Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/411

Rh .The dead are disposed of in various ways. The spirit is supposed .not to leave the body immediately, which is either buried for a time and then taken up and the bones cleaned and deposited in or near the dwelling, or it is exposed with the same object on a platform of -branches, or dried over a fire, and the mummy kept for a few years. Sometimes the head, oftener the jaw bone, is kept as a relic. Food is placed on a grave, with an infant a calabash of its mother s milk, and a path is made to the sea that the spirit may bathe ; but the spirits are everywhere dreaded as likely to injure the living. No one likes to go about, or into the water, after dark. Little imitation houses are placed in the woods to allure the spirits away. These dwell chiefly in the moon, and are particularly active at full moon. The houses which they haunt, and beneath or near which their bodies lie buried, are deserted from time to time, especially by a newly-married couple, or by women before child birth. Probably the effluvium from the buried corpse produces the feelings of sickness which are supposed to be caused by the spirit s presence, and which subside when they leave the spot. the return of warlike and other expeditions, at a marriage, birth, change of name, child s first hair-cutting, and also some time after a death. Diseases. -The chief diseases are skin diseases, with which in some places one- third of the population is affected, among these a sort of leprosy to which, as well as to a dropsy (beri-bcri), Europeans are subject, catarrhs, boils, syphilis, and intermittent fevers, especi- &lly where there is much coral on the coast. Food. &quot;The Papuan varies his vegetable diet with the flesh of the wild pig, wallabi, and other small animals, which are hunted with dogs, pirds are snared or limed. Fish abound at many parts of the coast, and are taken by lines, or speared by torchlight, or netted (the netting pattern is the same as ours) ; or a river is dammed and the fish stupefied with the root of a milletia. Turtle and dugong are caught. The kima, a great mussel weighing (without shell) 20 to feO fi&amp;gt;, and other shell-hsh are eaten, as are also dogs, flying foxes, lizards, beetles, and all kinds of insects, and an edible earth. Food is cooked in various ways, being stewed or roasted, or baked with hot stones as in Polynesia. A third part of sea water, which is carried to the interior in hollow bamboos, is added in place of palt, which is also obtained from the ashes of wood saturated by (the sea. The sexes generally eat apart. Clothing. &amp;lt;Their ry scanty clothing is made of the bark of Hibisciis, Broussonetia, and other plants, or of leaves, and in more civilized parts of cotton. Tight belts and armlets of split rattan and fibre are often worn. The people have usually a great dislike to rain, ajad carry a mat of pandanus leaves as a protection against it. Orna- -*The chief home-made ornaments are necklaces, armlets, and ear- ments. rings of shells, teeth, or fibre, and cassowary, cockatoo, or bird of paradise feathers, the last two, or a flower, are worn through the septum of the nose. The hair is frizzed out and decorated variously frith flowers, leaves, feathers, and bamboo combs. The fairer tribes at the east end tattoo, no definite meaning apparently being attached to the pattern, for they welcome suggestions from Manchester. For the women it is simply a decoration. Men are not tattooed till they have killed some one. Raised cicatrices usually take the place of tattooing with the darker races. Rosenberg says the scars on the breast and arms register the number of sea-voyages made. Weapons. The use of the bow and arrow is little known among the eastern tribes. The Papuan bow is rather short, the arrows barbed and tipped with cassowary or human bone. Other weapons are a short dart, a heavy spear and shield, stone clubs and axes. They are mostly ignorant of iron, but work skilfully with their axes of stone or tridacna shell, and bone chisels, cutting down trees 20 inches in diameter. Two man working on a tree trunk, one making a cut with the adze lengthwise and the other chopping off the piece across, will soon hollow out a large canoe. Every man has a stone axe, each village generally owning a large one. Their knives are of bamboo hardened by fire. In digging they use the pointed stick. The eastern tribes salute by squeezing simultaneously the nose and stomach, and both there and on the north coast friendship is ratified by sacrificing a dog. In other places they wave green branches, and on the south (Papuan) coast pour water over their Jieads, a custom noticed by Cook at Mallicolo (New Hebrides). Among other pets they keep little pigs, which the women suckle. The Papuan numerals extend usually to 5 only. In Astrolabe Bay the limit is 6 ; with the more degraded tribes it is 3, or, as in Torres Straits, they have names only for 1 and 2 ; 3 is 2 + 1. Houses. The houses are mostly (so Mr as is known) built in Malay fashion on piles, and this not only on the coast but on the hill-sides, though the houses there are smaller. Small houses are also found perched high up in trees as a safeguard against enemies and evil spirits, and possibly malaria ; and one or two of these in a village act as its fortress or watch-tower. The piles support a platform made from old canoes or branches, the whole covered with a rounded or inverted boat-shaped roof thatched with ralm branches, sometimes 500 feet long, and looking 389 inside, when undivided, like a dark tunnel. 