Head-hunters, black, white, and brown

The day after we left Parama we had a long, disagreeable run against the tide to Dauan, only reaching a comparatively sheltered anchorage near this island late at night. In the morning we made an early start, and arrived at Mabuiag in the afternoon. It was rough till we got in the lee of the extensive Orman’s reef. When the shelter of that was passed we had to do a lot of beating up against a strong tide, for in the narrow channels between the reefs, or between the reefs and the islands, there is often a tidal race.

I was very pleased to visit Mabuiag once more. During my former expedition I spent five weeks in this island, and its inhabitants happened to be the first natives I had studied and made friends with. After interviewing Mr. Cowling, the local trader, we went on to the Mission Station, and the rest of the day was spent in landing our stuff and putting up the camp beds, and otherwise establishing ourselves in the mission-house. Cowling invited us to dinner, for which we were grateful, as our domestic arrangements were all sixes and sevens. After a yarn we returned to the Mission camp; it felt quite chilly at night, as a strong south-east wind was blowing. Fortunately there were no mosquitoes nor sandflies, so there was no need to be cooped up in mosquito nets.

The Mission Station on Murray Island is on the leeward or western side of the island; but when we went across the island—to Las, for example—we found the continuous wind very refreshing. In Mabuiag the Mission Station is on the windward or south-east side of the island, and we at once felt braced by the change of air. There is no doubt that, owing to this, we could work better, and there was less temptation to slackness than was the case in Murray Island.

Mabuiag is a larger island than Murray, and consists of several hills three or four hundred feet in height, some are about five hundred feet high. It is, roughly speaking, triangular in outline, each side measuring about a couple of miles. Owing to the character of ancient igneous rocks the island is only moderately fertile, and the vegetation has more of an Australian character than has that of Murray Island. There are also small grassy plains with scattered pandanus trees, and here and there a cycad. The somewhat conical rocky hills are mostly covered with trees, with grassy patches on their summits. Water is rather scarce.

The little harbour, with its jetty, is situated at the most easterly point of the island. It is here Cowling has his store. The Mission Station is on the beach on the south-eastern side of the island, at one end of the only village in the island. Formerly the houses were more or less scattered over the island, but the missionaries have induced the natives to congregate in one spot.

Compared with the Murray Islanders, the people of Mabuiag are much better off so far as clothes and European commodities are concerned; but, as already stated, the island is much less fertile—indeed, little native food is now grown, barely enough for daily use.

Mabuiag has been for a longer time, and also far more thoroughly, under the influence of the white man than has Murray Island. Consequently the social and economic conditions have been more modified, and one immediately perceives that the people are more civilised, and it does not take long to find out that they are more intelligent as a whole. The men do more fishing, and are altogether more industrious than are the Murray Islanders.

At first sight one would be inclined to put all this down to the credit of the influence of the white men, but I am by no means sure that this is entirely the case. When the results of our investigations are completed and published it will, we suspect, be evident that the Mabuiag people are naturally more intelligent than the Murray Islanders.

Mabuiag is situated half-way between New Guinea and Australia, and it was the intermediate trading station between the natives of the Prince of Wales group and those of Saibai, who, on the other hand, had trading relations with the coastal people of Daudai, as the neighbouring part of New Guinea is locally termed.

The Mabuiag men were skilful sailors and fishermen, and they combined with this a little head-hunting and a fair amount of trading, all of which occupations tend to develop the intelligence. They also had the advantage of not having a very fertile soil. It was therefore necessary for them to till the ground fairly assiduously if they were to have enough garden produce to sustain life in comfort; this probably assisted towards making them industrious.

Muralug, the largest island in Torres Straits, and one of the nearest to Australia, has very similar physical conditions, but the people were at a much lower social grade. My impression is that they were not so enterprising on the sea as the Mabuiag men, and certainly they were greatly inferior to them so far as general culture and tilling of the soil were concerned. Indeed, most of their time was spent wandering about in the bush and living on what fruit happened to be in season. Macgillivray states that none of the land “by cultivation has been rendered fit for the permanent support of man.” It is possible that the Muralug people, although of the same stock as the Mabuiag folk, were influenced for bad by their neighbours on the Cape York peninsula, while the Mabuiag men were braced by contact with the Papuans of the mainland of New Guinea.

Murray Island, as we have seen, was so fertile that very little labour was necessary for supplying garden produce; and though the men were good sailors, and often visited Erub, and even occasionally Parama or Kiwai, yet their isolation prevented much intercourse, and they remained less intelligent than the Mabuiag people, but more so than the Muralug folk.

