United States or Barbados ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Among the Yabim and Bukaua, two neighbouring and kindred tribes on the coast of German New Guinea, a girl at puberty is secluded for some five or six weeks in an inner part of the house; but she may not sit on the floor, lest her uncleanness should cleave to it, so a log of wood is placed for her to squat on.
Among the Yabim and Bukaua, two neighbouring and kindred tribes on the coast of Northern New Guinea, a girl at puberty is secluded for some five or six weeks in an inner part of the house; but she may not sit on the floor, lest her uncleanliness should cleave to it, so a log of wood is placed for her to squat on.
Parkinson that the confinement of the girls lasts from twelve to twenty months. The length of it may have been reduced since Dr. George Brown described the custom in 1876. The customs of the two tribes seem to be in substantial agreement, and the accounts of them supplement each other. The description of the Bukaua practice is the fuller.
Some tribes of Northern New Guinea the Yabim, Bukaua, Kai, and Tami like many Australian tribes, require every male member of the tribe to be circumcised before he ranks as a full-grown man; and the tribal initiation, of which circumcision is the central feature, is conceived by them, as by some Australian tribes, as a process of being swallowed and disgorged by a mythical monster, whose voice is heard in the humming sound of the bull-roarer.
Word Of The Day