WATER VILLAGES OF PAPUA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 21

WATER VILLAGES OF PAPUA

A LONG the Papuan coast one frequently encounters villages built in the sea, says a writer in the Melbourne "Age." Although today' Papuan tribes are more or less under white control and live peaceably, except for occasional revivals of the old urge to raid a neighbouring village, it was not so long ago that the head hunters and cannibals from the interior made a practice of descending on the coastal tribes and carrying off women and supplies of human meat.

Thus it was as a means of protection against surprise attacks that the coastal natives built their huts out from the shore. Some of these villages have withstood the ravages of wind and tide for many years. The huts are usually about 12 or 15 feet above the high-water mark, and the sinking of the piles must have called for a great deal of patience and ingenuity on the part of the native workmen.

Although these sea houses afford the natives a certain measure of protection from other tribes, their inhabitants have to contend with the menace of the huge saltwater crocodiles. Maneaters are very numerous in these streams, and they lie in the water under the houses ready to seize an incautious native. Sometimes the saurians, doubtless emboldened by hunger, capsize a canoe and proceed to make their meal from its occupants.

The natives in the interior also build villages on the water. The various river tribes erect their huts out from the banks but, unlike the coastal natives, they have devised a protection against crocodiles. Stout fences of bamboo, interfaced with other suitable vegetation, are erected in the water around the huts.

The fences are usually semi-circular in form, and generally reach half-way across the river. Where two villages are facing each other on opposite sides of the river, both sides co-operate, and the fences are built right across the stream above and below the villages. Thus, in the enclosure the natives can swim with safety, and special traps are set outside the fences for crocodiles which might prove too enterprising.

In other parts of Papua and New Guinea huts are built in the centre of shallow lakes, and the only place the natives have to keep their children, goats, and poultry is on a platform between the huts.

In the interior of south-western Papua the natives build the famous tree houses. These are erected on living tree trunks which have been lopped off about 40 or 50 feet above the ground. They are constructed of bamboos firmly lashed together with stout creepers, palm leaves, and grasses.

Some of the larger of these huts perhaps 20 yards wide and four or five times as long, are built on two trees growing close together. The huts are reached by long ladders, and are utilised as dwellings for the unmarried women of the tribe. Heaps of stones ar> piled near the door for the purpose of discouraging any unwelcome visitors. The huts provide a safe refuge for the maidens of the tribe when the raiders come.