Note (return) — LECTURE II

Passing from Australia to other savage lands we learn that according to the belief of the Torres Straits Islanders all sickness and death were due to sorcery.31 The natives of Mowat or Mawatta in British New Guinea "do not believe in a natural death, but attribute even the decease of an old man to the agency of some enemy known or unknown."32 In the opinion of the tribes about Hood Peninsula in British New Guinea no one dies a natural death. Every such death is caused by the evil magic either of a living sorcerer or of a dead relation.33 Of the Roro-speaking tribes of British New Guinea Dr. Seligmann writes that "except in the case of old folk, death is not admitted to occur without some obvious cause such as a spear-thrust. Therefore when vigorous and active members of the community die, it becomes necessary to explain their fate, and such deaths are firmly believed to be produced by sorcery. Indeed, as far as I have been able to ascertain, the Papuasian of this district regards the existence of sorcery, not, as has been alleged, as a particularly terrifying and horrible affair, but as a necessary and inevitable condition of existence in the world as he knows it."34 Amongst the Yabim of German New Guinea "every case of death, even though it should happen accidentally, as by the fall of a tree or the bite of a shark, is laid at the door of the sorcerers. They are blamed even for the death of a child. If it is said that a little child never hurt anybody and therefore cannot have an enemy, the reply is that the intention was to injure the mother, and that the malady had been transferred to the infant through its mother's milk."35