IDNO

P.922.ACH1

Description

On Catalogue Card: “Girls playing on sand, Mer.”

A group of girls playing the last stage of koko, a divinatory game, where they are inspecting their hands for cuts or marks, and if so cry out “Ah! keg has killed a man”. The group of ten teenage girls are kneeling in the sand, holding their hands cupped in front of them. They are wearing shirts and skirts and missionary dresses and have a ‘garland’ made of woven green coconut leaves and flowers on their heads. In the background is a group of boys and to the far right in the shade of the coconut trees a ?European and Islander man are seated, behind this is the hill of Gelum. [Jude Philp 21/5/1999, updated JD 30/5/2011, description from record N.23181.ACH2, JD 13/03/2020]

Place

Oceania Australasia; Australia; Torres Strait; Mer

Cultural Affliation

Torres Strait Islander

Named Person

Photographer

Wilkins, Anthony

Collector / Expedition

Haddon, Alfred Cort [Cambridge University Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits, 1898 - 1899]

Date

10 August 1898

Collection Name

Mounted Haddon CollectionTorres Strait Island Expedition

Source

Haddon, Alfred Cort (Dr)

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Related Archive: The occasion of the photograph is described in Haddon (1898: 196-7) “It being a half-holiday Bruce arrange that the school girls were to play a water game for my benefit ... decorated their heads with a kind of basket of flowers and formed a long line in the water putting their hands on each others shoulders and singing a short song... ”. [J. Philp 21/5/1999]

Bibliographical Reference: Also referenced in Reports IV “A divinatory game, koko, Mer (p.318).” See p. 318 where the game koko, the costumes and songs are described. See also P.922.ACH1, P.923.ACH1 in this series. [J. Philp 21/5/1999]

Bibliographical Reference: Report IV, pp.218-9: “Game of divination. The only divination game known to me is that called koko in Mer, which is played by girls only. A number of girls bind their heads with bands of leaves or vines and flowers like a garland, or they make a rough sort of leaf basket which they put on their heads, or wear a fillet of a strip of palm leaf to which are fastenes vertical or horizontal palm-leaf rings - in fact they adopt as fantastic an erection of leaves and flowers as they can devise. They then walk into the sea until only their heads and shoulders are above the water, form into a line each placing her hand on the shoulder of the one in front of her, and repeatedly sing “Koko, koko, kaiep wageb.” keeping time to the music by bobbing their heads up and down. Later they resort to the sand-beach ...” [JD 7/4/2011]

Publication: Image published in 'Recording Kastom: Alfred Haddon’s Journals from his Expeditions to the Torres Strait and New Guinea, 1888–89, 1898–99', Edited by Anita Herle and Jude Philp (Sydney University Press), Fig 7.9, and captioned: "A group of teenage girls playing the last stage of koko, a divinatory game, and inspecting their hands for cuts or marks. They are wearing garlands of woven green coconut leaves and flowers on their heads. Mer, 10 August 1898. MAA N.23181." [JD 13/03/2020]