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The New York Times, March 30, 1919:

THE PHENOMENON OF CANNIBALISM

Why Certain Savages Are Fond of Human Flesh
Observations Made of the Horrible Custom in New Guinea

    The following article from the pen of a missionary appeared in The London Express...

    That cannibalism is still practiced in British New Guinea after over thirteen years of sovereignty is no reflection on the Lieutenant Governor and his magistrates, says the Bishop of New Guinea. With an area of 90,000 square miles on the mainland and 300 islands in proximity, and a force of 150 Papuan police, it is wonderful that it is limited to so few districts. It is safe to prophesy that in five years' time it will be unknown within this portion of the Empire.
    It is just four years ago since I was first brought face to face with this gruesome practice. Scene, the northeast coast, 150 miles away from any Government station...

    In front of us a native grass hut with the skull and other bones of a victim of a cannibal feast hung up as spoils of war over the door, and the "consumer" justifying his action in the limited vocabulary that we possessed in common. He was a big-framed man, with nothing but a piece of cloth round his loins, a garment hammered out of the bark of the paper mulberry tree. He had a portentously big mouth, and he showed this to its full extent with a splendidly sound set of teeth and a tongue blood-red from the juice of the betel-nut.
    He then stroked his gullet up and down with one hand, as with the other he pointed to the remains of his vanquished foe hanging over the door of his hut. "The Government says it's wrong, and the missionaries say it's wrong, but it is very good!" This was his plea for cannibalism. He knows better now, does my village friend...

WHITE VICTIMS

    The year 1901 was marked by a heavy roll of victims to cannibalism. Whether the number exceeded those of previous years may be questioned. Each year, at any rate, we know better what is going on. Still, the fact that there were four white victims marked last year unenviably.
    In February a party of diggers were making their way inland to the Yodda gold field, over some desperate country that experience alone can help one to realize, when they were cut off by a crowd of savages. Two were killed and eaten, another, a German, got away, but died a day or two afterward of exhaustion. The remains of the unfortunate men were found, and a party of their mates went out into the district and made horrible reprisals...

JUST A BAD HABIT

    But why do these cannibal feasts take place? Is it pure savagery, or is it a natural craving for animal food which cannot be satisfied in any other way?... It is, in fact, not easy to get materials for a definite conclusion at all.
    When natives are in the cannibalistic state we are not sufficiently in touch with them to know their language and discuss it thoroughly. By the time we are able to converse fluently with them they have abandoned the practice, and when this habit is once given up I know nothing that the Papuan is soon ashamed of, and being ashamed of, does not care to discuss.

    Besides, he is not accustomed to think out the reasons for doing a thing, and probably never had a reasoned reason, or thought why he did it, till we asked him. All we can get out of the villager, in answer to the question why he eats man, is such replies as: "It's flesh," "It's very good," or "It's our custom..."

CHILD CANNIBALS

    The Papuan rebounds from severe agriculture, and goes on a raid. Having raided and killed, he consumes, as a natural consequence, because the "flesh is very sweet." He eats it as he would eat pig.
    It is smoked on the fire and dismembered in just the same way. Then it is wrapped round in green leaves and tied up with bine and carried home in little parcels on poles. The pole is balanced on the man's shoulder, and the little bundles decorate the poles on each side of the man's shoulder. The boys and girls eat it at once. Their parents put it before them, and they really do not inquire if it is pig or man. They eat it just the same...

    The idea that it is due to the natural craving for flesh meat is not borne out by my New Guinea experience, for the river district, where cannibalism is most prevalent in that land, is the area where native pig does most abound. The rivers have only to be somewhat flooded, and the pigs are driven on to the higher ground, where they are easily speared...

The New York Times, February 4, 1923, p.SM6:

Dark Mysteries of Papua

    ...One may call it New Guinea, and one may recognize it as the jumping-off place, the end of the world...
    The country was discovered in 1511 by Antonio de Abrega, and the subsequent 300 years that saw conquest after conquest, civilization after civilization, rise and fall in neighboring Malaysia, that saw Australia discovered, settled, partly civilized, left never a mark on the great dark island lying north of New Holland.

    In convict days a few escaped criminals, almost as savage as the New Guinea natives themselves, found their way to the unknown country, but most of them met with a speedy end. It was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century that the coastline of the southern side was mapped out completely. And it was not until twenty years later that any kind of settlement began, though stray traders, officials and missionaries had been for some time resident in the country.

    Today the white people residing in the section known as Papua—formerly British New Guinea—number less than 1,000, although the area of Papua is 90,000-odd square miles, and the country is 800 miles long. The whole island... of New Guinea, including the Dutch-owned half, and British newly acquired [formerly German] territory, is 235,000 square miles, 1,500 miles in length, with 430 miles at the widest part.

