The Mysterious Skull Masks of the Tolai of New Britain The Mysterious Skull Masks of the Tolai of New Britain By Philippe Bourgoin All over the world — in Europe, America, Africa, Indonesia and Oceania — the living have venerated and decorated the skulls of ancestors and prominent figures in many different ways. In Oceania alone, they have been mummified in New Zealand, used unadorned as neck rest or pendants by the Asmat, kept in ossuaries in the men’s ceremonial houses in the Gulf of Papua, overmodeled and painted in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Ireland and the Solomon Islands, and transformed into dance masks on the northern banks of the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. Under cover of the face recreated in this way, the living community was able to appropriate the powers that the dead person had acquired during his lifetime. Five skull masks, New Britain, George Brown, Pioneer-Missionary and Explorer, An Autobiography, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1908, p. 212 The Bismarck Archipelago comprises three main islands: New Britain, New Ireland and Admiralty Island, which are united by a common basic culture although their ethnic and social components are not the same. New Britain, sixty kilometers wise and about four hundred long, was known as New Pomerana during the German occupation (1884-1919) and in constant contact with Europeans since 1700, when the English navigator William Dampier (1651-1715), the most famous corsairs of his time, first landed there in 1699. It is the home of the five well-known artistic styles reproduced by the Mengen, Sulka, Baining, Kilenge (who make spectacular dance costumes and headdresses from plant materials) and the Tolai. German New Guinea Another special feature of New Britain is the number of secret societies that coexist in the north of the island. These male societies are established institutions, charges with preserving traditions, commanding respect and maintaining order, and they once played an essential role — the main consumer goods, for instance, were produced and disseminated solely within a ritual framework. The origin of these societies is hard to establish, as the local people merely react what their fathers did from generation to generation. Only the Tolai had such societies, for the term “secret society” erroneously used by the early missionaries and observers is unfounded for the other groups mentioned above. Indeed, in the other groups, although a line was drawn between the initiated — generally all the men, in opposition to the women and small boys who had not yet gone through initiation ordeals — and the uninitiated, the initiated did not form secret brotherhoods. The Baining did not even perform initiation ceremonies. Secret societies and masks For reasons unknown to us, the Melanesian people now given the name of Tolai (the Gunantuna of the early authors) is believed to have migrated from central and southern New Ireland to the Gazelle Peninsula, driving the local Baining people into the mountains and settling on the northern shores of the peninsula and on the Duke of York Islands. The men belonged to two secret societies: Iniet and Dukduk. The former is famous for its initiation figurines made of chalk or tuff and its wooden and usually openwork initiation dance accessories; the second for its remarkable conical fiber masks. These groups regulate social life through a system in which the initiated men are the custodians of fundamental secrets and incarnate the living ressources of the community. The young men enter one society or the other and rise up through the ranks. Promotion to a higher rank can be costly and, in some cases, involves learning mask-making techniques. Among the Tolai, payment is made in small white shells (a sea snail of the Nassa genus) threaded by hundreds on long strings of rattan that are stored and presented in rolls called tabu (or tambu or dewarra). This form of payment is essential to the social structure, because the Tolai have constructed a “commercial” society in which everything of any importance is bought, sold or rented. But apart from establishing social status, the ultimate aim of accumulating shell money for a Tolai is the public distribution of tabu during funeral ceremonies. The spirit’s access to the world of the ancestors depends on its wealth in tabu. The Tolai fiercely resisted European attempts to take their land and have remained indifferent to outside influences. The German colonial administration tried to suppress these secret societies, even resorting to force. But to no avail, because although the Iniet society became marginalized, the Dukduk society, on the contrary, continued and is still flourishing today. The initiated jealously guard the secrets of making the four classical types of Tolai masks: the dukduk and tumbuan masks, made of colored, beaten bark fabric, leaves and feathers; light wooden masks held in front of the face by a fiber helmet; and skull masks. Through initiation, novices enter the group, participate in an activity and help shape the destiny of the community. However, initiation may have two different meanings depending on whether it is a compulsory rite of passage when the novice reaches a particular age group, or whether it involves