Culture
Initiation
. Women's Rites
. Group Rites
. Male Rites
This term is commonly used to refer to two distinct forms of ritual: individual rites de passage associated with an important change in status or assumption of office, and group rites performed by the members of closed, and many cases secret, associations when these admit new members into their company. In the small-scale and predominantly egalitarian communities of pre-contact New Guinea, initiations of the first type were relatively uncommon, whereas the group rites were widely practised and of major importance in the secular and religious life of the people.
During the past half-century European investigators, most of them trained anthropologists, have published reports on approximately fifty New Guinea societies, fourty-two of which are in sufficient detail to be used in a survey of initiation ritual. though as many as half of these are located in two areas, twelve in the Highlands and nine in the Sepik River region, the remainder are so distributed that they may be taken to provide examples of the main varieties of social systems found within the rest of the territory of Papua and New Guinea.
A notable feature of the incidence and distribution of group rites was that there were only eleven societies in which they were not practised and ten of these were located east of a line drawn between the Huon Gulf on the north coast and the eastern part of the Gulf of Papua on the south. The one western society without the rites was Mbowamb in the Central Highlands; the ten eastern were Mekeo, Roro (with the exception of the Waima group), Koita and Mafulu of central Papua, and Wagawaga, Wedau, Tubetube Island, Dobu Island, Trobriand Islands, and Rossel Island, all in the Massim area. Of the thirty-one societies in which west of the line and ten east. Although the rites in certain well-defined socia-geographical areas had many features in common, such as the Eastern Highlands and Sepik River sacred flute, male secrecy, and blood-letting complex, there were also major differences between neighbouring communities and striking similarities in the rites of widely separated peoples.
Women's Rites
In most parts of New Guinea the men believed that women, especially during their menstrual periods and when giving birth, were possessed of a kind of sanctity or supernatural power that was different from, and indeed opposed to, the power that they themselves acquired by the performance of ritual. Though there was much variation in the extent to which men feared and took precautions against the dangers of feminine ritual pollution, there were few societies in which menstruating women were not required to retire from social intercourse during the period of bleeding and for a few days afterwards. The usual procedure was for the husband or father of the woman to build a special hut well isolated from residential areas. When the bleeding began she retired to the hut where she either cared for her own needs or had her food and other necessities brought to her by female relatives. Even in those few societies where seclusion was either not practised or laxly observed, it was usual for the woman to avoid any close contact with men, to refrain from cooking and to keep away from the gardens. The people generally believed that if a man came into contact, even in the most indirect manner, with menstrual blood, he would sicken and perhaps die. The growth of plants was believed to be endangered in the same way.
In those societies in which male fear of feminine pollution was especially strong (for example, throughout most of the Highland and Sepik River areas) a girl's first menses were marked by the performance of secret female rites. Among the Arapesh, a Sepik River people who live on the north bank and not far from the coast, a girl was usually living in her husband's village at the time of her first menses. She informed her brother, who then built a hut in the bush where she retired for about a week with an elderly female relative in attendance. During her seclusion she fasted for as long as she could and refrained from drinking
and smoking. Her attendant regularly rubbed her body with nettles and taught her how to thrust a roll of the weed in and out of her vulva. The stinging was believed to make her breasts large and low-hanging and in general further her physical development. Her attendant told her she must keep her knowledge of the nettles secret from men. the men learnt their 'secret' when they were taught how to incise the penis when initiated into the tambaran cult; the women likewise had their secret which was known as 'women's tambaran'.
In Wogeo and Manam Islands in the Schouten group off the Wewak coast, a girl's first menstruation was made the occasion for elaborate and publicly performed ritual. the Woneo girl, instead of being secluded in a special hut, celebrated her first period by working a few hours in every garden in the village and then visiting the other villages on the island. she thus performed the vary acts that in most New Guinea societies were strictly prohibited. the ritual attributes of menstruation were still emphasised and placed in a special relationship with the gardens, but a danger that in other societies was literally shot up and guarded against was treated by the Wogeo as a force that could yield positive results. In the concluding stages of the rites the women gathered on a mountain top and amidst much lewd jesting ritually burned the girl's old skirt, the symbol of her youth now past. the men then stormed the mountain top and chased the women back to the village with sticks and stones. Later in the evening the women held a dance of their own from which men were excluded.