    Australia took over the government of the country in 1906, and it is only fair to acknowledge that it has done better with it than England did in the crown colony days. White settlement and population have increased, many thousand acres of virgin forest have been cleared and planted with rubber, cocoanuts and other tropic cultures; the natives have been pacific all 'round the coastline and for considerable distances inland.
    Towns have arisen; steamship services, not perhaps the best, have been kept running at fairly regular intervals. Hospitals have been built, Government doctors appointed. Roads have been made here and there, as funds permitted. Civilization, at last, has touched New Guinea.

    But she still resists; she is still the Dark Island, the untamable, the unknown. It takes much money to explore her enormous mountain ranges, rising 13,000 feet in height; her torrential rivers, broken with hundreds of rapids and waterfalls; to prospect, amid incredible difficulties, for the gold and the osmiridium, the gems, the oil, the coal, known to exist in their interior. Australia has not got the money; the country must be, and is, run with the strictest, most pinching, economy...

  Papua New Guinea Reference Articles and Links

Wikipedia: Papua New Guinea
    History of Papua New Guinea
BBC Country Profile: Papua New Guinea
US State Department: Papua New Guinea Profile
Maps of Papua New Guinea

Embassy of Papua New Guinea, Washington D.C.
Governments on the WWW links

WikiTravel: Papua New Guinea
US State Dept Papua New Guinea Travel

  Papua New Guinea News Websites

The National
NBC Radio
Port Moresby Post Courier

ABYZ: Papua New Guinea News Links
see also: Indonesia News - New Caledonia - Fiji - Australia - New Zealand

All of Papua New Guinea
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  Papua New Guinea News


    Papua New Guinea (PNG) was first settled between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. PNG’s harsh geography consisting of mountains, jungles, and numerous river valleys, kept many of the arriving groups isolated, giving rise to PNG’s incredible ethnic and linguistic diversity. Agriculture was independently developed by some of these groups. Around 500 B.C., Austronesian voyagers settled along the coast.

    Spanish and Portuguese explorers periodically visited the island starting in the 1500s, but none made it into the country’s interior. American and British whaling ships frequented the islands off the coast of New Guinea in the mid-1800s.

    In 1884, Germany declared a protectorate - and eventually a colony - over the northern part of what would become PNG and named it German New Guinea; days later the UK followed suit on the southern part and nearby islands and called it Papua. Most of their focus was on the coastal regions, leaving the highlands largely unexplored.

    The UK put its colony under Australian administration in 1902 and formalized the act in 1906. At the outbreak of World War I, Australia occupied German New Guinea and continued to rule it after the war as a League of Nations Mandate.

    The discovery of gold along the Bulolo River in the 1920s led prospectors to venture into the highlands, where they found about 1 million people living in isolated communities.

    Japan invaded New Guinea in 1941 and reached Papua the following year. Allied victories during the New Guinea campaign pushed out the Japanese, and after the end of the war, Australia combined the two territories into one administration. Sir Michael SOMARE won elections in 1972 on the promise of achieving independence, which was realized in 1975.

    A secessionist movement in Bougainville, an island well endowed in copper and gold resources, reignited in 1988 with debates about land use, profits, and an influx of outsiders at the Panguna Copper Mine. Following elections in 1992, the PNG Government took a hardline stance against Bougainville rebels and the resulting civil war led to about 20,000 deaths. In 1997, the PNG Government hired mercenaries to support its troops in Bougainville, sparking an army mutiny and forcing the prime minister to resign. PNG and Bougainville signed a truce in 1997 and a peace agreement in 2001, which granted Bougainville autonomy. An internationally-monitored nonbinding referendum asking Bougainvilleans to chose independence or greater self-rule occurred in November 2019, with 98% of voters opting for independence. However, the PNG Government and Bougainville officials remain in negotiations about the status of the island.

    CIA World Factbook: Papua New Guinea


Area of Papua New Guinea: 462,840 sq km
slightly larger than California

Population of Papua New Guinea: 6,057,263
July 2009 estimate

Languages of Papua New Guinea:
Melanesian Pidgin serves as lingua franca
English spoken by 1%-2%
Motu spoken in Papua region
715 indigenous languages many unrelated

Papua New Guinea Capital:
Port Moresby


PORT MORESBY WEATHER

  Free Books on Papua New Guinea (.pdfs)

Taming New Guinea Monckton 1921
Unexplored New Guinea Beaver 1920
In far New Guinea Newton 1914
Pygmies & Papuans Wollaston 1912
Scented Isles and Coral Gardens Mackellar 1912
The Mafulu Mountain People Williamson 1912
British New Guinea Thomson 1892
Explorations... in New Guinea Strachan 1888
Pioneering in New Guinea Chalmers 1887

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