Anatomy Of War In

Png Highlands

The recent report that the Papua New Guinea National Parliament had adopted new laws to curb tribal fighting in the Highlands (PIM, Jan, p 6) makes a new book, Blood Is Their Argument (Warfare among the Mae Enga Tribes men of the New Guinea High lands) particularly apposite.

The author, Professor Mer vyn Meggitt, began his in vestigations of the Mae Enga people during a 15-month stay, 1955-57. Five other visits followed between 1960 and 1973 and during these, mostly with his wife, he lived with the Mae Enga people.

The results of his research have varied from works with relatively popular-sounding titles such as Studies in Enga History to much more specific and technical papers on lineage systems, male-female relationships, and others on the people’s techniques of salt-making and house-build ing.

In this latest monograph, the subject is warfare among Highlanders who view them selves, the author says, “as fairly violent people, people for whom ‘blood is their argu ment’ ” for consistent and per petuated conflict between the various groups.

Despite the editors’ claim that “special pains have been taken in editing to make each book [in this series] lively and readable to an intelligent freshman”, this lay reader cannot agree that they suc ceeded in their aim.

It is not sufficient for Meg gitt to outline the scope of fighting and the relationship of groups of combatants; he must initially revert to such basics as defining “warfare”, even to the extent of citing such unexpected sources as Hobbes, and Scott’s Ivanhoe.

Nevertheless, the situation, despite various minor ex cuses, is that Mae groups feel that they need more land and they maintain that violence is a fairly effective means of ac quiring territory.

It is also interesting to note that the scale of such disputes was, until recent times, con ducted according to well defined rules regarding com pensation for death and inj ury; and of mutual obligations

of related groups to accom modate (temporarily or per manently) weaker relatives who were dispossessed.

The upshot of this con tinuous “warfare” in the days before administration intru sion into the area was that force was the means whereby dominant and expanding groups acquired more land to allow them to survive (more land making it possible to grow more crops and raise more pigs). At the same time, injuries and deaths in such fighting acted as a form of population control and the intricate system of com pensation also ensured that some sort of “honour” was effectively maintained both in warfare (especially ceremonial affrays) and towards relatives of victims.

Of course, it is stupid to at tempt to be wise after the event, but, according to the author, these matters of land dispute and compensation were pretty well managed before European incursion into the area.

Then fighting became an “offence”, and when “peace” was established, coupled with improvements in medical facilities in the region, there was a population explosion.

Despite well-meaning at tempts by administrators to arbitrate on boundaries which had always been flexible, and to attempt to define what had always been undefined, other schemes also went wrong. The present PNG legislation against fighting that is said to have cost Highland tribes about $lOO 000 in lost coffee trees and housing, might ask whether or not it really is necessary for these people to be concerned with producing cash crops; or if it might not be better for them to maintain their traditional gardens whose size was determined by traditional factors.

In some of Meggitf s reveal ing footnotes, he remarks that exotic crops which well meaning agronomists tried to introduce (eg potatoes and turnips) “offered no ap preciable advantages in pro ductivity (nor perhaps nutri tion) over the existing com binations of sweet potatoes, taro and other indigenous

plants”. Elsewhere surveyors with no knowledge of local tradition or law, have come in by helicopter and “fixed” ar bitrary boundaries, only to have their bench marks de stroyed once the “choppers” were beyond the next moun tain.

In this book, Meggitt gives obviously valid explanations for matters which were cause for concern among past ad ministrators and, still pose problems for the present government. His ex planations, unfortunately, are far too often over-detailed to be considered light reading; and as a cautious if wise academic, his comments con sist more of qualifications than possible solutions to the problems that have been caus ed, and will recur in this area.

Only once does Meggitt ap proach the readability of Gardner and Heider’s Gar dens of War when he con cedes that not only is there no restriction barring friends and kinsmen from participation in a fight, but that “younger bachelors do join in . . . just for the hell of it”. His defini tion of the problem (and of the many issues which com plicate this tradition of war fare, land shortage and over population) is detailed and valid. The pity is that it is so much easier to define the problems than to formulate

cures.

John Goode

(Blood Is Their Argument: Warfare

Among The Mae Enga Tribesmen Of

The New Guinea Highlands Mervyn

Meggitt. Published by Mayfield Publishing Company, Pelo Alto, Calif. $4 95.)