPO: Cadet Patrol Officer

DASF: Department of Agriculture, Stock, and Fisheries DC: District Commissioner

DDS: Department of District Services and Native Affairs DORCA: Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs FELO: Far Eastern Liaison Unit

JN: Joyce’s typed field notes

Lang.: Language

MAF: Missionary Aviation Fellowship

MBE: Member of the Order of the British Empire MD: Author’s typed diary notes

MN: Author’s typed field notes

NAA: National Archives of Australia

NB: Author’s field notebook

OBE: Officer of the Order of the British Empire OIC: Officer in Charge

PNG: Papua New Guinea

PO: Patrol Officer

RAAF: Royal Australian Air Force

SVD: Society of the Divine Word, a Catholic religious order SWCD: South Wapei Census Division

TP: Tok Pisin (Pidgin English, Melanesian Pidgin, Neo-Melanesian)

xxiii

Glossary

Throughout this book, terms in the Tok Pisin language are indicated by single quotes; terms in Namia are indicated by italics.

Tok Pisin

‘bus kanaka’: unsophisticated, old-fashioned person (pejorative) ‘hatwara’: sago pudding

‘haus kiap’: patrol officer’s rest house

‘haus kuk: kitchen

‘haus meri’: women’s house

‘haus polis’: police rest house

‘haus tambaran’: male ceremonial house ‘kalabus’: jail

‘kanaka’: Indigene, local, Native

‘kanda: cane, rattan

‘kapiok: bread fruit tree

‘kaukau’: sweet potato

‘kawawar’: ginger

‘kiap’: patrol officer

‘kot’: court; to be accused

‘kulaw’: green coconut for drinking

‘kunai’: grass plains

‘kundw’:: hand drum

‘laplap’: waistcloth or sarong

‘limbum’: flooring made from a palm trunk; pliable flower sheath of a palm sometimes made into containers

‘luluai’: top village official appointed by the ‘kiap’

‘mami’: a type of yam

‘maski’: never mind

‘meri’: female

‘morata’: thatch shingles made of sewn palm leaves ‘muruk’: cassowary

‘ofis’: office

‘ol i ranawe’: everyone ran away

‘pangal’: sago palm stem

‘popo’: papaya

‘Popi: Roman Catholic

‘posin: sorcery

‘ring moni’ shell wealth

‘saksak’: sago

‘sanguma (‘sangguma’): magical homicide

‘sarip’: small sickle for cutting grass

‘satu’: dice gambling game

‘selmani’: shell money

‘sing-sing’: festival usually including dancing and feasting ‘sot wir’: shortness of breath

talatala: Protestant

‘tok pilai’: joking

‘tultul’: secondary village official appointed by the ‘kiap ‘wailis’: a radio transmitter

‘wantok’: person who speaks your language ‘wanwok’: person who shared your contract labor ‘waspapa’: a foster father, a guardian

NAMIA aewal: stinging nettles

aewal wowi: stinging nettles bush demon aijan aokwae: spirit associated with natural phenomena amet: stone axe

anapi: bow

aokwae: spirit

aokwae bidami: spirit of dead person aokwae naki: spirit of newly dead person aokwae nebu: rainbow

Edwaki: Lujere central villages

ena aokwae: pond spirit

iju aokwae: stream spirit

imoulu: traditional male curer

iron: men’s house

ithu wowi: water bush demon

lei aokwae: swamp spirit

Lawo: northwestern Lujere villages

mero: two-piece smoking implement nakwolu: murderous male witch

na wowi: sago bush demon

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Glossary

Pabei: southern Lujere villages paumet: sorcery

poketaiyup: a person's spirit or soul tiramli: hand drum

walamaku: settlement

waniwani: wooden trumpet Weari: eastern Lujere villages wowi: bush demon xxvii

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the Lujere residents of Wakau hamlet of Iwani village, Aitape-Lumi Subdistrict, Sanduan (West Sepik) Province, who in 1971-72 and during my brief revisits in 1982 and 2000, generously shared their lives and stories with me. A few names warrant special mention, as their valuable contributions were so extensive: Oria, Kaiera, Nauwen, Arakwaki, Kunai, Klowi, and Waratchak, a boy in 1971 but on my return in 2000 a grown man called Jek.

