HEAD-HUNTING

Hokitika Guardian, 17 July 1929, Page 3

HEAD-HUNTING

. GRUESOME PRACTICE. • -ifr. STILL FOLLOWED IN NEW GUINEA. AUCKLAND, July 15. Two smollc-drietT human heads, male and female, from the Sepik River district of Northern New Guinea are ibeing presented to the Auckland Museum by Mr W. 11. M’Gregor, of Auckland University College, vhe recently returned from an extensive tour in that territory, and the Bismarck Archipelago. The heads are included in a collection of skulls, arid were removed from the mandated country by courtesy of the Administrator, Brigadier-General Evan A. Wisdom, solely in the interests of science. Traffic in such specimens as “curios” is strictly forbidden. “Throughout New Guinea and iho smaller islands of Melanesia,” said Mr M’Gregor to-day, “human heads and skulls prepared in one way or another arc frequently important objects of art in native villages. A variety of customs brings about their accumulation throughout Melanesia, and especially on the mainland of New Guinea. Head-hunting was formerly very extensively practised in a great many parts of New Guinea. This is still the case to-day, 'but measures for its suppression are taken wherever control by the Commonwealth, which holds the mandate, is established. In actual fact, however, the controlled areas are infinitesimal compared with the uncontrolled, in which wild natives live in primitive conditions, and savage customs prevail. “In many parts of-New Guinea elaborate initiation ceremonies precede the attainment of manhood. llmse are accompanied i.n many instances hv practices which, to the civilised mind, are rovoltingly cruel. As a prerequisite the youth must, secure a certain number of skulls taken from enemies of his tribe. , As often as not a small band of youths form a raiding party, fivo or six strong, which descends upon some isolated or ill-protected village, from which the gruesome relics are obtained. These are duly added to the tribal collection, which is usually stored in a ibuiMing of lni" T e size, a sort of men’s clubhouse, having special architectural fentinos of its own.

“While skulls of ancestors are sometimes placed in a definite ' illago shrine,” concluded Mr M’Gregor, “it is a custom among many tribes for these relics of the past to share the humble habitations of the living, umL it is not :ui altogether uncommon thing in New Guinea to find these grim smoke-blackened countenances staring down from dim, grimy recesses among the l'afters of the huts of one’s native hosts.”