European things. The Mafulu people are now beginning, mainly through the missionaries of the Sacred Heart, and also through their contact with Mekeo and other lowland tribes, to get into touch with European manufactures. Trade beads, knives, axes, plane irons (used by them in place of stone blades for their adzes), matches and other things are beginning to find their way directly and indirectly into such of the villages as are nearest to the opportunities of procuring them by exchange or labour.
Dogs may occasionally, though only rarely, be seen in the villages, but these are small black, brownish-black, or black and white dogs with very bushy tails, and not the yellow dingo dogs which infest the villages of Mekeo; and even these Mafulu dogs are, I was told, not truly a Mafulu institution, having been obtained by the people, I think, only recently from their Kuni neighbours. A tame cockatoo may also very occasionally be seen, and even, though still more rarely, a tame hornbill. There are no cocks and hens.
The universal domestic animal of the Mafulu, however, is the pig, and he is so important to them that he is worthy of notice. These pigs are "village" pigs, which, though naturally identical with "wild" pigs--being, in fact, wild pigs which have been caught alive or their descendants--have to be distinguished from wild pigs, and especially so in connection with feasts and ceremonies.
Village pigs are the individual property of the householders who possess them, there being no system of community or village ownership; and, when required for feasts and ceremonies, each household has to provide such pig or pigs as custom requires of it. They are bred in the villages by their owners, and by them brought up, fed and tended, the work of feeding and looking after them being the duty of the women. No distinguishing ownership marks are put upon the pigs, but their owners know their own pigs, and still more do the pigs know the people who feed them; so that disputes as to ownership do not arise. The number of pigs owned by these people is enormous in proportion to the size of their villages, and I was told that a comparatively small village will be able at a big feast to provide a number of village pigs much in excess of what will be produced by one of the big Mekeo villages.