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Folk Tales of Papua New Guinea — Part 1 (The Origin of Kiwai Island and People · The Kiwai People Move from the Bush to the Coast · Kapía the Black Cockatoo Brings Fire · How the Animals Were Sent to Fetch Fire · Narato and the Suguma)
Description
Folk Tales of Papua New Guinea opens with five tales of the Kiwai Papuans of the Fly River, in what is now the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. They were collected by Gunnar Landtman, who lived with the Kiwai people from 1910 to 1912 and recorded the tales from named Kiwai narrators, and published in his The Folk-Tales of the Kiwai Papuans (Helsingfors, 1917). They are read here in Landtman's own English text, lightly normalized.
In The Origin of Kiwai Island and People, told by Káku of Ipisía, the island itself gathers from river refuse into a sandbank, and Méuri, the first man, grows from a fish the hawk dropped on a stranded palm; a second telling, by Gaméa of Mawáta, tells how the people came from worms in the drying fish. In The Kiwai People Move from the Bush to the Coast, told by Gibúma of Mawáta, the bush villages hear a roaring and think it a fighting spirit — and Kokéma creeps down alone and finds only the sea; in the second telling, by Káku of Ipisía, Daméra appoints the totems and gives fire and the coconut their names. In Kapía the Black Cockatoo Brings Fire, three short tellings — by Obúro of Iása, Mánu of Ipisía, and Bogéra of Ipisía — tell how the cockatoo carried the fire-stick from Manávete, and why his beak is red at the corners to this day. In How the Animals Were Sent to Fetch Fire, told by Másingára men, the rat, the iguana, and the snake all run away into the bush, and the íngua swims the whole way to Túdo with the fire in its mouth. And in Narato and the Suguma, told by Duáne of Mawáta, a flesh-eating sugúma drives the people from their village, and the hunter who feeds it instead of fighting it ends with the monster as his children's guardian; the telling is Landtman's main version, presented complete as printed in 1917.
Chapters
0:28 The Origin of Kiwai Island and People
4:15 The Kiwai People Move from the Bush to the Coast
8:19 Kapía the Black Cockatoo Brings Fire
9:22 How the Animals Were Sent to Fetch Fire
10:53 Narato and the Suguma
From The Folk-Tales of the Kiwai Papuans (1917) by Gunnar Landtman — public domain. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.
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