NEW GUINEA CANNIBALS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23213, 10 June 1937, Page 2

NEW GUINEA CANNIBALS

LIFE AMONG THE PURARI Petting parties of the Purari natives of New Guinea are described by Dr Reo Fortune, New Zealand anthropologist, in a recent number of the American "Literary Digest." Dr Fortune, who is now attached to the Ling Nan University, Canton, lived for about two years with this primitive cannibal tribe. They are warlike and savage, man-eaters and head-hunters, he states, but they are strictly Puritan in. their morals, in spite of the predilection of their young folk for " petting parties." " Two or three girls run a party," states Dr Fortune, " in the hut of a younger married couple of their own village. The unmarried girls are allowed to invite a boy each, from other villages. The married couple stays awake all night as chaperons, for the Purari are strict and Puritan —the Puritans, too, had their ' bundling.' "The boy sits still with arms folded across his chest, while the girl who invited him sits some distance off, opposite him. At intervals she approaches, and rubs his face with her chin. They do not talk, being shy, but ' chin all night, and after a few such petting parties become deeply enamoured." Among these people the husband has power of life or death over his wife. If a woman accidentally witnesses a party of men engaged in religious rites with the sacred flutes or bull-roarers, her husband at once puts her to death. About 50 per cent, of the Purari die violently, riddled with arrows. Women are non-combatants, going to and fro unafraid between the battle lines. Black magic is rife, and superstition a powerful factor in every walk of life. Cannibalism occurs before the hot blood of war has cooled, and is invariably carried out in darkness; if by daylight, the butcher must cut off a ioint of his own finger in penalty. Dr Fortune's studies among the Purari were commissioned by the anthropological division of the Columbia University. New York. In April he submitted his report to the Council of Research in the Social Sciences at Columbia.