The Manam rites differed in that though they were performed when the girl first menstruated, they had no real connection with menstruation as a physiological event, with ideas about menstrual blood, or with the dangers that were elsewhere believed to be inherent in such overt manifestations of a girl's sexual maturity. For a period of seven days the girl was made the centre of much attention. four or five young girls were appointed as attendants to care for her needs, especially to prepare her food. Each afternoon the older women took her to bathe in the sea and, though the rite was clearly prefatory in intent, it was performed with much light-hearted enjoyment and laughter. On the first day she discarded her old petticoat and was dressed in new ones made of shredded banana leaf. Her attendants washed her face with leaves and beautified her body with oil. Each day female specialist added to her beauty by making small cuts to raise decorative keloids on various parts of her body. On the final day, after the usual bathing and oiling and donning of new petticoats, the girl was placed on a mat in front of her parents' house, and male relatives plaited ornaments on her body. A large gathering of kinsfolk attended this important ceremony and were feasted by the girl's parents. Early in the afternoon when most of the visitors had departed, a woman shaved the girl's head. the women then returned to the beach for a final washing, and while still in the water the girl donned and ornamental waistband and the type of coloured petticoat worn by adult women. Back in the village she was painted, dressed in yet more petticoats, and redecorated with ornaments. Her father sat in front of her, and after the women had ritually wailed she ate food presented by various relatives. the next day she returned to normal life.
The Manam, Wogeo, and Arapesh rites can be regarded as initiations only in so far as they conferred on the girl a new status as potential wife and mother - they did not make her a member of an excusive group of initiates.
Groups Rites
Initiations into closed ritual associations differed from the menstrual rites of women in that, instead of being performed separately for each individual at a specific stage in the in the life cycle, a number of novices ere jointly admitted at periodic intervals. Rites of this type were practised in thirty-one societies and in only three were girls included amongst the novices.
The Orokaiva and the Koko of the Northern District (Oro Province) of Papua initiated girls as well as boys, but whereas the boys went through the rites in full and learned all the secrets , the girls went through only a modified version and could not themselves subsequently act as initiators. Every few years the men of the village, disguised as ancestral spirits, took all the uninitiated children from their homes and assembled them on the ceremonial ground.
They proceeded to terrify the novices by performing masked dances and representing the voices of the spirits with bull roarers and flutes. At the end of the day the boys, but not the girls, were shown the instruments and had their significance explained. They were told that though these were truly sacred objects they were also used by the men to impersonate the voices of the spirits. The ceremony was followed by a period of seclusion that lasted for some months; the boys stayed in the men's club where the sacred instruments were also kept, the girls in a separate building specially erected for the occasion.
The Mundugumor, a Sepik River people, also initiated girls into a cut that centered on the possession of sacred flutes and bullroarers. Mundugumor social structure differed radically from they found elsewhere in New Guinea , especially in the unique descent categories which they so aptly termed 'ropes'. According to this system, a son belonged to his mother's rope, and a daughter to her father's, and son on down the generations. Given such a system, it was not surprising to find that the largest corporate and enduring groups were autonomous families living in widely6 separated homesteads.
Instead of a lineage, village or phyle cult there were innumerable small cults, each owned by one individual and each passed down a separate rope. In each family group at least two cults were represented, and father and son necessarily belonged to different ones. The holding of a ceremony depended solely on the ambition and influence of the twenty or so adults who qualified for the title of 'big man'. When such a person
decided to initiate new members into his personal cult he sounded his flutes, and the men of neighbouring homesteads came to help build a small ceremonial house. The men rounded up all the youths who had not yet been initiated into this particular cult, showed them the sacred objects, and subjected them to the particular torture that went with the rope concerned. Girls were given the choice of joining or not, and as they were exempted from the physical ordeals most of them agreed on at least one occasion. The boys had no choice, and by the time they were sufficiently strong to resist capture, most of them had been initiated into the cults of four or more 'big men'.
