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Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea

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A remarkable firsthand view of a lost culture in all its simplicity and violence by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927 to 2014), author of the National Book Award–winning The Snow Leopard and the novel In Paradise.

In the Baliem Valley in central New Guinea live the Kurelu, a Stone Age tribe that survived into the twentieth century. Peter Matthiessen visited the Kurelu with the Harvard-Peabody Expedition in 1961 and wrote Under the Mountain Wall as an account not of the expedition, but of the great warrior Weaklekek, the swineherd Tukum, U-mue and his family, and the boy Weake, killed in a surprise raid. Matthiessen observes these people in their timeless rhythm of work and play and war, of gardening and wood gathering, feasts and funerals, pig stealing and ambushes. Drawing on his great skills as a naturalist and novelist, Matthiessen offers an exceptional account of an ancient culture on the brink of incalculable change.

272 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1989

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About the author

Peter Matthiessen

144 books918 followers
Peter Matthiessen is the author of more than thirty books and the only writer to win the National Book Award for both non-fiction (The Snow Leopard, in two categories, in 1979 and 1980) and fiction (Shadow Country, in 2008). A co-founder of The Paris Review and a world-renowned naturalist, explorer and activist, he died in April 2014.

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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
Profile Image for Rick.
778 reviews2 followers
September 13, 2016
Published in 1962, Matthiessen’s sixth book and third work of non-fiction, Under the Mountain Wall provided its readers an inside look at one of the last existing stone age cultures, the Kurelu people of the remote mountain valleys of New Guinea—fear stops me from investigating how many seasons of Survivor may have been set there since but at that time the larger world had barely noticed, let alone intruded on the Kurelu. Matthiessen’s bold venture is to present what he witnessed and studied as if he and his colleagues are not present. He tries not to distract from the way of life he is capturing as an undiscussed eyewitness to tribal warfare, funeral ceremonies that include maiming young girls as part of their honoring the dead, long tramps through the mountain trails that risk ambush in search of feathers or plants for ceremonial use, treatment of wounded or sick individuals, cooking, farming, and celebrating small victories or life passages of one sort or another, and performing ritual activities to ensure the ghosts of their warriors haunt their enemies and not the reverse.

As always, Matthisessen is an attentive and precise witness. Bird songs, plants, clouds and sky, insects and animals are described with a Spartan beauty. Rats, pigs, huts, cookfires, utensils and weapons, gardens, clothing, jewelry, decorative accessories, such as the horim, a flatteringly long gourd covering for a warrior’s penis, and countless other details of Kurelu life and living are embedded in Matthiessen’s trim narrative. There is something modestly Homeric in the accounts of fighting and preparations and followup to battle. How the warriors prepare themselves and their weapons, bluster and bluff, are motivated by primitive emotions of revenge, how fear or bravery can grip an individual or group, how they ridicule their rivals (allies and enemies), and cope with injury and death. At the book’s very end there is a mention of a Waro village and that the Waro had come from the sky and had white skin and weapons that made a noise that echoed through the mountains and were building huts along the river. In this way, Matthiessen makes clear, as he did in the preface, that he and his team arrived just ahead of others and that what he describes would soon be changed forever.

Under the Mountain Wall successfully excludes any direct or indirect references, after the preface, to the presence of the author or his colleagues or any artifacts of their 20th century culture that they may have brought in with them. But the ghosts of them, more so than the ghosts of any departed Kurelu warriors, do occasionally play ghost-like tricks on the reader’s attention, provoking wonder: where was Matthiessen during this battle he describes so closely? Did he not distract one side or the other? Was he tempted to play god when the wounded are treated with rituals designed torn flesh or fevered bodies by chasing the harming spirits away? What did the Kurelu and their enemies make of these white people with their film equipment and its placement in their midst? These and other questions, like the flickering of lights or slamming of cabinet drawers or footsteps on a stairwell in a house empty of all but the reader, inevitably pop up as you read. Despite that occasional distraction, Matthiessen has effectively captured for the record (and apparently there is a corresponding film, Dead Birds, by Robert Gardner) a full and careful description of one of the final stone age cultures still in existence in the spring and summer of 1961, the last of the Old Frontier at the dawn of the New Frontier.

