The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea. Robert Wood Williamson
habit of wearing a single dog-tooth at each side of the head, as shown by 27, being a common one, and 28 showing the equally common habit of wearing a couple of betel-nuts at each side). Their appearance, when worn in abundance for a festal dance, is excellently shown in the frontispiece and in Plate 17; and the little girl in Plates 22 and 23, though too young to be a dancer, is decorated for an occasion.
Pigs’ tails are a common head decoration for women, and are also worn, though not so frequently, by men. These tails are covered with the natural hair of the tail, and are brown-coloured. They are suspended by strings passing round the crown of the head or from the plaits at the sides of the head. They are generally only about 6 inches long; but sometimes the ornaments into which they are made are much longer, and I have seen them worn by women hanging down as far as the level of the breast. These pigtails are sometimes worn hanging in clusters of several tails. They are also often, in the case of women, decorated with shells, beads, dogs’ teeth, etc., which are attached like tassels to their upper ends.12
Plate 30, Fig. 3 shows a pigtail ornament for hanging over the head, with the tails suspended on both sides and strings of beads and dogs’ teeth hanging from the upper ends of the tails. The ornament is worn by the middle man in Plate 9 and by the little girl figured in Plates 22 and 23, and it is seen more extensively worn by women decorated for dancing in the frontispiece and in Plate 17, and by the girl in Plate 71.
A peculiar and less usual sort of head ornament (Plate 30, Fig. 4), worn by both men and women, is a cluster of about a dozen or less of bark cloth strings, about 1½ feet long, fastened together at the top, and there suspended by a string tied round the top of the head, so as to hang down like the lashes of a several-thonged whip over the back. The individual strings of the cluster are quite thin, but they are decorated with the yellow and brown straw-like material above referred to in connection with abdominal belt No. 6 (being prepared from the same plant, apparently Dendrobium, and in the same way), the material being twisted in a close spiral round the strings, and making them look, when seen from a short distance off, like strings of very small yellow and brown beads, irregularly arranged in varying lengths of the two colours, shading off gradually from one to the other. Even when so bound round, these strings are only about 1/16 to ⅛ of an inch thick.
The Mafulu comb (Plate 30, Fig. 2) differs in construction from the wooden combs, all made in one piece, which are commonly used in Mekeo. It is made of four, five, or six thin pieces of wood, which are left blunt at one end, but are sharpened to points at the other. These are bound together with straw-like work, sometimes beautifully done, the binding being nearly always near to the blunt ends, though it is sometimes almost in the middle.13 The combs so made are flat, with the blunt ends converging and generally fastened together, and the long sharp ends, which are the ends to be inserted into the hair, spreading outwards. The bound-up blunt ends are in fact a point, or, say, half an inch or less (occasionally more) across. The spread of the sharp ends varies from 1 to 2 inches or more. The straw-like binding may be light or dark brown, or partly one and partly the other. Sometimes only the two outside prongs meet together at the blunt end, and the inner prongs do not extend much, or at all, beyond the upper edge of the straw-like work binding. The fastening together of the blunt converging tips is done sometimes with native thread just at the tips, and sometimes with a little straw work rather further down; occasionally it is missing altogether. The comb figured is not so converging at the blunt ends or so spreading at the sharp ends as is usual, and its blunt ends are not bound together. These combs are only worn by men; they are commonly worn in front, projecting forwards over the forehead, as is done in Mekeo; but they are also worn at the back of the head, projecting sideways to either right or left. A feather (generally a white cockatoo feather), or sometimes two feathers, are often inserted into the straw-like work of the comb, so as to stand up vertically when the comb is worn, and there wave, or rather wag, backwards and forwards in the wind. I could not learn any significance in these feathers, such as applies to many of the upright head feathers worn by the young men of Mekeo. The comb is worn by several of the men figured in Plate 9, one of them wearing it in front and the others having it standing out sideways at the back.
