A Simple Matter of Evidence!

By S. G. Middleton, Commissioner of Native Affairs in West Australia and formerly a Magistrate in Papua—A Broadcast Address.

FN 1931 I was a Patrol Officer in L charge of the Mondo Police Post n the Owen Stanley Ranges. One lay a mountain village constable rrived at my camp, saluted with a iourish, and dumped on my table a iackage containing something trapped in banana leaves which melt to high heaven. It was the fore rm of a human being in an ad anced state of putrefaction.

The indisputable, if gruesome, piece f evidence having been photographed nd disposed of, I invited the village onstable to tell his story.

It appeared that a woman member f his tribe and village was on her ray to a nearby garden when she fas set upon by three men of a eighbouring tribe and killed. Her ody was taken away and some of eaten, but the scene of the cannibal ;ast had been located by the alert onstable and his men and the evi ence picked up among the remains.

Did he know the names of the iree men? Oh, yes. A little girl ho was following the woman saw id recognised them; she had hidden i the jungle near the track until ightfall for fear of being seen by ther enemies. It sounded authentic > me.

The scene of the crime was the [eipa Valley. On the fifth day out nr party (about a dozen armed con ables and a couple of NCO’s, a :ore of native porters and our en msiastic guide, the village constable) :ached a point only one ridge away om the Meipa. It was almost dark hen we topped the ridge overlook ig the Meipa Valley and River, but nr guide pointed out our objective, village perched precariously on a izor-backed spur about six miles up ic valley.

When darkness fell with tropic sud mness, I followed the bare heels of ar guide and the faint track by the mcil-thin ray of my well-taped elec ic torch, while the police boys kept ;rfect file formation by sticking in ie backs of their belts phosphores :nt rotting sticks which glow eerily night in the Stygian darkness of ie Papuan jungle.

It was early in the morning when e cautiously approached the village.

The well-trained boys, in accord ice with their briefing, melted off in i the darkness to surround the vil ge, while my malodorous friend, the llage constable, and I took up a rategic position between the two

rows of houses in the lee of a large granite rock.

At last—the dawn! Ten minutes more and it was light enough to see an arrow in flight; then the blast of my whistle turned silence into pande monium, and, with shrieks, howls and shouts, the rudely awakened village sprang into life and action.

With their rifles in the slung posi tion, the police boys tripped, grabbed, and handcuffed together the fleeing natives as they streamed from their huts. In a matter of minutes it was all over.

Most had escaped to the jungle, as anticipated, but we had a couple of dozen “hostages” who, thoroughly scared but very quiet, had been herded near my rock in the middle of the village.

The recognition of the blue serge and red trappings of the “kimani” (native police) and the sight of a white man with them had the effect of restoring calm. The natives of Papua do not fear the white officer and the native police. Our captives were vastly relieved to find that it was a Government patrol party and not a band of native marauders, who had “attacked” their village!

Within the hour they were chatting amiably with the police boys and laughing till the tears streamed from their eyes at the evidence of gaping holes in the flimsy, sago-palm walls which bore mute testimony of the in mates’ desire to reach the protection of the jungle by the shortest possible route!

One of the three men had been caught. I explained the object of our visit and pointed out that they would be released as soon as the other two wanted men were produced.

Strong, immediate, and unanimous demands were made of those whom our captives could induce to come from the jungle to produce the cul prits. One village elder held his manacled hands high in the air as he addressed his unseen audience thus; “Look what you have done, you fools!

You have annoyed the Government and see what has happened to me!

Bring and (naming the men wanted) back here and let me get these things off my hands.

Lau hereva vadaeni!” (I have spoken).

NOT long after, a small party emerged from the jungle, push ing before them two reluctant and

thoroughly scared young men, the two we wanted. They put up no resistance and raised no objection when handcuffs were transferred from a couple of our hostages to them, and the others were released.

After breakfast I carried out the usual preliminary examination of our prisoners. Yes, they had killed the woman, they freely admitted. This man (indicated) clubbed her heavily from behind and the other two fin ished her off with spears and toma hawk. They then trussed her body to a pole and carried it to that creek you can see away down there, made a fire, ate some of the body, and left the rest for wild pigs.

Nothing extraordinary or suspicious here, I decided.

They accepted, with stolid equani mity, the direction that they must accompany us to Yule Island, there to meet Judge Murray, who might put them in gaol. If the Government wanted it that way, that was all right by them.

Six days later, goggle-eyed and afraid, they were having their first close-up view of the sea and then crouched as near to the bottom of the canoe as they could get, they were

being ferried across Hall Sound to Yule Island.

Nearly a week went by, Magistrate Thompson had carried out the preliminary hearing and, satisfied with the clear-cut evidence produced, had committed the trio for trial.

THEN one day Thompson summoned me to his office to hear an amazing story. A village constable who lived a bit farther down the valley from the original complainant arrived at Yule Island on a routine visit. He heard the story of our patrol and of the arrest, confession, and trial of our prisoners. His reaction was startling.

“What nonsense!” he told Thompson’s chief Court interpreter. “I knew that woman; she died of sickness. She was ’s (the complainant village constable) sister!”

And so the lid came off the whole strange brew. It was proved conclusively that the woman had died of natural causes. But the average Papuan seldom accepts that a person has died of natural causes. Centuriesold belief in the power of “puri-puri” (sorcery) dies hard,

Our friend the village policeman knew enough about Government law and administration to realise that a charge of “killing by sorcery” would not be accepted as prima facie evi dence of murder, yet he felt positive of his neighbours’ participation in the death of his sister. Hence his concocted story, It was the simplest thing for him to convince the three prisoners, whilst we were pre-occupied with our break fast, that it was futile for them to deny they had killed his sister. They knew they practised “puri-puri” and ‘The Taubada” (Master) knew it, too.

To please him—and to please me, I suspect—they had cheerfully pleaded guilty and would as cheerfully have gone to gaol for a crime that was never committed by anyone!

Whilst those who really know something of the intricacies of the black man’s mind can understand their reasoning and beliefs in such matters, the Government could not tolerate its patrol officers and police boys wasting their time and Govern ment money in such a manner, so a disappointed and shamefaced village policeman lost his uniform and went

to prison for three months on a charge of spreading lying reports.

The fact comforted me little as I trudged wearily back with my ex prisoners to their village and then re peated the awful switchback cross country journey to my eyrie at Mondo.

All for nothing? No, all for ex perience and a wider knowledge of black brother and, above all, a firmer conviction than ever that Sir Hubert Murray was, as usual, correct in his deductions and directions to his magistrates and patrol officers.

It was his inflexible rule that a plea of guilty must not be entered or accepted from a native. Nor was it permissible for a police magistrate in Papua to commit for sentence a native charged with an indictable of fence; he must always be committed for trial, and efforts made to ensure that the evidence produced at the trial before the judge is factual in every detail must be continued, even after the trial has taken place.