Sakate and Yambanima

Once, before there was sweet potato, Tombeama the son of Yaka Kaima, the flying fox, called out “Aina ipu ” which means “Come, sweet potato!” He did not stop there but called for a hardwood tree called mata. When these two things appeared, he called out for pigs and water. Live pigs arrived and with them came everything necessary to roast a meal of pork and vegetables in an earth oven. Evidence of all of these things can still be found on the mountain where Tombeama was raised by the flying fox.

(Yangupae Lyilyipu of the Sakate Yandapakini clan, Pipitaka)

Long ago Yakende Maitane was born from a flying fox, Yaka Kaima, in a cave high on the mountainside above the Keta River. When he was old enough, Yaka Kaima took his son Maitane down to the Lagaip and followed the river to a place called Mapu (which also means sweet potato) where Maitane settled. At Mapu, Maitane grew up and married a Pumane woman from Pipitaka and had three children. Sometime after his three children were born Maitane decided to hold a big sing-sing before the kumu tuu pingi anda lakenge ceremony, a fertility and healing ceremony that involved the use of human flesh. The news spread rapidly that Maitane was having a big sing-sing. His wife’s younger sister heard the news and decided to come as she had not seen her older sister for a long time. The day after hearing the news, she left her home with a group of her kin and came to the Keta.

 

The young woman arrived at the place where the sing-sing was to be held and was greeted warmly by her elder sister. Meanwhile though, as the sisters rejoiced in seeing each other, other plans were being made. Maitane along with a group of other men had decided that they would remove some of his wife’s younger sister’s abdomen skin to use in the ceremony. They set the time for the skinning ceremony for midnight on the day she arrived. There is a saying in Enga that ‘long ears catch rumors fast’ and the young woman soon became suspicious of what was going on and asked her sister what she should do in order to escape. They decided to swap places and that Maitane’s wife should go to the skinning ceremony rather than her younger sister. They exchanged all of their clothing, and the younger sister painted her face to look like Maitane’s wife’s face. During their final preparations, Maitane’s wife told her younger sister that if anything happened to her that she should take the youngest child and run away with him. Then she told her sister to sleep with the three boys and that she would sleep in her sister’s place.

 

When all was said and done, the younger sister went to sleep with the three little boys and the older sister slept alone. At midnight Maitane and his group of men crept quietly into the house to where they thought the young woman was sleeping. He told the men to proceed immediately with the skinning. While the men were busily skinning the elder sister, the younger one took the youngest of the three boys and escaped unnoticed.

 

In the morning, Maitane came home to make sure his family was fine. He entered the house and to his shock, he found that his own wife had been skinned and that one of his sons was missing. He guessed what had happened and did not hesitate for a minute to pursue the young woman. Within a few minutes he had gathered dozens of men, and they followed the trail of the young woman. When they reached Yakenda, the young woman was at Wakope. The band of men were rapidly covering the ground between themselves and the young woman and before long she realized that they were catching up with her. Her only option was to seek safety in a nearby cave. She grabbed the child and took refuge in a cave, hoping that the men would not find her.

 

Maitane arrived at the cave and told all his men that they were to do exactly what he did and nothing else. They agreed and went into the cave where the young woman was hiding. She was on one side of the cave, and they were on the other, but because it was dark, they could not find her. Maitane used his friction stick to start a fire and as he bent over, he did not realize that his testicles were hanging loose like two wild pandanus nuts. The young woman crept up on him from behind. She took her knife and started to cut off his testicles. As the pain shot through his body, he shouted out that somebody was cutting off his testicles. The others, following his orders, repeated the exact words that he uttered in pain. Every time he spoke, they repeated what he said, but did nothing to help him. Maitane was so angered and frustrated by the behavior of his men, that he called out, “I am falling into the river!” and so let himself drop into the river below. The rest of the men did the same and plunged into the Lagaip. The current carried them away and they drowned.

 

The woman slipped out of the cave into the open, walked across the bridge over the Lagaip, and went to a place called Pipitaka. There the child grew up and got married and had many descendants who are now called Sakate Yaka. The other two boys also grew up and were the founding fathers of Sakate Ipa and Yambanima.

(Amu Kulini, Yambanima Kaia, of Laijpaka (Yakenda))

Once in the land of Ipai (Porgera), there lived two brothers whose names are not known. They were cannibals. Every time women hung their babies in net bags from tree branches, the men would sneak into the gardens and take the babies away. Finally, the men got together and made a plan to catch the two cannibals and kill them. First, they tracked them and discovered their hideout and then they planned exactly how they would surround and kill them.

 

When the moment was right, the men surrounded the hideout of the two cannibals and prepared to attack. The cannibals, aware of what was going on, armed themselves to fight back. As the men stormed their house, the cannibals shot two men dead. Seeing that two of their men had been killed, they retreated and the cannibals fled to Aiyuosa. By this time the men were pursuing them again and gathering people as they went along. At Aiyuosa the cannibals shot another two men and ran on to Kindulimanda. There they shot another two men dead and fled to Yongeala. At Yongeala they shot another two men and ran on to Keta Ipaka where they did the same. From Keta Ipaka they fled to Ipakatupya. Darkness fell at Ipakatupya and so they sought shelter for the night in an old house.

