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Updated: June 29, 2025
The bows, which are large and powerful, are made of split bamboo, and the arrows of a cane procured from New Guinea, afterwards headed with hard wood variously pointed and sometimes barbed. The Kowraregas obtain bows and arrows from their northern neighbours, and occasionally use them in warfare, but prefer the spears which are made by the blacks of the mainland.
With regard to the curious burial ceremonies of the Kowraregas, I regret that I cannot be so explicit as might otherwise have been the case, as Giaom's information on this subject, and on this only, was not written down at the time. When the head of a family dies at Muralug, the body is laid out upon a framework of sticks raised a foot from the ground, and is there allowed to rot.
The Kowraregas inhabit the Prince of Wales group: the Muralegas and Italegas divide between them Banks Island: the Badulegas possess Mulgrave Island, and the Gumulegas the islands between the last and New Guinea: the Kulkalegas have Mount Ernest and the Three Sisters: The Massilegas* reside on the York Isles and others adjacent: and the Miriam tribe hold the north-easternmost islands of Torres Strait, including Murray and Darnley Islands.
Even the Kowraregas have much finer canoes than their neighbours on the mainland; one which I measured alongside the ship was forty-five feet long and three and a half in greatest width, and could carry with ease twenty-five people. At the latter place we found a small canoe with two outriggers concealed on shore among some bushes. The bark canoes of Rockingham Bay have already been described.
The junction between the two races, or the Papuan from the north and the Australian from the south, is effected at Cape York by the Kowraregas, whom I believe to be a Papuanized colony of Australians, as will elsewhere be shown. In fact, one might hesitate whether to consider the Kowraregas* as Papuans or Australians, so complete is the fusion of the two races.
That the Kowraregas settled the Prince of Wales Islands either prior to or nearly simultaneously, with the spreading downwards from New Guinea of the Papuans of the islands, scarcely admits of absolute proof: but that the former have existed as a tribe for a long period of years is shown by the changes which I presume to have taken place in their language.
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