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Show PAPUAN HEAD HUNTERS. All the Bamu tribes are head hunters hunt-ers and the majority cannibals. The bodies of those slain are generally mutilated, and the legs and arms cut off as well as the heads; the calf of the leg and the hand are, I believe, the two portions most esteemed. One very powerful tribe In the Bamu. called call-ed Blna, always, it is said, take two heads and two 6ets of arms and legs for every man of theirs that has been killed. Heads. besiJes being the badge of a warrior and items of on slderable social significance, play a prominent part in ceremony and dances. dan-ces. They are always cut off with the bamboo head knife, a weapon which la used from the Dutch boundary to the Purari delta This knife is a half section sec-tion of bamboo with a handle: a notch is made at the head of the blade and a I thin sliver of ban bamboo torn off. i j leaving a sharp edge For each successive suc-cessive head an additional notch la made and another slice torn off; consequently con-sequently each knife Is Its own recorder. re-corder. I picked up one knife a few years ago all red with fresh blood, I that had eight notches in it. On this) i name Bamu river trip I saw my first beads, There had been a serious mas- sacre at one village, and when we arrived ar-rived at the place there were several headless, legless and armless trunks lying about. .Some of the police went out to look for tracks, and not long after a sergeant came back swinging: a bundle of fresh heads that the raid ers had evidently dropped In their flight. The sight was not particularly pleasant, but it reminded me of nothing noth-ing so much as a string of onions. Once, when I was on the Upper Kiko river, a long way inland from the head of the Gulf of Papua, I found that the nathes there did not, apparently, ap-parently, collect heads, but hands, which were smoke dried and then nun round the neck as ornaments! They were quite willing to dispose of them at a tomahawk apiece I suppose cm the principle that hands were eas enough to get but tomahawks were scarce Wilfred Beaver in Wide World Magazine. |