The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea. Robert Wood Williamson
the faces of the people generally.5
A curious characteristic with them is the big toe, which is usually much developed, and projects outwards at a larger angle than is the case with the Roro and Mekeo people, and is much used for holding on to roots, &c., whilst travelling along their rough mountain paths.
Their general colour is a dark sooty brown, a trifle darker, perhaps, than that of the Kuni people, and contrasting forcibly with the varying shades of chocolate which you find among the Roro and Mekeo people. They are smooth-skinned.
Their hair is frizzly, and generally dark brown, often quite dark, almost even approaching to black, and sometimes perhaps quite black. But it is frequently lighter; and indeed I was often, when observing men’s hair lit up by sunshine, impressed by the fact that its brown colour was not even what we should in Europe call dark.6 I often saw marked variations in the depth of hair colour on the head of the same individual. I saw no examples of the comparatively straight or curly type of hair which is found in the Pokau district and elsewhere.7
Plate 3 gives front and side views of the mesaticephalic (almost brachycephalic) skull A and Plate 4 gives similar views of the dolichocephalic skull C. All the photographs were made as nearly as possible exactly half the sizes of the originals; but the photographer has made the front view of skull A about an eighth of an inch too narrow (with, of course, a corresponding deficiency in height), so that the tendency to roundness of this skull is not quite sufficiently shown, and the proportion of its height to its length is reduced, in the plate. I am not a craniologist, and so I do not attempt to discuss the more detailed points of interest which arise in connection with these skulls.
A good idea of the somewhat varying characters of the general physiques and features of the people will be obtained from my plates; but there are a few of these plates which I may mention here.
The people shown in Plates 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 16 may, I think, be regarded as fairly typical, and I would draw attention to the somewhat Melanesian tendency of feature which is disclosed by the faces of the man in Plate 6, the young man in the middle in Plate 7 and the fourth and sixth men from the left in Plate 9; also to the great diversity shown in Plate 9. The man shown in Plate 10, with his thick and strong muscular development, is of a type which is occasionally seen, but which is, I believe, unusual. The two men figured in Plates 11 and 12 are, I think, specially interesting. The one to the right, with his somewhat backward sloping forehead, and slightly arched nose, shows a distinct tendency towards the type of the Western Papuan, to which I have already referred. The other one is in general shape of head and appearance of features not unlike some of the dwarf people found by the recent expedition into Dutch New Guinea (see the man to the left in Plate 4 of the page of illustrations in The Illustrated London News for September 2, 1911), and indeed there is almost an Australian tendency in his face. It is noticeable that he has a beard and moustache, which is quite unusual among the Mafulu. A somewhat similar type of face may be noticed in one or two of the other plates.
Character and Temperament.
It is difficult to speak with any degree of definiteness on this question. It must be borne in mind that the Mafulu people have been very little in touch with white people, the missionaries, who have only been there since 1905, and on rare occasions a Government official or scientific traveller, being almost the only white men whom the bulk of them have ever seen; and they have been but slightly affected by the outside influences which for some years past have been constantly brought to bear upon the natives of the adjoining coast line and the people of the Mekeo plains; so that comparisons of these people with their more up-to-date neighbours as regards their relative natural characters may well be in some respects misleading.
Subject, however, to this caution I would say that they are lazy and easy-going (though not so much so as the Roro and Mekeo people), lively, excitable, cheerful, merry, fairly intelligent (this being judged rather from the young people), very superstitious, brave, with much power of enduring pain, cruel, not more revengeful perhaps than is usual among uncivilised natives, friendly one with another, not quarrelsome, but untrustworthy and not over-faithful even in their dealings with one another, though honest as regards boundaries and property rights and in the sense of not stealing from one another within their own communities (this being regarded as a most shameful offence), and of very loose sexual morality.
A difference between them and the Mekeo and Roro natives is that they appear to be not so conservative as the latter, being more ready to abandon old traditions and adopt new ideas; though this characteristic is one which shows itself in the young people rather than in the elders with their formed habits.
1 Dr. Strong’s measurements of seven Mafulu men referred to by Dr. Seligmann (Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 39, p. 329) showed an average stature of 59½ inches, and an average cephalic index of 80.0. It will be noticed that my figures show a somewhat higher average stature, but that my average cephalic index is the same. Dr. Seligmann here speaks of the Mafulu as being almost as short as the men of Inavaurene, and even more round-headed.
2 This is the index calculated on average lengths and breadths. The average of the indices is 83.8, the difference arising from the omission in working out of each index of second points of decimals.
3 Dr. Keith thinks they are all skulls of males. They are now in College Museum, and are numbered 1186.32, 1186.33 and 1186.34 in the College Catalogue.
4 Melanesians of British New Guinea, p.16.
5 Dr. Haddon refers (Geographical Journal, Vol. 16, p.291) to the finding by the Mission Fathers of “another type of native, evidently an example of the convex-nosed Papuan,” in the upper waters of the Alabula river. I gather from the habitat of these natives that they must have been either Ambo or Oru Lopiku. I should be surprised to hear the Semitic nose was common in either of those areas.
6 Dr. Seligmann, in speaking of the Koiari people, refers to an occasional reddish or gingery tinge of facial hair (Melanesians of British New Guinea,, p. 29). I never noticed this among the Mafulu.
7 Since writing the above, I have learnt that some of the dwarf people found by the expedition into Dutch New Guinea organised by the British Ornithologists’ Union had brown hair. Mr. Goodfellow tells me that “the hair of some of the pygmies was decidedly dark brown”; and Dr. Wollaston gives me the following extract from his diary for March 1, 1911, relating to twenty-four pygmies then under observation:—“Hair of three men distinctly not black, a sort of dirty rusty brown or rusty black colour—all others black-haired.”
Dress and Ornament
Dress.
The perineal band, made of bark cloth, is the one article of dress which is universally worn by both men and women.