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EUROPEANS

Rumors of

Gold and

Exotic Trade

Within a few months of the conquest of Malacca in 1511 by the Portuguese, an expedition was dispatched to locate the fabled spice islands. Some sources state that Antonio D'Abreu, the captain of this pioneer expedition, sighted West Papua's coast in 1512, but this is doubtful. But soon thereafter, references to New Guinea begin to appear in the western literature.

In 1521, 27 months out of Spain, Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of Magellan's epic world circumnavigation, received a first whiff of information about West Papua while loading cloves in Ternate: "...the king of these heathens, called Raja Papua, is exceedingly rich in gold and lives in the interior of the island." This, however, was a decidedly false lead.

In 1526, the first Portuguese governor of the Moluccas, Jorge de Meneses, landed on Warsai (which he called "Versija") on the northwest coast of the Bird's Head, not far from Sorong. Meneses was on his way to take up a new post at Ternate, when he was driven eastward by adverse winds. He baptized the island Ilhas dos Papuas from the Malay orang papuwah, meaning "frizzy haired man."

Search for the 'Isla de Oro'

After this initial forced landing, the more dynamic Spaniards made contact with West Papua as a result of their colonization of the Philippines. In Mexico, on the other side of the Pacific, Hernan Cortez, that prince of the conquistadores, also heard reports of this island of gold. Already in Mexico, and soon in Peru, the Spaniards had plundered a vast store of gold from the Aztecs and Incas. But this had been accumulated over generations, and after their initial euphoria, the Spaniards had to settle for the more mundane mining of silver. But if the Americas held no El Dorado, why not seek one on the other side of the Pacific?

In 1528 Cortez equipped and sent one of his lieutenants, Alvaro de Saavedra, to relieve a Spanish outpost under siege at Tidore by the Portuguese—and, not so incidentally, to discover and conquer the island of gold. While trying to return to Mexico from the Moluccas, Saavedra reached Biak, which he promptly dubbed "Isla de Oro." Spending one month among "naked black people," Saavedra made plans for further discovery and settlement even though not a trace of gold was found. He tried twice to return to Mexico along the equator but was turned back both times by contrary winds. Later, the Spaniards discovered that the only way to reach the Americas from Asia was to sail north to the latitude of Japan before catching the winds that would carry them east.

In 1537, the ever-optimistic Cortez directed Hernando de Grijalva to discover the island of gold. The expedition ended in disaster—not only did they find no gold, but the crew mutinied and murdered their captain. The disintegrating ship was abandoned in Cenderawasih Bay, and the seven survivors were captured and enslaved by the natives, becoming West Papua's first white "settlers." Years later they were ransomed by the Portuguese governor of Ternate.

In 1545, Ynigo Ortiz de Retes, another Mexican-based Spanish captain, gave New Guinea its name, while at the same time claiming it for the King of Spain. He chose the name "Nueva Guinea" either because of the people's resemblance to Africans, or because of the island was on the other side of the globe from Africa. New Guinea first appeared on Mercator's world map in 1569.

Retes' explorations dispelled the illusion of easy gold for the taking, so Spain soon lost interest in the island. (There in fact is plenty of gold in New Guinea, but the first gold rush, in Laloki, near Port Moresby, did not take place until 1878.)

In 1606, the last Spanish exploration of New Guinea took place. Luis Vaez de Torres, a Portuguese in the service of Spain (as had been Magellan), sailed the length of New Guinea's south coast and, in two places, landed and claimed possession for Spain. The annexation was ephemeral, but the strait Torres discovered still bears his name. He was first to prove that Australia was separate from New Guinea. Spain maintained the fiction of its claim to New Guinea, based on Torres' voyage, until the treaty of Utrecht in 1714 formally "relinquished" the island to Holland and England.

In an era of conflicting claims, might made right. In her push for a monopoly on the spice trade in the Moluccas, Holland muscled aside the Spaniards, the Portuguese and, for good measure, her own English allies. Nor did the Dutch neglect explorations to the east.

