Crocodile Men of Papua New Guinea

Chambri (previously spelled Tchambuli) are an ethnic group in the Chambri Lakes region in the East Sepik province of Papua New Guinea. The social structures of Chambri society have often been a subject in the study of gender roles. They speak the Chambri language. Margaret Mead, a cultural anthropologist, studied the Chambri in 1933. Her influential book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies became a major cornerstone of the women's liberation movement, since it claimed that females had significant and dominant roles in Chambri society. This community is located near Chambri Lake in Papua New Guinea, in the middle region of the Sepik River. The Chambri consist of three villages: Indingai, Wombun, and Kilimbit. Together, these communities contain about 1,000 people. When the Chambri first came together, though isolated, they located communities nearby that made it possible for cultural interaction and growth. A neighboring society, the Iatmul people, and the Chambri began trading goods so that each could progress and aid one another. The Chambri have been, and continue to be a large fishing community. The fish Chambri caught were in turn traded with the Iatmul to receive sago. For shell valuables the Chambri traded their hand-made tools and products. In later years as the introduction of European tools began appearing within the culture, the Iatmul no longer needed the Chambri's tools and goods. This left the Chambri vulnerable and eventually led to the Chambri society leaving their island to protect their community from the rising Iatmul military. They returned in 1927 once peace had been restored in their area. Historically known as headhunters and a volatile group, the Chambri abandoned these tendencies once Papua New Guinea came under independent government. Culturally their society had changed due to European influences, however the personal interactions and customs within the Chambri had not. New neighboring societies were formed, trade and growth continued throughout the years as anthropologists such as Margaret Mead, Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington visited this tribal location and reported on their findings.

The Chambri Tribe – commonly called The Crocodile Men of Papua New Guinea – believe humans evolved from the pre-historic river predators and that the creature is therefore sacred. They pay homage to this sacred animal every 4-5 years through a ceremony involving scarification. Scarification might be a trendy new body modification in the western world, but for the Chambri Tribe, it is a right of passage for males aged 11 to 30 years. To make the transition from boy to man, elders cut deeply into their backs, chests and buttocks to make the skin appear scaly: like that of a crocodile. The marks are meant to be representative of tooth marks from the crocodile as it ‘swallows’ the young men during the ceremony. To prepare for the ritual, which can be so intense that it results in death, the men live in a ‘Spirit House’ for six weeks. Also called Haus Tambaran, a Spirit House is a sacred space, where ancestral spirits are believed to inhabit every element of the structure: from the structural elements and foundations to spiritually and culturally significant objects within the house such as paintings and masks. Women are not allowed to enter under any circumstances, as it is the intention of the ritual to divorce the men from the ‘world of womenfolk’ and fill them instead with the power of the crocodile spirit. Once the boys have completed their tenure inside the house, the initiation ceremony commences. During the ceremony, tribal elders use bamboo slivers to make hundreds of deep slices into the boys’ flesh – who are held down and not permitted pain relief other than medicinal plant leaves that can be chewed. The act of withstanding the pain is a poignant part of the ceremony. It is believed that if the boy can remain composed, he will be able to overcome pain later in life.

The Chambri (called Tchambuli by Margaret Mead) live south of the Sepik River on an island Mountain in Chambri Lake in East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. Chambri Lake is approximately 143°10′ E and 4°7′ S. The lake is created by the overflow of two of the Sepik's tributaries. This overflow occurs during the northwest monsoon season, from September to March, when rainfall nearly doubles in intensity from a dry-season average of 2.07 centimeters to an average of 3.72 centimeters per month. Because the Chambri were a preliterate people, one can only speculate about their history. It is likely that their distant ancestors lived in small, semisedentary hunting and gathering bands. Perhaps in response to the intrusion of those Ndu speakers who became the Iatmul, the bands of early Chambri coalesced about 1,000 years ago and eventually formed what are now the three Chambri villages on the shores of the fishrich lake. The Chambri were contacted first by Australians in the early 1920s, and by 1924 relations between them were well established. Extensive labor migration to distant plantations began in 1927. In 1933, Mead and Reo Fortune worked for six months as anthropologists among the Chambri, and in 1959 Catholic missionaries completed construction at Indingai village of the most elaborate church in the Middle Sepik. The peoples of the Sepik River, those living along its northern and southern tributaries and those further south in the Sepik Hills, are united in a regional trading system based on interpenetrating ecological zones. This system links the Chambri with their neighbors—particularly the Mali and Bisis speakers of the Sepik Hills and the Iatmul of the Sepik River—in an exchange network that includes not only Subsistence goods but ceremonial complexes.

The men of the Chambri tribe in the East Sepik province of PNG practise crocodile scarification, an initiation for boys entering manhood during which their skin is cut and scarred to represent the scales of a crocodile. The crocodile is a significant spiritual and symbolic animal in PNG, and the Chambri tribe believes it descends from the powerful predator. The ancient myth tells the story of how crocodiles migrated from the Sepik River onto land to eventually become humans. In recognition of this ancestral connection, the young men of the tribe are inflicted with hundreds of deep cuts in cascading patterns down their backs, arms, chest and buttocks to give their skin the look and feel of a crocodile’s body. The intensely painful scarring procedure involves discipline, focus and dedication. The young initiate first joins his uncle in a spirit house, where he is held down while tribal leaders make hundreds of slices roughly, two centimetres long, into the boy’s skin with a bamboo sliver. There is no pain relief other than the chewing of the leaf of a medicinal plant, as the young boy must show enough strength to prove he is a man. The Chambri people believe that by suffering immense pain at a young age, they will be better equipped to withstand pain later in their lives. Once the cuts have been made, the boy lies near a fire where smoke is blown into the wounds and clay and tree oil pushed into the cuts to sculpt the scars so that they remain raised when healed. Then the initaties are adorned in an ornate headdress and jewellery at a big tribal ceremony, where the boys officially become not men, but crocodiles.

