"By Aeroplane to Pygmyland" Accounts of the 1926 Smithsonian-Dutch Expedition to New Guinea

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Journal of Matthew Stirling
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September 14, 1926 : Explorators Camp/Tombe Village


September 14th

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"I visited the village again today with Jordans and we were just in time to see the arrival of a new delegation from Agintawa."
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This morning the Dyaks returned bringing my ethnological collections to date with them. Tomanlian and one other Dyak remained behind and will stay here to help around camp, as {p. 252} our food supply is now adequate. A number of women from Agintawa visited us today and I took measurements of them. I should like a good many more as the proportion of women as to men is very small thus far in my tables. There were three small girls with them - one of them with framboesia. I visited the village again today with Jordans and we were just in time to see the arrival of a new delegation from Agintawa. They stopped some distance outside the village and waited in a group, where they evidently consulted before entering the village. They greet one another by a kind of hand shaking process. One extends the crooked middle finger of the right hand which is gripped between the 2nd and 3rd fingers of the hand of the person greeted and then pulled out with a popping sound. They also indicate astonishment thus.




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