Male Rites
Exclusively male rites of initiation were practised in twenty-eight societies, and normally all males were initiated by the time they reached adult-hood. However, in New Britain and in the neighbouring island of Tanga the rites were performed by the members of secret societies - the dukduk and ingiet in New Britain and the sokapana in Tanga, and though most adult men belonged to one and frequently to many, membership was voluntary, could be acquired at any age, and was subject to the payment of a fee.
The initiating men subjected the novices to numerous and harsh ordeals and hoaxes during a long period of seclusion in an isolated lodge. They also disguised themselves as supernatural beings by wearing elaborate masks and cloaks and rampaged through the neighbourhood destroying the property of non-members and terrifying the women and children.
The rites practised in the remaining twenty-six societies differed in that they united all men as members of a single ritual association. Within each area of social and cultural uniformity, which varied in scale from the five hundred or so residents of Busama village in the Huon gulf to the sixty thousand Chimbu of the Eastern Highlands, all adult men went through similar initiatory experiences prior to marriage. In Busama and similar small-scale societies, mostly found in coastal areas, all the adult men jointly initiated their youths in ceremonies held at intervals that varied from two or three to as many as ten years. In larger-scale societies, such separate rites were held by the members of important constituent units such as lineages, sub-clans, or even, as among the Gahuku-Gama, sub-tribes. By contrast with the New Britain and Tanga rites, which stressed lines of cleavage and antagonism between men, the great majority of the compulsory pre-marital rites reflected the community of male interests and their essential opposition to the sphere of women. this was especially true of those societies in which male fear of feminine pollution was extreme. In such cases the rites were primarily intended to mark the end of the lad's former close association with his mother and other female members of the household, cleanse him of the polluting effects of such contact, and make him grow into a strong and healthy adult by acquiring specifically male ritual posers. though the boys were usually required to undergo various unpleasant and painful experiences, these were seldom so harsh or cruel as in the secret society rites and were mostly intended to have beneficial effects.
The Gahuku-Gama of the Eastern Highlands provide a good example of a people who performed rites of this type . They are a congeries of tribes numbering about eight thousand persons, and they all speak the same language and share a common cultural heritage. the component tribes, about a dozen, united in offence and defence, and the great idza nama festivals were an expression of tribal unity. Each tribe was divided into two sub-tribes which in turn consisted of a number of named patrilineal clans. The clan was ideally exogamous, and most of the male members lived in a single palisaded village.
The men of each sub-tribe periodically initiated their youths into an exclusively male association based on the possession of sacred flutes. The separation of the sexes, and their opposition, was clearly expressed in the symbolic content of the rites, the ideology of the flutes, and the institution of the male club. The rites were divided into three separate stages spread over approximately four months and were usually so times that the final and most important stage coincided with the holding of a tribal pig-exchange festival. Each novice participated on three successive occasions, the first during early childhood, the second as an adolescent, and the third shortly before marriage.
In the first stage the men led the novices to a stream and allowed them to witness ritual vomiting and nose-bleeding. the sacred flutes were sounded continuously and the men threatened to kill any women who saw either the boys or the flutes. When the men returned to the villages they were set upon by armed women.
In the second stage the novices were secluded in the men's club for about two months. they were admitted into the secret of the flutes and also
taught how to play them.
The third stage marked the end of seclusion and the formal return of the youths to everyday life.
The five- and six-year-old boys who took part for the first time were brought to the river to witness the nose-bleeding and vomiting. They were also made to bath, and as they came out of the water the men greeted them with mock triumphant shouts. At the end of the day they rejoined their mothers in the family dwellings and took no further part in the rites.
The intermediate grade of novices had their noses bled and were shown how to make themselves vomit by swallowing a length of cane. They lived in the club for a few months, practising nose-bleeding and vomiting and avoiding any direct contact with women. However, the rules were lax, and they spent much of the time roving in bands. they were also taught the secret of the flutes, but were not yet allowed to play them.
The senior novices, after participating in the purificatory ceremony at the stream, entered a two-year period of seclusion. They had to avoid all forms of contact with women and could not even eat food cooked by them. they were taught how to play the flutes and received much instruction in the traditions of the tribe and the expected behaviour of adult males.
