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A general survey of the decorative art of British New Guinea clearly reveals the fact that there are distinct æsthetic schools, if the term may be permitted, in each of which there is a characteristic set of motives and also of forms and technique. The boundaries of these districts are not sharply defined, but, although our knowledge is still imperfect, they can in most cases be traced with sufficient exactitude. I expect that the Papuan Gulf district will be found to extend from the Fly River to Cape Possession (long. 146° 25´ E.), and that the Fly River district proper must be confined to what I have termed its Middle Region, and perhaps the upper reaches of that river as well.

We may then take these five districts for granted. The question now presents itself: What is the meaning of their distinctness? I do not think we have at present sufficient evidence to enable us to do more than make suggestions as to possible causes, and naturally ethnology is first appealed to. Are these differences due to ethnic diversity?

Many of those who have written on the natives of British New Guinea have not sufficiently distinguished between the numerous tribes in our Possession, and they speak in vague terms of the Papuans as if they were all alike. Now this is by no means the case, and before we can gain an adequate comprehension of Papuan ethnography and ethnology we must clearly distinguish between the characteristics of the various tribes, their customs, languages, and handicrafts.

There is still much discussion concerning the limitation of the term Papuan as applied to people, and even whether it should not be dropped altogether, as Professor Sergi suggests. The Italian anthropologist extends the term Melanesian not only to comprise the natives of all the Western Oceanic islands, including New Guinea and the adjacent islands, but also Australia. At present I adhere to what Mr. Ray and myself[10] have considered to be the most convenient course, and to employ the term Papuan for what appear to be the autocthones of New Guinea. By Melanesians we understand the present inhabitants of the great chain of islands off the east of New Guinea, and extending down to New Caledonia. These terms are used to designate peoples, not races; neither are pure races, and at present we are unable to gauge the amount of race mixture in either, or even to state precisely what are their components.

From the boundary of Netherlands New Guinea to Cape Possession on the eastern coast of the Papuan Gulf, and inland from these coasts, the natives are dark, frizzly-haired Papuans; typically they are a dolichocephalic people, and rather short in stature.

The Papuans also occupy the greater part of the south-east peninsula of New Guinea; but along the southern coast-line, almost uninterruptedly from Cape Possession to the farthest island of the Louisiades, is an immigrant Melanesian population, about whom I shall have more to say presently.

I will now enumerate a few facts which will clearly bring out the essential distinction between these two peoples.

We have not at present a sufficient amount of data on the physical characters of the two peoples by skilled observers to enable us to formulate what differences there may be between them. There is no doubt that the Papuans are more uniformly dark than are the Melanesians (I am now referring solely to the Melanesians in British New Guinea), and their hair is as constantly frizzly. Among the Melanesians light-coloured people are constantly met with, as are also individuals with curly and occasionally straight hair. Their skulls exhibit many variations, and are occasionally brachycephalic. Judging from my experience of the Western Papuans, the Papuan men usually sit with their legs crossed under them like a tailor, whereas the Melanesians squat, like a Malay, usually with their haunches just off the ground. I do not know whether this rule holds good for the Papuans of the south-east peninsula.

The Western Papuans may or may not scarify their skin, as in Torres Straits, but they do not tattoo; the Melanesians tattoo themselves, especially the women. Tattooing has, however, spread to a certain extent among the Papuan hill tribes of the peninsula; the Koitapu women appear to have thoroughly followed the fashion of their Motu neighbours; amongst the Koiari and other hill tribes it occurs only occasionally. The V-shaped chest mark gado (Fig. 20) occurs among the Motu and Loyalupu, but not east of Keppel Bay. Among the two former the tattooing lacks symmetry, but in Aroma curved lines become more frequent and asymmetrical figures have a bilateral symmetry with regard to the body.

The houses of the Gulf and Western Papuans are often of great size and contain numerous families, and there appears to be more club-life among the men. The houses of the Melanesians are smaller, each family possessing one; those in the Trobriand Group are not built on piles. Very characteristic of the Papuans are the houses which are confined to the use of the men. These houses are the focus of the social life of the men, and as religion among savages is largely social usage, it is also in connection with these structures that most of their religious observances are held.

