PAPUAN CANNIBALS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17471, 15 May 1920, Page 2 (Supplement)

PAPUAN CANNIBALS.

SOME SAVAGE CUSTOMS. MAN-piLUNG CEREMONIES. Although Australians steadily extending her hold over Papua by far the greater portion of the wido and wild interior is still the home of numerous cannibal tribes, who are as yet quite untouched by civilisation, writes our Sydney correspondent. A magistrate named Mr. Beaver, who had penetrated deeply into this region and studied the customs of the cannibal tribes, wrote an interesting report before he went in 1917 to the war, where he was killed; and his observations are contained in a recently published report of the Administrator of Papua. Among most of these tribes, no male is considered to have reached manhood until he has the scalp of another man at his belt. Each tribe has curious customs and ceremonies surrounding the business of man-killing. In most cases it is essential that the body of the slain man be brought home to the village and eaten. When the killer returns with the killed he wears a kind of red amaranthtis in his armlets. As soon as he arrives, all his friends and relatives gather round, and do obeisance. The corpse is hung up for a time—varying from pne to seven days—and strips of cloth are threaded through the slayer armlets, which he wears for a month. The corpse is insulted in various ways, both in song and action. In due course, it is eaten, with much ceremony—but the slayer never, in any circumstances, eats the body of the man he has slain. The slayer has rather an uncomfortable time of it. For a week, he must not sit on the ground, but only on sticks; he must eat nothing except roasted taro and bananas, and his only drink is muddied water and hot cocoanut milk. Then comet an elaborate ceremony by which he is admitted to manhood, the badge of which is a different kind of 'sporran. It is a common custom for the slayer to take his victim's name, or combine it with his own. When the newly-created man, having done this, finds the new name distasteful, he gets out of the difficulty by killing another man, whose name he is then permitted to take. The interior of this great island— Guinea is the largest island in the worldcontains the most untamed and dangerous natives in the world, with the possible ex ception of some parts of Africa.