The men told the women that the flute tunes were produced by large birds, that the birds appeared in the club during the course of the rites, and that they tended them during this period. The men agreed that the tale was invented for the express purpose of deceiving the women and keeping them in a position of inferiority. The men believed that in physiological endowment they were inferior to women and that in order to resort to such an elaborate achievement as the sacred flute cult and its associated rites of admission. Read wrote, 'A girl's growing breasts and her first menstruation are signs of a maturing process which is without obvious parallel in the boy, a fact that the men resent . . . The challenge of the physiological processes of growth and sexual maturity in women is met my men's initiation rites and, thereafter, the practice of regular self-induced bleeding and magical acts'
.
The people of Wogeo Island, the most northerly of the Schouten group, initiated boys into a sacred
flute cult in four stages which resembled those of the Gahuku-Gama. The first took place at about four years of age when the boys had their ear-lobes pierced and were permitted to hear, but not see, the flutes. The second was performed three years later when the boys were carried to the beach where they were shown the flutes and had their significance explained. the third stage took place when the novices were about ten. The men cut the lads' tongues and taught them how to play the flutes. the tongue-cutting was said to release the mother's blood with which children were born, and in addition, all those contaminating influences acquired through contact with women. The final rites took place at about the age of eighteen when the youths were shown how to incise the penis and were dressed in adult fashion.
The men told the women and children that flutes were the voices of supernatural beings, nibek, and they referred to initiation as being eaten by a nibek. though the women were not deceived by the men's tale, they nevertheless believed that they would die if they should see the flutes. The men themselves, despite regarding their deception of the women as a joke rather than as a means of maintaining their superior status, firmly believed that they could only become strong and healthy adults by seeing the flutes and by releasing bad blood through tongue-cutting and penile incision. Like the Gahuku-Gama, the Wogeo men continued periodically to bleed the penis, and act which they explicitly referred to as 'men's menstruation.'
The Gahuku-Gama and Wogeo rites were, with only minor variations, typical of those practised by the Kamano, Fore, Siane, and Chimbu in the Highlands, and by the Abelam, Arapesh, and Kwoma of the Sepik. In each of these societies the men maintained elaborate ceremonial houses which no woman or child was permitted to enter. The rites of initiation conferred on boys the right to use these buildings as eating places and dormitories and to share in the secret of the flutes, masks, and carved objects stored in them. the uninitiated were supposed to believe that the sound of the flutes was really that of spirits come to visit the men in their club, and that the spirits disliked women, especially during menstruation and childbirth. In some societies the men also told the women that the spirits bit or devoured the novices. the men performed rites with at least three aims in mind: to cleanse the boys of the polluting effects of past feminine contact; to make them grow into strong and health adults; to hoax, impress, and sometimes frighten the women. The three were related in that they derived from anxieties experienced by the men in their relationship with women, and especially from fear of menstrual blood and childbirth.
The compulsory rites practised in the remaining nineteen societies differed in that though they were performed with some, and in a few cases all, of the above goals, additional considerations were of the above goals, additional considerations were of equal if not greater importance. they fall into two broad classes: those in which status differences amongst the men directly cut across and hence reduced the basic sex dichotomy between adult initiated men and initiated women; those in which the participants were at least as much concerned with political economic, or entertainment functions of the rites as with status differentiation.
All the compulsory rites, including those in which the sex division was of paramount importance, divided the men into two main categories - the initiators and the initiands. When the rites were held at widely spaced intervals and the novices were secluded together for long periods during which they underwent numerous unpleasant experiences, strong bonds that persisted for many years were formed between the members of each initiatory set. but in the great majority of such rites - for example, those performed by the Gahuku-Gama - the boys were first and foremost initiated into a relatively undifferentiated adult male cult group and only secondarily into discrete age grades. The men shared the same secrets, resided in the same clubhouse and were members of the same patrilineal descent group.
The Busama of the Huon Gulf and the Iatmul of the Sepik were the only New Guinea societies in which the social gulf separating the novices from the initiators was as great if not greater that that separating both from the the uninitiated women and children. As in the New Britain and Tanga secret society rites, the senior men subjected the boys to numerous ordeals and appeared to do so in order to make them suffer rather than to further their growth or cleanse them of feminine pollution.
