New Guinea

Social Organization.

Although the family (q.v.) is an important unit in the social structure of all New Guinea peoples, a wider group, the clan (q.v.), seems in general to be more funda mental. Moreover, family relationships are not usually distin guished by name from many more remote relationships, and relationship terms used between persons who can trace genea logical relationship are also used in a systematic way between persons who are unable to trace any genealogical connection. This system, known as the classificatory system, takes a variety of forms in New Guinea, and social organization is unintelligible without an understanding of this system. Within the clan the classificatory system establishes a comparatively small number of relationships, and in general members of the same generation within a clan address one another as brothers and sisters, and the tie uniting members of one clan will be found to be similar to that uniting brothers and sisters by one father or mother. Both matrilineal clans (membership of which is determined by descent through the mother), and patrilineal clans (membership of which is determined by descent through the father), are found in New Guinea. The principal matrilineal area is the Massim district of Papua, and in this area the clans are totemic. (See ToTEmism.) Each clan is associated with four linked totems, bird, plant, fish and snake, and the bird-totem is not eaten by members of the clan. A person will also avoid the bird-totem of his father's clan, the totems of which are necessarily different, since the rule of clan-exogamy (marrying out of the clan) is strictly observed. Amongst the patrilineal Papuans of the west, the clan seems to become of rather less importance, and totemism occurs only in an attenuated form in the Gulf region.

In the east the clan figures as the important unit in the rituals of marriage and death, and the series of feasts more or less con nected with these events, which play a dominant part in the life of the Massim. Reciprocal exchanges of pigs and objects of value between persons more or less representative of clans is an impor tant part of all such activities, as in the Big Feast which extends from the Massim as far as the Mafulu. This reciprocity between clans was also shown in warfare, cannibalism being a ceremonial act of revenge on the part of one clan for the death of one of its members by another clan.

In the social organization of the Papuans of the west, as well as the Papuans of the northern division, and the Jabim, Bukaua, Tami islanders and others in the territory of New Guinea, the outstanding feature is the existence of tribal initiation-ceremonies. The Elema tribes commence this initiation of the males at about the age of eight, when the boy is first taken into the club-house of the village and shown the bullroarer, the noise of which has previously been a mystery to him. Only after two or three years is his initiation complete, and the process involves not only various ordeals and instruction for the initiates, but a great deal of ceremonial in which the whole of the village, and maybe other villages, are involved. In other initiation rites the swallowing of novices by a monster and subsequent resurrection is prominent, this occurring both amongst the extreme western tribes of Papua and in the Huon peninsular district of the territory of New Guinea.

Religion.

A cult of the dead occurs throughout New Guinea, and only rarely is a cult of gods associated with it. The Big Feast of eastern Papua is to a large extent a collective celebration of the dead, though in the Soi feast of the Massim a being is continually addressed, who is not strictly an ancestor, and is sup posed to have performed supernatural feats in olden times, and to have introduced the pig into New Guinea. This being is related to a number of other superhuman beings who lived in the past, but they can hardly be regarded as objects of a religious cult. On Rossel island, on the other hand, at the extreme east of the Massim area, we find an elaborate god-cult and constant care of the gods, who control the processes of nature by a priesthood.

The religion of the Elema tribes in the west of Papua may be described as an ancestor-cult, the name for ancestor being the same as that for all sacred objects; but some of these ancestors are regarded as deities who temporarily assumed a human form, giving birth to various tribes.

That death results from sorcery or is brought about by ghosts is probably a universal belief in New Guinea. The magic employed by sorcerers for this end is usually of the sympathetic type, some part of the victim being utilized by the sorcerer, or some imitative action being made to the accompaniment of a spell. Divination is also common, and where it is believed that ghosts may cause sickness divination is used to discover whether a ghost or sorcerer is responsible. On Rossel island an alternative cause of death is the desecration of the sacred ground of a god. (W. E. A.) Exploration.—Although New Guinea may have been seen by Antonio d'Abreu in 1511, its first visitor was apparently Dom Jorge de Meneses, who in 1526 took shelter at "Isla de Versija," either Warsia on the north coast, or Waigiu Island. Two years later Alvaro de Saavedra discovered "Isla de Oro," probably one of the Schouten Islands, and sailed along the north coast. The name "Nova Guinea" is due to Ynigo Ortiz de Retez (or Rotha) who landed on the north coast in 1546, and thought the natives resembled those of West Africa. The chart of Ortelius (1580) shows "Nova Guinea" as an island seventeen years before the fact was proved by Luis Vas de Torres sailing through the straits now bearing his name.

Dutch navigators, Willem Jansz (1605), Jacques le Maire and Willem Schouten (1616), Jan Carstensz (1623), Gerrit Pool (1636), Abel Tasman and others, appeared after the conquest of the Moluccas. In 1700 William Dampier sailed along the north ern coast, and Philip Carteret (1767) and L. A. de Bougainville explored the islands. James Cook re-discovered Torres Straits, and landed in New Guinea near Prince Frederick Henry Island (1770). Thomas Forrest (1774) wrote an interesting account of the island (Voyage, 1780). Although parts of the coast were surveyed by La Perouse (1788), John MacCluer (179o), D'Entre casteaux (1793, Voyage by Rossel), and also by Duperrey (1823), D. H. Kolff (1826), and Dumont d'Urville (1828), very little knowledge was gained of the country or people.