The Chambri people of Papua New Guinea are located in the Chambri lakes area of the middle Sepik River. There are three Chambri villages: Indingai, Wombun, and Kilimbit. Together these communities contain only a few thousand people. When the Chambri first came together, though isolated, they located communities close together so as to make it possible for cultural interaction and growth. The Chambri people are more relaxed with gender roles as both their men and women fully engage in business and economic activities. Chambri women are responsible for fishing which is the community’s major occupation and fish-for-sago barter markets are still regularly held in the Sepik Hills between Chambri and Sepik Hills women. In addition, there is a market held twice a week on Chambri where foodstuffs are available for purchase with money, they also handle marketing, and food preparation while Chambri men, in addition to their ritual responsibilities, build houses, canoes, and carve artifacts. Formerly, warfare and production and trade in stone tools were also important male activities but women have also begun to take on the responsibility. Mothers also take responsibility for primary socialisation in the Chambri society although, they frequently leave their children with their sisters or with other women when they have work to do, particularly when they go out to fish. Young children are rarely left with men who, although affectionate and indulgent, regard excrement and urine as polluting. Chambri society is largely egalitarian with all patricians, except those linked through marriage, considered potential equals. Gender relations are also of relative equality, with men and women operating in largely autonomous spheres.

The Sepik region of Papua New Guinea includes two provinces, East Sepik and West Sepik which are also known as Sandaun Province. This is one of the world’s most culturally and linguistically diverse regions. More than 300 of the 839 recognized languages in the country are spoken here with 200 separate tribes calling this area home. One of the most fascinating tribes of the region is the Chambri or Crocodile Men. Living along the Sepik River on the northern edges of Papua New Guinea, the Crocodile Men have become one with the animal they so revere. The origins of this tribe are linked to two myths. The first involves a girl who had been carried into the river by the crocodile and later gave birth to the crocodile people. The other tells of men living with crocodiles to learn the secrets of their power. This reverence for and devotion to the power of the crocodile has led the tribe to adopt a specialized, brutal initiation ritual. The purpose of the initiation is to remove any traces of the mother’s postpartum blood from the males’ bodies through skin cutting. Alternatively known as the wagan (wakan) initiation ceremony, it is also a celebration of the return of the ancestral crocodile. Symbolically, this act is necessary to fully divorce young men from the world of women, and fill them with the power of the crocodile spirit. Traditionally, it would be the boy’s maternal uncle charged to inflict the wounds. This would ensure that the mother’s blood is returned back to her line as the uncle makes a man for his in-laws clan. The Sepik ideal is that young men should progress through rites of passage ceremonies in a group rather than individually. These groups are arranged based on their kin classifications and serve to strengthen bonds and relationships.

Since the early 1960s the Chambri have considered themselves to be staunch Catholics. They are, at the same time, convinced that all power, whether social or natural, is ancestral power. Religion—as well as politics and, indeed, all activities of importance—focuses on evoking and embodying ancestral power through the recitation of (usually secret) ancestral names. In addition to the spirits of the dead are a variety of autochthonous powers that dwell in stones, whirlpools, trees, and, most importantly, crocodiles. All are thought to act not only on their own volition but under the control of those Chambri who know the relevant rituals. All adult persons have some knowledge of efficacious names; by definition, powerful men are the most knowledgeable about these names. Anyone who knows secret names—that is, who has power—has the capacity for sorcery. Some men and women have the special capacity to be possessed by spirits from their maternal line in order to diagnose illness, misfortune, and the causes of death. Others contact paternal spirits in dreams for the same purposes. Many Chambri ceremonies are rites of passage during which persons are increasingly incorporated into their patricians. At the same time, matrilateral kin are presented with affinal payments to compensate them for the corresponding diminution of their maternal portion of these Persons. The most elaborate of these ceremonies is initiation during which young men receive the hundreds of incisions on their backs, arms, and upper thighs that release the maternal blood that contributed to their fetal development. Other ceremonies, requiring the evocation of the powers of particular patricians, are believed to ensure that, for instance, the wet season will come, particular species of fish will reproduce, and fruits of the forest will be plentiful. Through the performance of such clan-held ceremonial prerogatives and obligations, a totemic division of labor emerges in which, through the efforts of all, the universe is regulated.

The Chambri were historically war-like and had a reputation as hunters of people. However, they had good trade relations with their neighbouring tribes, such as the Iatmul, who would provide food in exchange for handmade tools. When the Iatmul started to use mass-produced tools, the Chambri were forced to flee their ancestral land, fearing they no longer had a use for the larger, also warlike Iatmul tribe. They returned in the early twentieth century after peace had been established. European anthropologists speculated that women were dominant in Chambri society, as they had responsibility for fishing (the bulk of the Chambri diet) and trade. However, more detailed observation revealed that the sexes operated along strictly divided lines, but were more or less equal in standing – still a very unusual situation! Marriage practices reflect this divide: arranged marriage is the norm, but there is no dowry tradition, as the Chambri believe this demeans women. Men arrange the marriages but potential brides have input into the decision, working closely with their male family members to make a good pairing. Siblings act as each other’s main support, negotiating power for the family within the tribe and providing parental input for extended family’s children.