Method of Presentation

This is the first of a series of papers dealing with the culture of the Mountain Arapesh and its relation to the culture of the surrounding area. My report on the Arapesh was conceived and written as a unit. But owing to the exigencies of publication, it has been necessary to break the resulting monograph up into a series of papers to be published over a period of several years. Consequently, I have made such alterations and rearrangements of the material as were absolutely necessary for sectional publication, though the general plan still remains implicit in the organization of the sections which has been very slightly altered. Cross references have, of course, had to be made retrospective only and this, in some instances, detracts from the vividness of the material. The present paper consists of the original first and second sections; the only alteration has been to shift the discussion of the place of the Arapesh in the system of diffusion, from a statement introductory to the details of the local material culture, to a position as a brief conclusion of this section. This will be followed by sections on ritual, religion, social and economic organization and functioning, a diary record of the events of six months in one Mountain village with a systematic analysis of these events as illustrative of the functioning of the culture, the account of one individual’s reaction to his own culture. The final paper will be a comparative section on material culture embodying a description of Arapesh imported material culture, with rather full reference to the Tchambuli and Mundugumor collections. This final section bulks large in the general proportions of the projected series, and because of the wealth of comparative material, it was considered too disproportionately large to place in the series. I have, therefore, broken up the description of the material culture into several parts. In this paper I deal with the local or domestic material culture, for which the Mountain Arapesh rely mainly upon their own efforts, and present only a very brief account of those manufactures for which they rely in part or entirely upon import. I have postponed the discussion of the very crude Arapesh forms to the later section, where they can be more profitably compared with the more elaborate imported forms upon which the Arapesh more exclusively depend for their inspiration. Similarly, in the discussion of painting on bark: Arapesh painting is a weak and pallid imitation of the flamboyant facade painting of the inland peoples and can best be understood in relation to it, so the detailed analysis of the work of teacher and assistant on an Arapesh painting has been postponed to the section on the collection. All consideration of artistic styles is postponed to the final section. Ceremonial paraphernalia have been omitted from this paper.