Some native dances and queer costumes—Novel blackmailing methods—Woman’s vanity and a censured dance.
For some reason, unknown to the ordinary layman, the Church has taken a dislike to nearly all forms of savage dancing, and many missionaries, brave and good fellows though they be, have seen evil in these performances where other less cultivated men have seen nothing that suggests immorality. But often what appears immoral to the Western mind is quite free from any such suggestion to the mind of the savage. I do not say that these natives are paragons of virtue and morality, but in deference to them it is only fair to say that they stick to their code of morals, though it is not ours and may seem rather lax to us.
A KAIVAKUKU, RORO TRIBE, CENTRAL DIVISION, BRITISH NEW GUINEA
Owing no doubt to the missionaries disliking certain dances, the natives are now very shy about permitting a white man to witness them; some, however, can still be seen, and these I will try {49} to describe. There are several different dances in New Guinea, all distinct in their movements, in the costumes worn at them, and the music accompanying them; there are the war dances, the marriage dances, the fishing, festival and agricultural dances, and for all these the costumes vary, some of them being unique, for there is no island in the world which can rival its assortment of ceremonial regalia. In some of the dances the women are most strangely attired, whilst in others the grotesque costumes of the men are startling.
When the fish dance, or any other semi-religious dance is to be held the men wear masks, for the making of which they are famous, and then the performance is indeed weird. In the Mekko district, south-east of Port Moresby, most elaborate masks of hideous design cover the heads of the dancers, whilst their bodies are concealed by capes which are nearly two feet thick and cover the wearer completely, leaving only the lower part of the legs visible, and these, in contrast to the bulk above, look strangely thin and out of place. The heat and weight of these costumes must be enormous, but the natives would undergo any discomfort rather than be without them.
The masks, which vary in shape and size, are {50} generally not shorter than three or four feet, and occasionally they run to six or seven. They are held in position on the man’s head by a cross-bar which he grips between his teeth, and they are constructed on canework frames, and shaped like an enormous hock bottle. A thin bark covering is stretched over the frame, which is then completely smeared with white lime, and a hideous face is generally worked or painted on the front of it, with the mouth and eyes enormously big and distorted. When one considers that these masks and their attendant costumes are also used for blackmailing dances their thorough ugliness is warranted.
Blackmailing is a favourite pastime, and when they are intent on it they don their ugliest masks and steal round to the hut of the man or woman from whom they wish to extort money, or frighten, and in the dim moonlight begin a weird and unearthly dance accompanied by horrible noises, which they continue until the desired effect has been obtained, and the man is frightened out of his wits and ready to agree to his assailant’s proposals. This dance is closely allied to the dook-dook dance of New Britain. In New Guinea when the mask and cape are worn the steps of the dance are slow, and the movements are supposed to be majestic and {51} awe-inspiring, making the performances more like stately processions than dances. One of the most interesting of these is the festival dance for a successful agricultural season. It is considered a kind of prayer to the gods of agriculture, and it generally takes place once a year and is conducted by different tribes on each anniversary.
HARVEST DANCE, NEW GUINEA
When the yams and bananas are ripe, the natives hold a celebration, in which as a rule men dance in close formation with the girls on the flanks. Occasionally a girl edges her way in and takes the arm of a man, as is seen in the illustration, where the red head-dresses are those of women. The white plumes of the men denote that they have slain an enemy in single combat. The streamers down the back of the man on the left are those of his head fillet. Behind the dancers are the bananas suspended on a scaffold. The celebration takes place in the summer.
The dancing ground having been picked, the villagers squat by their huts, or form a large ring on the ground, and then when all is ready a troop of men strangely dressed, each carrying his drum, comes prancing on to the ground.
From the back of their heads long waving strings, made of leaves, are hung, flying out behind them and touching the ground. Their woolly hair is gaily festooned with bright-coloured feathers, white and red, pure white, pure red, and reddish brown and green; and above these there is often a brilliant red cockade which stands straight up.
Armlets adorn their arms, and a narrow belt with a scanty attachment suffices for the covering of the lower part of their bodies. Long streamers of palm leaves hang, in some cases, from both armlets and leglets. Their drums are also gaily decorated with strings and streamers.
On arrival on the ground they form up in rows {52} and begin a peculiar crouching movement by bending their knees and rising on toe and heel, to the accompaniment of a monotonous dull thumping on the drums. Every now and then a different beat is sounded, and instantly the men change their positions. Whilst this peculiar shuffling movement is going on a crowd of girls appears and begin to dance in and out among the men, and then vanish again almost as quickly as they appeared. Their costumes are equally quaint, the chief adornment being a mat hung round their waists and open on one side. The remaining portions of their bodies are nude, with the exception of necklaces and curious feather adornments on their heads.
