Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 253, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1914 — The SHORTEST of PYGMIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The SHORTEST of PYGMIES

YGMYLAND, in the MaM lay swchipelago, has been sR H found and explored, described and pictured. It is as -weird and wonder--1111 ful as Gulliver’s Lilliput, and is actual fact, not satirical fancy. It is hidden in the mountainous heart of New Guinea, or Papua, the largest island in the world —counting Australia as a continent. Lying south of the equator, and separated from Australia by •the Arafura sea and Torres strait, New Guinea has an area of 308,000 square miles. The possession of this yast territory is divided, politically speaking, between Holland, Great Britahkand Germany. Only in the British territory' has any serious attempt been nme at settling and administering the country. Owing to its remote situation, its rugged mountain ranges and impenetrable forests, its deadly climate and hostile, treacherous inhabitants, New Guinea today is practically terra incognita. It offers greater opportunities for the explorer, collector and anthropologist than any other portion of the globe. The expedition recently sent to this virgin land by the British Ornithologists’ union made pioneer explorations in the land of the Taplro pygmies, described in two narratives of sensational interest: Doctor Wollaston’s “Pygmies and Papuans” (Sturgis & Walton Co., New York) and Captain Rawling’s “Land of the New Guinea Pygmies" (J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia). Here is a marvelous courftry, with snow-clad peaks as high as Mount ■Blanc, rising from impenetrable tropical forests inhabited by native races who live in so primitive a state that It is literally what Doctor Wollaston calls it —the stone age today. The pygmies encountered by Wollaston in one of their villages among the spurs of Mount Taplro were cleanly built, active little fellows, whose average adult stature was somewhat less than four feet six inches. Their skin is a dusky yellowish brown, hair short and woolly and black. Many of the men have short, bushy black beards. With the exception of a head dress of plaited fibers and .feathers and a gourd strapped around We loins, they go about unclothed. bows and arrows, flint knives and stone-headed clubs, and make fire by friction of bamboo sticks, blowing the smoldering tinder into flame. The raise and smoke tobacco, mostly in the form of cigarettes; set snares for birds, wild pigs and small animals; and extract a faint, pleasing sort of music from a split bamboo instrument, something like a jew’s-harp. Doctor Wollaston found the Tapiro pygmies shy and timorous, but eager for barter, and extremely curious about the white men. Their women he never set eyes on. The village headman, a bald and white-bearded old creature horribly disfigured by disease, kept up a shrill shouting all the while the straigers were in sight; and it was probably dub to his protests that the Englishmen—on this trip, at least —were not permitted to view the female of the species. It may have been that the pygmies feared the big Papuan men who accompanied the expedition from the plains would carry of! their wives. It seems the supply of Papuan women Is very scanty, and the men would be apt to seize any chance of abducting a Tapiro woman. Mr. Wollaston tells of an exciting chase after two small men, who were ultimately captured and kindly treated, but who “showed no inclination to conduct strangers to their borne.” This with the aid of native porters was finally reached, and

friendly relations set up with the Tapiro, as these newly-discovered pygmies are called, the men submitting willingly to measurements, which showed an average height of four feet nine inches. But no offers of metal knives and axes would induce them to let their women be seen, probably, Mr. Wollaston conjectures, because they feared abduction by the Papuans. He supplies interesting details about them, although vagueness attends these, “for they are so Indescribably dirty that it is not easy to know which is their true color,” but the type is distinctly Negrito. The language of the Tapiro pygmies seemed to be radically different from that of the Papuans, and the Wollaston party were unable to make even the smallest vocabulary of it. Their voices are high-pitched and nasal, and full of animal-like throat sounds impossible to render phonetically in writing. Captain Rawling and Doctor Marshall had somewhat better luck. Through a forest filled with birds of paradise and emerald green serpents, they penetrated to the pygmy village of Wambiriml, high up in the hills and spent a day and a night there, photographing and parleying with the Lilliputian natives. In the line of feminist study, however, they made no further advance than their predecessors had done. It was only among the pygmies’ grownup cousins, the taller Papuans of the plains, that they secured those pictures of women and children which form so striking and convincing a complement to the published narratives. "The more one sees of these people,” writes Rawling, “the more one realizes that their lives are one long struggle for existence. Precipitous mountains with deep and gloomy gorges surround them on either hand, every foot of ground clothed with the densest forest, wit£ perpetual rain, with no wild fruit or edible roots, and flesh in any form scarce and hard to procure. One must seb the ground to appreciate the amount of labor that has been expended in clearing away the great trees and vegetation in their efforts to cultivate the less precipitous land. When it is realized that this has been accomplished solely with the aid of fire (a difficult operation in this wet climate), stone axes and two implements fashioned out of a couple of small pieces of hoop-iron fastened to bamboo handles, the magnitude of the task will be understood." The visitors displayed large butcher knives, which elicited gasps of admiration and envy from the pygmies, and explained that these prizes were 'for such men as would Induce a woman to show herself. Yet all to no purpose. The old men formed the obstructionist party; the young ones by themselves might have yielded to the temptation. They said the women had surreptitiously peeped at the white men from the screen of the jungle, but had been scared off by the clothes they wore! u »>• The pygmies, it is believed, intermarry with the Parimau people of the plains, who are of larger stature, and not so Turkish or Mormon-like in their ideas about the segregation of the female sex.

The Papuan women of Parimau have no great attractions, either natural or artificial, to hide or conceal. With the exception of a few beads they wear nothing but the loin cloth, made from the bark of a tree. “Poor wretches!” exclaims the explorer, “their days are one long round of toll, and they have little leisure to think of trinkets or decoration. Woman, the weaker creature, is relegated to a very inferior position, and is in fact the slave, body and soul, of her lord and master, becoming his property to deal with as he pleases. Marriages, except on special occasions, are not considered of much importance, and are not celebrated by feasts or jollification. Nor is any attention paid to the birth of a child. “If dress can be looked upon as a source of pleasure, widows in Paupua are to be envied, inasmuch as they are required to adopt outward and visible signs of their bereavement. A widow of standing will decorate herself with a short and scanty bodice of woven grass, which leaves the stomach bare, while from the hips will hang a still more ragged form of skirt. Surmounting all is a peculiarly shaped poke bonnet, made of the same material, which, unless the lady wishes to be seen, completely hides her face. Young widows are not so careful to conceal their charms, and are usually satisfied with the scantiest of skirtKMn the form of bunches of grass hanging in front .and behind, and if thSy fancy it, with more tufts hanging from the biceps.” Probably nowhere else in the world are the birth and death rates so high as in New Guinea. The suggestion here occurs, that the gift of $100,000,000 for a world health campaign—which benefaction Ambassador Page announced the other day in London as having been projected by a number of wealthy Americans —may find scope -in New Guinea. “The income of this fund,” according to published announcement, “which will amount to about $5,000,000 a year, will be applied to the study and cure of diseases among native races in all parts of the world.” -