First Contact: New Guinea's Highlanders Encounter the Outside World by Bob Connolly

Author:Bob Connolly [Connolly, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnology, Anthropology, First contact, History, Papua New Guinea
ISBN: 9780670801671
Amazon: 0670801674
Publisher: Viking
Published: 1987-08-02T22:00:00+00:00

Michael Leahy introduces a Hagen big man—possibly Ndika Powa—to the cockpit of a Junkers transport plane. The Australian on the wing is pilot Bob Gurney. Kelua, 1933.

“Mick didn’t hit the villagers, but when his labourers did not work well or did something wrong, he would whip them with a big piece of rubber. The people were frightened because they had seen him hit others before.” (Dan Leahy says the “rubber” was an aeroplane wing strut. Leahy’s men were stripped, stretched out and flogged with this, his most severe form of punishment. Any physical violence against indentured labourers was against the law, but it was customary in New Guinea before the war as a way of maintaining discipline.)

“Masta Mick put me in the aeroplane,” says Isakoa, “and told the other man there, ‘He might try and jump out, so the two of you sit together.’ So I sat next to him—just the two of us. When the plane took off and when it went up and down I cried! And that masta held me and said, ‘You must not cry!’ But I kept on until we landed at Wau. If I’d been big I could have looked out, but I was small, so the masta put me under his arm and held me there as we went. Just the two of us.

“After landing at Wau, Masta Bill drove down in a car towards me. When I saw it I was afraid. He wanted me to go with him in it but I thought that thing would kill me, so I held tightly onto the plane and cried in fear. The masta patted me on the chest and put me in the car. I saw houses—green houses, red houses, white houses. I thought I had come to the devil’s place, and maybe I would go wild. And then I thought of my mother, and I cried a little.

“I saw cattle, and I was really afraid of them. I saw donkeys. I pissed with fear when I saw them. But I used to go and buy meat from the freezer at Wau and then I realised those animals were food after all. At Wau I stayed with Masta Bill. He could take his eye out and pull out his teeth. I used to be afraid of him, too.” (Bill Tracy worked for Jim Leahy at Wau. He had a glass eye and false teeth.)

“The idea of sending them out,” says Dan Leahy, “was to give them a look at the outside world, how we lived, to show them there were all the motor cars, and all the different machinery and the modern equipment. They had nothing at all! They’d never seen a wheel, much less something pulling it! They only carried things on their backs. It was primitive man to modern civilisation. To show them all that.”

When young highlanders like Narmu and Isakoa visited the outside world, they were something of a novelty to the white population. They were fussed over, like zoological curiosities.

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