New Guinea Headhunter Descendants Put on a Convincing Show for Visitors : HEADHUNTERS: Show for Guests

AMBOIN, Papua New Guinea —  Thirty warriors bristling with spears--brown bodies writhing, colorful feather headdresses flashing, war-painted visages glowing ferociously--leaped ashore from three war canoes.

Making blood-curdling cries, the raiding party swooped down on their helpless victims, brandishing stone adzes sharp enough to cut off a head with a single swipe.

Their forebears, a generation or two ago, would have taken a guest’s head, but the Yamandim tribesmen were only play-acting at ferocity for their visitors’ benefit.

It was an all-too-convincing flashback to 50 years ago, when the tribes along the Karawari River and throughout Papua New Guinea practiced headhunting; a young man wasn’t eligible to marry until he had one or two heads on his belt.

The mock battle was on the Karawari River, a major tributary of the 700-mile Sepik River in the East Sepik Province of eastern Papua New Guinea.

Roughly the size of Texas, Papua New Guinea is part of the island of New Guinea, the world’s second-largest non-continental island after Greenland, and lies north of Queensland, Australia.

Until its independence in 1975, Papua New Guinea was governed by Australia as a colony from the early 1900s. After World War II it was a United Nations Territory.

Dotted along the Karawari River’s murky jungle banks are dozens of tribal villages whose inhabitants, like the Yamandim, emerged from the Stone Age only 50 years ago.

The first white men--missionaries, adventurers and Australian patrol officers, or kiaps --came to the Sepik lowlands in the 1930s to save souls, prospect for gold and administer Papua New Guinea.

The white man’s endeavors and those first encounters notwithstanding, the villagers still live much as their ancestors did a millennium ago.

In those days, the dead would have been borne back to the attacking village, where, with due ceremony, their heads would have been removed.

To show the present-day onlookers that they had no hard feelings, “attachers” and “victims” joined in a feverish celebration, chanting and gyrating wildly to eerie flute and throbbing drum accompaniment.

Somewhat reassured, the visitors reboarded the “river truck” (a flat-bottomed, 20-foot rectangular, shaded orange punt) that would carry us to several villages on the river for demonstrations of their traditional ceremonies, many of which, like headhunting, were no longer practiced.

Karawari Lodge, our base camp in the nearby river outpost of Amboin, had arranged for the performances. The lodge consists of 20 thatch-roofed rooms strung out on a ridge high above the river--each with bath, mosquito netting, ceiling fan and a veranda for viewing the jungle wildlife and spectacular Sepik Blue Orchid.

The boat plied a wondrous seascape. Brilliant-plumed birds of paradise and pied herons flew overhead. Lining the shore were reedy pit-pit grass and the flamboyant flame of the forest trees, their orange blooms curving upward like licking flames.

Fluffy clouds drifted above. The scene was perfectly reflected in the river’s watery mirror.

Approaching our guide Chris’ home village of Kundiman for a sago-making demonstration, our craft was met by an amphibious scouting party of naked, chattering offspring, cavorting in the water near a muddy makeshift boat landing.

Using adzes , the women scraped and pounded the sago palm pith into pulp, poured water into a finely-woven basket containing the pulp, then repeatedly wrung the basket to let the white, flour-like sago drop into the canoe below.

The excess water was drained from the vessel and the remaining mealy substance scooped into a large shell bowl. In a shell pan over a fire of hot stones, Chris’ mother fried a “bath” of sago pancakes for the visitors.

Sago or “sak sak,” which the natives eat three times a day, is spongy, chewy and tasteless.

As we skimmed down serene Yimas Lake the pied herons in the branches of a breadfruit tree by the water’s edge waited until the boat was within a few feet of their perch before flapping into regal flight.

On a neighboring log were six egrets and one small black cormorant. Stooped, serious and stern, they looked like an avian committee in session.

Suddenly the boat was enmeshed in a piece of runaway real estate. Our guide gunned the motor, inching the 60-foot green island out of our “African Queen’s” path.

Picnicking aboard, we listened to the jungle birds’ tootling. Above us, its golden cloak billowing, soared the magnificent bird of paradise (one of 36 bird of paradise species native to Papua New Guinea).

Impressionistic sea flora surrounded the boat: tiny, delicate white flowers sprouted from serrated green pads and a single water lily boasting a bold purple stem rose from a giant underwater weed.

