Sorcerers

And the Village Policeman

SORCERY is one of the most difficult problems that have to be tackled by the administrations of primitive races; and in Papua the evil effects of it are still very much in evidence, even after fifty years of white rule.

The native belief in sorcery is very wide-spread, and there is no tribe and no village in the Territory in which it is not practised and feared.

It is the more difficult to suppress be cause there is no organisation binding the sorcerers together. Each magician works by himself, and the Administration is unable to strike at the head of the evil, simply because there is no head.

From its very nature, sorcery cannot be classed as a crime. The things that the sorcerers do are so harmless in them selves that they can seldom be made the basis of any definite charge.

Sir Hubert Murray writes: “The chief difficulty in all cases in which sorcery is an element is in finding out exactly what the sorcerer did.”

The evil seems to lie not so much in the acts of the sorcerers as in the general native belief in their powers. And it is this superstitious belief, rather than sor cery itself, which lies at the root of nearly all the crime committed.in Papua.

In one of his official reports, the Resi dent Magistrate of the Kumusi division wrote of a case in point.

Two natives of his division had been charged with “pretending to exercise sor cery.” They were convicted, served their sentence and were discharged. Shortly afterwards an indignant Village Constable appeared at the Government station.

“You know those two sorcerers you let out of gaol a week ago?-” he asked the magistrate. “Well, when they got back to the village they put magic on the bush pigs. Now the bush pigs have broken into my garden and eaten all my taro.

Look; here is some taro half-eaten.”

“How do you know that these two men put a spell on the bush pigs?” the magis trate asked.

“When they came out of gaol they were angry. They said ‘This village policeman made us go to gaol for three months. Now we will spoil his garden.’ ”

“Did anyone hear them say this?”

“No; but of course they said it. Isn’t it exactly what they would say?”

“Then you have no witnesses?”

“No; but there is the taro, half-eaten.”

Questioned, he admitted that he had not repaired his fence for six months, and that a Papuan fence could not be ex pected to last so long without attention; but he resented the magistrate’s refusal to take action in what, he was convinced, was a clear case of sorcery.