GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

CHAPTER 14
FROM EGALITARIANISM
TO KLEPTOCRACY
IN 1979, WHILE I WAS FLYING WITH MISSIONARY FRIENDS
over a remote swamp-filled basin of New Guinea, I noticed a few huts
many miles apart. The pilot explained to me that, somewhere in that
muddy expanse below us, a group of Indonesian crocodile hunters had
recently come across a group of New Guinea nomads. Both groups had
panicked, and the encounter had ended with the Indonesians shooting several
of the nomads.
My missionary friends guessed that the nomads belonged to an uncon¬
tacted group called the Fayu, known to the outside world only through
accounts by their terrified neighbors, a missionized group of erstwhile
nomads called the Kirikiri. First contacts between outsiders and New
Guinea groups are always potentially dangerous, but this beginning was
especially inauspicious. Nevertheless, my friend Doug flew in by helicopter
to try to establish friendly relations with the Fayu. He returned, alive but
shaken, to tell a remarkable story.
It turned out that the Fayu normally lived as single families, scattered
through the swamp and coming together once or twice each year to negotiate
exchanges of brides. Doug's visit coincided with such a gathering, of a
few dozen Fayu. To us, a few dozen people constitute a small, ordinary
gathering, but to the Fayu it was a rare, frightening event. Murderers sud-