BLACK, WHITE & GOLD Goldmining in Papua New Guinea 1878–1930 BLACK, WHITE & GOLD Goldmining in Papua New Guinea 1878–1930 HANK NELSON Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Nelson, Hank, 1937-2012, author. Title: Black, white and gold : gold mining in Papua New Guinea, 1878-1930 / Hank Nelson. ISBN: 9781921934339 (paperback) 9781921934346 (ebook) Subjects: Gold mines and mining--Papua New Guinea--History. Gold miners--Papua New Guinea--History. Dewey Number: 622.3420995 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU Press. First published 1976 by The Australian National University Reprinted © 2016 ANU Press Preface Papua New Guinean communities living on islands in the Coral Sea, near creeks feeding the major rivers of the mainland, and in villages crowded along ridge-tops in the interior, gardened and hunted over land containing gold. Most of the men who came hungry for the gold were from Australia. They carried with them the skills to obtain it and the beliefs then common among Australian working men about foreigners and blacks. Most of the diggers believed that their guns and their brains made them superior to any ‘coloured’ men. Some also thought that they were physically superior, although that was harder to believe after 1902 when the first black American won a world boxing title. They did not doubt that they had a right to take the gold, and many thought that it was only a matter of time before Australians possessed the land. Papua New Guineans had a variety of attitudes towards outsiders. Different communities put different values on skills in war, crafts, growing crops, trade, and the ability to control the non-material world. But the variety of their responses to miners was more than just a reflection of the fact that Papua New Guineans had worked out different methods of exploiting their environment and different sets of rules about how men should treat each other; communities were also separated by their experiences with foreigners. Some of the peoples living alongside alluvial land had for many years been meeting foreigners who came to fish for pearls, recruit men to work on boats and plantations, save souls and govern. Their beliefs and behaviour had been changed by those meetings. Others had only heard talk of foreigners when the miners and labourers came with their stores and began to dig and sluice. So relationships between miners and villagers varied from one area to another. Some villagers retreated and the miners rarely saw them, some fought the miners and were shot in large numbers, some joined the police, some induced the foreigners to use their guns against enemy clans, some worked for the miners, some learnt to work gold for themselves (and still do), some extended their gardens and supplied the v BLACK, WHITE AND GOLD miners with tons of food, some village women decided to sleep with miners, and some were raped. The miners were gone from some fields within a few months; they stayed on others for forty years. On a few isolated fields the miners could not prospect or work unless they could buy food from the villages; on fields close to a port or navigable river the miners could be independent of local communities. This book is about encounters between Papua New Guineans and miners from the first ‘rush’ in 1878 until 1930, four years after the alluvial miners finally found ‘the big one’. It begins in 1888 with the north Queensland miners crowding to Sudest Island, New Guinea’s first goldfield. It then turns back to look at the way of life and beliefs of the villagers and miners who met on Sudest. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 trace the relationships between foreigners and villagers as mining developed on Sudest, Misima and Woodlark Islands. Chapter 5 shifts to the mainland and the rush inland from Port Moresby in 1878 when no gold was found. Later chapters follow the defining of the alluvial areas along the northern rivers, near Milne Bay, in the Keveri Valley and on the upper Lakekamu River, and describe the meetings between peoples in those places. The last chapter is about the finding of rich alluvial and reef gold on Koranga and Edie Creeks and along the Bulolo Valley of the Morobe District. This book also attempts to tell some of the history of the miners and Papua New Guinea communities independent of their meetings. It is imperial history; not the history of colonial policy but of the behaviour of men on the frontier of empire. Gold was the main export of British New Guinea and Papua until 1916 and it was again the most valuable export in 1938–39. In the Mandated Territory of New Guinea gold quickly replaced copra as the main export until by 1940 gold made up more than 80 per cent of the Territory’s exports. Many writers have described the development of the Morobe Goldfield after 1926; here it is mentioned briefly. The history of some communities on other goldfields has been taken beyond 1930. vi PREFACE Gold-sluicing on Sharkeye Park’s claim, Koranga Creek, Morobe Goldfield, late 1920s PHOTOGRAPH. H L. DOWNING vii BLACK, WHITE AND GOLD The information for this book has been obtained by reading, talking and travelling. Most of the reading was done in the National Archives of Papua New Guinea and in the library of the University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby; and in the Australian Archives, the National Library of Australia and the Menzies Library of the Australian National University, Canberra. Although most of the book is about miners who wrote infrequently, and villagers, labourers and policemen, nearly all of whom were illiterate, the written records are rich. The main defect in the written material is that so much of it is about people and not by them. This problem has been partly overcome by obtaining information from many sources about the communities described by outsiders. The writings of anthropologists, missionaries and linguists helped, and so did travelling and asking questions. This book has benefited from ‘informed tourism’ rather than ‘field work’. In the Northern District and along the Waria River alone, communities from at least twenty language groups met the miners. Each community would provide valuable material for the student who earns the confidence of the people and has the skills to communicate with them. This book may assist those who attempt more detailed studies. Fully-footnoted copies of the manuscript of this book showing sources of information and making additional comments will be placed in the library of the University of Papua New Guinea, the Menzies Library of the Australian National University, and the National Library of Australia, Canberra. Canberra 1975 H. N. N. viii Acknowledgements When I went to the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in 1966 I knew little of the people who lived there. Out of choice and necessity I was soon pretending to teach some of them their history. I learnt slowly that many of the students came from communities which valued information about their past, retained much detail, judged the past actions of men and wondered about the road that they were on. After I had done some work we could share knowledge. I could tell a class when men from a particular area first joined the police force, what training they were given, what official powers they had, what dramatic incidents they were involved in, and what their white officers thought of them. The students could tell me why some men joined the police, what village people thought were the powers of the police, how the police behaved in the villages, what the police thought of their officers, and what happened to men who returned to the village after service with the police. I wish to thank the students who gave me the chance to learn about the history of the people of Papua New Guinea. In the notes attached to chapters I have mentioned only those students who gave particular help. Kevin Green, Jim Gibbney, Moeka Helai and Bob Langdon helped me find written material. The staffs of the Library of the University of Papua New Guinea, the National Archives of Papua New Guinea, the Australian Archives, the Menzies Library of the Australian National University, the National Library of Australia, the Fryer Library of the University of Queensland, the Oxley Memorial Library of Queensland, the La Trobe Library of the State Library of Victoria, the Mitchell Library of the Library of New South Wales, the Australian Museum and the National Museum of Victoria gave courteous assistance. Don Affleck, Elton Brash, Bert Brown, Leonie Christopherson, Fred and Nancy Damon, Don Denoon, Tom Dutton, Amirah Inglis, John Kolia, Diane Langmore, Jerry Leach, Nancy Lutton, Louise and Mekere Morauta, Alby Munt, Nigel Oram, Eddie Parr, Frank Pryke, Leo Pryke, Tony Pryke, Roger Southern, Jim Specht, Mary-Cath Togolo and John Waiko gave information on particular points. Barry Smith, Francis West, ix BLACK, WHITE AND GOLD Robin Gollan and Bill Gammage gave advice about the manuscript; and Stewart Firth and Ken Inglis made detailed comments on a completed draft. Most of the book was written during 1973 and 1974 while I was a Research Fellow in the Department of History in the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.