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Updated: June 22, 2025
The inhabitants present the most ugly specimen extant of the Papuan race; the men wear no covering, and the women, who are used as mere beasts of burden; wear only a petticoat, made from the plantain leaf. Their canoes are more rudely constructed than in most of the other islands; and, on the whole, these people seem to be among the most degraded of the islanders of the Pacific."
I have never seen these people myself, but from the numerous accurate descriptions of them that have been published, I have had no difficulty in satisfying myself that they have little affinity or resemblance to the Papuans, with which they have been hitherto associated. In most important characters they differ more from the Papuan than they do from the Malay.
Hero then I had reached a new world, inhabited by a strange people. Between the Malayan tribes, among whom I had for some years been living, and the Papuan races, whose country I had now entered, we may fairly say that there is as much difference, both moral and physical, as between the red Indians of South America and the negroes of Guinea on the opposite side of the Atlantic.
They contain a Celebes-Malay element and a Papuan element, along with some radical peculiarities found also in the languages of the Siau and Sanguir islands further north, and therefore, probably derived from the Philippine Islands. Physical characteristics correspond.
But with language it is not so. There have never yet been found human beings, not the most degraded horde of South African bushmen, or Papuan cannibals, who did not employ this means of intercourse with one another.
Their stature and their features, as well as their disposition and habits, are almost the same as those of the Papuans; their hair is semi-Papuan-neither straight, smooth, and glossy, like all true Malays', nor so frizzly and woolly as the perfect Papuan type, but always crisp, waved, and rough, such as often occurs among the true Papuans, but never among the Malays.
The Standard Wing is found in Gilolo as well as in Batchian, and all the specimens from the former island have the green breast shield rather longer, the crown of the head darker violet, and the lower parts of the body rather more strongly scaled with green. This is the only Paradise Bird yet found in the Moluccan district, all the others being confined to the Papuan Islands and North Australia.
But as the present remarks are made for the sake of illustrating a method, rather than establishing any particular point, this is not necessary here; a few instances taken from the names of the parts of the human body being sufficient to show the general distribution of some of the commoner Australian roots; and the more special fact of their existence in the northern dialects: The Miriam Vocabulary belongs to a different class, namely the Papuan.
Many of the natives, though equally dark with the others, have little of the Papuan physiognomy, but have more delicate features of the European type, with more glossy, curling hair: These at first quite puzzled me, for they have no more resemblance to Malay than to Papuan, and the darkness of skin and hair would forbid the idea of Dutch intermixture.
He'll not try hurricanes again!" The woman was a Malay, as all the Aniwans were. Had a Papuan woman on Tanna or Erromanga dared such a thing, she would have been killed on the spot. But even on Aniwa, the unwonted spectacle of a wife beating her husband created uproarious amusement. At length I remonstrated, saying, "You had better stop now! You don't want to kill him, do you?
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