Fore people
The Fore underwent considerable cultural change as a result of this contact: they traded with the outsiders, began growing coffee, and started to adopt a money-based economy.
Gordon T. Linsley, a patrol officer stationed at Okapa, noted the rapid pace of social change among the Fore in a 1951 report.
He observed that village warfare had declined considerably, the young Fore men seemingly glad to have an excuse to quit fighting.
Broad paths linked communities together; however, Linsley noted inter-district fighting persisted and accusations of sorcery were still common in Purosa.
[7][6] The Fore diet consists of pigs, small animals, insects, wild plants, and root vegetables such as taro.
[6] After the introduction of the sweet potato roughly 150 years ago, food production increased, as the crop could be grown in harsher conditions than existing root vegetables.
[6] In their analysis of a 1957 study, Hamilton-Reid and Gajdusek determined that the Fore people have an unusually rich and varied diet especially when compared to other civilizations in the New Guinea highland regions.
[9] In addition to growing sweet potato, ebia, sugarcane, and pitpit in their large and productive gardens, the Fore supplement their diet with pigs, rodents, and adult insects.
The quality of their diet is so high that, in the 1957 study, no evidence of clinical malnutrition was found in the general population despite lacking access to any modern nutritional or medical services.
Women are generally considered inferior to men, but age and gender are not necessarily an aspect of the power structure; the only distinction made is between children and adults.
These hamlets are established when gardening land surrounding the current settlement is exhausted and it is necessary to move outwards and clear more areas of woodland for growing crops.
[12] Conflict often arises over unused land for expansion of farming and grazing, and villages or kinship groups will often band together to defend territory.
(This ceremony consists of living isolated in the forest for a month, receiving a new name, getting piercings, and playing music with sacred flutes.)
The husband and his nagaiya will slather themselves in mud and ash (symbols of mourning), hit the wife, and consume one of her pigs and one of her sweet potato gardens.
[dubious – discuss] Through such rituals, the Fore were assured that the deceased's positive aspects remain in the tribe, while the auma, ama, and kwela reach kwelanandamundi.
[13] To protect against attacks by enemy villages, the Fore make an effort to keep outside sorcerers from being able to access leavings or water holes.
[16] Although the magic bag vanished with the nokoti, the kin gain the strength to vanquish many foes when they eat the sugar leaves on that rock formation.
The Fore predominantly viewed warfare as an undesirable last resort, so they often resolved conflicts peacefully or ended wars at the earliest feasible opportunity.
Even wars that began under the guise of retaliation were sometimes strategic in nature; larger clans would call for warfare against smaller groups if they were in desirable trade locations, or in order to increase their might and military numbers.
[17] The Fore had not been exposed to firearms and other advanced weaponry prior to colonial contact and thus resorted to archery-based warfare in the form of open-field fighting and ambushes.
Coordination of war location and logistics was typically done through messengers carried by pako, peaceful envoys who went to enemy territory alone and unarmed.
In the rare occasion that more than a few people died in one battle, the tribe that suffered those deaths would commonly avenge them with ambush attacks on enemy villages.
[19] These rituals were typically initiated after a pako brokered an agreement of peace between the hostile forces, based on the damages exacted by both groups.
[17] At the ceremony, an elderly woman from both sides would place the leaves of a daka plant and some sugarcane at the center of the battlefield as gifts for the other group.
Colonial forces and patrol officers also brought new goods to the region, which the Fore called mono’ana and valued greatly.
[19] This change is partially responsible for the halting of the Fore ritual of consuming deceased relatives, which was a primary agent in the rise of the kuru disease.
[24] According to Gajdusek, who also observed kuru in the 1950s, the hypothesis that the disease was spread via the endocannibalistic rituals of the Fore people was extremely apparent.
[25] The prevalence of the kuru epidemic has been on a steady decline since the 1950s, but has lingered into the 21st century due its incubation period which can last as long as 50 years.
Transumption not only expressed love and grief, but also recycled the deceased's abilities within the family and quarantined the kwela, which was dangerous if not disposed of properly.
The Fore people believe that ailments and misfortunes stem from sorcery and witchcraft, so naturally they scrambled to find the sorcerers responsible for kuru.
