Note 1 — Chapter I · The Country and Inhabitants of the Kula District

The actual distribution of races in New Guinea completely justifies these hypotheses. Map II shows the Eastern part of the main island and archipelagoes of New Guinea and the racial distribution of the natives. The interior of the continent, the low sago swamps and deltas of the Gulf of Papua—probably the greater part of the North Coast and of the South-West Coast of New Guinea, are inhabited by a “relatively tall, dark-skinned, frizzly-haired” race, called by Dr. Seligman Papuan, and in the hills more especially by pygmy tribes. We know little about these people, swamp tribes and hill tribes alike, who probably are the autochtons in this part of the world.1 As we shall also not meet them in the following account, it will be better to pass to the tribes who inhabit the accessible parts of New Guinea. “The Eastern Papuasians, that is, the generally smaller, lighter coloured, frizzly-haired races of the eastern peninsula of New Guinea and its archipelagoes now require a name, and since the true Melanesian element is dominant in them, they may be called Papuo-Melanesians. With regard to these Eastern Papuasians, Dr. A. C. Haddon first recognised that they came into the country as the result of a ‘Melanesian migration into New Guinea,’ and further, ‘That a single wandering would not account for certain puzzling facts.’ ”2 The Papuo-Melanesians again can be divided into two groups, a Western and an Eastern one, which, following Dr. Seligman’s terminology, we shall call the Western Papuo-Melanesians and the Massim respectively. It is with these latter we shall become acquainted in the following pages.