Clothing and Ornaments.—The Papuan's chief home-made ornaments are necklaces, armlets and ear-rings of shells, teeth or fibre, and cassowary, cockatoo, or bird of paradise feathers—the last two, or a flower, are worn through the septum of the nose. With his head encircled by a coronet of dogs' teeth, and covered with a network cap or piece of bark-cloth, the septum of the nose transfixed by a pencil of bone or shell, and perhaps a shell or fibre armlet or two, the Papuan is in complete everyday attire. On festal occasions he decks his well-forked-out and dyed hair with feathers and flowers, and sticks others in his ear-lobe holes and under his armlets; while a warrior will have ovula shells and various bones of his victims dangling from ringlets of his hair, or fixed to his armbands or girdle. The Papuan comb is a long piece of bamboo split at one end into prongs, while the other projects beyond the forehead sometimes two feet or more, and into it are stuck the bright feathers of parrots and other birds. The fairer tribes at the east end tattoo. Men are not tattooed till they have killed some one. Raised cicatrices usually take the place of tattooing with the darker races.
The Papuans build excellent canoes and other boats, and in some districts there are professional boat-builders of great skill, though in others this is now a lost art. These boats are either plain dug-outs, with or without outriggers, or regularly built by planks tightly laced and well caulked to an excavated keel. The "lakatoi" is composed of several capacious dug-outs, each nearly 5o ft. long, which are strongly lashed together to a width of some 24 ft., decked and fitted with two masts, each carrying a huge mat sail picturesquely fashioned. On the deck high crates are built for the reception of pottery for conveyance annually to the Fly River district to exchange for sago.
Papuans use Pan-pipes, a Jew's harp of the Papuans' own fabri cation, and the flute; on occasions of ceremony the drum only is used—this instrument being always open at one end and tapped by the fingers. To the accompaniment of the drum, dancing almost invariably goes, but rarely singing. All sorts of jingling sounds also are music to the ear, especially the clattering in time of strings of beans in their dry shells.
Nearly all Papuan houses are built on piles, and this not only on the coast but on the hillsides. In the north, the east and south west of the island immense communal houses (morong) are met with. Some of these are between 500 and 700 ft. in length, with a rounded, boat-shaped roof thatched with palm-branches, and looking inside, when undivided, like dark tunnels. In some dis tricts the natives live together in one of these giant structures, which are divided into compartments. As a rule elsewhere each family has its independent dwelling. On the north coast the houses are not built on piles ; the walls, of bamboo or palm branches, are very low, and the projecting roof nearly reaches the ground; a barrier at the entrance keeps out pigs and dogs. A sort of table or bench stands outside, used by the men only, for meals and for the subsequent siesta. In east New Guinea sometimes the houses
are two-storeyed, the lower part being used for stores. The ordinary house is 6o to 7o ft. long, with a passage down the centre, and stands on a platform or veranda raised on piles, with the ridge-pole projecting considerably at the gables so that the roof may cover it at each end. Inland villages are often situated on hills or on top of steep-faced rocks as difficult of access as possible, whence a clear view all round can be had, or the vil lage is protected by high palisades and by fighting platforms on trees commanding its approaches. The "dobbos" are tree houses, built in high trees. On the north-east coast many of the villages are tastefully kept, their whole area being clean swept, nicely sanded, and planted with ornamental shrubs, and have in their centre little square palaver places laid with flat stones, each with an erect stone pillar as a back-rest. Excellent suspension bridges span some of the larger rivers.
Weapons and Tools.—Papuan weapons are the bow and arrow (in the Fly River region, the north and north-east coasts) ; a knife of a sharp segment of bamboo ; a shafted stone club— rayed, disc-shaped or ball-headed (in use all over the island); spears of various forms, pointed and barbed; the spear-thrower (on the Finsch coast) ; and hardwood clubs and shields, widely differing in pattern and ornamentation with the district of their manufacture. The Papuan bow is rather short, the arrows barbed and tipped with cassowary or human bone. The Papuans were mostly ignorant of iron, but work skilfully with axes of stone or tridacna shell and bone chisels, cutting down trees 20 in. in diameter. Two men working on a tree trunk, one making a cut with the adze lengthwise and the other chopping off the piece across, will soon hollow out a large canoe. Every man has a stone axe, each village generally owning a large one. Their knives are of bamboo hardened by fire. In digging they use the pointed stick. In British New Guinea alone is the man-catcher (a rattan loop at the end of a handle with a pith spike projecting into it) met with. For war the men smear themselves in grotesque fashion with lime or ochres, and in some parts hold in their teeth against the chin a face-like mask, supposed to strike terror into the foe, against whom they advance warily (if not timidly), yelling and blowing their war-trumpets. The war canoe (which is a long, narrow dug-out outrigger, capable of holding 28 men) is only a transport, for they never fight in it. The conch-shell is the trumpet of alarm and call to arms.
See B. Hagen, Unter den Papuas (Wiesbaden, 1899) ; A. B. Meyer and R. Parkinson, Album von Papila Typen (Dresden, 1894) ; F. S. A. de Clercq, Ethnographische Beschrifving van de West-en Noordkust van N.N.G. (Leyden, 1893) ; A. C. Haddon, Decorative Art of British New Guinea (1894) ; Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological expe dition to the Torres Straits (1904) ; Annual Reports on Papua (19a0 21) ; W. E. Armstrong, Rossel Island (1928) ; G. Laudtman, Papuans of Kuoni.