We're Illiterate?"
pp. 75-79 · Read in the full issue
An Author Amok Among the Cannibals N. GUINEA MAN ASKS, "DO THEY THINK
• The bookshops in the last year or two have offered a fairly wide selection of travellers’ tales on New Guinea. And there is an increasing number of articles and short stories being published about the Territory. This has driven an indignant reader at Minf, in the Western Highlands of New Guinea, into sending us the following letter discussing merits of one book in particular—and the trend in general.
From time to time the reading üblic is assailed by books, articles nd stories about New Guinea and le Islands. Some are good honest ction of the Saturday Evening ost type wherein nubile lady an tiropologists are rescued from a ite more exciting than death by ronzed and lissome District Com ussioners. Some purport to be fact, nd are indeed reasonably factual.
However an increasing proportion the It Happened to Me’ school ■ reportage would strain the credu ty of a Munchausen or even old dies who donate to Mission •cieties.
The very latest of these astonish ig documents has recently come to my possession. It is entitled Witness to Witchcraft’ and is ritten by Dr. Harry B. Wright of niladelphia, USA, ‘Adventurer, nthropologist and member of the iplorers Club’.
One chapter only relates to New uinea, but such are its contents at the reader would suspect that ie entire book merits the brutal it apt Anglo Saxon expression mmonly used by Australians to ascribe such literature.
As chapter 15, under the sinister :ading ‘REVENGE’, opens, the hi spid Doctor Harry finds himself New Guinea, having been invited the Government to complete me anthropological work on the lorigines. From then on, events :-ve fast.
The ‘Telefomin Incident’ blows >, and Doctor Harry, who ‘had e luck to be near there when it ppened’ finds himself in a po ion to give his readers the in le story. This ‘differs in some spects from the official story, for isons which will become obvious’, rhe stage is now set for drama th the reader enthralled by the licate hint that the author is nehow privy to some monstrous 'ret hitherto concealed by official m.
Fhe background to the Telefomin cident now emerges and so does 3 fact that Dr. Harry’s geography sadly adrift. Surveyors will be mayed to learn that Telefomin is the Owen Stanley range, not far )m the Kokoda trail, and ap rently a bit south of Buna. The
gcod Doctor is chasing sorcerers in the ‘Village of Wabag, near the Sepik area’.
The battle of the Sepik (1942) is supplied as historical background.
Here we find that Jim Taylor, J.
G. Jones and George Ellis were foully murdered by treacherous constabulary, although Dr. Wright appears to have met Jim Taylor in Goroka in 1954.
This massacre it seems, so pro foundly impressed the Telefomin tribes (who have probably not heard about it even today) that jungle guerillas known as ‘Bete Men’ took to annoying patrol officers by sur reptitiously slashing their tendons v hen on patrol.
These attentions, as the doctor points out, rendered the patrol of ficer useless for patrol duty. (‘Bit’ is a form of sorcery practised in the Telefomin area, but has not so far been employed effectively against a European).
The European population at the time of the murders at Telefomin is now paraded. They are two patrol officers, a missionary, a medical attendant and a geologist. Records indicate that the two latter must have been stowaways.
The plot thickens. On a patrol in the Strickland River area, many carriers were drowned, and Dr.
Harry hints that somebody might have pushed them in. The tribes become incensed and this incident is cited as causing the ensuing ‘rebellion’.
The Forbidden Sport
In actual fact the tribes were in censed all right, but much later.
The drownings were taken in good part as an occupational hazard; the incense came when the promised compensation was held up by red tape in Wewak. Even then, this incident appears to have had little bearing on the murders.
The women and girls of the vil lage now begin to needle the tribes men into resurrecting their for bidden sport of headhunting and collecting the heads of their white enemies.
Dr. Harry’s anthropological re searches have eventually borne fruit, as it had been hitherto sup posed that headhunting was not a
nactics Indigenous to the Telefomin ,rea.
