Baliem Valley

The discovery of the Baliem Valley to the Western world and the unexpected presence of its large agricultural population was made by Richard Archbold’s third zoological expedition to New Guinea in 1938.

Teams of Dutch soldiers and Dayak people recruited from Borneo collected flora and fauna in the Baliem Valley, but did not know the language and killed one native without firing a warning shot.

The three survivors, Margaret Hastings, Kenneth Decker, John McCollom, and a rescue team of 11 paratroopers stayed in the valley until the end of June and traded visits with the people living there.

[4] The following is copied from the back cover of Peter Matthiessen’s book Under the Mountain Wall: In the Baliem Valley in Central New Guinea live the Kurulu, a Stone Age tribe[note 1] that survived into the twentieth century.

Matthiessen observes these people in their timeless rhythm of work and play and war, of gardening and wood gathering, feasts and funerals, pig stealing and ambush.