admission to a secret society, the mask society for instance. Naturally, nobody divulges exactly how novices are admitted to a secret society. On the other hand, the public festivities that celebrate the important phases in the life of the young people regularly require the intervention of the mask society and its dancers, which functions rather like a committee responsible for making the arrangements and performing the most important parts of the ceremony. There is therefore unbroken continuity between these two forms of initiation and the successive stages in individual lives, all characterized by the apparition of these masks which leave the sacred enclosure and come to the village square for the dances. These successive steps in an unveiling process that continues through childhood and adolescence culminate, for some, in admission to the mask society. A guarantor of the living world, the mask is activated by the dancer’s movements and becomes the necessary medium for recognizing the cult that maintains social cohesion. It is both a regulating and protective figure, the material manifestation of a spirit ancestor or force that must be presented in a theatrical way to be beneficial to the community. The power it carries may be dangerous, too, so while it is valued by the group it will be kept in a sacred place, away from prying eyes, and its sacred character legitimizes its social and political role. Richard Heinrich Robert Parkinson (1844-1909) Parkinson was one of the first, if not the first to have lived among these peoples, studying their societies on the spot at a time when (though not for much longer) they were still vigorous. His famous book on the ethnography of the Bismarck Archipelago (Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee, Stuttgart, 1907 and 1926 – Thirty Years in the South Seas, Crawford House Publishing, Bathurst, 1999, pp. 257-259), summarizes his research. He went to New Britain in 1879 and to the Duke of York islands at the end of 1882. After reconnoitering the coast of Gazelle Peninsula, he chose the Ralum region, south of Blanche Bay, and settled at Malapau early in 1884, where he developed his own plantations. In 1887, he joined the Neue Guinea Kompanie as an inspector and tax collector, which enabled him to travel extensively. Thus, with the help of his trusty informer Talille, he was well placed to observe traditional and religious customs and gather information from the natives, especially the Tolai, on whom he focused most of his attention, arranging for a troupe of six dancers to go to the 1896 Colonial Exhibition in Berlin. Parkinson refers to a skull cult in the Gazelle Peninsula: “Skulls of wealthy people, who have left a lot of tabu, are exhumed after a certain time, placed on a frame and ceremonies take place. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with the skull masks. These are the products of a very specific district, and I have succeeded in localizing it precisely. The skull masks are made from the frontal and facial bones and mandible of a human skull [in most cases, the heads with an articulated lower jaw are placed quite high, at face level, which gives this mask a particular frontality, quite different from the rounded look of a complete skull, which recalls the physical type of the people of the Ralum region]. In order to achieve the greatest possible similarity with the face of a living man, the outer surface is coated with the crushed pulp of the Parinarium laurinum nut [sometimes mixed with other substances (?)] and then painted [with white, red, brown-red and more rarely blue paint on a black background]. Often the face is framed with a beard either formed from Parinarium pulp and then represented by painting, or made from actual human hair; and frequently also from pig bristles or stiff plant fibers. The same applies to the hair of the head, either made from real human hair or from plank fibers. Occasionally a piece of bark material extends from the upper edge of the mask covering the wearer’s head. The mask is either held in one hand in front of the face, or a wooden cross-brace is fixed to the reverse side and gripped in the wearer’s teeth. The older masks look very realistic and are difficult to obtain today. […] When the shell money (tabu) is distributed at weddings the distributor holds the mask (lor) [which means both skull and ancestor] in front of his face during the distribution. After the distribution he puts it aside again. A further usage is that during feasts certain people, holding such a mask in front of their faces, make their way on to the feasting place and receive a portion of the food as a gift, to which, unmasked, they would not be entitled. Earlier they are said to have worn the masks in dances; in spite of repeated assurances, this was not clear to me for a long time, for the natives always sing when dancing, and gesticulate with hands and arms, so that they would hardly be able to hold a mask in their teeth or keep it in position with their hand. Dancing with masks has been described to me by reliable sources as a slow, silent wandering round by the wearer while another part presented the usual noisy dance. The home territory of the skull masks encompasses the districts on the high plateau between Weberhafen and Blanche Bay, and the custom is restricted to this area. It is certainly not excluded that, in earlier times, the skull masks had been connected with a certain type of ancestor worship, but what one reads about this in various works is based exclusively on hypotheses that find no confirmation in statements by the natives. There is no item about which I have enquired more extensively over the last twenty years than these masks; and it would be incomprehensible if during this whole period not a single fact came to my ears indicating a higher significance, if one actually existed.” Men from New Britain holding a skull mask, Meinecke, Gustav, Deutschland und Seine Kolonien in Jahre, 1896. