president's address — SECTION F. 169 



Collection of Skulls in- Namau. 



The people of Namau were alsoi head-hunters as well as canni- 

 bals (the two do not always go together), and their ravi or large 

 ni^n's houses, were festooned with innumerable skulls; and the 

 removal of these skulls was necessary to the eventual suppression 

 of head-hunting. Not all these skulls were the skulls of enemies — 

 many were the skulls of friends and relations ; but all had to go, 

 so that in putting down a crime we were also suppressing a quite 

 unobjectionable funeral rite. Fortunately, no harm appears to 

 have resulted ; and, in any case, head-hunting must stop. 



PiircJiase of Land. 



Particularly in buying land from natives it is necessary to 

 have at least some rudimentary knoAvledge of native custom. The 

 practical man, who will stand no nonsense, probably solves this 

 difficulty, and, inore suo, creates a hundred others, by simply 

 declaring all native-owned land to be Crown land ; but, if we have 

 any regard for the traditions of British justice, we shall probably 

 try, whatever the precise details of our land policy may be, to 

 inflict as little hardship as possible upon the native owners, and 

 to do this we must have some general idea of the form of land 

 tenure in different parts of the Territory. Many years ago some 

 person who had the interests of the Papuans at heart, and who 

 had persuaded himself that they were being robbed of their lands, 

 asked that a special Board should be appointed to hear any com- 

 plaints which might be raised by native owners in connexion with 

 land purchase; the Board was .appointed, but it has never met, 

 for the reason that the few mistakes that were made were easily 

 corrected, and that no injustice has been alleged. 



Best nu-f ion of Sacred Tree — Policeman Ordered to Shoot his 



Totem. 



It would be easy to give individual instances where ignorance 

 or neglect of native customs has caiised unnecessary, and sometimes 

 rather serious, trouble. A friend of mine — a humane man, and 

 one who had exceptional consideration for natives — told me that 

 he was once besieged for several days by a horde of cannibals 

 whom he had offended because in his clearing operations he had 

 unwittingly destroyed a sacred tree; he was the last man in the 

 world to destroy anything that any one considered sacred, but 

 there was nothing to distinguish this tree from others, and it had 

 simply gone with the rest. Less serious in its results was the 

 rather thoughtless action of a Government officer who told a 

 police-man to shoot soane birds to make soup for a sick colleague. 

 The birds (they were black cockatoos if I remember aright) were 

 the totem of the policeman, and he might not take their life; so 

 he was placed in a very terrible dilemma, for on one side was his 

 clear duty to obey orders, and on the other was the life-long 