1 Otherwise the coast houses are 60 to 70 feet long, often more, with a passage down the centre, and the side spaces partitioned off as needed. Each house has a sort of paterfamilias, the rest of the numerous inhabitants being his relations or slaves. A bridge, when the house is over the water, connects it with the land, and near this is sometimes a small jointure house for widows of former occupants, and a separate one for bachelors or for pregnant women. A veranda towards the sea is usually occupied during the day by the men, and one on the land side by the women. The gable ends are often prolonged upwards and carved, and the houses adorned with drawings of animals, and hung round with weapons, and crocodiles, dogs , and boars teeth. On the north coast, about Astrolabe Bay, the houses are not built on piles ; the walls, of bamboo or palm branches, are very low, and the projecting roof nearly reaches the ground ; a barrier at the entrance keeps out pigs and dogs. A sort of table or bench stands outside, used by the men only, for meals and for the subsequent siesta. In east New Guinea sometimes the houses are two-storied, the lower part being used for stores. The furniture consists of earthen bowls, drinking cups, wooden neck-rests, spoons, &c., artistically carved, mats, cordage, small plaited baskets and boxes, and various weapons and implements. The pottery is moulded and fire-baked. West New Guinea exports a certain amount of sago, nutmegs, Trade, massoi and pulasaria barks (all wild), birdskins, tripang, tortoise- and pearl-shell, the trade with the Dutch being worth about 20,000 a year. Misol is rich in all these products, and Salawatti in sago. They are sent to Ceram, Ternate, and Macassar in exchange for iron and copper ware, cotton cloths, indigo, knives, mirrors, beads, arrack, &c. The Ke islanders are great boatbuilders. An active trade is carried on between the hill and coast tribes, the former bringing down vegetable produce in exchange for fish and shell ornaments. In the north-west some of the coast villagers spend six months in the forest collecting massoi bark, and live the rest of the year by fishing. Often a village has its special industry, as canoe -building, pottery, or manufacture of shell ornaments, or of the little sticks worn in the septum of the nose. Large trading canoes pass up and down the coast, probably combining a little piracy and kidnapping with other business. The Papuan pirates were formerly dreaded in these seas. For trading purposes several large canoes are lashed together, with a platform above and a house at each end united by a palisade. Coasting voyages of several weeks are made in these craft. The canoes vary from the common &quot;dug-out&quot; to the great war-canoe elaborately carved and ornamented. Both races show considerable agricultural skill probably an old Agricul- Asiatic tradition, for the plants cultivated seem mostly Asiatic, ture In some places the hill-sides are carefully terraced, plantations well kept and fenced, and flowers grown for ornament. Any one may clear and cultivate a piece of land belonging to his tribe, but often after one or two deaths a kampong is deserted, and new forest-land taken up ; on the west coast, where the mainland is too steep for cultivation, the people cross over and cultivate the neigh bouring uninhabited islands. They have a strong sense of pro prietorship, even of the fruit trees in the forest and of the fish in their own streams or on their own coast. History. The claims to superiority over New Guinea on the part History, of the rulers of some of the small neighbouring islands are curious when we compare the extent of their dominions with New Guinea. These claims date at all events from the spread of Islam to the Moluccas at the beginning of the loth century, and were maintained, by the Malay rulers both of Batjan and of Gebe. Latterly they have been exercised by the sultan of Tidore. When the Dutch first came to these seas it was their policy to ally themselves with certain chiefs, and support their claims over various islands, so as to extend their own commercial monopoly ; and they now support the claims (admitted by Great Britain in 1814) of their former rival and ally the sultan of Tidore over both the Raja Ampat (i.e., the four Papuan kingships, Waigiu, Salawatti, Misol, and Waigamma 2 ) and certain islands or points on the north-west coast of New Guinea, and the rulers of these places are nominated, on his recommendation, by the Dutch governor of Ternate, under the titles of rajah, major, singaji, or korano. Salawatti and till lately Misol have dominated the coasts respec tively adjacent to them, but certain dues (consisting of sago, massoi bark, occasional slaves, and other produce) are levied in the sultan s name, at irregular intervals, all along the coast for hundreds of miles. These extortions make Islam unpopular, and have retarded progress, for we read in former days of Papuan pirate fleets, and of &quot; the Papuas &quot; in league with the Moluccas against the Portuguese. The Dutch, however, in their dealings with the people still find it convenient to use the sultan s name and authority. As his suzerain they claim possession of the west half of New Guinea as far as 140 47 E., but his claims never extended so far, and their sovereignty is little more than nominal. There is a small coaling station 1 These large houses, like the custom of head-hunting, are traceable west through Borneo up to the north-cast frontier of India, where the custom above- mentioned of exposing the dead also prevails. 2 On Misol island.
 * Feasting and dances take place on the setting up of a karwar, on