The initiation of lads into manhood is accompanied with sacred ceremonies in some of the Papuan tribes, but, so far as is known, by none of the Melanesians in New Guinea. Masks are usually, perhaps invariably, worn at these ceremonies, and the bull-roarer is swung and shown to the lads. There is no record of a bull-roarer among the Melanesian folk.

Masks are employed by many peoples during certain ceremonies; their distribution in New Guinea is interesting, as it will be found that in the British Possession they characterise the Papuan as opposed to the Melanesian elements. They were common in Torres Straits, have been obtained in Daudai, and are very abundant in the Papuan Gulf from Maclatchie Point to Cape Possession.

Dancing may be a secular amusement or a ceremonial exercise; in both aspects it is largely practised by the Papuans proper. We have very few accounts of dances among the Melanesians, and these do not appear to be of a specially interesting character.

Of their weapons the stone-club is alone common to all the tribes. The use of the bow and arrow is confined to the Papuans, and is universally employed to the west and in the Papuan Gulf. Heavy, sword-like, wooden clubs and wooden spears are common among the Melanesians, and the sling is employed in the D’Entrecasteaux Islands.

Only the Melanesians make pottery.

The Papuans earlier adopted tobacco, and grew their own tobacco before the white man came, but they do not chew the betel to any great extent; quite the reverse is the case with the Melanesians.

I have now enumerated a sufficient body of evidence to demonstrate that two groups of people inhabit British New Guinea. We have now to see whether a further analysis is possible.

Our knowledge of the Western Papuans is too imperfect for any definite generalisations to be made at present, but I venture to present the following tentative suggestions:—

The most typical Papuans in the British Protectorate are probably the bush tribes from the Dutch boundary to the back of the Gulf of Papua. They are gradually being pushed inwards by the coast people. Macfarlane contrasts the high and broad skull of the latter with the “long, narrow skull, with its low forehead and prominent zygomatic bones,” of the former, whom he also states are “greatly inferior, both mentally and physically.” The observations of d’Albertis of a racial mixture in this region are supported by de Quatrefages and Hamy. The Torres Straits islanders are also a mixed people. I do not think we have sufficient evidence before us to decide what are the component races of these Western Papuans. I suspect that the Fly River is to a slight extent what may be termed a “culture route,” and that the natives of the higher reaches have indirect communication with those of the north coast of New Guinea; for example, the rattan armour collected by d’Albertis high up the river is similar to that obtained by Finsch from Angriffs Haven, near Humboldt Bay, and recalls the coir armour of Micronesia; it is probable that this was the route by which tobacco found its way to Torres Straits and the Gulf district, and thence to the south-east.

The Papuans also extend down the south-east peninsula and into the adjacent island groups. On the mainland they have been conquered in certain places by Melanesian immigrants, and a mixture of these two peoples has taken place to a variable extent. In the islands the amalgamation has been more complete.

The immigrant people are by the majority of writers spoken of as Polynesians. This identification is apparently based solely on the lighter colour of some of the former than that of the Papuans proper, and on numerous words common to them and the Polynesians.

The light colour of the skin and the occasional presence of curly or even straight hair among some of the people of British New Guinea certainly proves a racial mixture, although Comrie and Finsch do not lay much stress on these points. The latter (Samoafahrten, p. 234) writes:—“The natives of Bentley Bay, as at East Cape, are of a tolerably light skin colour and belong to what the ignorant would explain as a Malay mixture. But wrongly, for they are true Papuans, amongst whom the individual occurrence of curly, even of smooth hair, is of no consequence.” The craniology of the natives of the south-eastern peninsula and neighbouring islands has been studied by Comrie, Flower, Mikloucho-Maclay, de Quatrefages, Hamy, and Sergi, most of whom admit with Flower “a considerable mixture of races among the inhabitants of this region of the world.” As at present anthropography cannot speak with precision concerning the racial elements in this immigrant people, we must turn to other branches of anthropology, and we will see what light ethnography and linguistics can throw on this ethnological problem.

