PAPUA SAVAGERY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 594, 27 July 1933, Page 2

PAPUA SAVAGERY

01RVS ORdElAL TALES OF HEAD-HUNTING iN ADMINISTRATORS1 REPORT RAID BY BUSH NATIVES Sydney, July 6. Strange tades of sorcery, xii&gic, tribal rites and of head-hunting are contained in 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 expe'ditions are not the b6st means of ending this pleasi'ng sport of the Papuan natives. Sir Hubert reported th'dt just as the Commissioner for Native Affairs, Mr. Hides, had finished reading a controversy on the subjftct he arrived at Daru, at the mouth of th'e Fly River, to find 5-1 head-hunters awaiting trial in connection with a recent raid. There were two survivors from one of the raids, a man and a little girl aged ahout 10 or 12. Their stories, quoted from the report, well illustrate the savagery and terror that follow a head hunting raid of bush natives: — "Th'e man said he was asleep in his house when he was awakened by the tumult. He rushed out to find the village in fiames, and the head-hunters dealing out destructiOn all aroUnd. He ran for his life, received a ghastly wound from a tomahawk, tumbled ov over a fence, received another wound as he fell, and lay half unconscious on th'e ground. But not for long; for, hearing his pursuers call for the beheading knife he made a last desperate effort and reached the bush. Narrative By Survivot "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 the they heard a noise as of people approaching the village. They guessed what the noise meant, and ran off in different directions; but they were seen and pursued, and one little girl was caught and beheaded. The oth'er, the witness, escaped into th'e 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. " 'I was very frightened,' she said, 'and wished that I could get back to my mother. I thought that my mother would sa.ve me.' And so she waited until the cries and the shouting ceased and the fires dwindled and the

dawn came 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 wished that the anthropologists had been there to hear it; 1 think it would have changed some of the opinions." Dealing next with the recrudescence of this "uneconomic" practice among' the little known tribes hetween the Fly River and the Dutch border, the victims being the Weridai people, who survived the great massacre of 1927, and the Moyan people, Sir Hubert states that the recent raidefs had been the Suki people. A Loit of Young Widows The Suki live about the head waters of a creek that runs into the Fly, near Cassowry Island and received their name from their habit of calling out "Suki Suki" ("knife, knife") whenever they see Government parties Sir Hubert has difficulty in explaining the causq of the raids. Investigation by the Commissioner of Native Affairs revealed the Moyan raids to b,e due to he fact that a man called Daki sought the hand of a Moyan girl, and, being refused by her father, wished to take vengeance on the whole community. The Suki, who had raided the Weriadai survivors, told the Commissioner that their motive was to emulate the Moyan raiders, as since that raid they had been taunted with cowardice. iOn their arrest, however, the Suki had igiven 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 c'ourse, they could not marry again unless we got some h'eadsy so we simply had to go." Direct Cause of Murders 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 to be the direct cause of murders of small girls in the Turama area of the Delta iDivision, the girls being purchased from their parents and then ki'lled and eaten. Patrol Officer Cowley arrested the murdeters, who explain'ed that the mbr'ders were a necessary preliminary to the marriage of widows. Like the Suki, however, the murderers went back on their statements at their trial ahd attempted. to justify their action as an ordinary tribal "back pay" in retaliation for the previous murder of one of their own tribe.