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, 1887, p. 256 The article published in 1969 by Hans Damm (“Bemerkungen zu den Schädelmasken aus Beubritannien (Südsee)”, Jahrbuch des Museums für Vôlkerkunde zu Leipzig, vol. XXVI, Berlin, 1969, pp. 85-116), was the first in-depth study and critical comparison of these astonishing skull masks. Damm used testimonies to complement and improve on statements by Parkinson; George Brown (1835-1917), who established the first mission station at Port Hunter on the main island of the Duke of York in 1875; the entomologist Franz Hübner (1846-1877), who was hired by the Godeffroy Company in 1875; the German naval officer J. Weisser, the paymaster on a German ship which moored in Blanche Bay in December 1878 and December 1882; the ethnologist Otto Finsch (1839-1917) who made two trips to Blanche Bay between 1879 and 1885; Wilfred Powell (1853-1942), who explored New Britain from 1877 to 1880 and described a nocturnal dance, accompanied by drums and female singers, in 1878; Father Fromm MSC (Missionaries of the Sacred Heart) who published an account in 1899; and the most recent testimony that of Carl Laufer’s (1904-1969) MSC, who stayed in the Gazelle Peninsula from 1924 to 1954. Three Natives. The one in the center is a prominent member (or master) of a secret society called Iniat, Brown, George, D.D., Pioneer-Missionary and Explorer. An Autobiography, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1908, facing page 116. It has thus been established that skull masks were used on Matupi Island, in the Ratavul, Raluana and Rakunai districts, and on Gazelle Peninsula between Cape Gazelle and Weberhafen. With the exception of a few variants, Damm divided the skull masks into two main types, using formal and stylistic criteria, the presence or not of a cross-brace, and weight and size. Type A, far the more widespread and probably the oldest, has a very realistically modeled face using a large amount of material which gives an impression of gentleness; the eyes are open, the lips parted, it has a brace at the back so it can be gripped in the wearer’s teeth. These masks that were held over the face and held by the wearer who gripped the wooden brace at the back in his teeth so that their hands were free to perform the dances designed to bring the ancestor’s goodwill on the group; they were also used to share out the tabu money at funerals and weddings. The stylization common to all these skull masks would suggest that there was no attempt to personalize them, even though there is a degree of diversity probably due to individual artists and some items with identical characteristics may have been produced by the same workshop. Snail shells and small claws (?) are stuck in the wings of the nose of some items, but we have not been able to establish that it is the reason and what animal they might have come from. Type B, generally smaller and lighter, has a more roughly modeled face. These masks had quite a different function, as shown by the absence of the brace at the back (although some items in this group do have them) and the blind eyes; the terrifying death’s-head expression would be justified if these masks were used in warfare to frighten the enemy and protect the warriors. They were worn around the neck like a pendant — as shown by the vestiges of knots of rattan cords or strings on some of them — or held in the hand. There are many unanswered questions about the function and former meaning of the objects used by the Iniet secret society, because the very first collectors unfortunately said nothing on the matter. They were probably, in a far-distant past, used in connection with funerary ceremonies or ancestor worship. For the natives believe that the head is the main seat of the vital force that must stay within the tribe or the community. The notions of “funerary” mask made from the skulls of renowned chiefs, powerful individuals, and “warrior” may be conceivable. Still in use before the Europeans came, skull masks where becoming rare and dying out and had probably already lost their deep significance, as Parkinson says, when he was carrying out his fieldwork in 1882. The mystery of their decline, which was gradual rather than sudden, can be elucidated by the fact that only a small group ot Tolai, in a specific region, belonged to the Iniet society — otherwise there should have been more masks — and that the society must have been sufficiently powerful and secretive for nothing to be divulged to the uninitiated, and even less so to foreigners at the time of colonization. —Tolai Lor skull mask—private collection.
