Note 15 — Introductory

The natives of Mt. Scratchley (apparently the eastern or south-eastern side), visited by Sir William Macgregor in 1896, appear from his description of them15 to show a few points of resemblance to the Mafulu people. In particular I refer to their “dark bronze” colour, to the wearing by women of the perineal band (to which, however, is added a mantle and “in most cases” a grass petticoat, which is not done in Mafulu), to the absence of tattooing or cicatrical ornamentation, to their “large earrings made out of tails of lizards covered by narrow straps of palm leaves dyed yellow” (which, though not correctly descriptive of the Mafulu earring, is apparently something like it), to their use of pigs’ tails as ear ornaments, to their plaiting of the hair and the decoration of the plaited hair with teeth and shells, to their small charm bags and to the shortness of their bows. Also to the construction of their houses, with the roof carried down to the ground, with a fireplace about 2 feet wide extending down the centre of the building from one end to the other, and having an inclined floor on each side, and especially to the curious apse-like roof projections in front of these houses (Dr. Haddon calls them “pent roofs”16), Sir William’s figure of which is, like that of the Chirima villages, identical, or nearly so, with that of a Mafulu house. But Sir William’s description of the physique of these Mt. Scratchley people and other matters make it clear, I think, that they belong to a type different from that of the Mafulu, though they must be next door neighbours of the Fuyuge-speaking people. Dr. Seligmann, in commenting upon this description of these people, expresses the opinion that they are Papuo-Melanesians.17