Combating Cruel Rites
p. 23 · Read in the full issue
Missionary’s Work In New Britain
SOME barbaric customs of New Britain natives were described by Rev. V.
H. Sherwin, Melanesian Missionary at Sag Sag, New Guinea, before he left Syd ney in February by the “Ormonde” on his way to London on furlough.
“I found that 100 per cent, of the par ents killed their first born, because they believed that, if it lived, it would be come bewitched, and that all disease was due to witchcraft,” he said. “So, for the sake of the children to follow, the first was sacrificed, by placing the infant in a hole and crushing its life out with a stone.
Wives who lost their husbands insisted on being strangled, so that they could enter the spirit land with him.
“To-day only about 15 per cent, of the parents in the mission district slay their first born; and the other practices of sui cide and head-hunting are decreasing.”
Mr. Sherwin told how children, from a week old, have their heads tightly bound with tapa cloth, to produce an elongated skull —a mark of native beauty. The ef fect, however, was to cause malformation of the brain.
This intrepid missionary has been working 200 miles distant from the near est District Office. The natives there never saw a white man until they saw
him. He has been their physician, health inspector, and teacher, as well as min ister.
Perhaps his greatest coup was when he won over to Christianity the chief of all the territory among the 30 villages in his district. To-day the chief’s son is a worker beside Mr. Sherwin, and there are hopes that this young native will become an ordained minister.
Under the missionary’s guidance the natives are being taught to eat more health-giving food; to observe sanitation laws; and to give up their superstitions, some of which are dying hard. The chil dren are also being taught the simpler elements of Christianity.
Mr. Sherwin will return to his work after furlough. He will, however, have a white companion, for the Bishop of Melanesia has laid it down that hence forth each minister must be accompanied to remote districts by a lay missionary.