Our first visit has turned out so well and the natives seem so friendly that there seems to be no reason why we should not move camp so as to be near them and thus save a long hike through the jungle every time we wish to see them. A walk through the jungle is the occasion of a fight with mosquitos, particularly at this time of year, February, which is the beginning of the rainy season. With the assistance of several of the younger men we transfer our belongings from the beach to the kampong and settle down for a long visit. This kampong is as good as any to study the natives in and the inhabitants seem fairly trustworthy.
Our tent is placed, this time, between two of the large family shacks, and after a day or two 98we begin to feel quite at home. The natives do not interfere with us, and as we are careful not to impose upon them, all is well. The first night of our stay in the kampong is one of sadness for the natives, we find, for one of their very old men has passed away in its course. He has been ailing a long time, they tell us, and it has surprised them all that he should last so long. They are very much like civilized people in the affection they appear to feel for any sick or ailing member of their immediate family.
We stumble upon a Kia Kia mourning party quite unexpectedly. When one of these people dies the body is placed in a sitting posture in the spot where death overtook him, if that is in the house, and his nearest relatives decorate him with fresh paint and feathers. There is no wailing while the body is kept in the house. One or two members of his family hold a vigil beside him and fan the flies away, while others go to the burial ground to prepare the grave. This is usually about six feet deep, but as the body must be placed within it seated there is a shelf built 99two feet from the bottom on which the deceased rests. When the grave is ready—and its preparation may consume three or four days—the body is transferred to it with much solemnity. The grave is not filled with earth, but a framework covered with a heavy thatch of palm-leaves is placed over the dead and the earth is piled to a depth of two feet on that. As the body is lowered into the grave the relatives begin a quavering chant and all present seem to feel deeply the loss of their kinsman.
They surround their burial places with strong fences, for if any one were to walk across a grave he must inevitably break through its thin, ill-supported top, which would be disconcerting, to say the least. One of our neighbor’s pigs, an exceptionally large and heavy one, one day wanders into the cemetery and, judging from the howl of wrath that ensues, raises havoc in the graveyard. At any rate, when the noise has quieted down, the pig is dead, and for some reason it is buried in the grave it has just despoiled.
100The death of the old man casts a gloom over the entire kampong and for a few days we leave the inhabitants to their own devices. The few kodak pictures we have snapped aroused their resentment to such an extent that we have decided discretion to be the better part of destitution. We fill diaries, these days, with notes of happenings observed from a discreet distance.
One of the things that comes to our notice is the way the women gather cocoanuts. When the family larder is low, one of the men will call the attention of one of the women to the fact and she dutifully prepares to replenish the stock. Her preparations are interesting. It is a considerable distance straight up in the air to the crown of a full-bearing cocoanut-palm, and the nuts cluster well up in the lower fronds about forty feet from the ground. The tapering trunk offers a good grip for the legs and one could climb it easily by simply clasping the legs about it after the fashion of our own boyhood, but the Kia Kia has a method all his own.
The native climbs a cocoanut-palm in a series of humps and stretches, like a giant inch-worm
Making fire. A piece of hard wood is rotated by hand while in contact with a softer piece
101When about to ascend the trunk, the woman first gathers a bunch of long grass which she twists into a rope and ties snugly about her ankles. This done, the feet are placed against the trunk of the palm, with the soles gripping it, while the grass binding on the ankles serves as the fulcrum of a lever of which the lower leg forms the long end. The legs are bowed outward so that with set muscles a surprising grip is obtained. With the feet in this position, the arms grasp the trunk and lift the body upward six or eight inches and the legs are drawn up to a higher position. In this manner the native proceeds upward like a great inch-worm, in a series of humps and stretches. When the top is reached one hand only is clasped around the trunk, while the other twists the nuts off their stems. This is done by merely grasping the lower surface of the nut and rotating it until the fibers of the stem are broken. The nut is then allowed to drop to the ground, where it lands with a thud and a bounce that make one shudder at the thought of what it might do were it to land squarely upon one’s head. When a sufficient 102number of ripe nuts are gathered, the woman descends the trunk much as she climbed upward, though this seems to be a more arduous undertaking. Apparently, however, this is due to fatigue rather than to the actual difficulty of climbing down, for these people have no stamina and seem to tire quickly.
The cocoanut supplies both food and drink to the Kia Kia. True, he eats many other things, but the flesh of this fruit is the great staple, the others being sago cake, surf-fish, wild pig, bush kangaroo, and “long pig” (human flesh), the use of each being in ratio to the order named. When a Kia Kia is thirsty he goes to the pile of nuts beside the house and selects one that appeals to him, walks to a shady place, and leisurely sits down. He places the nut between his feet, which are drawn well against the body, and with a deft blow of his stone war-club breaks the thick husk at the small end of the nut. This he grips in his teeth and peels off, holding the nut between his palms, with his elbows raised. After the husk is removed one blow of the club opens the 103end of the nut and the cool water is attainable.
The Kia Kias do not drink. That is, they do not drink in the sense that we use the term. When a Kia Kia desires water, he wants it in sufficient volume to wet his throat and stomach at one and the same instant, so he simply throws back his head, opens his gullet, and without swallowing lets the fluid run in and down. It goes down in one continuous stream. Nowhere in the world can one see a similar operation. It is absolutely unique and all Kia Kias have the same drinking—let us call it technique.
Their sago is prepared in a simple manner. The palm from which the starch is derived is indigenous to their jungles, and we are told that one large trunk of, say, two-foot thickness and twenty-foot length will supply food for four persons for a year. When sago is to be prepared a palm is felled and the pithy center is scraped from it, macerated with pestles, and soaked in water. The water dissolves the starch content and, when evaporated, leaves the starch ready for immediate consumption.
104The moist starch is molded into cakes which are dried bone-dry, and in this form it seems to keep indefinitely. In preparation for eating, the cake is simply softened with water and toasted over a fire until cooked sufficiently to suit the individual taste. With the exception of the surf-fish, the other articles of Kia Kia diet are seldom eaten except on some special occasion, as at a feast. The surf-fish are gathered with each full tide, but of course only the natives on the sea-coast get these. They are always cooked, never eaten raw. In fact, the Kia Kias eat everything but cocoanut cooked, and even cook that sometimes.
The heads of enemies, both animal and human, are kept as trophies denoting the prowess of the hunter or warrior. Boar tusks are made into armlets, and the greatness of a hunter is easily determined by the number of these that adorn his arms. In the case of a human enemy the head is severed from the body and smoked after the brains have been removed. It is kept carefully, within the house of the man who collected 105it, until the ravages of time and multitudinous insects have removed the last remaining traces of dried flesh from it, and it then becomes a mural decoration for the house or graces the doorway of the shack. In the case of the human enemy the body is always eaten; that is, when the feast can be compassed with no great danger of news of the orgy coming to the ears of the punishing white men who rule the country. These feasts are becoming increasingly infrequent, but cannibalism still exists and perhaps a dozen cases yearly are brought to the attention of the authorities. For each of the cases that come to the notice of the Assistant in Merauke there are many that never come to light, for the natives have held them in great secrecy of late.
The skulls of deceased foemen sometimes litter up the place to such an extent that the children play with them as with toys, and one little black rascal—the son of the chief, by the way—seems to take a particular delight in hearing his mother describe the affrays in which his father collected them. We are so fortunate as 106to get a snap-shot of her entertaining the youngster in this way, and later secure one of the little shaver trying to pile them one upon the other, like one of our kiddies at play with building-blocks. He is so engrossed in his attempt to balance them that he fails to notice that we are taking his picture.
As the savages have no matches, the............