Travelling with early European explorers in interior New Guinea was a perilous undertaking. Just two of his five assistants survived Captain Lawson’s precocious (and entirely fictional) crossing of New Guinea in 1872. Shortly thereafter, the real adventures of Luigi D’Albertis up the Fly River proved equally fatal for many of his companions. The idea of trusting to local guides took root only slowly, and the self- contained expeditions that left the safety of their vessels on large rivers very quickly lost their way, often walking against the grain of the social landscape. In 1926, when two government patrol officers, Charles Karius and Ivan Champion, were instructed to cross the island at its widest point, from the Fly to the Sepik, the contrast in their attitudes towards intermediaries marked a watershed in the conduct of New Guinea exploration. Karius, taking the lead as the senior officer, went around in circles, unable afterwards to account for his route. Champion separately forged a relationship with the Bolivip headman, Tamsimal, who then successfully guided them across the range into the headwaters of the Sepik. Re-walking their route in 1996, we encountered Tamsimal’s descendants, and were treated to a series of dramatic skits at Bolivip that asserted their own re-enactment of the relationship, and their own understandings of the social status of the intermediary.

Entrada Livre

Chris Ballard é Professor Associado em História do Pacífico no College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University em Camberra, Austrália. É o editor de The Journal of Pacific History e um polifacetado autor como vasta experiência de pesquisa como arqueólogo, historiador e antropólogo em Papua Nova Guiné, Vanuatu e Indonésia Oriental. As suas publicações include livros ou números especiais de revista em temáticas diversas de antropologia, agricultura, arqueologia e história.