I am deeply grateful for the generous three-year research grant awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health in 1970 that made it possible for me to live with the Lujere and collect the data upon which this book is based. I am also grateful to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for an earlier summer travel grant that brought me to Papua New Guinea in 1967 to join anthropologists Margaret Mead and Rhoda Métraux on the Sepik River.

I am also grateful to the following institutions and governmental departments for facilitative support, and to their staffs for personal courtesies: Carolina Academic Press; Christian Missions in Many Lands; Cornell University Library; Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Papua New Guinea; Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History; Franciscan Friars of Papua New Guinea; National Archives of Australia; National Archives and Public Records Services of Papua New Guinea; Kreitzberg Library, Norwich University; Davis Family Library, Middlebury College; Morrisville Public Library, Morrisville, Vermont; Ethnological Museum of Berlin; New Guinea Research Unit, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University; National Department of Health, Department of Social Development and Home Affairs, and Office of the Administrator, Papua New Guinea; University of Berlin Library; Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; University of Michigan Library; Thomas James Rodoni Archive, University of Newcastle; University of Pennsylvania Museum Library; University of Sydney Archives; Howe Library, University of Vermont; Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Sanduan (West Sepik) Province, Aitape-Lumi Subdistrict, and Edwaki Base Camp offices.

I am greatly indebted to the following individuals, some lamentably departed, who at very different times and in often vastly different ways each gave generously of their time

XXİX and expertise to keep my research rolling along (listed alphabetically): Phillip Ace, Rosemary Ace, Alex Achjanie, Timoti Aliowoni, Bryant Allen, Dan Anderson, Janet Anderson, lan Bean, T. O. Beidelman, Lauri Bragge, Peter Broadhurst, Ralph N. H. Bulmer, B. G. Burton-Bradley, Barry Craig, Kathryn Creely, Laurent A. Daloz, Diane De Terra, Jared Diamond, Mark Dornstreich, Stephen J. Duggan, T. Wayne Dye, May Ebihara, Harry Feldman, Tom Feldpausch, Becky Feldpausch, Oswald C. Fountain, Deborah Gewertz, Elizabeth A. Gillam, Risto Gobius, Robert Gordon, Phillip Guddemi, Eike Haberland, Karin Hanta, Robert Haynes, Alan Healey, Linda Hoffmann, Ian Hogbin, Heidi Horsely, Leo Hoy, Mary Taylor Huber, Peter Huber, Richard Hutchings, Adell Johannes, Dan Jorgensen, Bernard Juillerat, Christian Kaufmann, Antje Kelm, Heinz Kelm, Sander Kirsch, Ron Kitson, Raymond Lanaghan, Don Laycock, David A. M. Lea, Hope Leichter, James Leichter, Gilbert A. Lewis, Kay Liddle, Claudio Lomnitz, Joseph K. Long, Laura Marshall, Adrian Matthews, Shirley Matthews, Aileen R. F. McGregor, Donald E. McGregor, Marion Melk-Koch, Margaret Mead, David Merau, Rhoda Métraux, Wolfgang Mieder, Joyce Slayton Mitchell, Peter Moriarty, Lyn Wark Murray, Douglas Newton, George D. Oakes, Lita Osmundsen, Nina Parris, Cecil Parrish, Mary Parrish, Mark Pendergrast, Veronica Richel, Paul Roscoe, Jo Scanlan, Markus Schindlbeck, Meinhard Schuster, David P. Scorza, John R. Slayton, William E. Staley, Yvonne Starcheska, Andrew Strathern, John Sturt, Joseph Subasic, Nancy Sullivan, Pamela Swadling, Patricia Townsend, Edgar Tschadjin, Jacques Van Vlack, Beatrice Voirol, Annette Weiner, and C. S. Wigley.

During the actual writing of this book there are a few names already mentioned that deserve a separate shout-out for the many times they lent their expertise to my work: Bryant Allen, Lauri Bragge, Peter Broadhurst, Barry Craig, Kathy Creely, Stephen Duggan, Tom Feldpausch, Betty Gillam, Gilbert Lewis, David Merau, and Veronica Richel.