The headmen act with savage unning. They send runners to the onstabulary posts at Wewak and ifabag asking for trade goods to be snt in. This is the first of a num er of epic overland journeys men ioned, but modestly glossed over i the text.
Anyway, Patrol Officers Szarka nd Harris are sent in, ostensibly a. a routine census patrol, but Dr. arry knows better; ‘Actually they ere assigned to feel out the tem sr of the natives’.
The patrol is split up, not, it now ipears, in order to hasten the :eary work of census, but in order • impress the natives, acquaint the ficers with the terrain in case of skirmish (nothing could have ten further from anyone’s mind), id as a precautionary move (arm lair strategists note!) Harris was assaulted in the even g while making camp and killed th 11 arrows and one tomahawk, n fact Harris was struck by a ilchet at dawn, and he lived for n hours. Dr. Harry has him shoot g until his gun is empty, but irris was in no condition to shoot yone).
All the constables save one have en killed. The survivor flees to arka’s patrol and finds them all ad.
Censorship has hitherto main ined that only the two patrol leers and two constables died, t Doctor Harry has the good oil. le lone survivor must have been active sort of chap because he w makes his way overland to le lower base at Daru’, to de er his report.
We are left in no doubt as to 3 authenticity of this exploit, as , Harry who is sojourning in ibag ‘a few miles away’ now ikes his way to the scene of the me with members of the con bulary force, and interviews the wivor.
Fhis in itself is no mean ac nplishment. Dr. Harry modestly .ves the reader to assume that followed Black and Taylor’s ite on the Hagen-Sepik patrol of 8-9.
"Real White Men" punitive (one hopes the United tions will bridle at this) expedi te led by four district officers now :es the field and reports the hives’ astonishment at seeeing re white men. They had thought seems, that once they had done the five at Telefomin, they would /e exterminated the entire white mlation of the world. 7his seems singularly obtuse of - Telefomins who could hardly missed seeing glider loads troops landing there during the r, besides sundry patrol officers f the pilots of the fortnightly craft service.
Evidently the Telefomins who had worked on the coast and local policemen who had undergone periods of training in large Terntory centres had been close mouthed about their expenences.
The murderers are eventually brought to justice, but now a legal hitch appears. Under the ‘United Nations Mandate’ a death sentence cannot be ordered. It seems then that Mr. Justice Gore exceeded his authority when he recorded a death sentence against the accused.
Later on Dr. Harry visits Rabaul, and meets up with ‘Sepik Robbie’, an old pal. The gripping tale that ensues concerns more murder (this time the victim is ‘Massa Green’, District Officer Angoram) and
thought transference from Angoram to Rabaul.
Dr H arry confesses himself 'dumbfounded' over the incident in which> by art or acC ident, he has contrived to make it appear that he was at least a passive partici pant.
Readers might well be dumb founded to learn that this affair took place in 1935, thus involving Dr. Harry not merely in thought transference but in more exciting transferences in space and time itself - In fairness to the Doctor, it must be admitted that on the next P a^e he leaves himself a loophole, although this is in fine print as it were.
Still in a daze apparently, the
rrepressible Doctor revisits Tam unan on the Sepik river, ‘near he scene of the Telefomin mas sere’, but he is soon in more strife, fter he leaves the area, bitter ghting breaks out between two illages. Who is the innocent smenter of this war? Right first me!
Dr. Harry has been fooling around ith witchcraft again, and by iving one village from a down 3ur of rain has caused several hers to become flooded. Even the octor however, adopts a vaguely jologetic tons over this one. He ys it doesn’t seem so ridiculous hen you get the facts.
Nevertheless he strikes a note of ithetic authenticity in one sen nce. Apparently his friends in the strict Office in Wewak told him at his re-arrival in the Sepik area mid be most unfortunate.
Do the authors of these travel ues imagine that the residents the countries about which they ite are illiterate? It is time that ch buffoonery was publicly ex sed to the ridicule which it richly serves.
Yours, etc.,