The almost universal type of earring (Plate 20, Fig. 1), varying from 2 to 3 inches in circumference, is made out of the tail of the cuscus. The ring is made by removing the hair from the animal’s tail, drying the tail, and fastening the pointed end into or on to the blunt cut-off stump end, tying them firmly together. The ring is then bound closely round with the yellow and brown material (Dendrobium) of belt No. 6; but a space of 1 or 2 inches is generally left uncovered at the part where the two ends of the tail are fastened together. The simplest form is a single earring, which passes through the hole in the ear; but I have seen two rings hanging to the ear; and frequently a second ring is hung on to the first, and often a third to the second, and sometimes a fourth to the third; or perhaps, instead of the fourth ring, there may be two rings hanging to the second one. In fact, there are varieties of ways in which the fancy of the wearer and the number of rings he possesses will cause him to wear them. They are worn by both men and women.14 They may be seen in several plates, but unfortunately are not very clear. The most distinct are, I think, those worn by the second woman from the left in Plate 26 and the woman on the left in Plate 28. The second woman from the left in the frontispiece has two of them hanging from her right ear.
Pigs’ tails, similar to those worn from the hair, are also worn by both men and women, especially the latter, suspended from the ears; and here again they vary much in length, and are often decorated with tassel-like hanging ornaments of shells, beads, etc.
Forehead ornaments (Plate 30, Fig 5) are made by men and worn by them at dances. This ornament is a band, very slightly curved, which is worn across the forehead, just under and surrounding the basis of the dancing feathers. It is generally about 16 inches long and between 4 and 5 inches broad in the middle, from which it narrows somewhat towards the ends. Its manufacture consists of a ground basis of the material of belt No. 5, into which are interplaited in geometric patterns the two black and yellow and brown materials which are used for belt No. 6. It is fixed on to the forehead by means of strings attached to its two ends, and passing round, and tied at the back of, the head.
Nose ornaments. These are straight pencil-shaped pieces of shell, generally about 6 inches long, which are passed through the hole in the septum of the nose. They are only worn at dances and on special occasions; but the people from time to time insert bits of wood or cane or bone or some other thing into the hole for the purpose of keeping it open. There are temporary pegs in the noses of the fifth man to the left in Plate 9 and the man in Plate 10. The nose ornament is worn by the woman to the extreme right in the frontispiece.
Necklaces and straight pendants, suspended from the neck and hanging over the chest, are common, though they are not usually worn in anything approaching the profusion seen in Mekeo and on the coast. These are made chiefly of shells of various sorts (cut or whole), dogs’ teeth and beads, as in Mekeo. The shells include the cowries and the small closely packed overlapping cut shells so generally used in Mekeo for necklaces, and the flat disc-like shell sections, which are here, as in Mekeo, specially used for straight hanging pendants; also those lovely large crescent-shaped discs of pearl shell, which are well known to New Guinea travellers. The shells are, of course, all obtained directly or indirectly from the coast; in fact, these are some of the chief articles for which the mountain people exchange their stone implements and special mountain feathers, so the similarity in the ornaments is to be expected; but it is only within a quite recent time that the pearl crescents have found their way to Mafulu. I do not propose to describe at length the various forms of shell ornament, as they are very similar to, and indeed I think practically the same as, those of Mekeo. Some of the necklaces are figured in Plates 31, 32 and 33, and they are worn by many of the people figured in other plates, especially the frontispiece and Plate 17. Straight pendant ornaments are seen in the frontispiece and in Plates 6, 17, 26 and others. The crescent-shaped pearl ornaments are seen in the frontispiece and in Plates 6, 7, 16, 28 and others, a very large one being worn by the little girl in Plate 71.
There is, however, one shell necklace which is peculiar to the mountains, and, I think, to Mafulu (I do not know whether the Kuni people also wear it), where it is worn as an emblem of mourning by persons who are relatives of the deceased, but who are not sufficiently closely related to him to stain themselves with black during the