178 president's address — section r. 



with the sug[ge§tion, and entered the Nobo house, and was 

 promptly killed, cooked, and eaten; the Nobo house was then 

 burnt down, and a fresh one built in another place. Why they 

 should take the trouble of enticing the man to the Nobo house 

 instead^ of killing him out of hand was the point which one could 

 not understand, and it was just the point which they could not 

 explain. 



At the trial the witnesses repeated the account which had been 

 given to the arresting officer, and added that occasionally, I pre- 

 sume when there was a dearth of visitors, they succeeded in 

 inducing some of their own village people to enter the fatal house. 

 This seemed to me the most surprising thing of all, for, though it 

 might be possible to entrajo- an unsuspicious stranger, I could not 

 understand how a native^ of the village, who, of course, would 

 know exactly what the house was built for, could ever be got inside 

 it; but the only explanation I could get was, "Suppose we say, 

 ' More better you go along Nobo house,' he gO' all right." 



DifficuJty of F'itt'in<j in Xative Customs with E uropean Ideas. 



It is, of course, easy to enumerate' the strange customs that one 

 has met with, but it is very rarely that one can understand these 

 practices of the Stone Age and modify them in such a way as to 

 make them fit in with what has been called the^ "European epoch 

 of the human mind" ; though it seems clear that this line of 

 investigation must in future play a very important part in the 

 government of native races, however much it may have been 

 neglected in the past. The difficulties, however, are very great. 

 My experience in- Papua is that if a native gives you a reason for 

 any custom or belief you may be pretty sure that he has just made 

 it up, and that, in fact, he does not know, but does not like to 

 admit his ignorance; and, consequently, you find yourself reduced 

 toi conjecture, which can only be verified and checked by enormous 

 patience and industry. 



Difficult)/ 0/ Gra><'inn<i the Real Meaning of What a Native Tellx 

 You; C Oliver sat 1071 with a Cassovar//. 

 It is SO' difficult, too, sometimes, toi know w^hat a native means. 

 When a witness gives you, for instance, an account of a conversa- 

 tion which hei has had with a cassowary iii the bush, and adds 

 that he has always found a cassowary to tell the truth, it is really 

 quite impossible to know what he means. One may say that he is 

 mad, but the man I am thinking of most certainly was not mad, or 

 vou may say that his concept of personality is fluid (vide Hartland's 

 Ritual and BtHef, p. 30), and that he'^ thinks that a man can 

 change into a cassowary and a cassowary into a man without much 

 difficulty; but. as a matter of fact, he does not think anything of 

 the sort, and if he saw a man turn into a cassowary he would be 

 just as amazed as you or I. Probably the man in question knew 

 perfectlv well that he had never had a conversation with a cassowary 