Under the Mountain Wall is an invaluable account of a primitive, at times brutal, stone age people whose way of life was dependent on warfare and agriculture, where the rules of warfare make any killed human, whether armed warrior or unarmed woman or child, a cause of celebration, where medicine was magic, and where law was nakedly about power—stealing a neighbors pigs or raping his wife was punishable as a crime against honor only if the victim, the owner of the pigs or the husband of the wife, had the power to inflict the punishment. Under the Mountain Wall is both provocative and restrained, instigating comparisons that it doesn’t itself make, between our world and the one described. It’s an early pillar in a body of outstanding work that includes the Watson trilogy, Far Tortuga, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Tree Where Man Was Born, The Snow Leopard, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Wildlife in America, and others that make the case that despite a small handful of major honors, Matthiessen remains one of our most under-appreciated writers.
Profile Image for Daren.
1,583 reviews4,579 followers
May 16, 2014
Very detailed, and the cultural side was very interesting, but for me maybe 50 pages too many. Got a bit repetitive with battles and pig eating. The names of people, places and tribes was a bit of a battle, but that is inevitable in a book like this. 3.5 for me.
Profile Image for Calzean.
2,777 reviews1 follower
March 25, 2016
Written after spending two seasons in 1961 with the Kuerlu people in the Baliem Valley in Papua which is now part of Indonesia.

In 1961 JFK became President of the USA, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, America's involvement in the Vietnam War started and Barbie got a boyfriend called Ken.

Meanwhile the Stone Age people of Papua carry on their ancient practices. War or the risk of death from a raiding party is a daily occurrence but is not fought for land as there is enough for everyone. War is fought to prove a man's bravery and to take revenge on a previous death, rape or kidnapping. Young girls loss part of a finger as part of the grieving process when a relative dies. Men weave, work in the gardens and hunt. Women have many rights to chose who they marry or where they live. But they still have a tougher existence than the men where strength and bravery is the pathway to riches (pigs and wives).

Matthiessen just tells their life as it happens. There is nothing about him or the expedition he is on. A lot is on the wars and fights, and the celebrations of victory or death that follows. He shows that people are just people - some are brave, some are vain, some are plain stupid and some are intelligent, caring and wise. Unfortunately these people and there way of life is sadly no more, and their wisdom in living in their environment has been lost.
Profile Image for Joanne Timmins.
14 reviews
Read
April 17, 2013
an interesting read that was tinged, for me, with unease as I knew that these people are probably dead now and their way of life irrevocably altered by now. The war descriptions were , for me, too detailed but considering what an important activity war is to the Kurelu, it's understandable that Matthiessen gave so much space to them. It seemed that warring informed their social, political & to a degree economic systems. Not too much info on the women though.
Profile Image for Saski.
474 reviews172 followers
April 15, 2014
On April 5, 2014, I received this news alert in my inbox: Peter Matthiessen, Author and Naturalist, Dies at 86. "Hmmm," I thought, "Never heard of him. Wonder if we have anything by him...." I turned from the computer and faced the travel bookshelves. There, at eye-level, between Time off to Dig, Archaeology and Adventure in Remote Afghanistan by Sylvia Matheson and A Reed Shaken by the Wind: A journey through the unexplored marshlands of Iraq by Gavin Maxwell, was Peter Matthiessen's Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in Stone Age New Guinea. "Ok, in honor of this man's life and career, I will put everything aside and read this book."

I started off most skeptically. The exhibition went to New Guinea in 1961, and Matthiessen was not even a student of anthropology or cultural archaeology but rather an English major, brought along, I assume, for his way with words, though at that point in time he had published very little. Or perhaps it was the naturalist in him, fostered first by his father, spokesperson for the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy, and later adding zoology courses to his English major at Yale. I had visions (nightmares) of vignettes of cute little savages. I was ready to hate the book. I am nothing if not judgmental.

