question of Kuni relationship it can, I think, hardly
be doubted that the Kuni have some characteristics which are clearly
those of the Mafulu and other central mountain tribes, and others which
are obviously those of the Papuo-Melanesians of the adjacent plains
and the coast beyond; and the only question seems to be the nature
and origin of the Kuni relationship to these two types of people. It
may be, as suggested by Father Egedi, that they are actually a cross
between these two mixed types; or, if the suggestion in my concluding
chapter as to the possible presence in these Mafulu and other mountain
people of Negrito blood be correct, it may be that the Kuni people
are merely another result of the general Negrito-Papuo-Melanesian
intercrossing, in which the Papuan and Melanesian elements have been
more predominant than they have been with the Mafulu.

CHAPTER XX

Conclusion

What is the origin of these Mafulu people, with their short stature,
small and somewhat rounded heads, slight but active build, sooty
brown skin, and frizzly hair, predominantly brown in colour, and with
their comparatively primitive ideas of organisation, and simple arts
and crafts?

The question is one of no mere local interest, as the answer to
it will probably be the answer to a similar question concerning
most, and perhaps all, of the other Papuan-speaking people of the
mountainous interior of the Central District of British New Guinea,
and may even be a key to the past early history of the entire island.

It has, I think, been hitherto believed that all these mountain people
had a mixed Papuan and Melanesian ancestry; but it was impossible to
be among them, as I was, for some time without being impressed by the
difference in appearance between them and the people of the adjacent
coast and plains, and suspecting that, though they had Papuan and
Melanesian blood in their veins, there was also some third element
there. And the name which obtruded itself upon my mind, whilst in
Mafulu, was Negrito.

The dark skin and the comparatively rounded heads, and, I think, some
shortness of stature are found elsewhere in British New Guinea; though
shortness of stature and rounded heads are unusual, and, I believe,
only local, and I do not know whether even the Papuan skin is ever
quite so dark as that of the Mafulu people. But the almost universal
shortness of stature, the comparatively slight, but strong and active,
build and the brown