There is another circumstance that must not be overlooked, although we do not yet know its full bearing. From the measurements we made of the living natives, and from those I have made on the skulls, it appears that the Torres Straits Islands were inhabited by a branch of the Western Papuans, who had the very dark skin, black woolly hair, and long, narrow heads that characterise that group of peoples. This stock alone occurs in Murray Island, whereas in the western tribe, from Saibai to Muralug, there is superimposed on this ground-stock another stem with a similar skin and hair, but with broader heads. This broader-headed population can also be traced along the Daudai coast to Kiwai Island, and for at least seventy miles up the Fly River.

It is generally admitted that a broadening of the head is advantageous, especially if associated with an increase in total capacity. However this may be, human progress is usually directly connected with a mixture of peoples, and apparently the mixture of even a very slightly different people has somewhat improved the mental activity of the western islanders.

There is a large collection of skulls in the British Museum (Natural History Museum) which came from the island of Pulu, about which I shall have more to say immediately. They are consequently the skulls of enemies of the Mabuiag folk, probably mainly natives of Moa. These skulls, which have been described by Mr. Oldfield Thomas, are very narrow. Of one exceptionally narrow skull, with a very protruding muzzle, Mr. Thomas writes: “This skull may be taken as a type of the lowest and most simian human cranium likely to occur at the present day.”

The skulls I obtained at Mabuiag during my two visits to that island belonged to natives of that island, and they are markedly broader than those collected by Dr. Macfarlane.

In 1888 I was very anxious to obtain some skulls, but for some time could not get any. One morning my boy Dick said to me, “Doctor, I savvy where head belong dead man he stop; he stop in hole.” I promised the boy a jew’s-harp to show me the spot, and on going there I took from a crevice in a rock a beautifully perfect skull that had been painted red. I told Dick to inform his friends that I would give a jew’s-harp for a skull or for some bones.

That afternoon a crowd of small boys marched up, holding in their hands a number of human bones. I suspected I was being somewhat imposed upon, as probably one boy had collected the lot and distributed them among his friends; but I had learned the lesson that if you want to start a trade you must not mind paying extravagantly, if needs be, at first. Once the trade has started it is quite a different matter. I paid each boy a jew’s-harp for the worthless broken bones he brought. The boys were hugely delighted, and strutted up and down the village strumming their jew’s-harps.

The young men of the village then began to yearn for jew’s-harps, and that same evening they came to me, and said, “Doctor, I want jewsarp.” I replied, “I want head belong dead man.” “I no got head belong dead man,” they urged. “You savvy where he stop. You get him,” was my reply.

The following evening the skulls began to arrive, and I duly gave a jew’s-harp for each one. Unfortunately by this time my small stock of jew’s-harps was exhausted, save for two. Then one young man said, “Doctor, I want jewsarp.” “I want head belong dead man.” “I no got head belong dead man.” “You savvy where he stop; good thing you catch him.” To my surprise the man replied, “I no got wife.”

At first I could not make it out. In those days I had not paid any attention to craniology, but I knew enough to satisfy myself that the skulls were those of people who had been dead a long time, and many were obviously the skulls of men. Consequently the young men had not been killing their wives for the sake of a jew’s-harp. No savage I ever came across would make such a bad bargain as that.

Then I discovered that the young men had sent their wives to procure the skulls; and, as not unfrequently happens elsewhere, the women did the work, and the men got the reward.

The advent of the white man has upset the former economic conditions on Mabuiag. The men now spend all their time “swimming diving” as it is called, that is, they go in parties in sailing boats, and dive by swimming for pearl-shell in shallow water. Some natives own their own boats, and make up crews on a system of sharing; others hire themselves out to white men. They generally start out on Monday and return on Friday or Saturday. All the time they are away they feed on tinned meat, biscuits, flour, and other white man’s food. They get accustomed to this food, and as they are away from home so much, they cannot “make” their gardens. Thus it comes about that agriculture, as well as fishing, is greatly neglected, and a considerable portion—and in some instances the bulk—of their food has to be bought from the stores. Should the supply of pearl-shell fall off, or the price be lowered, the natives would suffer greatly; and if the storekeepers left the island, the people would practically starve. As it is, many are considerably in debt to the traders, and often the traders have to advance supplies of flour and food to ward off starvation. With all their apparent prosperity, the people are really in a false economic condition, and their future may yet be temporarily deplorable.

