THE NEW PYGMIES

Hokitika Guardian, 3 January 1927, Page 2

THE NEW PYGMIES

(By Robert AL MacDonald, who explored Now'Guinea as a Prospector).

A race of pygmies in New Guinea has suddenly become of world interest and several expeditions are setting out to find thorn.

The pygmies live in the country in which the Sep iff river lias its sources, among the mysterious Snow Afouiitains near the Dutch boundary. According to themselves, they have lived there since about midway through time, when a great flood overwhelmed the “littie lands” of the Pacific (the t aroline Islands) and forced their ancestors, who were birdmen. to fly to the towering mountains where their descendants now live. The chief village is known as AA'amharima. Its population is about 5,000. It never grows larger as the people continually send out colonists to settle in the impregnable mountain valleys in both British and Dutch territories. The men—tile women arc never seen—are almost uniformly 42in. in height, sturdy in build and almost covered with light grey hair, hut otherwise perfect specimens of manhood. They have voices like megaphones, can blow tiny darts tlirnurli tolios witli uneering precision. and carry those-needle-like missiles in their frizzed hair. They have strange tanoo laws which forbid them to have intercourse with the outside world except through the medium of some tribes of giant cannibalistic natives who live around them. Those tribes have never been brought under subjection by British, Dutch, or German authorities, and are known throughout New Guinea for their ferocity : hut they are practically the servants of the pvgmies and guard them against intruders. I hey say. “Little fellows work devil-magic on us.” and certainly the dwarfs have a knowledge of some things that the white prospector finds it hard to explain. AA’nmbarimn is a village consisting of about"a score of public, edifices built of bamboo and bark, and many treehouses. The public buildings stand on piles over the river, their gables decorated with weird winged monstrosities supposed to represent the gods and devils of the people’s ancestors. Exquisitely woven mats serve as windows and doors.

Taro, yam sweet potatoes, and a kind of tobacco are cultivated, and a drug—soothing but memory-stealing—-is manufactured and trailed for outside commodities.

The pygmies are very hospitable once vou are received as a triend, but if you break a tapoo law or gaze upon their womenfolk a poisoned dart end? that friendship—and your lit*'.