Solomon Islands Wizards

Hokitika Guardian, 18 March 1922, Page 1

Solomon Islands Wizards

CANNIBAL LABOURERS

LONDON, Jan. 14

Back in London after three years in the Solomon Islands, Mr Clifford W. Collinson, a young Englishman with an adventurous nature, is longing to return to his South Sea home. Mr Collinson owns four little islands at the extreme west of the British Solomon Islands group. He lias come to England on business and finds the rush and excitement of London very unattractive.

One of the most fascinating stories of his life on the islands that he told to a Daily Mail reporter was one of how labour is obtained from an island called Malaita. “Some of the best labour comes from this island,” he said, "but since it- is peopled with cannibals and 1 i cad-bun ter s it is not safe to land. When we wanted labour we went in a schooner and fired a gun. This was a signal to the bush-men in the interior that we were recruiting labour. After a time, perhaps 24 hours, the bushmen come down to the teach. Coffee brown and dressed simply in a loin cloth, they are accompanied by their families. Some of the women have white bleached hair and some carry babies in a sling. The beach mon, who are paid of species of blackmail for allowing the bush-men to come to tlie beach, stand watching. “A man goes to the beach from the schooner in a dinghy. Close behind him is another dinghy with armed men. First the labour-seeker must bargain with the relatives of Hie man. ‘He belong to me—want to come along with you,’ one may say. He ask for a tin of biscuits perhaps. You bargain, and at last a price is agreed. Then you bargain with the labourer, lie may agree to come for £1 a month. Some work for 10s a month. Getting the labour works out at about £2O a head.

One of Mr Collinson’s strangest tales was that of the sorcerers. “If a man lias a reputation as a wizard and lie wills a man to die, and the other man gets to know it, he does die,” ho said. “On a recent occasion a man was owed money by a wizard. This man willed bis creditor to die, and he did die. A friend of the dead man was so annoyed that lie killed the wizard.

“T think this business of death following the wizard’s ‘willing’ can be accounted for by the fact that the people have a very weak will. 11 they are ill, and they think they are going to die, they just die.” Mr Collinson deals in copra, the dried meat of the coco-nut. With him arc bis manager, his wife, and three children.