Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/410

Rh 388 NEW GUINEA while equally distinguishing the race from the brown Polynesians. The type of man known as Papuan or Melanesian (see MELANESIA) is found here in its greatest purity, and appears to occupy the whole island excepting its east extremity. But among tribes occupying so wide an area, having little intercommunication, and with other races at no great distance, many deviations from the normal type must be expected, and in fact it is not very easy to define this type. Its leading characteristics are a medium height; fleshy rather than muscular frame; colour a sooty brown, varying, but decidedly darker than the Malay ; high but narrow and rather retreating fore head, with thick brows ; nose sometimes flat and wide at the nostrils, but oftener hooked and &quot;Jewish,&quot; with depressed point, a feature represented in their karwars or ancestral images ; prognathism general, but not universal ; lips thick and projecting, so as to make the chin seem retreating ; high cheek bones ; hair black, frizzly, trained into a mop. The appearance is thus negroid, and is said to resemble the population of the African coast opposite Aden. But in the Arfak mountains in the north-west, and at points on the west and north coasts and adjacent islands, very degraded and stunted tribes are found, with hardly the elements of social organization (possibly the aboriginal race unmixed with foreign elements), and resembling the Aetas or Negritos of the Philippines, and other kindred tribes in the Malay Archipelago. On the banks of the Fly river D Albertis observed at least two widely differing types, those on its upper course bearing some resemblance to the tribes of the eastern coast. Here, wedged in among the ruder Papuans, who reappear at. the extremity of the peninsula, we find a very different-looking people, whom competent observers, arguing from appearance, language, and customs, assert to be a branch of the fair Polynesian race. But there are obvious signs among them of much admixture of blood ; and they or their congeners again may easily have modified their neighbours immedi ately west of them, just as Malay and other influences have done on the other end of the island. Indeed the greater degree of intelligence and good looks observed at points along the north coast may be due simply to this cause. On the west coasts there is a semi-civilization, due to intercourse with Malays and Bughis, who have settled at various points, and carry on the trade with the neighbour ing islands, in some of which, while the coast population is Malay or mixed, that of the interior is identical with the people of the mainland. On the west coasts Moham medan teaching has also some civilizing effect. Many of the tribes at this west end of New Guinea are, at all events in war time, head-hunters, and in the mountains cannibals. Cannibalism in fact is practised here and there throughout New Guinea. Tho frequent hostility and mistrust of strangers arc partly due to slave-hunting raids and ill- treatment by traders, but the different tribes vary much in character. Thus in the mountains of the north-west the Karons, a short, hardy, well-built people, cultivate very little, living chiefly on wild plants which their women cook in hollow bamboos, and obtaining what they require from without, as knives, ornaments, &c., either by plunder, or by disposal of slaves or bird skins ; while their neighbours the Kebars grow vegetables and very fine tobacco, which they sell to the Amberbaki, a peaceful industrious coast tribe. The mountain tribes are usually despised by their coast neighbours as ruder and more destitute of resources, but when more numerous and fiercer, as in the south of west New Guinea, the tables are turned, and the coast people live in perpetual terror of their neighbours, who plunder and enslave them. At Humboldt Bay the people, though uncertain, rude, and warlike, are ready to trade, and tribes of a kindred race are found farther east, at Astrolabe Bay; here the Russian Miklucho Maclay lived among them for some time, and was favourably impressed by them. Still farther east, the plateaus of the Pinisterre ranges are highly culti vated and artificially irrigated by a comparatively fair people. Many tribes in the south-west seem to be migratory. At Princess Marianne Straits tribes much wilder than those farther west, naked and painted, swarm like monkeys in their trees, the stems of which are submerged at high tide. But the Torres Straits islanders are employed by Europeans in the pearl shell fishery, and are liked as labourers ; and in some of the K6 and Aru Islands the Papuan inhabitants form orderly Christian communities. The people of the south-east peninsula seem generally, like the typical Poly nesian, of a mild, accessible type. Englishmen, wandering inland and losing their way, have been found and brought back by them. Their manners are more courteous, their women better treated, than is usual with Papuans, but they show perhaps less ingenuity and artistic taste. Their children, in the mission schools, show much intelligence. While tribes allied to the Papuan have been traced through Timor, Flores, and the highlands of the Malay Peninsula to the Deccan of India, these &quot; Oriental negroes &quot; have many curious resemblances with some East-African tribes. Besides the appearance of the hair, the raised cicatrices, the belief in omens and sorcery, the extraction of diseases in the form of bits of wood or stone, and the practices for testing the courage of youths, they are equally devoid of forethought or ambition, rude, merry, and boisterous, but amenable to discipline, and with decided, artistic tastes and faculty. Several of the above practices are also common to the Australians, who, though generally inferior, have many points of resemblance (osteological and other) with the Papuans. The extinct Tasmanians were more closely allied to the Papuans. The constitution of society is everywhere simple. Among the more advanced tribes rank is hereditary, otherwise the chiefs generally have but little power, most matters being settled by the assembly, a contrast to the Polynesian respect for birth and hereditary rank. The Papuan s religious institutions are likewise simpler ; there is no general object of worship, consequently no regular priesthood ; the institution of tabu is less oppressive, and its sanction less awful, but the transgressor may still have to reckon, not only with the society or individual who imposed it, but also with offended spirits. Almost every crime is condoned by payment. A characteristic example of the feeling of the fair race towards the dark was seen in the contempt shown by the tribes of the south-east towards certain Melanesian teachers introduced by the English missionaries, while others brought from the Polynesian islands were treated with respect. The Papuan women are, as a rule, more modest than the Poly nesian. In western New Guinea, according to the Dutch missionaries, Religion, there is a vague notion of a universal spirit, practically represented by several malevolent powers, as Manoin, the most powerful, who resides in the woods ; Narwoje in the clouds, above the trees, a sort of Erl-Konig who carries off children ; Faknik in the rocks by the sea, who raises storms. As a protection against these the people construct having first with much ceremony chosen a tree for the purpose certain rude images called karwars, each representing a recently dead progenitor, whose spirit is then invoked to occupy the image and protect them against their enemies and give success to their under takings. The karwar is about a foot high, with head dispropor tionately large ; the male figures are sometimes represented with a spear and shield, the female holding a snake. Omens arc observed before starting on any expedition ; if they are unfavourable the per son threatened retires, and another day is chosen and the process repeated. They have magicians and rain-makers, and sometimes resort to ordeal to discover a crime. Temples (so-called) are found in the north and west, built like the houses, but larger, the^piles being carved into figures, and the roof-beams and other prominent points decorated with representations of crocodiles or lizards, coarse human figures, and other grotesque ornamentation; but their use is not clear. Neither temples nor images (except small figures^ worn as amulets) occur among the people of the south-east, whose religious ideas seem vague and rudimentary ; but they have a great dread of departed spirits, especially those of the hostile inland tribes, and of a being called Yata, who causes disease and death.