In 1606, the same year that Torres made his discovery, Dutch navigator Willem Jansz sailed along New Guinea's west and south coasts. Also looking for gold, he touched land at various points, including the mouth of what has since been called the Digul River.

Luigi D'Albertis ascending the Fly River in the Neva, in 1876. D'Albertis harrassed the people of the Fly by shooting off fireworks and stealing artifacts. He made few friends even among his own crew, one of whom he beat to death in a fit of anger, but he did make it 930 kilometers upriver.

In 1616, two more Dutchmen, Jacob le Maire and Willem Schouten, surveyed New Guinea's north coast, including the islands of Cenderawasih Bay. Then, in 1623, Jan Carstensz sighted snow-capped peaks while sailing along West Papua's southern coast. His reports were ridiculed in Europe, as no one believed that there could be snow so near the equator (4°S). None of the doubters bothered to check with the Spaniards about the Andes, and 200 years would pass before whites saw the snows of Kilimanjaro.

Birds of paradise and slaves

Although West Papua harbored no gold, there were nonetheless valuable trade items emanating from the island, as the Dutch belatedly discovered. Javanese, Bugis, Bandanese and Seramese traders were conducting highly profitable forays to the west coast of West Papua. In exchange for Javanese brass gongs, Chinese porcelain, cloth and metal implements, the traders received massoi bark (a medicinal prized by the Javanese, taken orally or as an oil smeared on the body to cure various illnesses, including venereal disease), an inferior quality of nutmeg (whose export irked the Dutch monopolists), trepang (dried sea cucumbers, a Chinese delicacy), tortoise-shell, pearls, bird of paradise skins and very valuable slaves.

From their bases in the nutmeg islands of Banda and clove-producing Ambon, the Dutch sent out their own trading ships but soon ran afoul of the "treachery" of the West Papuans. Not without justification, the Dutch blamed the hostile attitude of the West Papuans on the forcible capture of slaves by other traders.

Muslims from Seram Laut practiced the most effective means of control of West Papua's trade. A contemporary Dutch account states that the Seram Muslims married West Papuan wives ("in which they are not very choice," it gratuitously adds) and then instructed the children of these unions in the Muslim faith. Through these relatives, the Seram Laut men controlled West Papua's trade.

In 1660 the Dutch East India Company recognized the Sultan of Tidore's sovereignty over "the Papuan Islands in general" while signing an "internal alliance" with the sultan. The treaty stipulated that all Europeans, except the Dutch, were forbidden in the area. The Dutch also reinforced the brutal Tidorese tribute-collecting flotillas to increase the sultan's authority and wealth.

While the Dutch were quite successful in maintaining a spice monopoly in the Moluccas, West Papua was too far away for effective control. The great French explorer Compte de Bougainville initiated a round of expeditions to New Guinea in 1768, and the prince of navigators, James Cook, having made a series of historic discoveries in the Pacific, rediscovered the Torres Strait in 1770 (then had a run-in with the Asmat of the south coast). Other early sailor-geographers to visit New Guinea included William Dampier, Dumont d'Urville and two particularly bothersome (to the Dutch) Britons.

In 1775, Thomas Forrest of the British East India Company landed at Dore Bay, near present-day Manokwari. He was looking for a source of spices outside the Dutch sphere. Forrest was told that no Dutch "burghers" traded there—only Chinese, who easily obtained passes from the Sultan of Tidore and flew Dutch colors. They were trusted not to deal in spices. Forrest learned that these traders brought steel tools, weapons and porcelain to exchange for massoi, ambergris, trepang, tortoiseshell, bird of paradise skins and slaves.

Another Briton, John McCluer, stopped on the southwest coast of West Papua in 1791. His name then stuck to the gulf which he correctly mapped as almost cutting off the Bird's Head from the body (now called Berau Bay). McCluer found some nutmeg in West Papua, but of the inferior elongated variety, not the prized round type.

