NEW GUINEA HOME-LIFE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3019, 24 January 1912, Page 89

NEW GUINEA HOME-LIFE.

The social habits of the Mafulu savages are even more interesting to the Western world than tiio story of Mr li W. Williamson’s journey to their country, the account of which has appeared in the London Standard. Mr Williamson, who is a member of the council of the Anthropological Society, undertook the journey to New Guinea purely for ethnological reasons, and spent some months making a study of this strange tribe of cannibals. “ I rather fancy,” he said, “ that the Mafuluo are in some way in communication with the coast tribes of Northern New Guinea from the fact that many of their decorations a-ro made from shells. In their ceremonial dances they decorate themselves extravagantly with feather ornaments, including those groat framework erections reared up some six feet above their heads, similar to others found elsewhere In New Guinea. Their social life is very interesting They live in scattered clusters of villages on a clan system, occupying their own villages, and each clae having its own chief. In each village they have what ethnologists call ‘ club houses,’ these being houses in which tile unmarried men live, and which are also the ceremonial places—the town halls, I may call them. The chief of each clan is specially associated with the club house in the village of his clan, in which he himself resides. The chieftainship ie» held by heredity on the male side. Polygamy is practised, but the average number of wives ‘owned’ by each man is one, though a rich native may have as many as five. Morality is exceedingly low. The Mafulue have practically no dress, men and women alike being nude, except for a narrow loin belt; but on the coast the women of the tribe wear a short petticoat made of fibre. There is verv little quarrelling in the villages, and there is not much crime, the main cause of killing being quarrels between members of one community and those of another. Infanticide is extremely common, and there are various reasons for this. Though the tribe in one of cannibals, the tribesmen. will not kill a person for tlie sole purpose of eating him, but they will eat human flesh when the victim is killed in battle or private fight. In the latter case- the slayer is rot allowed to share in the feast.” “ Did you run any danger of providing a feast for them?” “ They would have made a good meal of me if I had got into trouble with them,” was the reply, “ but I did not quarrel.” I found that they cat a great, quantity of pig flesh, and they regard that animal as a very valuable commodity. They do not worship it. as has been suggested, but they slay a great many pigs for their feasts and ceremonies, including one at the side of their cheifs’ graves. There are both wild and village pigs, and the latter are used for special ceremonies; but after tho first there is a subsequent feast at which the wild pigs aro killed. In stature tho Mafulus arc- not, big, but they are well built and fcbo women do all the carrying, with’ the result that they are better developed iu tho limbs than tho men. Their teligion really amounts to a fear of spirits. It is not ancestor worship, for I could find no link between this worship of spirits (if one can call it that) and the ancestor worship of other nations. They believe that the fig tree and certain plants aro haunted, and a remarkable instance of their faith was given once in the case of a father of the mission who wished to cut a plant to help him in the building of a hut. The Mafulus warned him not to cut it. but lie disregarded their words, and the curious thing is that tho following day he was very ill and had to bo removed to the coast." The two main causes of intercommunity fighting are that a man may be killed cither in vendetta or by sorcery, and that a wife has cdojied and her parents, who may live in another community, refuse to refund the price paid for her by the husband. Marriage is a very simple affair. If a young man decides on a woman he goes to her parents and a price is arranged—some pigs or a tomahawk—and then the parents go back with him to his house. Then they all sit down outside the house for a short while, and the wedding is over. They have a large number of feasts, and one of them, which only takes place at rare intervals, is exceedingly formal and complicated. I ain convinced that the people themselves do not know its origin, but 1 think it has pome connection with the _ feasts relating in some way to the spirits of departed chiefs.”