EXPLORATIONS INTO HIGHLAND NEW GUINEA, 1930-1935 1 5 E D IT E D BY D 0 U G LAS E. JON E S foreword by Jane C. Goodale Thc Univcrsitv of Alabama Press lilscaloosa and London Copyright © 1991 by The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America designed by zig zeigler 00 The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leahy, Michael J., 1901-1979. Explorations into highland New Guinea, 1930-1935/ Michael J. Leahy; edited by Douglas E. Jones and with a foreword by Jane C. Goodale. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-8173-0446-0 (alk. paper) 1. Ethnology-Papua New Guinea. 2. First contact of aboriginal peoples with Westerners-Papua New Guinea. 3. Leahy, Michael J., 1901-1979. 4. Papua New Guinea-Description and travel. 5. Papua New Guinea-Social life and customs. I. Jones, Douglas E. II. Title. GN671.N5L43 1991 305.8'009953-dc20 91-9027 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available Photographs in this volume are reproduced with permission of the Michael J. Leahy Collection of the National Library ofA ustralia and of Mrs. Jeanette Leahy. Foreword by Jane C. Goodale / vii CONTENTS Editor's Preface / xi Introduction / 1 The Year 1930/6 The Year 1931 / 23 The Year 1932/49 The Year 1933/ 79 The Year 1934 / 143 The Year 1935/236 Conclusions / 243 Editor's Afterword / 245 Index / 251 FOR E W 0 R D Leahy's account of his probes into the interior of Papua New Guinea in the 1930s is an extraordinary docu ment because of the exceptional quality of the man. In some ways he set the pattern for others who, after him, would venture into the unknown for a variety of personal reasons. All would be young and independent, courageous and am bitious, self-confident, and above all intelligent. These character traits, held in high value by the Western world, also manifested themselves, as the reader will see, in individual highlanders whom Leahy came to know and respect and who joined his expeditions into the unknown. Additional qualities that Leahy possessed-the ability both to see and to describe, verbally and with the camera, his own personal experiences-give the reader a vivid sense of the man, the land, and the people. The character of a first contact has rarely been described in such FOREWORD vii detail. Mter all, such an encounter lasts only for a fleeting moment. The explorers, anthropologists, and missionaries who have written of such events often focus on their own emotions when meeting the "other" for first time. Rarely do they possess Leahy's sensitivity to the perceptions of the primitive peoples contacted. Leahy was remarkably objective in his descriptions of the ap pearance and demeanor of the natives whom he met in his travels through the heretofore unknown highland region of Papua New Guinea. But he also reflected his own cultural milieu and time. His openness of mind was sometimes tempered by his Western cultural beliefs concerning the origins of culture and society and the evolu tionary development of the races of mankind. The local people regarded Leahy as a "spirit ancestor" coming back, perhaps to haunt them. For his part he saw them as "primi tives" who were in some external respects distinct from his own people. So defined, they fell into a category which according to his worldview was associated with emotions, values, and a mentality in contrast to those of Western cultures. He regarded the natives, for example, as exhibiting a limited range of reactions, as exhibiting (even after contact) a very thin veneer of civilization, and as having not yet developed the brain to cope with conditions that Western ers find commonplace. The concept of the "noble savage" of the Western age of "En lightenment" seldom appears in Western writings today. Rather the so called primitive is seen to be somewhat retarded in his tech nological mastering of the physical environment. The industrial revolution and the concomitant development of the "work ethic" fundamentally altered Western society, leading it to consider itself superior to those who were not technologically "advanced." Unfor tunately, many Westerners still often believe that technological de velopment is the response of superior minds to challenging physical environments. As Leahy wrote (in 1962), the Papua New Guineans' "environment limited their thinking to a technology and culture foreign to ours. . . . Their people will have to . . . work or starve." "We, [the exploring party] survived," he wrote, "by virtue of the magic with which they [the primitives] had endowed us, our superior mentality, and our firearms in that order." For Leahy, the highland Papua New Guinean was "a congenital thief, murderer, FOREWORD cannibal . . . , bent on the obliteration of anyone and anything his . . . armament and animal cunning" could conquer. From the native's standpoint, Leahy and his party enjoyed "magic" power, but Leahy was keen enough to recognize that these primitives would (and they soon did) learn the limits of that power and would discover the strangers to be fundamentally human, like themselves. The reader will find that at times Leahy speaks as a member of a Western "civilized" culture and at other times as one who grew to know and respect the intelligence of these particular "others," the people with whom he came into contact. Some of them became trusted boss boys (foremen) in his line of carriers and were fellow explorers of heretofore unknown regions of highland Papua New Guinea. Therefore, to focus on ways in which Leahy contrasted himself and his culture with the local people and their culture is to lay undue emphasis on what was and still is a very commonly held erroneous Western view of non-Western others. Anthropologists have recently come to appreciate the extent to which their descrip tions and evaluations of others are filtered through their own culture. What results from anthropological description and analysis of another person's culture, then, is never completely objective. It may best be described as "one culture's interpretation of another." What is remarkable in this work is not that Leahy shows cultural bias in his interpretation but that he rarely does so. In fact, as the reader will see, Leahy made it his policy to select "natives of supe rior intelligence" to travel with him. He thereby gave them the opportunity to journey beyond their known world so that they might inform their fellow tribesmen of the world from which the strangers in their midst had come. He frequently praises specific individuals for their intelligence and ability to learn new ways. Far from considering the local population of the country through which he was traveling an obstacle to progress or an enemy to be overcome by force, Leahy reserved his strongest words of reproach and anger for "armchair administrators" and other "so-called ex perts." He held them indirectly responsible (through their igno rance of reality and for not always honorable political motives) for the few "murders" of European invaders by local people during the time period of which he writes. FOREWORD ix