On Tiny Tench Island,

They Have Their Own Way Of Doing Things

From E. R. Piez, secretary-treasurer of the Seventh-day Adventist Mission, Rabaul.

Thirty-nine miles east of Emirau Island in the St.

Matthias Group of New Guinea’s Bismarck Archipelago and 60 miles almost due north of Kavieng on New Ireland is tiny, rarely-visited Tench Island, home of a unique people with strange customs of their own.

THE island, which is circular, is only about a quarter of a mile across and only about six feet above sea level at its highest point. It is so small and so low that it cannot be seen from any other island, although on clear days, the mountain tops of New Hanover, 70 miles way to the south-west, can be seen from Tench.

Tench’s total population of about 50 live a secluded life, as the island is not on any regular shipping route.

The people are different from those on the islands nearby, and except for their hair, they do not even appear to be Melanesians. No one has been able to tell how they got to their island or where they came from.

Recently, while on a trip to Mussau, the main island in the St.

Matthias Group, I was one of a party which decided to pay the Tench Islanders a call in the SDA mission vessel.

As the weather was calm, we expected to have no trouble in find ing the island and anchoring there for the day.

As we left Mussau, Mr. Milton McFarlane (our missionary there) told us that the people of Tench would be expecting us.

We wondered how this could be when we had no plans for going there until a few days before our departure, and even then only provided the weather was good.

Mr. McFarlane replied that the people always had a dream when the mission ship was going to call.

This, apparently, is actually the case, for when we anchored there about 8.30 a.m. and I asked an islander when they had first seen our boat, he replied that straight after worship a boy had climbed a tree to see if we were in sight, as he had had a dream that we were coming.

Drinking Water

Looking around Tench Island, we found plenty of other things that were unusual.

Drinking water, for example, is obtained from a well in the low lying centre of the island, which rises and falls with the tide, but is untainted by the miles of salt water around the island.

A small thatched building is erected over the well to prevent leaves from falling into it. The well is barely four feet deep and is replenished by rain water soaking into it.

Sometimes, in heavy seas, salt water overflows the island and con taminates the drinking water, but the well always seems to become fresh again.

Another Tench Island oddity is

the method of fishing. A large dry leaf, strengthened with cane, is sewn up to form a kite and a length of fishing line is used to fly it.

Another fishing line is fixed to the tail end, and on the end of this is tied a unique fish “hook”—a large spider’s egg-sac.

To catch a fish, the kite is flown from a canoe paddled into the wind.

The kite’s “tail”, with its strange “hook”, dangles in the water at quite a distance from the canoe, and the fish are caught because they cannot extract their teeth from the silken strands of the spider’s egg-sac.

Judging by the number of kites I saw in the houses, this system of fishing must be quite effective.

Rat Problem One of Tench’s worst problems is the rat. I saw quite a few of these as I walked about the island.

The rats like to climb the coconut trees and get the nuts before they are ripe.

To stop the thieves, the people tie the green leaves of the pandanus palm around the trunks of the trees taking care that the branches do not overlap. This prevents the rats from getting a foothold.

Gathered nuts are put into small storehouses, the stumps of which are also bound with pandanus leaves to prevent rats from getting at them.

Besides fish, coconuts and other fruit, the Tench Islanders’ diet in

[?]ench Island, whose location is shown [?]n this map, is one of the most isolated [?]slands in Papua-New Guinea. It is more [?]an 50 miles from Mussau Island, its [?]earest big neighbour, which, in turn, is 360 miles north-east of Madang.

You don't have to be an ethnologist to see that Tench Islanders, such as this one eating a pandanus fruit, are not Melanesians, as are the natives of the neighbouring islands.

Photo: E. A. Boehm.

eludes migratory birds which come to the island each year to nest.

Many of the chickens of these birds are robbed from the nests and are reared in cages. We saw many of these, but some of them will never go into the pot because their owners have become too fond of them.

"Treating" The Sick We were told that burying the dead was never a problem on Tench Island in the old days.

It appears that if a person became sick and did not seem to be recover ing after five days, he was put into a canoe with stones tied to his legs and taken out to sea.

After being thrown overboard, the canoe was washed, the people washed, and then they went on with their regular activities.

Evidently a fear of epidemics started this custom, which, in most cases, would have been too late to be effective as a germ destroyer.