PAPUA SAVAGERY

Hokitika Guardian, 22 July 1933, Page 6

PAPUA SAVAGERY

TALES OF HEADHUNTING HA ID BY BUSH NATIVES SYDNEY, July 13. Strange stories of sorcery, magic, tribal rites and of head-hunting are contained iu the annual report of the Administrator of the Territory of Papua, Sir Hubert Murray. Sir Hubert shows a keen appreciation and understanding, and dealing with the head-hunters he is sharply critical of the claim by some anthropologists that punitive expeditions are not the best means of ending this pleasing sport of the Papuan natives. Sir Hubert reported that just as the Commissioner for. Native Affairs, Mr Hides, had finished reading a controversy on the subject he arrived at Darn, at the mouth of ithe Fly River, to find 51 head-hunters awaiting trial in connection with a recent raid. There were ,fwo survivors from one of the raxv.s a man and a little girl aged about 10 or 12. Their stories, quoted from the report, well illustrate the savagery and terror that follow' a headhunting raid of bush natives: — “The man said he was asleep in his house when he was awakened by the tumult. He rushed out to find the village in flames and the head-hunters dealing out destruction all round. He ran for his life, received a ghastly wound from a tomahawk, tumbled over a. fence, received another wound as he fell and lay unconscious on the ground. But not for long; for hearing his pursuer call for .the beheading knife he made a- last desperate effort and reached the bush.

NARRATIVE BY SURVIVED “The little girl said it was a bright moonlight night, as bright as day, as she and another little girl were playing under some banana trees when they heard a noise as of people approaching the village. They guessed u'hat the noise , meant, and ran off in different directions; but they were seen and pursued, and one little girl ivas caught and beheaded. The other, the witness, escaped into tile bush. There she lay watching the blaze of the burning village, and listening to the yells and the shrieks of the raiders and their victims.

“ ‘il Avas very frightened,’ she •said ‘and -wished that I could get back to my mother. I thought that my mother would save me.’ And so she waited until the cries and the shouting ceased and the fires dAvindled and the dawn come at last. And then .she crept back to the place where the village had been, and the first thing that she saw was her mother’s headless body.” “While the little girl was telling her story,” reports the Commissioner, “I Avished that the anthropologists had been there to hear it; I think it would have changed some of the opinions.” Dealing next Avith the recrudescence of this “uneconomic” practice among the ■little., known tribes betAveen the Fly River and the Dutch border, the victims being the Weriadai people, who survived the great massacre of 1927, and the Moyan people, Sir Hubert spates that the recent raiders had been the Siiki people.

A LOT OF YOUNG WIDOWS The Suki live about (the head waters of a creek that runs into the Fly, near Cassowary Island, and received their nme from their habit of calling out “Suki Suki” (“knife, knife”) when ever they see Government parties. Sir Hubert has difficulty in explaining the cause of (the raids. Investigations by the Commissioner of Native Affairs revealed the Moyan raids to be due to the fact that a man named Daki sought the hand of Moyan girl'and, being refused by her father, wished to take vengeance on the whole community. The Suki, who had raided the Woriadai survivors, told the Commissioner that .their motive was to emulate the Moyan raiders, as since that raid they had been taunted with cowardice. On their arrest, however, the Suki had given a different explanation. They then told the. arresting officer that they had thought that the Government would catch them, but “there were a lot of young widows in the village and, of course, they could not marry again unless we got some heads. So we simply had to go.” At the trial, again, the Suki refused! to give any explanation and denied that the motive was this' influence of the young, and possibly charming, widows. Widows, however, later were found to be the direct cause 0 f murders of small: girls in the Turama area of the Delta Division, the girls :being purchased from their parents and then killed and eaten. Patrol Officer Cowley arrested the murderers, who explained that the: murders were a necessary preliminary to the marriage of widows. Like the Suki, however, the murderers went back on their statements at their trial and attempted to justify their action as an ordinary tribal “back pay” in retaliation for the previous murder of one of their own tribe.