In Busama the rites were held at intervals of about a decade, and the age of the novices varied from about fifteen to twenty-five. When the day came each novice was carried by a kinsman who had been initiated on a previous occasion to a hut specially prepared in the bushy. throughout the journey the older men beat the novices with firebrands, sticks tipped with obsidian, and nettles. They arrived covered in blood and were handed to two men who were to act as guardians and tormentors during their long period of seclusion. They were beaten, starved, deprived of sleep, partially suffocated, and almost roasted. Water was prohibited, and if thirsty they had to chew sugarcane. Only the coarsest of foods were allowed, and even these were left raw. the guardians also repeatedly instructed the boys about their kinship responsibilities and duties to elders. At length, agter some months, a priest summoned supernatural beings from underground while the other men sounded bullroarers. The guardians then taught their charges how to incise the penis. As in the Eastern Highlands and Sepik river communities, all initiated men were expected to repeat the operation regularly on their own penis, especially after sexual intercourse and before undertaking any difficult or dangerous task. The period of seclusion ended when a series of great feasts was held and the initiands emerged richly decorated.
Hogbin, who studied both the Wogeo and the Busama, concluded his account of the Busama rites with the following observation: 'The question to be decided is whether the youths were introduced primarily into an age group or primarily into a sex group ... My impression is that a dual purpose was aimed at but with slightly greater emphasis on age. This conclusion is backed up by negative evidence from Wogeo, in the Sepik district, where the sexual side receives the stress. The Wogeo men when initiating a youth concentrate on hoaxing the women and refrain from inflicting hardships upon him; . . . The behaviour of the Busama was the direct opposite. They ignored the women's reactions and the initiation of the girls and devoted their energy to making the youths suffer (Kinship and Marriage in a New Guinea Village).
The Iatmul, a Sepik River people whose social structure was notable for its complex series of age grades based on alternating generations and half-generations, emphasised the hoaxing and bullying of the novices to an even greater extent that the Busama. Instead of ritual purification by means of incision, circumcision, nose bleeding, or nettle stinging, the boys were cruelly scarified. In the second stage of the rites the men taught the novices to play the sacred flutes kept in the ceremonial house, fed them meat to make them grow big, and at the end decked them with finery and paraded them before the women. But the ethnographer Bateson made no mention of the men attempting to deceive the women with tales of devouring monsters. In fact, a number of girls even went through a modified version of the rites in which they too saw the flutes and were scarified.
Bateson described the spirit in which the ceremonies were carried out as that of irresponsible bullying
and swagger on the part of the men: 'In the process of scarification nobody cares how the little boys bear their pain. If they scream, some of the initiators go and hammer on the gongs to drown the sound. the father of the little boy will perhaps stand by and watch the process, occasionally saying in a conventional way "That's enough! That's enough!" but no attention is paid to him ... When pain is inflicted in other parts of initiation, it is done by men who enjoy doing it and who carry out their business in a cynical. practical-joking spirit. The drinking of filthy water is a great joke and the wretched novices are tricked into drinking plenty of it . . . In the first week of their seclusion, the novices are subjected to a great variety of cruel and harsh tricks'.
There were no New Guinea societies in which initiation was the exclusive concern of an hereditary aristocracy. there were, however, two communities, Manam Island in the Schouten group and Mowehafen in southern New Britain, in which the sons of high-ranking fathers went through the rites in full, while commoner boys were excluded from the final and most important ceremonies.
The Manm rites, like those of all the Sepik River peoples, were closely associated with a cult of sacred flutes kept hidden from women in the men's houses. Each village possessed a pair of the flutes, one male and the other female, and though every youth was instructed in their use during initiation, they were blown only for a member of the high-ranking tanepwa class.
