Читать книгу The Mafulu: Mountain People of British New Guinea - Robert Wood Williamson - Страница 14

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Tattooing and body-scarring are not practised by either men or women among the Mafulu.

Depilation. When a young man’s beard begins to grow, the hairs of the beard and moustache and eye-brows are extracted. No other depilation is practised by men, and none whatever by women; and none of them shave any part of the body. The depilation is effected with two fibre threads twisted round each other, the hair to be extracted being inserted between the threads. Anyone can do this, and there is no ceremony connected with it.

Nose-piercing. The septa of the noses of both men and women are pierced at or after the age of 15 or 18, and either before or after marriage. This is done for men by men, and for women by women. There is no special person whose duty it is to do it, but he or she must be one who knows the incantations which are required. There is no restriction as to diet or otherwise placed upon the operator prior to the operation, but there is a day’s food restriction imposed upon the person whose nose is to be pierced.

Two instruments are used for the operation, one being a piercing instrument made of pig bone and sharpened, and the other being a small wooden plug, also sharpened. The operator first visibly, but silently, engages in two incantations, during the former of which he holds up the thumb and first finger of his right hand, and during the latter of which he holds up the two instruments. He then with the thumb and first finger of his right hand holds the septum of the nose of the person to be operated upon, whom I will call the “patient,” and with the left hand pierces the septum with the bone instrument. He next inserts the wooden plug into the hole, so as to make it larger, and leaves the plug there. Then he takes a blade of grass, which he also inserts through the hole, by the side of the plug, and, holding the grass by the two ends, he makes it rotate round and round the plug. This is a painful process, which frequently causes tears and cries from the patient. He then probably goes through the same process with various other patients, as it is the custom to operate on several persons at the same time.

The patients are then all lodged in houses built for the purpose, one house being for men and one for women. These are not houses which are kept permanently standing, but are specially built on each occasion on which the nose-boring operation is going to be performed. A great swelling of the patients’ noses develops, and this spreads more or less over their faces. The patients are confined in the special houses until the holes in their noses are large enough and the wounds are healed. During this confinement each patient has himself to do what is requisite to further enlarge the hole by the insertion into it from time to time of pieces of wood and by putting in rolled up leaves and pushing pieces of wood inside these leaves. During all this period he is not allowed to come out of the house, at all events not so as to be seen, and his diet is confined to sweet potato, cooked in a certain way. The cooking for all the patients, men and women, is done by the woman nose-piercing operator, assisted by other women. The potatoes are wrapped up in leaves (usually banana), each potato being generally wrapped up separately in one or more leaves; and, when so wrapped up, they are cooked in red-hot ashes, and then taken to the houses where the patients are.

When the hole in any patient’s nose has reached the requisite size, and the wound is healed, he inserts a large croton leaf9 into the hole; he may then come out and return to his own house, retaining the croton leaf in his nose. He must next occupy himself in searching for a black non-poisonous snake about 12 or 18 inches long, which is commonly found in the grass. I cannot say what snake this is, but I am advised that it is probably Tropidonotus mairii. Its native name is fal’ ul’ obe, which means “germ of the ground.” Until he finds this snake he must keep the croton leaf in his nose, and is still under the same restriction as to food, which is cooked in the same way and by the same persons as before. On finding the snake, he secures it alive, removes the croton leaf from the hole in his nose, and inserts into it the tail end of the living snake; then, holding the head of the snake in one of his hands, and the tail in the other, he draws the snake slowly through the hole, until its head is close to the hole. He then lets the head drop from his hand, and with a quick movement of the other hand draws it through the nose, and throws the snake, still living, away.10 This completes the nose-piercing; but there still rests upon the patient the duty of going to the river, and there catching an eel, which he gives to the people who have been feeding him during his illness.

