In New Ireland girls are confined for four or five years in small cages, being kept in the dark and not allowed to set foot on the ground. The custom has been thus described by an eye-witness. “I heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected with some of the young girls here, so I asked the chief to take me to the house where they were. The house was about twenty-five feet in length, and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the entrance to which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly ‘tabu.’ Inside the house were three conical structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the ground, at which point they tapered off to a point at the top. These cages were made of the broad leaves of the pandanus- tree, sewn quite close together so that no light and little or no air could enter. On one side of each is an opening which is closed by a double door of plaited cocoa-nut tree and pandanus-tree leaves. About three feet from the ground there is a stage of bamboos which forms the floor. In each of these cages we were told there was a young woman confined, each of whom had to remain for at least four or five years, without ever being allowed to go outside the house. I could scarcely credit the story when I heard it; the whole thing seemed too horrible to be true.1

Horrible though it may seem to us, I think the tribe engaged in this custom has a different perception. They are treating their young girls like seeds. They pamper their female adolescents as they pamper their seeds, they even store them in pods, with the sought after effect that neither girl nor seed sprout until needed.

Many of the traditional ways we treat women, or anything else for that matter, are rooted in sympathetic magic2 e.g. if it works on A, lets try it on B.

The tug of Civilization rewards the forsaking of superstition and in the case of the daughters of New Ireland the pull is in the right direction.

1 Frazer, James; The Golden Bough; The Seclusion of Girls At Puberty.
2 Magic being a kind of prayer in which we help God get pointed in the right direction with performance art. Like charades.