STONE AGE NATIVES

Evening Post, Issue 25, 30 January 1935, Page 10

STONE AGE NATIVES

FOUND IN NEW GUINEA

FRIENDLY TO MISSIONARIES

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, January 24.

The Bev. Brother Eugene, an American at the. Catholic mission station in the Mount Hagcn area of New Guinea, was recently reported murdered by natives, but more than a 'week later he was rescued alive, though seriously wounded, speared in a lung. He has sinco died. It was a coincidence that at about the game time that this news was received itf Sydney from tho faraway hinterland of the Mandated Territory, a friend received a letter from Brother, Eugene, written soon after the latter, made contact with the natives of the newly-discovered area in which he was afterwards attacked.

. "The territory near Mount Hagen is very swampy and mountainous," he wrote. "Whea our party entered the great Wahgi Valley from the big mountain*,'we were greeted from all sides, to our astonishment, by large tribes of blacks.' Their features are much, finer than those of the coastal races, and some of them closely resembled tho American Indians, with big feathers on their heads. It seemed that the natives enjoyed'"very much to see us missionaries. Some natives snapped their fingers, some screamed crazily. Others picked ■ us. up and held us in the air for a moment. Some had a good handshake, .thinking that we were white gods. Some frightened natives took us for ghosts or some evil spirits. In a word, they thought we were from another world. I have always found tho natives very friendly, and so I found them during our entire: trip to Mount Hagen. The people appear to be happy and peaceful in many places.

"The natives treated our. expedition very kindly as 1 soon as they found us to be friendly and not coming to kill them. As currency, the natives use 'gold-lips,' big sea shells, but mostly little sea shells, little white buttons, and coloured beads. They are Stone Age men. We had dozens of stone-bladed axes in our hands; the natives, carry them, together with spears, bows, and arrows,' when they travel. They are agriculturists, traders, and business men among themselves, and some are real Jews.' . ./.-■:' .". -'..•.

"It's great to be here in this interior wilderness with these wild Stone Age natives, always finding them in good humour and childlike."