Then, with a community death "festival", the markai thaay (now called the Kulagudpudai "Tombstone Opening", the mari, envisaged as a spirit with feathers on its head, was free to travel to Bœigu (Boigu) in northwest Torres Strait, accompanied by markai who had come to take them home to the Augadh's gœgaith (clan land) in Kibukuth, leaving from Bœigu Gœwath (inlet) on northwest Mua.
Women could fish inshore, near reefs, using a wali line woven from the dhani (wild fig), or scouring the shoreline for Hawksbill turtle eggs (which however they were forbidden to eat during lactation), and the akul, goba and silel varieties of shellfish.
They lived part of the year in solitude, or with a few select assistants, directed the initiation rites at sacred ceremonial grounds (kod), and were reputed shapeshifters, reminiscent of shamans, capable of coercing both nature and men through sorcery, through secret herbal lore and the manipulating of effigies (wauri).
[8] Before the white presence made itself felt, Barbara Thompson related that the Mua were divided into two distinct groups, differentiated by accent and slight dialect differences; the Mualgal and the Italgal.
The two groups appeared to have engaged in a cycle of feuds, whose aim was not conquest, but rather revenge, with some acquisition of women and the accumulation, via headhunting, of skulls for trade and as trophies.
[15] One was reluctant to fight without the presence of the relevant emblem representing either one's totem or specialkœubu maidh "battle magic" (augadh) worn by a warrior.
After death, the body was laid on a high sara "rack", a mortuary bier raised on four legs so as to avoid harm from dogs and pigs.
The latter were rubbed with red ochre, gathered within a bark sheath and buried in a sand mound surrounded by shells, skulls and dugong bones.
The practice of tinting the bones with red ochre is atypical of the Torres Straits mortuary customs, and may have been introduced to the Mua via the Kaurareg from aboriginal usages in the Cape York Peninsula, though is also known in Papua New-Guinea.
The legendary lore of the area states that the Kauraraiga were originally the Hiámu/Hiámo/Hiáma (the Kiwai name) from Iama, one of the Bourke Isles north-east of Mua, who had settled on Daru off the coast of New Guinea south of the Fly River so as to be closer to their trading partners and clansmen of the East Trans Fly Bine and Wipi peoples, and who were eventually driven away by colonising and marauding Kiwai as these latter migrated westwards.
[19] The first mention of Mua in European records goes back to William Bligh's entry in the logbook of HMS Bounty, dated 11 September 1792, noting its high mountain.