Table Of ContentEXPLORATIONS INTO
HIGHLAND NEW GUINEA,
1930-1935
1 5
E D IT E D BY D 0 U G LAS E. JON E S
foreword by Jane C. Goodale
Thc Univcrsitv of Alabama Press
lilscaloosa and London
Copyright © 1991 by
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
designed by zig zeigler
00
The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information
Science-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leahy, Michael J., 1901-1979.
Explorations into highland New Guinea, 1930-1935/ Michael J.
Leahy; edited by Douglas E. Jones and with a foreword by Jane C.
Goodale.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8173-0446-0 (alk. paper)
1. Ethnology-Papua New Guinea. 2. First contact of aboriginal
peoples with Westerners-Papua New Guinea. 3. Leahy, Michael J.,
1901-1979. 4. Papua New Guinea-Description and travel. 5. Papua
New Guinea-Social life and customs. I. Jones, Douglas E.
II. Title.
GN671.N5L43 1991
305.8'009953-dc20 91-9027
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available
Photographs in this volume are reproduced
with permission of the Michael J. Leahy Collection
of the National Library ofA ustralia
and of Mrs. Jeanette Leahy.
Foreword by Jane C. Goodale / vii
CONTENTS
Editor's Preface / xi
Introduction / 1
The Year 1930/6
The Year 1931 / 23
The Year 1932/49
The Year 1933/ 79
The Year 1934 / 143
The Year 1935/236
Conclusions / 243
Editor's Afterword / 245
Index / 251
FOR E W 0 R D
Leahy's account of his probes into
the interior of Papua New Guinea in
the 1930s is an extraordinary docu
ment because of the exceptional
quality of the man. In some ways he set the pattern for others who,
after him, would venture into the unknown for a variety of personal
reasons. All would be young and independent, courageous and am
bitious, self-confident, and above all intelligent. These character
traits, held in high value by the Western world, also manifested
themselves, as the reader will see, in individual highlanders whom
Leahy came to know and respect and who joined his expeditions
into the unknown. Additional qualities that Leahy possessed-the
ability both to see and to describe, verbally and with the camera,
his own personal experiences-give the reader a vivid sense of the
man, the land, and the people.
The character of a first contact has rarely been described in such
FOREWORD vii
detail. Mter all, such an encounter lasts only for a fleeting moment.
The explorers, anthropologists, and missionaries who have written
of such events often focus on their own emotions when meeting the
"other" for first time. Rarely do they possess Leahy's sensitivity to
the perceptions of the primitive peoples contacted.
Leahy was remarkably objective in his descriptions of the ap
pearance and demeanor of the natives whom he met in his travels
through the heretofore unknown highland region of Papua New
Guinea. But he also reflected his own cultural milieu and time. His
openness of mind was sometimes tempered by his Western cultural
beliefs concerning the origins of culture and society and the evolu
tionary development of the races of mankind.
The local people regarded Leahy as a "spirit ancestor" coming
back, perhaps to haunt them. For his part he saw them as "primi
tives" who were in some external respects distinct from his own
people. So defined, they fell into a category which according to his
worldview was associated with emotions, values, and a mentality in
contrast to those of Western cultures. He regarded the natives, for
example, as exhibiting a limited range of reactions, as exhibiting
(even after contact) a very thin veneer of civilization, and as having
not yet developed the brain to cope with conditions that Western
ers find commonplace.
The concept of the "noble savage" of the Western age of "En
lightenment" seldom appears in Western writings today. Rather
the so called primitive is seen to be somewhat retarded in his tech
nological mastering of the physical environment. The industrial
revolution and the concomitant development of the "work ethic"
fundamentally altered Western society, leading it to consider itself
superior to those who were not technologically "advanced." Unfor
tunately, many Westerners still often believe that technological de
velopment is the response of superior minds to challenging
physical environments. As Leahy wrote (in 1962), the Papua New
Guineans' "environment limited their thinking to a technology and
culture foreign to ours. . . . Their people will have to . . . work or
starve." "We, [the exploring party] survived," he wrote, "by virtue
of the magic with which they [the primitives] had endowed us, our
superior mentality, and our firearms in that order." For Leahy, the
highland Papua New Guinean was "a congenital thief, murderer,
FOREWORD
cannibal . . . , bent on the obliteration of anyone and anything his
. . . armament and animal cunning" could conquer.
From the native's standpoint, Leahy and his party enjoyed
"magic" power, but Leahy was keen enough to recognize that these
primitives would (and they soon did) learn the limits of that power
and would discover the strangers to be fundamentally human, like
themselves. The reader will find that at times Leahy speaks as a
member of a Western "civilized" culture and at other times as one
who grew to know and respect the intelligence of these particular
"others," the people with whom he came into contact. Some of
them became trusted boss boys (foremen) in his line of carriers and
were fellow explorers of heretofore unknown regions of highland
Papua New Guinea.
Therefore, to focus on ways in which Leahy contrasted himself
and his culture with the local people and their culture is to lay
undue emphasis on what was and still is a very commonly held
erroneous Western view of non-Western others. Anthropologists
have recently come to appreciate the extent to which their descrip
tions and evaluations of others are filtered through their own
culture. What results from anthropological description and analysis
of another person's culture, then, is never completely objective. It
may best be described as "one culture's interpretation of another."
What is remarkable in this work is not that Leahy shows cultural
bias in his interpretation but that he rarely does so. In fact, as the
reader will see, Leahy made it his policy to select "natives of supe
rior intelligence" to travel with him. He thereby gave them the
opportunity to journey beyond their known world so that they
might inform their fellow tribesmen of the world from which the
strangers in their midst had come. He frequently praises specific
individuals for their intelligence and ability to learn new ways.
Far from considering the local population of the country through
which he was traveling an obstacle to progress or an enemy to be
overcome by force, Leahy reserved his strongest words of reproach
and anger for "armchair administrators" and other "so-called ex
perts." He held them indirectly responsible (through their igno
rance of reality and for not always honorable political motives) for
the few "murders" of European invaders by local people during the
time period of which he writes.
FOREWORD ix