Lastly, a special acknowledgment and commendation is due the dedicated patrol officers who wrote the detailed reports I have extensively drawn from, and to their supervisors up the chain of command who added their own comments. Without making this “readerly pilgrimage” (Lomnitz 2014: xl) into the colonial past via these officers’ comprehensive writings, all situated in time and place, I could not have enfolded my account of the Lujere into their long and deep history of foreign occupation. The patrol officers whose reports I gratefully cite are T. G. Atchison, Lauri Bragge, Merton Brightwell, J. K. Broadhurst, P. E. Feinberg, J. E. Fowke, Ric Hutchings, Frank D. Jones, Ray Lanaghan, J. Martyn, J. K. McCarthy, George Oakes, R. Orwin, G. F. Payne, E. W. Robinson, A. Stevens, M. E. Tomlinson, R. K. Treutlain, C. A. Trollope, F. J. Wafingian, P. B. Wenke, John White, A. S. Wright, and D. Young-Whitford.

Regarding Hau Books, my first thanks are to Hylton White, who initially appreciated the ethnographic scope and historical significance of my book about the Lujere people. The dedicated copy editors who worked on the book were Dan Holbrow (who also drew the charming map of Wakau village (map 6), Honora Perkins, and Julee Tanner; I owe a special thanks to Julee for all the laughs we had in Zoom meetings as we scrambled to finish the final editing.

Some of the material in the book was first presented in talks to the Anthropology Section, New York Academy of Sciences; Department of Behavioral Science, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine; Department of Psychiatry, Tufts University College of Medicine; Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Papua

Acknowledgments

New Guinea; and in sessions at the Ninth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (1973); Seventy-Third Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (1974); One Hundred Forty-Second Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1976); Wenner-Gren Foundation Ninety-Fifth International Symposium, “Sepik Research Today” (1984); and the Johnson State College lecture series, “The Creative Audience” (1990).

XXXi

The Sepik is a very large river.

Gregory Bateson (1932: 4)

Beginnings

Nostalgia is a troublesome sentiment. Like unrequited love, it is too self-serving, too wistfully sentimental, too intellectually sloppy. And it is usually only half of the story— the good half. Yet whenever I think of New Guinea and its Sepik provinces, as I did when beginning this book about the Lujere people, I inevitably succumb to nostalgia’s seductive embrace. As I began to write, the faint whiff of tropical mold that even today clings to my old notebooks transported me back to the Lujere’s swampy homeland and the “messiness and imponderabilia of fieldwork” (Dalton 2000: 291-92). Then the languid tropical air is suddenly suffused with voracious mosquitoes or angry bolts of lightning and torrents of rain transforming a pleasant afternoon into a hellish storm. It is the same when recalling the villagers with whom I lived. First, their personal warmth and gentle kindnesses towards one another and to me immediately jump to mind, and then I recall their obsession with the terrifying male witches—the nakwo/u—who they said didn’t hesitate to secretly attack and kill their neighbors.

Although nostalgic memories are a part of any author’s ethnography, more important are the many hundreds of pages of handwritten and typed field notes, the boxes of taped interviews, hundreds of black-and-white and color photos, fragile decaying maps, stacks of film canisters and, today, video recordings and digital photos. Unlike nostalgic memories that uncritically gloss the past, a large corpus of clearly identified fieldwork materials critically jerks the writer back in time and space to specific persons and concrete events personally known or witnessed. Vague memories and even events long forgotten come scurrying back, leaping into one’s consciousness, often with surprising vividness.

This book is about the Lujere people of Papua New Guinea as witnessed from the village of Wakau, where I lived with them in 1971-1972, a long time ago. I first heard about them when I lived in the foothills of the Torricelli Mountains, where I was studying the

Wape people in the village of Taute.' The Lujere were located about a three- or four-days’ walk to the south. On a clear day in the right spot, I could see their wet grasslands far away in the Sepik River Basin; even farther in the dim distance were the Central Ranges on the other side of the hidden river. Map 1 depicts the island of New Guinea and the Sepik area, while map 2 shows the location of the Lujere in relation to neighboring Sepik societies that had been the focus of ethnographic studies around the time of my research.