The nose-piercing is generally done at one of the big feasts; and, as these are rare in any one village, you usually find in the villages many fully-grown people whose noses have not been pierced; though as to this I may say that nose-piercing is more generally indulged in by chiefs and important people and their families than by the village rank and file. It commonly happens, however, that a good many people have to be done when the occasion arises. Each person to be operated upon has to provide a domestic pig for the big feast. I have been unable to discover the origin and meaning of the nose-piercing ceremony.11

Ear-piercing is done to both men and women, generally when quite young, say at seven or twelve years of age. Both the lower and the upper lobes are pierced, sometimes only one or the other, and sometimes both; but the lower lobe is the one more commonly pierced. They can do it themselves, or can get someone else to do it. There is no ceremony. The piercing is done with the thorn of a tree, and the hole is afterwards gradually widened by the insertion of small pieces of wood. They never make large holes, or enlarge them greatly afterwards, as the holes are only used for the hanging of pendants, and not for the insertion of discs. After the piercing the patient must, until the wound is healed, abstain from all food except sweet potato; but there is no restriction as to the way in which this food is to be cooked, or the person who is to cook it. There is as regards ear-piercing no difference between the case of chiefs’ children and those of other people.

Body-staining is usual with both men and women, who do it for themselves, or get others to help them. There is no ceremony in connection with it. The colours generally adopted are red, greyish-yellow and black. The red stain is procured from an earth, which is obtained from the low countries; but they themselves also have an earth which is used, and produces a more bronzy red. The yellow stain is also got from an earth. All these coloured earths are worked into a paste with water, or with animal fat, if they can get it. I think they also get a red stain from the fruit of a species of Pandanus; but I am not quite clear as to this. The black stain is obtained from crushed vegetable ashes mixed with fat or water. The staining of the face is usually of a simple character. It may cover the whole face all in one colour or in different colours, and often one side of the face is stained one colour, and the other side another colour. They also make stripes and spots or either of them of any colour or colours on any part of the face. The red colour (I think especially that obtained from the Pandanus fruit) is also often applied in staining the whole body, this being especially done for dances and visiting; though a young dandy will often do it at other times. The black is the symbol of mourning, and will be referred to hereafter.

Hairdressing may be conveniently dealt with here. The Mafulu hairdressing is quite simple and rough, very different from the big, spreading, elaborately prepared and carefully combed mops of Mekeo. This is a factor which a traveller in this part of New Guinea may well bear in mind in connection with his impedimenta, as he has no difficulty in getting the Kuni and Mafulu people to carry packages on their heads, which the Mekeo folk are unwilling to do.

The modes in which the men dress their hair, so far as I was able to notice, may be roughly divided into the following categories:—(a) A simple crop of hair either cut quite close or allowed to grow fairly long, or anything between these two, but not dressed in any way, and probably uncombed, unkempt and untidy. This is the commonest form. (b) The same as (a), but with a band round the hair, separating the upper part of it from the lower, and giving the former a somewhat chignon-like appearance, (c) The hair done up all over the head in three-stranded plaits a few inches long, and about an eighth of an inch thick, having the appearance of short thick pieces of string, (d) The top of the head undressed, but the sides, and sometimes the back, of the head done up in plaits like (c). (e) A manufactured long shaped fringe of hair, human, but not the hair of the wearer (Plate 20, Fig. 3), is often worn over the forehead, just under the wearer’s own hair, so as to form, as it were, a part of it, pieces of string being attached to the ends of the fringe and passed round the back of the head, where they are tied. These fringes are made by tying a series of little bunches of hair close to one another along the double string, which forms the base of the fringe. Specimens examined by me were about 12 inches long and 1¼ inches wide (this width being the length of the bunches of hair), and contained about twenty bunches. It is usual to have two or three of these strings of bunches of hair tied together at the ends, thus making one broad fringe. These fringes are often worn in connection with styles (c) and (d) of hairdressing; but I never noticed them in association with (a) and (b).

I was told that men who have become bald sometimes wear complete artificial wigs, though I never saw an example of this.

The hairdressing of the women seemed to be similar to that of the men, except that I never saw the chignon-producing band, that they do not wear fringes, and that the entire or partial plaiting of the hair is more frequently adopted by them than it is by the men. I do not know whether the women ever indulge in entire wigs.

Method (a) is seen in many of the plates. Method (b) is illustrated, though not very well, in Plate 9 (the fourth and fifth man from the left) and in Plate 21 (the young man to the left, behind). Method (c) is adopted by four of the women in the frontispiece, by some of the women in Plate 16, by the woman in Plate 17, and by the little girl in Plates 22 and 23. Method (d) is well illustrated by the second woman from the right in the frontispiece.

The cutting of the hair of both men and women is effected with sharp pieces of stone of the sort used for making adze blades, or with sharp pieces of bamboo or shell.

Infant deformation is not practised in any form by the Mafulu people; nor do they circumcise their children.