European outposts established

West Papua's first European settlement was an unmitigated disaster. In 1793, Captain John Hayes, an officer in the Bombay Marine (the British East India Company's navy) led an expedition to West Papua to establish an outpost. Based on an account of Forrest's brief stopover, Hayes chose Dore Bay for his settlement, dubbed New Albion. He named his little harbor Restoration Bay.

Hayes claimed the land for Britain, but his expedition was totally unofficial and was backed with private money. He found nutmeg trees, dyewood and teak, and dreamed of the area being the center of a British-run spice trade. His little community of 11 European settlers and an equal number of Indians planted massoi and nutmeg trees and hoped for the best.

They built Fort Coronation to defend themselves against local hostilities and an expected Dutch attack. The Dutch did not need to bother—after 20 months, native arrows, a lack of supplies and disease forced the evacuation of the colony. All the men who had not been killed or taken as slaves by the natives were by this time very sick. The quality of spices gathered was very disappointing, and the British East India Company expressly banned any further private attempts to settle New Guinea.

[Note: Things might have been different if the settlement hadn't taken place just as the Napoleonic War put the Dutch East Indies temporarily in British hands.]

The next European colony did not fare much better. Stung into action by false rumors of a British trading post somewhere in southwest West Papua, Pieter Merkus, the Dutch governor of the Moluccas, sent an official expedition in 1826 to claim New Guinea's south coast up to the 141st parallel. Expedition leader Lieutenant D.H. Kolff published a most interesting account of the effort.

In 1828, based on Kolff's report, a government post and colony named Merkussoord (after Merkus) was established on Triton Bay, a beautiful—but malarial—bay near present day Kaimana. Fort du Bus, built of stone, was named for the Belgian Viscount du Bus de Ghisignies, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.

The fort's garrison consisted of a lieutenant, a military doctor, 11 unhappy Europeans and 20 despondent Javanese soldiers and their families. A scowling group of 10 Javanese convict laborers were stuck with all the dirty work. Some Malay Muslims voluntarily joined the colony and Seramese trading boats called regularly. After 10 years, malaria finally forced the abandonment of the colony.

In 1848, again prompted by British activities the Dutch reinforced the Sultan of Tidore's nominal control of West Papua's north coast. An 1850 report of the sultan's yearly tribute-gathering hongi expeditions describes them as unabashed exercises in pillage, rape and abduction.

Official accounts of this period indicate that West Papua's most important exports to Ternate were trepang, tortoiseshell and massoi, with lesser quantities of cedar, ebony, sandalwood, rubber, pearls and copra leaving the island. An indeterminate number of slaves and bird of paradise skins round out the list.

The plumes were traded to Persia, Surat and the Indies, where the rich wore them in their turbans and used them to decorate their horses. Europeans who had at first ridiculed the Asian penchant for these feathers were soon obliged to buy their wives French-designed hats made from them.

Catholic missionary Father H. Tillemans poses in the West Papua highlands with a Tapiro man. West Papua's first explorers were traders and naturalists; later these were replaced by missionaries and anthropologists.

The Dutch claimed sovereignty over New Guinea early on, but were a long time in following up with direct administrative control. Finally, developments on the other side of the border prodded them into action.

In 1884, a British protectorate was proclaimed at Port Moresby in eastern New Guinea and, in the same year, the German Imperial flag was raised on the Island's northeastern coast. Fifteen years later, the Dutch finally established two permanent posts in the west, at Fakfak and Manokwari. The boundary with the British was settled in 1895, and with the Germans in 1910. It followed the 141°E line with the exception of a slight westward blip at the Fly River.

In 1902 a post was founded at Merauke as an embarrassed response to complaints that the theoretically Dutch-controlled subjects regularly crossed the 141°E meridian to bring back British-administered trophy heads. The habits of the people of southeast West Papua, in this case the fierce Marind-Anim, were responsible for the Dutch names given to two rivers in the area: Moordenaar (Murderer) and Doodslager (Slaughterer).