CHAPTER XITOMMAN AND THE HEAD-CURING ART

We were safe on board the Amour, but we could still hear the boo-boos marking the time for the wild dance back in the hills. I awoke several times during the night. The boom-boom still floated across the water. I was glad that we had taken to our heels when we did, though I still regretted the picture I might have got if we could have stayed. At dawn, there was silence. The dance was over.

A trader who put in at Southwest Bay late in the morning told us of a man who had been brutally murdered at the very village we had visited. It was his belief that we had escaped only because the memory of the punitive expedition that had avenged the murder was still fresh in the minds of the natives. Even that memory might have failed to protect us, he told us, if the natives had really been in the heat of the dance. And he and Captain Moran swapped yarns about savage orgies until Osa became angry with me all over again for having stayed so long on the hill to witness the dance.

After a day’s rest, we continued on our journey insearch of cannibals. Our next stop was Tomman, an island about half a mile off the southernmost tip of Malekula. Since we found the shore lined with canoes, we expected to be surrounded as usual, as soon as we had dropped anchor, by natives anxious to trade. To our surprise, there was not a sign of life. We waited until it was dark and then gave up expecting visitors, for the savages of the New Hebrides rarely show themselves outside their huts after dark for fear of spirits. Early next morning, however, we were awakened by hoarse shouts, and found the Amour surrounded by native craft. We then discovered that we had arrived inopportunely in the midst of a dance. Dances in the New Hebrides are not merely social affairs. They all have some ceremonial significance and accordingly are not to be lightly interrupted.

Captain Moran assured us that, since the natives of this island, like those of Vao, were sufficiently acquainted with the Government gunboat to be on their good behavior where white men were concerned, it would be safe to go ashore. We launched a whaleboat and set out for the beach, escorted by about a hundred savages, who came to meet us in canoes. These natives, like some of those we hadmet with in the region around Southwest Bay, had curiously shaped heads. Their craniums were almost twice as long as the normal cranium and sloped to a point at the crown. The children, since their hair was not yet thick enough to conceal the conformation, seemed like gnomes with high brows and heads too big for their bodies.

When we reached shore, we beached the whaleboat at a favorable spot and, leaving it in charge of a couple of the crew, followed a well-beaten trail that led from the beach to a village near by. At the edge of a clearing surrounded by ramshackle huts, we stopped to reconnoiter.

I have never seen a more eerie spectacle. In the center of the clearing, before a devil-devil, an old man was dancing. Very slowly he lifted one foot and very slowly put it down; then he lifted the other foot and put it down, chanting all the while in a hoarse whisper. At the farther side of the clearing, a group of old savages were squatting near a smoldering fire, intently watching one of their number, the oldest and most wizened of them all, as he held in the smoke a human head, impaled on a stick. Near by, on stakes set in the ground, were other heads.

THE OLD HEAD-CURER

The natives who had accompanied us up the trail shouted something and the men about the fire looked up. They seemed not at all concerned over our sudden appearance and made no attempt to conceal the heads. As for the old dancer, he did not so much as glance our way.

We went over to the men crouched about the fire and spoke to them. They paid scant attention to Moran and me, but they forsook their heads to look at Osa. She was always a source of wonder and astonishment to the natives, most of whom had never before seen a white woman. These old men went through the usual routine of staring at her and cautiously touching her hands and hair, to see if they were as soft as they appeared to be.

I discovered that the old head-curer knewbêche-de-merand could tell me something of the complicated process of his trade. The head was first soaked in a chemical mixture that hardened the skin and, to a certain extent, at least, made it fireproof. Next, the curer held it over a fire, turning and turning it in the smoke until the fat was rendered out and the remaining tissue was thoroughly dried. After the head had been smeared with clay to keep it from burning, it was again baked for some hours. This process consumed about a week of constant work. The driedhead was then hung up for a time in a basket of pandanus fiber, made in the shape of a circular native hut with a thatched roof, and finally it was exhibited in the owner’s hut or in a ceremonial house; but for a year it had to be taken out at intervals and smoked again in order to preserve it.