The Mabuiag people have a very superior new timber church, which was built, as they are proud of stating, “by contract for £250.” The natives of other islands built their churches themselves, but here they could afford to pay others to do it for them; and no false modesty causes them to be behindhand in making the most of this fact. Some time ago a large quantity of pig copper was found by the natives on a reef close by, and they sold this to the traders for about £500. With some of the money thus obtained they built their church. The copper must have formed part of the cargo of a ship that struck on the reef, and the copper was jettisoned to lighten her.

We very soon annexed the old church building as a storehouse and laboratory, and found it most convenient. Some of us slept in it, and found it a cool, airy bedroom. The roof was considerably dilapidated, the thatch having come off in many spots; but fortunately there was no rain. The walls were broken in places, and the doors and window-frames were all giving way; still it suited our purposes admirably.

A day or two after our arrival a procession of men, women, and children came from the village very early in the morning, singing hymns as they marched, and deposited in front of our door a present of a large number of coconuts, four water melons, one yam, some taro, several eggs, two cocks, and a hen. Most of the parents with characteristic kindliness let their little children put their presents on the heap. The spokesman said the island was poor (in garden produce), and they could not give us much. In replying, I said we knew they had not much produce, and that they had given us a good present. I added also that no one had given us fowls and eggs before. After the little speechifying was over, the people and the heaped-up food were photographed.

It was much easier to get information from these people than from the Murray Islanders, for they know English very much better, were further removed from their past, and did not appear to have the scarcely veiled affection and respect for their old customs that the Murray Islanders certainly retain. They were less unwilling, therefore, to tell what they remembered of their former customs. There were still a few old men alive who knew the “old-time fashion,” and they often acted as referees, so that it was possible to get definite information upon points about which the younger men were uncertain; but the old men knew very little English, and the young men had to interpret for them.

Owing to the industrious habits of the men and their professed desire to get money for the forthcoming “May,” they went out diving for pearl-shell, and we were during our first week occasionally left without “subjects.” To obviate this I engaged two men, Peter and Tom, at ten shillings a week each to come and talk to us whenever we wanted them. I also engaged a man named Waria to help Ontong. After engaging Waria as literally our drawer of water and hewer of wood, I discovered that he was the hereditary chief of the island! So he was promoted to be my special instructor in the old native customs, and help Ray with his study of the language. Waria’s father died when he was a lad, so the present Mamoose was elected by the Hon. John Douglas. Since we left Waria has “come into his own.” We soon found out that Waria was making a translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and he turned out to be a very accomplished person. He was genuinely interested in our work, and quite grasped what our objects were. One day, on his own initiative, he wrote the following:—

Very early one morning, hearing the sound of wailing in the village, we went to inquire who had died. To our sorrow we heard it was the infant son of Waria. The child was quite well the day before, except for a stomach-ache; probably he had been overlaid in the night. There was a great exhibition of grief, and many people came in all through the day to sit in Waria’s house and weep by the poor little corpse. These people are really most affectionate and sympathetic; everything was disorganised that day on account of the infant’s death. Even old men sat about doing nothing. Waria was very desirous to have a photograph of his dead baby in order that he might not forget what he was like. Of course we did this for him.

When he was in Murray Island, Rivers wanted to find out whether any of the psychological traits or aptitudes that he had investigated ran in certain families, and consequently he commenced to record the relationships of the various subjects. Before he commenced on the inquiry he had absolutely no interest in the subject of genealogy, but he soon became literally fascinated with it. In the end he had tabulated the genealogies of every native of Murray Island as far back as could be remembered.

It was very amusing to see Rivers closeted with some old man ferreting out the family history of various people, and he often surprised the natives by the width and accuracy of his knowledge. A tremendous amount of secrecy had to be exercised in these inquiries in Murray Island, and one never knew in what odd corner or retired spot one might not come upon the mysterious whispering of Rivers and his confidant. The questions one overheard ran mostly in this wise, “He married?” “What name wife belong him?” “Where he stop?” “What piccaninny he got?” “He boy, he girl?” “He come first?” and so forth.

All this is not so simple as it appears, as everyone has one or two names, and sometimes a man will casually assume a new name. Some men have married several times, often to widows with children; but the most confusing point of all is the very general custom in Murray Island of adopting children. In many cases children do not find out till they are grown up who their parents were; often they never know.