 

The group of men chasing the cannibals turned back before dark and told the people along the way that the cannibals, who had been stealing their children, had been found and were hiding out near the junction of the Keta and the Lagaip.

 

In the morning, men from all clans surrounding the cannibals’ hideout gathered to attack. The cannibals, however, were prepared to fight back. With two well-placed shots they shot down the two first men from the attacking party. After some time though, the cannibals were overwhelmed by the large number of men fighting against them. When the men noticed that the cannibals were tiring, they advanced. The cannibals took refuge in the house, so the men set fire to it. One of the cannibals broke through the house wall and jumped into the Lagaip. The other wasn’t as lucky and so was burned to death inside the house.

 

The site where the one cannibal was burned alive was the site of the anda lakesamana ceremony. Prior to the ceremony, when a man of the Sakate or Yambanima tribes died, he was buried in a sitting position with a rope attached to his skull. After some months, the skull was removed from the grave and placed inside the skull house at Ipakatupya. When the skull house was full, people were invited from tribes near and far, some as far away as Kandepe. Many long houses were built, a large sing-sing took place, pigs were slaughtered and the Kepele ritual was held. At the end of the ceremony, the skull house was burned, driving away the ghosts of the deceased.

(George Kasa, Yambanima Kilyenda clan of Ipakatupya)

“Once in the land of Yakenda there lived a man whose name has been forgotten. One fine day he went hunting for possum in the nearby bush. As he was walking through the bush, he saw something shining and, curious as to what it could be, he went in that direction. When he arrived at the spot, he found a dwarf with long, light hair.

 

The dwarf, who was named Sabapae, asked the man where he was going and the man told him that he was going hunting. Sabapae told the man that he had been waiting for him and that they should go together for Sabapae would do what he could to make the hunt successful. The man agreed to take the Sabapae along and they made their way to a hut in the forest. The man told the Sabapae to stay there and make a fire and prepare food while he went hunting.

 

The man had plenty of good hunting dogs and killed many possums. He returned home, pleased with his days work only to find that the dwarf had done nothing. Sabapae was sitting next to the hut and dreaming away. The man asked Sabapae why he hadn’t prepared anything and Sabapae answered that he had been terribly sick. Sabapae assured him that by the next day he would be better and then would prepare the food and fetch the water.

 

The man believed Sabapae and did all the chores including roasting the possums. At the end, he was thirsty and asked Sabapae to go and fetch water. Sabapae claimed that he was too sick, so the man went instead. Before he left, Sabapae asked him to collect a wild taro leaf and some strong bush vines by the bank of the creek. The man did as Sabapae said and when he returned, they ate the possums. When they were finished, Sabapae told the man to lay out the taro leaf in the centre of the hut. The man did as he was told. Then Sabapae climbed the center post and defecated onto the leaf below. When Sabapae had finished defecating, he told the man to eat up his feces. The man refused and told Sabapae off calling him all sorts of names and telling him that he was worthless and should not order him around. Sabapae grew impatient and told the man that if he didn’t do what he said that he would kill him and so the man ate the feces and they went to bed.

 

Early the next morning, the man went out hunting again with his dogs and exactly the same things happened once more. On the following day, the two left for home, but Sabapae did not help carry the possums, but strolled behind at a leisurely pace. When they arrived at a certain place, the dwarf offered to carry the possums, but the man refused so they continued. When they arrived at the spot where they had first met, Sabapae said that he was thirsty from the long trip and asked the man to fetch water. The man made a quick trip to a nearby creek and when he returned, Sabapae and the bag of possums were gone. Thinking that Sabapae had gone on ahead, the man continued home, but the dwarf had disappeared. He told his relatives what had happened.

 

The next day, one of the man’s relatives went hunting in the same forest. He met the dwarf Sabapae and exactly the same thing happened. This time though, the man forced Sabapae to do everything including eating his own feces. When they returned home and Sabapae asked the man to fetch water. He agreed but tied a rope to the bag of possums. While he was fetching water, he felt a tug on the rope, and he knew that Sabapae was escaping with the bag of possums. Without wasting any time, he followed the rope which led to a cave. Sabapae escaped out the other side of the cave, ran to his house and gobbled up all the possums.

 

The man caught up with the dwarf, tackled him and wrestled him to the ground. They rolled over and over many times in a deadlock while Sabapae told the man that he could do anything to his body, but not to break the red cordyline plant (kalya akaipa) that grew in the middle of his garden. The man ignored what Sabapae said, got up, went over to the cordyline plant and broke it off. When he did so, Sabapae died instantly. He then buried Sabapae at the site where the cordyline plant grew. Before he buried him, he removed his penis which turned into a Kepele stone or a sacred stone of power. The stone is still there today. From that time on, the people of Sakate hunted for possums, slaughtered pigs and fed meat, fat and other foods to the Kepele stone so that their children, crops and pigs would grow and flourish.”

(Tombea Lyilyipu, Sakate Yandapakini clan of Pipitaka)