A comparison of Papuan and Melanesian customs and handicrafts will prove that there is little of real importance in common, say, between the Motu or the South Cape natives and the Samoans. I need only allude to the almost total absence of a system of cosmogony or of a pantheon with a definite mythology; associated with this lack of a theology is the absence of an organised priestcraft. The democratic Papuans and Melanesians have no hereditary chieftainship, and the power of tabu is much more limited than in Polynesia. Strangely enough, these so-called “Polynesians” in South-East New Guinea make pottery and do not drink kava. There is also a well-marked distinction between the weapons, implements, etc., and the decorative art of the New Guinea people and those of the Polynesians.

For the linguistic evidence I have consulted my friend and colleague, Mr. S. H. Ray, who is our great authority on the languages of Western Oceania. In an essay in my Memoir[11] he discusses this question, and as most is known about the Motu language of the neighbourhood of Port Moresby, he takes this as a basis for comparison; what is proved for this applies, in all probability, to the other Melanesian languages of British New Guinea. “Much could be written to show that it is with the Melanesian tongues that the Motu of New Guinea should be included and not with the Polynesian. The same method applied to the Kerepunu, the Aroma, Suau, and other dialects akin to the Motu, points to the same relationship. The Motu grammar is entirely Melanesian and non-Polynesian. Such words as are common to it and the Eastern Polynesian are equally common to the whole of Melanesia. Melanesian words which are non-Polynesian are also found in Motu and the allied languages of New Guinea.”

I had long been puzzled by certain differences between the Motu and allied tribes on the coast of British New Guinea and the natives round Milne Gulf and of the neighbouring groups of islands, all of whom I speak of collectively as the Massim.

There is a difference in their physiognomy. The Motu and allied tribes are remarkably destitute of a religion, and are (or were) at the mercy of the sorcerers of the indigenous hill tribes, and, what is more remarkable, there is no trace of the cult of the sacred frigate-bird or of that of any other animal. They make their pottery by beating a lump of clay into a pot, whereas, according to the only descriptions we have, the Massim women build up their pots with bands of clay laid in spirals. A study of my Memoir on the decorative art of British New Guinea will clearly bring out the enormous difference between the Motu and the Massim in artistic feeling and execution.

My knowledge of Melanesia was too slight to enable me to proceed further with this problem, but in a recently published paper Mr. Ray says[12]:—“With regard to the place of origin of the Melanesian population of New Guinea it does not seem possible to ascertain the exact quarter from which it has come. There is at first sight much dissimilarity between the languages west and east, between the Motu and Kerepunu on the one side and the Suau of South Cape on the other. Though this dissimilarity disappears on closer examination, it may be stated that the language of Suau appears very similar to those of San Cristoval in the Solomon Islands, which lies almost due east of South Cape. The Motu and Kerepunu agree more with the languages of the Efate district in the Central New Hebrides.”

Further evidence must be collected before Mr. Ray’s suggestion can be definitely accepted. The decorative employment of the frigate-bird in the Massims and Solomon Islands supports his first proposition; but, on the other hand, inlaying with shell and nacre is very characteristic of the Solomon Islands, and this is absent from the Massims; there are besides many other points of difference. So far as I am acquainted with photographs of natives from the New Hebrides I do not see any resemblance between them and the Motu, but it must be borne in mind that there can be culture-drift without appreciable actual mixture, though amongst savage peoples the latter must to a certain extent be concurrent.

To return to the Papuan peoples of British New Guinea. It is probable that these are also a mixed people, and not a race in the ethnological sense of the term. Owing to continual inter-tribal warfare, or at least mutual distrust, there has not been much intercourse between the inhabitants of different districts; this may partly account for such distinct styles of art as occur in Daudai and the Papuan Gulf. I have already hinted that influences from North-Western New Guinea may have penetrated down the Fly River, but a discussion of the latter question opens up complicated problems of Malaysian ethnography into which I cannot now enter.