Their system of naming relationships is very different from ours; for example, a mother’s sisters, that is the maternal aunts, are called “mothers.” In the usual method of collecting names of relationships confusion would often arise, owing to the very varied ways of regarding kinship; but according to Rivers’ system mistakes could practically never arise. All the terms he used were: “father,” “mother,” “husband,” “wife,” “boy,” “girl,” or “man” and “woman,” and for the first of these he always asked, “He proper father?” “He proper mother?” Once a genealogy was fairly complete it was only necessary to ask, “What A call B?” “What A call F?” “What B call A?” and so on, to find out what were the relationships acknowledged by them, and the names by which they were called.

Finding that this line of inquiry led to such good results in Murray Island, Rivers immediately started similar investigations when he arrived at Mabuiag. The collection of genealogies here was in one respect more difficult than in Murray Island, as the families were larger and the prevalence of polygamy, until quite recently, further complicated matters. Intermarriages between natives of different islands were naturally much more common than in Murray Island; indeed the intermarriage between the inhabitants of Mabuiag and Badu have been so frequent that they must be regarded as one people.

Not only did Rivers record the islands the various people came from, but their totems as well. By this laborious work a great deal of valuable information will result that could not be obtained in any other way or with anything like the same accuracy. The clan marriages of the population of Mabuiag for several generations will not fail to reveal the rules that regulated marriage and descent.

There was an interesting psychological difference between the Mabuiag folk and those of Murray Island. As has just been pointed out, great secrecy had to be maintained in the latter island when pursuing genealogical inquiries; but quite the opposite condition prevailed in Mabuiag. Here the information was obtained in public, and a doubtful point in genealogy was frankly discussed by men and women. This enabled Rivers to make more rapid progress than in Murray Island, and at the same time he was equally sure of his facts: what in Murray Island required private confabulations with various men at different times could here be settled practically offhand.

Much varied sociological information can be obtained by recording genealogies in this way. For example, one can get definite facts on the number of children in a family, the proportion of the sexes, the number that die before they themselves have children, the number of adopted children, the idea on which relationship is based, the relationship nomenclature, the relation of totems to individuals or communities, the personal or group restrictions as to marriage, the relative fertility of related or unrelated stock, the effect of crossing between different races, and so forth.

Without entering into further detail, I would like to emphasise the fact that by this system Rivers has supplied anthropologists with a new method of research, by means of which important data can be collected with absolute accuracy on subjects concerning which it has hitherto been very difficult to obtain reliable information.

Some white men resident on Mabuiag had crews of mainland (Queensland) blacks, and we took this opportunity to measure, psychologise, and photograph some dozen of these men. This was a fortunate chance for us, as we wanted to make a few comparative observations on the North Queensland aborigines.

There were also a few South Sea men living on Mabuiag, who had married native women, and we studied several of them, and their half-caste children as well. My old friend Billy Tanna was still on Mabuiag with his numerous progeny, and three or four other Tanna men besides, whom we also measured. Tanna is one of the New Hebrides group.

One Lifu man, Sŭni or Charley, had the longest head I have ever measured. It was 215 mm. (8½ inches) in length. It was also narrow and high; the length, breadth (or cephalic) index was 66·9. Rivers found in Sŭni the first example of true colour blindness he had yet come across. It was amusing to see Sŭni’s total inability to discriminate between pink and blue and red and green, and his other attempted matches were very quaint. There were two other Lifu men on the island, and great was Rivers’ delight to find that one of them was also red-green blind. One felt tempted to frame all sorts of wild theories about a colour-blind race. During his return home, both at Thursday Island and at Rockhampton, in Queensland, Rivers investigated four other Lifu men, but only one of these was colour-blind. Still, it is an interesting fact that not a single other case of colour-blindness was found among one hundred and fifty natives of Torres Straits and Kiwai, or among some eighty members of other races, including Australians, Polynesians, Melanesians, Tamils, and half-castes, and yet three out of seven Lifu men were colour-blind. Lifu is one of the Loyalty group in the South Pacific. The inhabitants are Melanesians, with, in some instances, a little Polynesian admixture.

Ray pursued his philological studies in Mabuiag, and found that there was a very marked difference, both structurally and in vocabulary, between it and the Murray Island tongue. From Saibai to Muralug and from Badu to Tut one language is spoken, but there are at least four closely allied dialects corresponding to as many groups of islands. The grammar of this language is decidedly of the Australian type, though there is no marked connection in structure or vocabulary with languages of the neighbouring mainland of Australia.

