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The Iwam are a tribe living on the banks of the Sepik River and of the May River, one of its southern tributaries, in north-east New Guinea. The Iwam language is part of Laycock's Upper Sepik Stock, which itself is part of his Upper Sepik Phylum: this includes languages at a considerable distance to the east, northeast and north which are all widely separated from each other by speakers of Toricelli Phylum languages (see map, Fig. 2). The May River Iwam were discoverd by the Behrmann expedition of 1912-19131 which seems to have failed to contact the Sepik Iwam, who were then living inland. They were briefly visitied by the Crane expedition of 1929,2 but apart from adventurous traders and labor recruiters met few other westerners until the establishment of the May River Patrol Post in 1956. There are now altogether about 2,300 Iwam. Those of the Sepik River live in four large and rather widely separated communities, and both the language and culture show slight differences from those of the May River Iwam, with their more numerous (about thirteen), much smaller and more closely spaced settlements. The material culture of the Iwam is not radically different from that of their riverine neighbours, give or take a few minor items. They were (and to some extent still are) prolific artisits, making large numbers of paintings on sago spathes for the decoration of ceremonial houses, carved shields3, carved canoe prows, engraved lime gourds, and weapons. The art styles of all these river groups show a basic reliance on a small range of forms: two-dimensional surfaces are covered with a limited number of standardized abstract designs in bilaterally or biaxially symmetrical compositions. The wealth of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations which is such a striking characteristic of middle Sepik River art-and to which, indeed, it largely owes its considerable fame-simply does not exist. Even the small proportion of representations of birds and human heads found among the Wogumas, to the east, seems absent from Iwam art. In the last few years, however, a number of large and small wood silhouette carvings of cassowaries (Figs. 3, 4) have been collected in both Sepik River and May River Iwam villages. These seem at first glance foreign to the Iwam context; unlike the rest of the art style they are lopsided and asymmetrical, even though they have surface decoration in typical designs. One's first impulse is to suspect that they are nontraditional; a feeling which is buttressed by the discovery that since the Iwam have started carving shields for the tourist trade,4 they have also (though perhaps only after 1970) been making similar cassowaries for sale as well. However, the earliest collection date of one of these, to my knowledge, is 1962, some time before any extensive commercialization of Iwam art began. Cults of any kind seemed to have played much less spectacular roles among the Iwam than in other Sepik River areas, but it is evident that the cassowary was involved in at least one, and that the carvings were cult objects. Iwam informants state that formerly they were kept in the men's ceremonial houses, inside small individual screened shrines, in which were also stored the painted skulls of victims of headhunting raids (Fig. 5). These skulls were the "guardians" of the carving. The maker or owner slept in the shrine. Boys were initiated to the sight of the figures, which were regularly presented with offerings of food. All this was done, say the Iwam, to insure the fertility of cassowaries for food. So far, so good. The large figures can be seen as the sacra of a fertility and hunting cult, and the small carvings as personal charms probably employed to the same end. There are counterparts to dual use of large and small versions of the same cult-object in other Sepik cultures, notably the well known hook-figures (yipwon) of the Karawari River.5 But why the relationship to skulls, and why are the skulls decorated? Schuster reports that the designs with which the enemy skulls were painted were also cut into the hair of young girls at their first menstruation; a coincidence which he relates to coneeptions of a connection between death and fertility found in other headhunting areas of the world.6 Cassowaryhead-fertility (both of human beings and cassowaries) thus form an interconnected series of ideas. To take a Freudian view, one might think of the heads as phallic symbols; a suggestion not at all contradicted by the fact that some of the actual heads involved are explicitly female. On the contrary, it would merely be still another example of the Sepik penchant for endowing one sex with the attributes of another which, common in mythology, appears in its most overt form in the ritual transvesticism of the middle Sepik River latmul tribe.7 If however the heads (skulls) are to be considered symbolically male, to complete the pattern the cassowary should be symbolized as female. In fact, it is; but before pursuing this it will be as well to review some ornithological facts as well as local conceptions about these interesting creatures.

(1962). Tibor Bodrogi, Art in North-East New Guinea. Art Journal: Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 130-132.