War and peace: two radically different encounters with the Marind-Anim

Abstract

Early in Sir William MacGregor’s tenure in British New Guinea, he was alerted by groups in the Western Division of seasonal raids of Marind-Amin engaged in headhunting. Determination to pacify the regions led him to take action. Several expeditions were aimed at discouraging the warriors from crossing the border and inflicting further damage. During two face to face interactions with people known as the ‘Tugeri’ in 1890 and 1896, peaceful and violent respectively, MacGregor acquired a substantial number of cultural objects for the Official collection. As a precise moment in the lives and practices of these Marind-Anim warriors, analysis of the extensive 1896 assemblage is particularly important for revealing aspects of private and ritual life not recorded in extant historic or ethnographic accounts. A comparison of the two assemblages illustrates how radically different cross-cultural encounters can influence the composition of ethnographic museum collections. The study helps identify attributes of material in museum collections that might also have been obtained from violent engagements.