F

R IRIAN JAYA (INDONESIA;

fl h 4 $ “aul S

PAPUA NEW GUINEA a. a D-

Map 1. The island of New Guinea, with the Sepik area framed in the center box. Reprinted from Lutkehaus et al. (1990: 664) by permission of Carolina Academic Press.

The government referred to the Lujere as “the Yellow River people,” but the Wape called them ‘ol man belong tais’ (“the swamp dwellers”), usually adding with a look of scornful fear, Em i as ples bilong sanguma!’ indicating that to them, the Lujere were the home of ‘sanguma,’an old and dreaded form of ritualized magical homicide with, I would

1. When I first began to think about New Guinea as a field site for extended research with my family, I read an article by Eike Haberland (1965) on the areas in the Sepik region that needed ethnographic research and later talked with him personally at an anthropology meeting. One area was the Torricelli Mountains that lay between Aitape on the north coast and the Sepik River; the other was the area south of the Torricellis that Haberland (1965: 40) identified as “the river basin of the Yellow and Sand River.” Neither had been studied ethnographically yet, although Gilbert Lewis was soon to do fieldwork among the Gnau in the Torricellis. As it resulted, I studied the Wape in the Torricellis, west of the Gnau, and the Lujere in the area of the Yellow and Sand Rivers.

2. Looking at map 2, the physiographic regions are the Northern Ranges of the Bewani, Torricelli, and Prince Alexander Ranges; the Intermontane Trough of the Sepik and Ramu River Basins; and the Central Cordillera of the West, Central, and Schrader Ranges (Löffler 1972).

LET

Map 2. The Lujere homeland and some of the Sepik cultures with ethnographic studies, 1972. Reprinted with permission from Mitchell 1975: 412.

learn, a wide cultural distribution in Oceania that stretched even into Indonesia and Australia and examined here in depth for the first time. On the rare instance when any Yellow River people happened to enter our village en route to the subdistrict headquarters in Lumi, word spread quickly as my neighbors and friends vanished into their homes. Everyone was afraid of the swamp people and their ‘sanguma’ witchcraft. Among the Lujere, ‘sangumamen are called nakwolu. In later chapters, you will learn why and how they are both feared and hated as killers but also respected and valued as curers called imoulu.

In 1962, Patrol Officer R. K. Treutlein made a fifty-six-day patrol of the villages between the Wape dwelling in the mountains and the Lujere in wet grasslands. He wrote:

Once one goes further south the position changes, though, and the fear of “Sanguma” becomes very strong. Every sudden or unusual death, be it due to sickness or not, is blamed on Sanguma. The people are afraid to leave their houses at night, they barricade the doors at nightfall and will not come out except under the most dire circumstances, until daylight. Two cases of death allegedly due to Sanguma reported at Tubum village, were on investigation quite obviously pneumonia, yet the people blamed the Yukilos [ Yukilo villagers] for having killed these two men by Sanguma. They said that this sort of thing has always been going on. (Treutlein 1962: 12)

For the Wape, ‘sanguma’was called numoin, but the men who had that daunting power were no more; the last one in my fieldwork village of Taute died shortly before I arrived. But his death did not extinguish their formidable belief in ‘sanguma’ witchcraft or their mortal terror about the way they believed a victim was secretly assaulted and killed. First, a ‘sangumaman rendered his lone chosen victim unconscious by strangulation. With his victim now prostrate, if not dead, he made cuts in the body’s fleshy parts, removed small bits of muscle; then, piercing the victim’s armpit area, he drained some blood into a bamboo container. Once the bodily lacerations were finished, he magically closed them without scarring. His victim, who would have no memory of this murderous encounter, was then magically returned to life and sent home to meet his or her inevitable death in so many marked days. My neighbors’ belief in ‘sanguma’ murders was thoroughgoing, but my thinking, so deeply grounded in Western rationalism, could not accept the details of a murderous ‘sanguma assault as factually possible. For one, human skin that has been sliced open in a tropical forest cannot be closed without a trace, and second, a dead person cannot be brought back to life. It seemed to me the belief in ‘sanguma’ murders was just a supernatural belief, a cultural “superstition” ungrounded in actuality, something the pioneering Sepik anthropologist Ian Hogbin (1952: 136) flatly declared “as almost certainly a figment of native imagination.”