Later, Ray had an opportunity of verifying this conclusion by a partial investigation of the language of the Yaraikanna tribe of Cape York, which is, however, totally distinct from that of the islanders of either the eastern or western tribes.

A marked peculiarity of the Mabuiag language is the extremely indefinite signification of the verbs, which require to be made definite by prefixes indicating the part of the body concerned, the direction of the action, or the place concerned. For example, palan apparently indicates the putting forth of something; and thus we have poi-palan, to shake off dust; gagai-palan, to fire gun or arrow; minar-palan, to make marks, to write; ibelai-palan, to cover as with a blanket; balbalagi-palan, to make not crooked, to straighten; berai-palan, to make like a rib, to slacken a rope; dan-pali (an intransitive), to open the eyes, to awake; aka-pali, to show fear. Another peculiarity is the partiality of the language for noun constructions; indeed, as all the verb suffixes are the same as those of nouns, it may be doubted whether the verb exists as it is understood in European languages. “I have seen you,” is in Mabuiag ngau ninu imaizinga, literally, “mine your seeing”; the imperative plural “Fear not” is nitamun akagi, “Your not (being) afraid.”

The Mabuiag people have been under Christian teaching for over a quarter of a century, and in most respects they may be regarded as civilised and Christianised as country-folk at home. For about half this period the islanders were under the influence of the Rev. Dr. S. Macfarlane, but the actual teaching has always been done by South Sea teachers.

The new church was opened with great ceremony in 1897, and crowds of natives arrived from all parts of Torres Straits, even from the far-distant Darnley and Murray Islands.

It was amusing to find that these Mabuiag folk believe that the Murray Islanders are more savage, or less advanced than themselves, just as the Murray Islanders in their turn look down upon all the other islanders. We were told in all soberness that at the opening of the new church one of the Murray Islanders tried to make sorcery on a Mabuiag man, but God was too powerful, and He made an example of a Murray Island boy who died mysteriously and was buried on a small island to windward. I believe our wicked old friend Ulai was the suspected sorcerer. On Mabuiag they say the Murray and Darnley people still keep up magic, and they contemptuously speak of these foreigners as eating frogs. Really, people are much alike all the world over! Here is another instance of the fact that is always striking us—the essential identity of the human mind under all varying conditions of race and climate.

Our good friend Mr. Chalmers arrived on Monday, October 3rd, from Saguane, bringing Ray with him, various mishaps having delayed his expected arrival on the previous Saturday. His main object in visiting Mabuiag was to hold a “May Meeting.” Murray Island and Saibai each have their own “Mei,” as they call it; but Mabuiag is the central station for all the other western islands.

Tamate employed one day in examining the school children, and some of us went to the distribution of prizes in the afternoon, the scissors, knives, pens, and pencils giving great pleasure to the little winners.

According to their custom everywhere the South Sea teachers put a stop to all native dancing in Torres Straits, and as I much wanted to see a dance in Mabuiag, there was some danger of the Mabuiag teacher misunderstanding my expressed desire to get up one. Tamate, however, soon arranged matters, and a native dance was included in the programme.

In the forenoon of Saturday, October 8th, a service was held in the church. Most of the congregation arrived in procession headed by Tamate, Isaiah, the Samoan teacher of Mabuiag, and Morris, the Niuie teacher of Badu.

After these came two broad rows of men and boys, then two rows of women and girls, all singing hymns. During the singing of the second hymn in church, it was discovered that the all-important plate for the collection had been forgotten, so a deacon went out and returned with two enamelled iron plates.

In his address Tamate said he was sorry to see that fewer people had come from the other islands than in former years. The Prince of Wales Islanders were few in number, but they (the Mabuiag people) had promised to subscribe money to help the Prince of Wales Islanders. The Mabuiag people earned plenty of money diving for pearl-shell; perhaps they made too much money, for when they went to Thursday Island they often squandered it on drink and other indulgences, and so had no reserve for bad seasons. Tamate appealed for more money to support new teachers in the Fly River district, and also for an annual contribution of clothes and calico and other things for their fellow-countryman Mugala, the teacher at Kunini. Finally he asked them to send young men to his station at Saguane to learn to read the Bible in English, and eventually to go out as teachers.