The old head-curer was an artist, with an artist’s pride in his work. He told me that he was the only one left among his people who really understood the complicated process of drying heads. The young men were forsaking the ways of their fathers. Of the old men, he was the most skilled. All the important heads were brought to him for curing, and he was employed to dry the bodies of great chiefs, smearing the joints with clay to keep the members from falling apart, turning each rigid corpse in the smoke of a smoldering fire until it was a shriveled mummy, painting the shrunken limbs in gay colors, and substituting pigs’ tusks for the feet. The old man told me that heads nowadays are not what they were in olden times. He said what I found hard to believe—that the craniums of his ancestors were twice as long as those of present-day islanders.

Specimens of the head-curer’s art were displayed in every hut in the village. The people of Tommanare not head-hunters in the strict sense of the word. They do not go on head-raids as do the men of Borneo. But if they kill an enemy, they take his head and hang it up at home to frighten off the evil spirits. The heads of enemies are roughly covered with clay and hastily and carelessly cured, but those of relatives are more scientifically treated, for they are to be cherished in the family portrait gallery. While the natives of Tomman do not produce works of art comparable to the heads treated by the Maoris of New Zealand, the results of their handiwork show a certain dignity and beauty. One forgets that the heads were once those of living men, for they are dehumanized and like sculptures. Each household boasted a few mummies and a number of heads, and, to our surprise, the people willingly showed us their treasures and allowed us to photograph them. In northern Malekula, as we had learned, it is as much as a white man’s life is worth to try to see the interior of a head-hut, and demands for heads—or skulls, rather, for the natives of the northern part of the island do not go in for head-curing—are usually met with sullen, resentful silence. Here, the natives not only brought out heads and bodies for us to photograph, but in exchange for a supply of tobaccopermitted me to make a flashlight picture of a big ceremonial hut containing about fifty heads and fifteen mummified bodies.

This hut seemed to be a club for the men of the village. Almost every village of the New Hebrides boasts some sort of a club-house, which is strictly taboo for women and children. Here, the devil-devils are made and, it is rumored, certain mysterious rites are performed. Be that as it may, club-life in the New Hebrides seemed to me to be as stupid and meaningless as it usually is in the West. Instead of lounging in plush-covered armchairs and smoking Havana cigars, the men of the New Hebrides lay on the ground and smoked Virginia cuttings in clay pipes. Each man had his favorite resting-place—a hollow worn into the ground by his own body. He was content to lie there for hours on end, almost motionless, saying scarcely a word; but the women and children outside thought that he was engaged in the strange and wonderful rites of his “lodge”!

A CLUB-HOUSE IN TOMMAN WITH MUMMIED HEADS AND BODIES

Toward evening the women of the village appeared with loads of firewood and fruits and vegetables. On top of nearly every load was perched a child or a young baby, its head fitted snugly with a basket to make the skull grow in the way in which, according to Tomman ideals of beauty, it should go. The women of Tomman we found a trifle more independent than those of other islands of the New Hebrides. Of course, their upper front teeth were missing—knocked out by their husbands as part of the marriage ceremony. The gap was the Tomman substitute for a wedding-ring. But on Tomman, as elsewhere in the New Hebrides, wives are slaves. Since a good wife is expensive, costing from twenty to forty pigs, and the supply is limited, most of the available women are cornered by the rich. A young man with little property is lucky if he can afford one wife. He looks forward to the day when he will inherit his father’s women. Then he will have perhaps a dozen willing hands to work for him. He will give a great feast and, if he kills enough pigs, he will be made a chief.

When we went back to the ship at sunset, the old man was still doing his solitary dance in front of the devil-devil. In the morning, when we returned to the village, he was already at it, one foot up, one foot down. When we left Tomman, four days after our arrival, he was still going strong. I tried to discover the reason for the performance, but the natives either could not or would not tell me.

Although Tomman was an interesting spot, we did not remain there long. I was looking for cannibals, and experience had taught me that head-hunters were rarely cannibals or cannibals head-hunters. So, since our time in the islands was growing short, we decided to move on.

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