Fine creatures some of them are, and as they prance about in striking attitudes, dodging in and out of the rows of men, swaying their skirts backwards and forwards, they present a fascinating picture and, as they warm to the dance, the continued shuffling movements of the men, the swirling of the women’s skirts, their swaying bodies, and glimpses of elaborately tattooed legs, and the measured beating of the drums, the only sound that breaks the silence, a giddiness steals over the spectators and a weird feeling of monotony takes hold of them.
READY FOR THE DUBU DANCE
{53}
Then suddenly the whole scene will change, the girls, who a few seconds before were swirling round the men, vanish, the drumming ceases, the long rows are broken up, and the men too disappear, leaving only the crowd of eager spectators who remain gazing at nothing.
A wonder comes into one’s mind if it is all a dream, for throughout the whole dance no sound has escaped the performers, and the silence and the half-darkness produce a scene of peculiar uncanniness. But soon all is movement again and other performances have to be gone through. New figures are introduced as in our round dances, but there seem to be no set places for the girls; they appear and dance independently in and out of the rows of men as if to show off their fine figures, their beautiful skins, and bewitching ways, some dancing and acting more or less demurely, whilst others throw themselves about with an abandonment and coyness that it would take a most practised Western flirt to excel.
Every attitude and every movement seem to be accompanied by an action of the apron or skirt, which is swerving with a perfect rhythm backwards and forwards, or from side to side. But this is not the women’s dance, they are merely adjuncts to the performance and use their admission to it more for {54} love-making than anything else. Their real dance comes later when they mount the Dubu, and this is the dance so strongly objected to by the missionaries, but, strange to say, the natives themselves seem to take very little interest in it; they call it “the dance belong women”; and were it such an immoral proceeding, surely the men would crowd to see it.
The ordinary Dubu is a rough platform about four feet high and built upon stout piles. More elaborate ones are to be seen in some districts, and these are decorated with weird designs and strange carvings, with flanges reaching out right and left and long beams carved like gigantic bullocks’ horns and decorated with gaudy tassels that add a quaintness to them; they stand some ten feet off the ground, whilst others have posts rising fifteen feet above the ground and ending in a half-moon design, but these bigger ones are not used for the girls to dance on, but are kept for ceremonial purposes.
THE DUBU AT RIGO, BRITISH NEW GUINEA
A score of girls, dressed up to the nines in their twine skirts (reaching about as far down as a Parisian ballet girl’s dancing costume) and completely tattooed, suddenly begin prancing through the village, swinging in their hands a long string at the end of which is a ball. By practised movements {55} they make it curve in grotesque shapes around their bodies, and all the time this is going on they are swinging their skirts backwards and forwards by a peculiar movement of their bodies, from their waists. This extraordinary performance of pirouetting maidens goes on for some time to the accompaniment of drums. Then, at a given signal, they mount the Dubu and discard their skirts, and stand unadorned before the spectators who, as I said before, are nearly all women. Then married women anoint them, whilst others bring them baskets of areca nuts and yams. The yams they cut up in pieces, and whilst doing so go through graceful movements which display their figures to the best advantage. Then suddenly, at another given signal, they start pelting the onlookers with the nuts, which are scrambled for by the women amid laughter and screams of delight; they are like children at a fair, and almost as simple. When all the nuts are finished the girls slip on their skirts and jump down, and so ends this, the most terrible dance of the modest maids of Papua. There is another famous dance which takes place on the departure of the Lakatois for the annual trading expedition up the Gulf.
Professor Haddon, in his book the Head Hunters, relates an amusing thing he saw at Veifaa, {56} of which this dress incident reminds me. He says that though the natives in this place are never seen in any but native costume, the missionaries have insisted on the women wearing calico gowns whilst attending divine service, and it was an amusing sight, he continues, to see the girls and women arriving at the church, for—on entering the courtyard—they pulled these European costumes over their half-nude bodies; but it was still more comic to see the way they pulled themselves out of them directly the service was over. He adds, that in spite of their scant clothes and the above peculiarity, the women are extremely modest.
Tattooing cannot be said to be as general in New Guinea as in many other places, but in some districts the women are particularly well tattooed, the whole of the upper part of their bodies being completely covered with intricate designs. The methods of making the patterns vary, but as a rule, the woman lies on the ground whilst two others work them out with a stick dipped in burnt resin. When the whole is finished it is pricked in by means of a sharp thorn attached to a stick and bound tightly to it with fibre. Most of the women have extraordinary designs on their thighs, which they make a point of showing when they are dancing.