PAPUANS (Malay papiiwah or puwah-puwah, "frizzled," "woolly-haired," in reference to their characteristic hair-dressing), the name given to the people of New Guinea and the other islands of Melanesia. The pure Papuan is found in most parts of New Guinea and is an element in Melanesia. Papuan elements formerly existed in Australia, and the Tasmanian race may be akin to the Papuan. The typical Papuan is woolly haired, long headed, dark skinned, broad nosed. The nose is often prominent and convex.
Their culture is very diverse, and in parts has been affected by contact with other peoples. Modern research (Armstrong and Laudtman) has added much to our knowledge of the Papuans, and further investigations are being undertaken from Australia, which controls the area by mandate.
Custom regulates the duties in life, but where cases of doubt or difficulty arise, the old men—with more of social importance and individuality—discuss and decide the issue. Here and there are chiefs, or head men, and patrilineal succession is found in certain districts. The exogamic clans are local groups, totemic, and generally patrilineal, though kinship systems are "classifactory." Marriages are often regulated more by kinship, reckoned by genealogical methods, than by clanship. Exchange marriages are frequent. In Rossel Island—a mixed culture—a class system in decay was found by Armstrong. Once naked and unashamed, the people often suffer now from extreme prudishness. Polygamy was once prevalent. The initia tion rites included lessons in morals. Pre nuptial chastity was rare. Individual own ership of land was recognized. Children generally divided their father's property equally, but bequests (verbal) were re spected.
Magical practices were common, but the training of a magician was unpleasant and rigorous, the methods employed being of the ordinary type. (See MAGIC : PRIMI TIVE.) Ceremonies—of a magico-religious nature—were performed in connection with fishing and cultivation, close connec tion between sexual activity and agricul tural success finding expression in rites of a peculiar nature.
There is a belief in a class of powerful beings, most of which are mischievous but stupid, though some are good. Beliefs are
vague. That of transmigration into animals has been recorded. Another is that the soul leaves the body at death and goes to an unknown island in the west. Some return and even marry mortals. Various forms of divination were employed. Spirits appeared in dreams ; hero cults are recorded and of the Western Islands it is stated that they "had no deities or conception of a Supreme God." Ancestors are believed to control the food supply, and if customs are broken, withhold their favour.
Yams, taro and sweet potatoes constitute in some districts the main food of the people, while in others sago is the staple diet. Forest fruits and vegetables are also eaten. Maize and rice—which are not indigenous—are eagerly sought after. The Papuan varies his vegetable diet with the flesh of the wild pig, wallabi and other small animals, which are hunted with dogs. Birds are snared or limed. Fish abound at many parts of the coast, and are taken by lines, or speared at night by torch-light, or netted, or a river is dammed and the fish stupefied with the root of a milletia. Turtle and dugong are caught. The kima, a great mussel weighing (without shell) 20 to 3o lb., and other shell fish, are eaten, as are also dogs, flying foxes, lizards, beetles and all kinds of insects. Food is cooked in various ways. Cooking-pots, made at various parts of the coast, form one of the great exchanges for sago ; but where such vessels do not reach, food is cooked by the women on the embers, done up in leaves, or in holes in the ground over heated stones. The sexes eat apart. In the interior salt is difficult to get, and sea-water, which is carried inland in hollow bamboos, is used in cooking in place of it. Salt, too, is obtained from the ashes of wood saturated by sea-water. In the Fly River region, kava, prepared from Piper methysticum, is drunk without any of the ceremonial importance associated with it in Polynesia. As a rule the Papuans have no intoxicating drink and do not know the art of fermenting palm-sap or cane-juice. Tobacco is indigenous in some parts, and is smoked everywhere, except on the north-east coast and on the islands.