101 thority are not hard to imagine, and Townsend refl ected on this in describing his efforts to pacify the people of Sepik in his memoir: They were determined to continue their old ways. I was determined to stop them. So it developed into a game, the rules of which they understood very quickly and as quickly turned to their own advantage. They learned that they could make all their preparations—even let their intentions be known abroad—and that, according to the rules of the government which I followed, I would be unable to take any action against them until such time as a raid or a fi ght had actually taken place. On several occasions I arrived at a village to fi nd that they were making new ceremonial carvings in connection with a projected head-hunting raid or tribal war. I was even permitted to see them and the sago-palm leaf that was being sewn together to partition a part of the House Tambaran for one of their nefarious purposes. At these times I would sit down amongst the old men of the village and argue the Government’s position and point out that Government’s idea of law and order did not include either head-taking or war between neighbours. It made no difference. Just as strongly the elders would point out, perfectly logically as far as they were concerned, that there was now an increasing number of young men in the village who had not taken their heads and therefore could not get married or take their place as adults in the community. “Do you consider my Police are men?” I would ask them. “Oh yes,” they would invariably reply, “and you need not tell us that they have not taken heads and that therefore we need not. They have their ways; we have ours.” I was forced to leave things as they were because, at that time, it was impossible to station suffi cient police throughout the District to prevent what we called crime and what these people regarded as a way of life.7 Most Australian collections of Sepik art stem from the 1930s, when Sepik cultures began to feel the altering effects of kiap administration, missionary endeavors, and the infl uence of returning indigenous laborers whose experiences of a different way of life affected traditional hierarchies. A particularly noted collector from this time was the labor recruiter and plantation owner E. J. Wauchope, who, based at Awar near the mouth of the Sepik River, supplemented his recruiting visits to the Sepik River by trading for artifacts. Wauchope was commissioned to collect on behalf of the Australian Museum, and between 1935 and 19388 he built a col- FIG. 8 (left): Guardian fi gure, paki. Audua or Yuarima Village, Yuat River, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Early 20th century. Collected by E. J. Wauchope, 1935–1938. Wood, shell, ochre, paint, fi ber. H: 94 cm. Australian Museum, E.46360. Photo: Stuart Humphreys, Australia Museum. Of the fi fteen examples of these house fi nial fi gures known to this author, only three show signs of weathering consistent with being exposed to the elements for any duration of time. Beyond the two examples shown in Myth & Magic, two are in private hands and another eleven are held at The British Museum (Oc.1936.0720.175, Oc.1936.0720.176, and Oc.1936.0720.177); the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (inv. 1930.487); the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva (inv. 4077); the Australian Museum, Sydney (E. 46363, E. 46364, and E. 87395, the latter, in the author’s view, being the oldest example extant); the University of Queensland Anthropology Museum, Brisbane (inv. 26402 and 4739, the latter in the unique form of a bird); and the Museum Victoria, Melbourne (X 47996). FIG. 9 (bottom left): Some of E. J. Wauchope’s collection from the Keram and Yuat Rivers, now held in the Australian Museum, 1935. Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia. A labor recruiter and plantation owner, E. J. Wauchope also collected a substantial amount of art from the lower reaches of the Sepik. Many of his acquisitions were particular rare and of especially fi ne quality. FIG. 10 (right): Club. East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Early 20th century. Charles Richmond Glover Collection, prior to 1920. Wood, fi ber. H: 100 cm. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, inv. 70.144. This club is of particularly rare form, the shape of which is evocative of a bird. FIG. 11 (below): Figure from a fl ute, wusear. Yuat River, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Early 20th century. Collected by Sir William Dobell 1949 Wood, shell, hair, ochre, fi ber. H: 57 cm. Private collection, Australia. A series of these fi gures known as wusear are shown in Myth & Magic. With their looming heads and confrontational stance, they once decorated the ends of long bamboo fl utes. The entire fl ute and the fi gure could be decorated in shell jewelry, feathers, and other adornments, which left little but the face of the wusear fi gure visible. Each fl ute and fi gure were kept in the family home and thought of as the “children” of the monstrous crocodile, Ashin, the great creator and mother of all Biwat people.
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