North of Yimas Lake we entered the narrow water driveway of Yimas 2 village, home to 100. An elderly woman resplendent in a glistening white cassowary feathered cap (from the flightless, emu-like bird), wearing shiny kina shell earrings and necklaces of tiny shells, stood in a dugout watching the large catfish she had just caught slip out of her grasp and fall back into the river.

Two women, smoking furiously to keep the ravenous river mosquitoes at bay, offered miniature mackerel netted in a conical fishing basket.

In addition to fish and sago, the villagers’ diet--gathered mainly from their natural surroundings--included frogs, sago grubs, snakes, small birds, pandanus fruit, bananas and, on special occasions, roast pig. Pigs are the paramount symbol of Papuan wealth, and were introduced from Southeast Asia about 4,000 years ago.

The land mass and islands known as Papua New Guinea were settled between 30,000 and 60,000 years ago, when, it is believed, Papua New Guinea was connected to Australia.

Chugging toward Yimas 1 village, we slowed to avoid capsizing a passing canoe from which a fisherman trailed a net. His wife kept the fire steaming for his catch. Their infant peered at us, shy and unblinking.

The natives’ slender, crocodile-prowed craft balanced precariously. We stopped often that day, to permit an elderly man in a stationary canoe to continue his meditation--or for the staccato exchange of the latest news between our guide and passing oarsmen.

The jungle paths around the river are worn down by centuries of plodding bare feet, but the Karawari is still the only highway between villages.

At the Yimas 1 school--a thatched-roof, one-room affair--20 youths greeted us shyly and returned to their multiplication, spelling and English.

English, taught in school, is the country’s official language. But pidgin English is the link connecting Papua New Guinea’s 1,000 tribes, who speak more than 700 languages, nearly half of the world’s tongues.

There were only three girls in the sixth-grade class. Jerry, the soft-spoken teacher, said: “It costs 25 kina per year to send a child to school.” (The kina, roughly equivalent to the Australian dollar, is named for the kina shell, the former tribal currency.)

“Most parents feel it is more important to educate a son than a daughter . . . if they consider educating their children at all. The government is working hard to change this attitude.”

In the village below the school, children played tag in a square surrounded by wood and thatch apartment houses on stilts. Near the river, pigs burrowed in the mud. Mangy, emaciated dogs snoozed in the sun.

Several village women were weaving bilums, the traditional net or string carryalls for babies, piglets and paraphernalia--sometimes all three carried at once.

The palm fibers were spun against the weaver’s naked thigh, protected by a chalky powder, then painstakingly knitted with a pointed cassowary bone needle.

Johnita, making up her equally comely friend, Betty, drew a big crowd. Both girls wore ropes of tiny shells over “bras” outlined in white paint on their bare shoulders and breasts.

Their legs, below swaying red and green grass skirts, were adorned with white stripes.

Using a small pointed stick dipped in white clay, Johnita drew a wide, eyeglass-like line around her friend’s orbs and nose and a triangle down the cheeks, then carefully filled in the spaces with a profusion of white polka dots.

We left the 20th Century for an ancient skin-cutting ceremony--a tribal initiation rite performed in Manjami’s Haus Tambaran or Spirit House, amid tall masks and awesome spirit faces painted on bark.

Four village chiefs in full bilas (ceremonial regalia) danced around the initiates. The chiefs’ dress were three-foot-high red-and-yellow plumed headresses, mother-of-pearl bibs and bamboo-pierced noses.

Hour-glass Kundu drums reverberated and bamboo flutes moaned as relatives restrained a youth while one of the chiefs demonstrated how in the old days the youth’s back would have been incised and the wounds filled with ashes, creating a lifetime pattern of manhood-denoting scars.

The cutting was simulated, but the ritual magic and mysticism were enough to shake even an intrepid tourist’s nerves.

Continental and Air Micronesia each offer weekly direct service from Los Angeles to Port Moresby. Round-trip air fare is $1,355.

Tour packages are available through Melanesian Tourist Services, 10351 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 305, Los Angeles 90025, toll-free (800) 776-0370. Among the trips offered are a cruise along the Sepik River aboard the Melanesian Explorer or Melanesian Discoverer, and another that includes the Trobriand Islands. Price is $1,200 per person. A nine-day, eight-night package that includes the Nuigini Highlands, Sepik River and Madang costs $2,565 per person.

For more information on travel to Papua New Guinea, contact Melanesian Tourist Services, 10351 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 305, Los Angeles 90025, toll-free (800) 776-0370.