NEW GUINEA CANNIBALS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 15 November 1913, Page 3

NEW GUINEA CANNIBALS

Circumstances, supported by the story of a massacre or white men in German New Guinea, brought to San Francisco on September 20, t>y R. \Vestermann, a German instructor in the Chinese 'Uni-versity-at Kiautschou, China, indicate that a party of four American scientists who sailed from California four months ago on an expedition to sctudy the Papuan Malay tribes on the German side of New Guinea and the archipelago have fallen victims of cannibals in the mountain fastnesses of the island.

The party, which was sent out by the Carnegie Institute, consisted of" pr. Alfred H. Mayer, of the institute; Dr. E. Newton Harvey, of Princeton; Dr. H. I. Clark, of Harvard, and Professor D. H. Tennant, of Bryn Mawr. They sailed on the steamship Aorangi for tbe Torres Strait settlement and German New Guinea early in May.

When leaving it was the intention of the scientists to proceed to Sydney, and then north to Queensland and Torres Straits, spending some time at these placesV But on arriving at Sydney Lliey are said to have changed their plans, proceeding direct to Friedrich Wilh'elmshafen. on the north-west coast of German New Guinea.

Westermann .spent a week at Friedrich Wilhelmshafen. He heard*" of the arrival of four Americans answering the description of the scientists, who had gone into the interior.

Before he left, word reached the German port from the interior that a party of twelve bird of paradise hunters and several white tra\ rellers had bpen captpred by headhunters and that ..t«? of them had been roasted alive, ■ ,■::■■'>r:; which is born of hatred and raiiti\.^: t.i strangers, and is known to exist among the cannibals in the isolated districts of the German possession. Owing to the wildness and roughness of the couatry, isolation begins a few miles inland from the coast towns.

"A month before I arrived, at Friedrich Wilhelmshafen," said Westermann "a plot which had been years in crystallisation to massacre all the white men on the island of German New Guinea was prevented by one of the natives who had been healed of a dread malady by a German doctor at Friedrich Wilhelmssafen.

"The natives admitted to the plot were to receive tokens at feasts held simultaneously in all parts of the island by eating of the betel nut. All ate of the hut except the one native who had been healed. He mysteriously disappeared from the native haunts in the interior, made his way to Friedrich Wilhelmshafen and carried the word of the uprising to Dr. Halen, the German Governor.

"The: Governor dispatched troops and rounded up the fingleacler3 thus preventing the massacre of 450 white men ; women and children on the island.

"The leaders, together with 1000 natives, were Reported to the Island of New Pommera, whet© they can be kept under g»a.rd at the German 'garrison sentenced to hard labor for life"