Before the meeting actually began, but after we entered the church, Mr. Chalmers, greatly to my surprise, said he would like me to speak to the natives. On finishing his address, therefore, he called upon me for a “talk.” After some general remarks I spoke a little about our work, and that we found the differences between white, black, brown, and yellow men were mainly external, but in reality all were very much alike. I went on to tell them about prehistoric man in Britain, how, like themselves thirty years ago, he went naked, and only had stone implements. I described briefly the difference between palæolithic and neolithic implements, and how man gradually improved; how they themselves had augŭds (totems) and our ancestors had too—theirs were dugong, shark, cassowary, etc., while ours had been the white horse, seal, and wild boar, and so on; how they cut representatives of their totems on their bodies, whilst our forbears used to paint their augŭds in blue on their bodies; how tomahawks and knives came to us from another place, just as white men brought them theirs; how we formerly made sorcery just as they did—they made magic with wooden figures of men, and we stuck pins into clay figures. Then missionaries came to Britain and taught the people about God, just as missionaries come to them. The people in New Guinea are still what they themselves were like a few years ago, and it was now their turn to send missionaries to New Guinea. This address of mine given in pidgin English was the first, as it will probably be the last, given by me at a “May Meeting.”

Then followed prayers and addresses in the vernacular by teachers, chiefs, and deacons, with hymns interspersed; and all the time, as in home churches, only more so, there was a continual dropping by the children of the coins they were to contribute to the collection, only, as not at home, the sound was the clink of silver, and not the clank of copper.

Afterwards the five young men with their wives, who were going to Chalmers’ Mission Station at Saguane, were asked to come on the platform, and each gave a short address. Finally the collection was made as the congregation passed out of church in island groups. Mabuiag contributed £8 10s.; Badu and Moa, £8 0s. 9d.; Prince of Wales Island, £1; and the South Sea men of Mabuiag, £11 2s., making a total of £28 12s. 9d. During the year £64 15s. 1d. has been collected at the Sunday offertory at Mabuiag, consequently Chalmers took back as the Mabuiag subscription to the London Missionary Society £40 10s., this amount being the local “May” collection and half the weekly offerings for the year, a very creditable amount.

Mabuiag is the only native church which has a collection every Sunday; during the four months we were in Murray Island there was no collection, they have one only during their “May,” and I was told that their last collection amounted to less than 10s.!

Isaiah invited all our party to luncheon with Tamate, and he gave us a first-rate midday dinner of pig, fowl, ham, yams, and sago cooked in an earth-oven; cake, tinned fruit, bananas, and water-melon, with ginger ale and coconut water to drink.

After dinner a large quantity of food was heaped in front of the mission house by the natives, and a speech was made stating that the island was so unfertile that they could not give so much as they would like. There was one large live turtle, and a cooked and cut-up one, dugong meat, fish, dampers, tins of meat, yams, taro, sweet potatoes, two bunches of bananas, and plenty of coconuts. When we had photographed the heaps of food, “Teapot,” a Samoan, gave a very clever dance to the beating of an empty kerosine tin. Teapot flung an axe backward and forwards, up and down, and every possible way, catching and twisting it with great dexterity.

The present of food was then distributed. To Tamate was given the live turtle, a lot of coconuts, and other fruit; to the “Doctor,” twenty coconuts and five sweet potatoes. I was very pleased at this further proof of the friendliness of the natives; other people also received a share of the present.

Later in the afternoon a dance was performed by some thirty men in the palm grove within the Mission compound. This was the Pibi kap, sometimes called “Kwoiam’s dance,” after the legendary warrior of the island—it was a war dance performed after a successful fight. Some of the men had variously painted themselves with red and black and yellow ochre; they wore chaplets of young coconut leaves or white feathers in their hair, crossed shoulder-belts and petticoats of the same yellow, or yellowish green coconut leaves, streaming armlets to match, and bands round their legs and ankles. They held bows and arrows in their left hands, and in their right each carried a coconut, or pawpaw, to represent a decapitated human head.

It would be tedious to describe in detail the various movements of the dancers. Usually they advanced in single file, with a skipping movement, holding the body somewhat bent, then, resting for a moment on one leg, would beat the air two or three times with the other leg, then stoop, resting on both feet, and trail the “head” on the ground, then advance with various skipping movements; occasionally they would rapidly dance on the tips of their toes, as if they were boring into the ground, sometimes the bow would be held horizontally, at others vertically, and almost continuously the “head” would be trailed backwards and forwards in the sand; every now and again the cry of victory would be raised. Some old women excited by the memory of former days could not refrain joining also in the dance.

Imagine a “May Meeting” in Exeter Hall closing with a war dance!