The rites themselves were performed in three stages that closely resembled those of the Wogeo, but instead of ritually reinforcing the sex dichotomy, the ceremonies emphasised the rights and privileges of the aristocrats. It is significant that they did not include incision or any other form of blood-letting operation. The ethnographer Wedgwood noted that only the tanepwa went through the rites in full, though she did not specify which stages were omitted for the commoner boys. The geographical position of Mowehafen is of particular interest in that the people maintained regular contact with the Huon Gulf area of New Guinea via Siassi Island. The Huon Gulf ceremonies, which formed part of a secret male cult similar to that found in the Eastern Highlands and into Mowehafen. The people, however, radically altered the rites by initiating boys and girls together and excluding all commoners. The operation of circumcision, which in the Huon Gulf area was a carefully guarded male secret, was performed shortly after birth by an old woman. during the course of the rites proper, which were performed some years after circumcision, the initiates, both girls and boys, were shown bullroarers and then secluded for a short period. the Mowehafen, like the Manam, thus transformed a ritual complex usually associated with male solidarity and fear of women into one associated with an hereditary status distinction between men.
The Tchambuli (Chambri) are yet another Sepik River people who initiated their boys into a male cult that centred on the possession of scared musical instruments, including flutes, and a tale told to the women that sounds of the instruments were really the voices of supernatural beings come to visit the men in their ceremonial houses. But the Tchambuli showed little interest either in the efficacy of their deception of the women or in making the boys suffer. the boys were initiated, not because they had reached an important stage of physiological or social development, nor as a ritual reinforcement of their separation from women and incorporation into a world of male secrets and exclusively male activities, nor again as a means of maintaining and reinforcing male rank, but rather as an excuse to hold an elaborate and beautiful ceremony providing entertainment and amusement for the entire community, women included. The rites were simply one of the many occasions on which the men displayed the magnificence of their masks, their skill as dancers, the size and ornateness of their ceremonial houses, and the sumptuousness of their feasts.
Each boy was initiated individually at the whim of his father's ceremonial ambitions, and age was a matter of little importance. As with the Iatmul, the boy was scarified, but every effort was made to reduce his suffering to the minimum. the operation, which was intended to make him beautiful, was performed in the men's house by one of the boy's classificatory mother's brothers, and far from being a carefully guarded male secret, the lad's mother attended so that she might comfort him. He was secluded for a short period but did not have to undergo any unpleasant experiences.
The flutes, gongs, and masks were supposed to be male secrets, but the women knew everything, and the men knew that they knew. The women said they perpetuated the pretence so that the men would not be embarrassed and also to ensure their own enjoyment of the dances and masked dramas. During these latter the women joined in and threatened the younger men who wore masks
representing the opposite sex.
All the compulsory pre-marital male rites so far discussed shared at least one characteristic - the initiated men, regardless of the degree of internal status differentiation, continued throughout their lives as members of the cult group. In three societies - the Enga and west Kyaka of the New guinea Highlands, and the Huli of the Papuan Highlands - the rites, though having many features in common with those found elsewhere, differed in that they were for bachelors only. So long as a man remained a bachelor, regardless of how old he might be, he retained membership of a closely knit ritual association and participated in the initiation of new members. the strict exclusion of married men was a consequence of their close association with women, and did not have anything to do with their having reached a certain age category.
In all three societies the sex relationship was characterised by strict residential separation from an early age, acute male anxiety concerning the dangers of feminine pollution, and the performance of rites, including the initiation ceremonies, from which women and children were excluded. Amongst the Enga, when a boy was about six he left his mother's house to sleep in his lineage club. At about fifteen he first participated in group rituals which the bachelors of his sub-clan performed in order to nullify the unavoidable contacts with clanswomen. the bachelors maintained cult grounds, forbidden to women and married men, where they cultivated a type of bog iris to ensure the health and welfare of their fellows. The withering of a plant was taken as evidence that someone had broken the taboo on associating with women. It was thought that such a person would fall ill or suffer other misfortune. The iris was connected in myths with female blood and was thought to protect the young men from the dangers of menstruation. The iris was also employed in magic having to do with wealth, pigs and war.
When a new member joined the group he faced seclusion for about two years in a special house on the cult ground. During this period various rites were performed including regular body- and eye-washing, rubbing with potent leaves, singing of spells, cultivation of the iris plants, observances of regulations concerning dress, diet, conversation and general behaviour, interpretation of dreams, and final emergence in full regalia at a public festival.
Source:
Encyclopedia of Papua and New Guinea
Melbourne University Press