The Continental Island

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The island of New Guinea is lush, green, mountainous, and still largely unexplored

The continental island* of New Guinea ranks as the second largest island on earth, after Greenland. Its 303,400 square miles are today divided roughly equally between the old Indonesian province of Irian Jaya in the west and the independent nation of Papua-New Guinea in the east. The island, home to more than 1,100 distinct clans and tribes each speaking their own dialect or language, is largely undeveloped and unexplored. There are regions in the interior where no man --- not even a native --- has gone.

Natives, 1885. Many tribes still retain the old ways of living

Once called only “Papua” by (many of) the indigenous peoples, the appellation “Guinea” was attached to the island by Portuguese explorers who noted a resemblance between the Melanesian natives of the place and the West African “Guinea Men” they took as slaves --- indeed, most ethnologists today point to the similarity of genetic markers between Africans and Papuans. Man is postulated to have traveled from Africa to New Guinea more than 40,000 years ago.

With its coral reefs, clear waters, multiple cultures, and incredible biodiversity, Papua-New Guinea is an increasingly popular tourist destination

Since the island is so culturally and linguistically diverse, effective political control of its various regions is uncertain. Only 18% of Papuans live in cities (one of the lowest percentages of urban dwellers anywhere), and most people survive on subsistence agriculture. In the deep hinterlands some tribes survive as hunter-gatherers. Only a generation or two ago, verified reports of headhunting and cannibalism were not uncommon, and it is likely that some isolated groups still practice these rites.

A Rhoku villager wearing a traditional headdress made of Cassowary feathers

Politically, the island was at first colonized by the Dutch in the west, by the British in the southeast and by the Germans in the northeast. The Germans lost control of their colony to the British after World War I. Interestingly, the British did not unite the eastern end of the island into a single colony, but retained dual administrations. From the outset of British control, effective governance came from and through Australia, which considered the two political divisions to be Australian Territories. The Australians granted the eastern end of the island complete independence in 1975, though it remains a part of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Every tribe and clan has its own customs. Some traditional tribal dress is shocking to westerners and undoubtedly gave rise to dramatic stories of “savages” living throughout the island. That some Papuan peoples did (and perhaps still do) ritually consume human flesh or collect the heads of their enemies did not improve the outlook of strangers coming from outside

When Indonesia won independence from the Dutch in 1949, Irian Jaya was not ceded. Instead, the Dutch prepared the region for its own independence. However, in 1962, the United Nations Trusteeship Council gave this task to Indonesia, which instead worked to bring the region into union with itself, a task successfully accomplished in 1969.

Young women living in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua-New Guinea, are like young urbanites living anywhere else in the world

The island is a mountainous rainforest. Its dense vegetation is in shocking contrast to Australia’s far more arid, flatter, landscape, though the two places are separated only by the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Torres Strait, and geologically they are one landmass.

Melanesia today includes New Guinea island, the Solomons, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and Fiji

The wildness of New Guinea made many westerners nervous. Political officials in both the Netherlands East Indies and in Papua-New Guinea feared for Earhart and Noonan’s safety if they were forced down in the interior of the island. Likely they would be impossible to find under the dense jungle canopy, or they might die flying smack into one of the island’s many cloud-shrouded mountains; or, worst of all to some, they might end up in native hands. Lurid tales of decapitation and flesh-eating aside, even today, Papua-New Guinea’s record of violence against women is considered horrible. Forty-one percent of men surveyed admit to having raped a woman, many as young as the single digits. Perhaps Amelia’s heavy service revolver wasn’t a flare pistol after all.

Papuans in the town of Lae come to see Amelia Earhart. The small doors on the side of the Electra are gasoline ports. Note the European woman in the crowd

*Upon the face of the World Ocean even the huge landmasses of the Americas and Afro-Eurasia could be considered “islands”; even more so, the isolated “island continents” of Antarctica and Australia. “Continental islands” like Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, and Celebes (Sulawesi) are a magnitude smaller than the “island continents” but still large enough to have given rise to their own unique flora, fauna, human cultures, and histories.