The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea. Robert Wood Williamson
history of New Guinea. Speaking very broadly, it is generally admitted that the bulk of the population belongs to the Papuan race, a dark-skinned, woolly-haired people who have also spread over western Oceania; but, to a greater or less extent, New Guinea has been subject to cultural and racial influences from all sides, except from Australia, where the movement has been the other way. Thus the East Indian archipelago has directly affected parts of Netherlands New Guinea, and its influence is to be traced to a variable degree in localities in the Bismarck archipelago, German New Guinea (Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land), Western Oceania, and British New Guinea or Papua, as it is termed officially.
The south-eastern peninsula of New Guinea—or at all events the coastal regions—has been largely affected by immigrants, who were themselves a mixed people, and who came later at various times. It is to these immigrants that Mr. Ray and I applied the term Melanesian (Ray, S. H., and Haddon, A. C., “A Study of the Languages of Torres Straits,” Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., 3rd ser., IV., 1897, p. 509). Early in 1894, Mr. Ray read a paper before the Anthropological Institute (Journ. Anth. Inst., XXIV., p. 15), in which he adhered to our former discrimination of two linguistic stocks and added a third type of language composed of a mixture of the other two, for which he proposed the name Melano-Papuan. These languages, according to Mr. Ray, occur in the Trobriands, Woodlarks and the Louisiades, and similar languages are found in the northern Solomon Islands. For some years I had been studying the decorative art of British New Guinea, and from physical and artistic and other cultural reasons had come to the conclusion that the Melanesians of British New Guinea should be broken up into two elements: one consisting of the Motu and allied Melanesians, and the other of the inhabitants of the Massim district—an area extending slightly beyond that of Mr. Ray’s Melano-Papuans (“The Decorative Art of British New Guinea,” Cunningham Memoirs, X., Roy. Irish Acad., 1894, pp. 253–269). I reinforced my position six years later (“Studies in the Anthropo-geography of British New Guinea,” Journ. Roy. Geog. Soc., 1900, pp. 265, 414). Dr. Seligmann, in his valuable paper “A Classification of the Natives of British New Guinea” (Journ. Roy. Anth. Inst., XXXIX., 1909, pp. 246, 315) corroborated these views and designated the two groups of “Melanesians” as the Eastern and Western Papuo-Melanesians. The following year he published the great book to which Mr. Williamson so frequently refers, and in which this classification is maintained, and these two groups together with the Papuans, are termed Papuasians.
The Motu stock of the Western Papuo-Melanesians have extended their dispersal as far as the Mekeo district, where they came into contact with other peoples. It has been shown that the true Papuans are a narrow-headed people, but there are some puzzling exceptions, the explanation of which is not yet ascertained. The Papuo-Melanesians contain a somewhat broad-headed element, and there is a slightly broad-headed population in the central range of the south-east peninsula, the extent of which has not yet been determined. The questions naturally arise: (1) Is the true Papuan a variable stock including both long- broad-headed elements? or (2) Does the broad-headed element belong to an immigrant people? or, again (3) Is there an hitherto unidentified indigenous broad-headed race? I doubt if the time is ripe for a definite answer to any of these questions. Furthermore, we have yet to assign to their original sources the differences in culture which characterise various groups of people in New Guinea. Something has been done in this direction, but much more has yet to be learnt.
So far I have not referred to a Negrito element in the Ethnology of New Guinea. From time to time we have heard rumours of pygmy people, and German travellers have recorded very short individuals in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Land; but it was not till the expedition to Netherlands New Guinea of the British Ornithological Union of 1910–11 that a definite pygmy race was demonstrated. I think this can be no longer denied, and the observations made by German ethnologists show that the race in a more or less modified state is widely spread. Now Mr. Williamson, whose work in New Guinea was contemporaneous with that of the Netherlands New Guinea expedition, adduces evidence that this is also the case in British territory. It is worth recalling that de Quatrefages and Hamy (Crania Ethnica, 1882, pp. 207–210, 253–256) distinguish a “Negrito-Papuan” and a “Papuan” element in the Torres Straits. This problem will be discussed in Vol. I. of the Reports of the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits. I feel little doubt that Mr. Williamson has shown strong evidence that the Mafulu and probably other adjacent mountain tribes are essentially a pygmy—that is to say a Negrito—people who have been modified to some extent by Papuan and possibly Papuo-Melanesian influence, both physical and cultural. He has marshalled his data with great skill, and has dissected out, as it were, the physical and cultural elements of the Negrito substratum. It only remains for other observers to study Negritos in other parts of New Guinea to see how far these claims can be substantiated. It is evident therefore that, apart from the valuable detailed information which Mr. Williamson has given us concerning a hitherto unknown tribe, he has opened up a problem of considerable interest and magnitude.
A.C. Haddon.
Introductory
The map appended to this volume is (with the exception of the red lines and red lettering upon it) a reproduction of a portion of the map relating to the explorations and surveys of Dr. Strong, Mr. Monckton and Captain Barton, which was published in the Geographical Journal for September, 1908, and the use of which has been kindly permitted me by the Royal Geographical Society. I have eliminated the red route lines which appear in the original map, so as to avoid confusion with the red lines which I have added. The unbroken red lines and the red lettering upon my map are copied from a map, also kindly placed at my disposal, which has been recently prepared by Father Fillodean of the Mission of the Sacred Heart, and these lines mark roughly what the Fathers of the Mission believe to be the boundaries of the several linguistic areas within the district covered by their map. It will be observed that some of these lines are not continued so as to surround and complete the definition of the areas which they indicate; but this defect is unavoidable, as the Fathers’ map only covered a relatively small area, and even in that map the lines were not all carried to its margin. It will also be noticed that, though the Fathers introduce the two names Oru Lopiku and Boboi as being linguistically distinct, they have not indicated the boundary line between the two areas. Father Egedi, however, informed me that this boundary passes along the ridge of hills south of the Ufafa river as far as Mt. Eleia, and thence along the Ukalama river to the Kuni boundary. The Ukalama river is not shown in the Geographical Society’s map; but I may say that it is shown in the Fathers’ map as rising in Mt. Eleia, and flowing thence in a south-easterly direction, and so joining the St. Joseph river close to Dilava. The broken red line upon my map does not appear in the Fathers’ map, but has been added by me to indicate what, I understand, the Fathers believe to be a continued boundary, so far as ascertained, of the Fuyuge linguistic area, called by them the Mafulu area, to which I am about to draw attention.
The term Mafulu is the Kuni pronunciation of Mambule, which is the name, as used by themselves, of the people who live in a group of villages within and near the north-westerly corner of the area of the Fuyuge-speaking people, whose Papuan language, so far as ascertained, appears, subject to local dialectal differences, to be the same, and may, I was informed, be regarded as one common language throughout the Fuyuge area.
The Fathers of the Mission have adopted the name Mafulu in a wider sense, as including all the people with whom they have come in contact of the Fuyuge-speaking area; and, though my investigations, which form the subject-matter of this book, have been conducted only in the neighbourhood of Mafulu itself, I was assured that, so far as the Fathers have been able to ascertain, all these Fuyuge people not only have similar languages, but also are substantially similar in physique and in culture. My observations concerning the Mafulu people may therefore, if this statement is correct, be regarded as applying, not only to the inhabitants of the portion of the north-westerly corner of the Fuyuge area in which the Mafulu group of villages is placed, but to those of the whole of the north-westerly portion of the area, and generally in a greater or less degree of accuracy to those of the northerly and north-easterly parts of the area, and possibly the southerly ones also.
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