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Updated: May 8, 2025
Far south of the Moluccas lies the island of Timor, inhabited by tribes much nearer to the true Papuan than those of the Moluccas. The Timorese of the interior are dusky brown or blackish, with bushy frizzled hair, and the long Papuan nose. They are of medium height, and rather slender figures.
The Timorese sacrifice a black pig to the Earth-goddess for rain, a white or red one to the Sun-god for sunshine. The Angoni sacrifice a black ox for rain and a white one for fine weather.
These are of a semicircular form, and often three or four feet in diameter. I once saw the natives take a bees' nest, and a very interesting sight it was. In the valley where I used to collect insects, I one day saw three or four Timorese men and boys under a high tree, and, looking up, saw on a very lofty horizontal branch three large bees' combs.
I have not mentioned horses, which are often thought to be wild in Timor, because there are no grounds whatever for such a belief. The Timor ponies have every one an owner, and are quite as much domesticated animals as the cattle on a South American hacienda. I have dwelt at some length upon the origin of the Timorese fauna because it appears to be a most interesting and instructive problem.
They are certainly distinct from the Timorese or Papuan races, and must be classed in the western rather than the eastern ethnological division of the Archipelago. The whole of the great island of New Guinea, the Ke and Aru Islands, with Mysol, Salwatty, and Waigiou, are inhabited almost exclusively by the typical Papuans.
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