RELIGION AND THE PAPUANS.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 2, 1 November 1883, Page 12

RELIGION AND THE PAPUANS.

Captain Armit, the leader of the Argus expedition to New Guinea, gives the following account of one of the Native tribes :—“ These inland Natives have no religion, yet one’s property is sacred among them. If you drop anything and they find it, you will have it returned to you immediately. They are far more moral than Europeans. Any breach of the moral law is punished with death. But from what I gathered from Luija, the chief, such breaches are hardly ever known to occur The Coijari have no idea of a Deity that I can find out after repeated attempts. They are terribly superstitious, and will not speak of dead people for fear that by doing so they will come to life again, and do them some injury for bringing them back from beyond the curtain that divides mortality from immortality. Yet this rude, this primitive people have a very high idea of right and wrong.”—Australasian, Aug. 25, 1883.