PAPUAN PYGMIES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 986, 2 May 1911, Page 4

PAPUAN PYGMIES.

AVERAGE HEIGHT, 4ft 6in

Mr Walter Goodfellow, the leader of the British expedition to the snow rauge of Dutch New Guiuea, has returned home owing 10 ill-health.

“We found the pygmies (he said) to the west ot the Mimika, which was rather off our track. Letters received since I left show that further traces of their dwellings have been found. Mr Grant stayed in one of their villages, but they all left, as they did not like his staying there. Small parties ol these little people used to visit our camp, but we have never seen a woman or a child. They were all hidden away, and even offers of presents were useless to persuade them to produce one of the women.

“They are a scattered and probably not numerous people. The men average only 4ft 6in in height —the tallest was only 4ft 8)4 in—but they are beautifully developed. All have bushy beards. Their weapons are quite different from those of the lowland tribes. They live by hunting, but they also cultivate the ground, and we found enormous clearings all made with their little stone axes. They livi in small huts formed of leaves.”

Mr Goodfellow gave an account ot a marriage festivity of one of the tribes which he witnessed at a village opposite the camp. The ceremonies lasted two days, but the bride only arrived on the second day, when she was brought up river by her own village people in gaily-decorated canoes, and was lauded alone except for one little girl. The moment she was disembarked the canoes and their occupants departed, leaving the bride, who was enveloped from head to foot in a grass covering, to crawl on hands and knees to her husband’s house, some hundreds ot yards distant. No men except the husband, who was awaiting the bride in his hut, were present, but all around were groups of silent wojnen who watched the new arrival’s painful progress on hands and knees. Previously the husband’s people had paid over stone clubs and other articles as the purchase price of his wife.