The Origin of the Kanum Tribe

A house shaped like a tree

Across the border, in land now part of Papua New Guinea, there is a place called Karumpumer. In the telling of the Kanum, it is there that the lineage of humankind began.

There grew a nibung palm of enormous size. That tree was not merely a tree. That tree was a house. Within it were doors, stairs, and levels, and on every level lived couples of human beings. The roots of that nibung, the narrator says, remain to this day, and the swamp around it became a great pool.

Two elders and two dogs

Outside that tree lived two elders, a grandmother and her companion. They lived alone, with no children. All they owned were two dogs, named Entakawetip and Karumpu.

Every day the two elders gardened and hunted, and the two dogs were the ones that seized the game. Coming home from the hunt they would heat stones, take up tubers, and eat. So their days went. And they did not know that near them, inside that nibung trunk, other people were living.

Three days counted

At one time the two dogs began going off to hunt on their own. Strangely, the dogs came home full, though no game was brought back. At four in the morning kumbili would be prepared as provisions, yet the dog would already be gone from its place, and on its return its belly was already full.

This went on for three days, and those three days were counted. At last the grandmother said this could not be allowed to continue. Kumbili was prepared and left at home. That day they did not hunt. That day they set out to learn what their dogs were eating.

A necklace of leaves, then a necklace of shells

The first method was a necklace of leaves. In the open ground grew a kind of yellow flowering plant that the Kanum call entarempe. Its leaves were dried again and again until fully dry, then strung into a necklace, so that the dog's trail could be left behind and heard.

They followed on, but the sound was lost. The dry leaves snapped off one by one among the many trees, and the trail ran out.

The second method used river snails. The flesh was taken out, the shells were bored through, then strung into a necklace. When the dog woke at five and vanished, the companion began to follow. The elders of former times, the narrator says, could still run swiftly.

She followed a long way, until at last she stopped before a nibung palm of extraordinary size. From within the tree she heard the sound of people. And she caught the smell of human waste, and understood that this was what her dog had been eating for three days.

The tree is opened

The next morning the two of them set out together, carrying food already cooked over heated stones. Arriving there the companion called out, "Bamet," meaning brother. From within the tree an answer came, but it rose and faded. So she took up a songkapu, a sharpened piece of wood about two metres long, and drove it into the nibung trunk to open it.

From that thrust, according to the telling, came a mark that has passed down to this day. On the faces of the Kanum and the Kima'am there is an inherited scar, and because of it the faces of the two cannot be told apart.

Once the tree was opened, the companion asked, "Bamet, who are you?" She asked in the Kanum language, and from within she was answered in Kanum as well. "Oh, you are my sibling," the voice said.

The couples came down one by one. On the lowest level were the Kanum. On the second stair were the Malind. Then the Yei. And at the far end, in the swamp, the Kima'am.

The division of territory

Then came the division of territory. The Malind were told their place was along the coast. The Yei were told their place was to the north. The Kima'am were told their place was in the swamp country. The Kanum themselves stayed partly inland and partly along the shore, toward the south. Each with its own customary food.

From that time there have been the Malind, the Kanum, the Yei, and the Kima'am.

Not a fable

The narrator closed his account with an objection worth recording. People might call this a fable. He rejects that name.

"This is not a fairy tale, this is history," he said.

And he added that to this day the four peoples still acknowledge that they are all fragments of the Kanum, and that they are People of Raising Sun.