Reading the preface, my skepticism grew. It starts off with "The peaks of the Snow Mountains, on bright morning, part of the dense clouds and soar into the skies of Oceania." Wow, snow-covered peaks in Oceania? I proceeded to search the book for maps. No maps. The closest I could find was a sketch of a typical village. Not good enough! A travel book without maps? What were they thinking! I almost stopped there.

The description, while it could never replace an actual map, held me, drew me in:
On a high flank in the central highlands lies a sudden valley: here the Baliem River, which had
vanished underground some twenty miles upstream, bursts from the mountain wall onto a great
green plain. The plain itself, ten miles across, is a mile above the sea....the valley, which
supports more than forty thousand people, …is a region of perhaps thirty square miles under the
northeast wall....

The region is bordered in the south by the Aike River and in the west, toward the Baliem, by the
lands of the enemy Wittaia. In the north and east it ends abruptly at the mountain wall. The
wall rises in a series of steep ridges to an outer rim which varies, around the valley, from ten
to twelve thousand feet in elevation; the upper wall is rarely seen. All day, all year, the
clouds balance on the rim, as if about to rumble in. They are dark and still and all but
permanent, protecting the great valley from infecting winds.

Included within this beautifully descriptive substitute for a map is the only excuse offered for the lack: "...the valley,...the last large blank on the most recent maps".

I became hopeful when I read that the exhibition included two anthropologists and that its purpose was to "live among the people as unobtrusively as possible and to film and record their wars, rituals, and daily life with a minimum of interference." Finally, what decided me in favor of continuing was that the author explained that this book would not document the first reactions of this people to the white man, but attempt to describe the culture in its pure state. Still cautious but with curiosity peaked, I moved on to the main section of the book.

I really didn't think Matthiessen could do it, describe a people totally without reference to other cultures, setting them completely on their own, unjudged, simply shown for who they were. It was slow-going at first, so many names, so many unfamiliar letter combinations, many with overlapping similarity. I felt at first I was floundering in a morass of Weak-'s, lek's, Were-'s, Asuk- verses Asok-, Eka-, Eke-, Eki-. Fortunately, and almost redeeming the author for a lack of a map, are included in the back a list of common Dani words, glossary of names, and explanations of the many photos. Slowly, the various families sorted themselves out in my head, and I began to watch for individuals to crop up in the narration.

This should have been a boring book, expounding in great particulars each and every detail of everyday life. It was not. It is an incredible feat of prose and I hope if the akuni ever read the account, it pleases them.

I wish to include a comment by the author himself in a later interview (http://www.theparisreview.org/intervi...), if for no other reason than to dispute him: "Nonfiction at its best is like fashioning a cabinet. It can be elegant and very beautiful, but it can never be sculpture. Captive to facts – or predetermined forms – it cannot fly." I beg to differ, Mr Matthiessen. This writing soars.
426 reviews8 followers
May 6, 2023
We should have been assigned this book when we studied this tribe as part of a university anthropological course. However, then we would be exposed to random rape, wife stealing, ecological ruin, and ghost placation by severing girls' fingers, as an integral part of stone age culture.
We got the whitewashed version, of pristine culture about to disappear under the tidal wave of 'modernization.'
Peter Matthiessen too, doesn't tell the whole story. He never mentions that he was there with Robert Gardner who was filming a documentary called "Dead Birds." That they lived separately from the tribe they described. That they must have shared a lot of stories with each other... and that their project was possible because West Irian, as it was known when they were there, was still controlled by the Dutch.
Here's what we DO get. Exquisite nature descriptions:
…and the fierce blue-gray hunter of all continents, the peregrine: the falcon dove down the steep hill like a shard of falling sky, its passage booming a half-mile away.
We get war, war and more war:
The cheerfulness, even gaiety, of the people is the more remarkable for the fact that never in the whole course of their lives can they be certain that death does not await them down the path; after each peril, like the small mice which dart or flatten in the grass at a hawk’s passage, they continue as though nothing had occurred.
And of course, the pigs, which seem to be both money and family.
Once or twice a year, depending on its current fortunes, a clan will hold a ceremony which renews the power of the holy stones and invigorates and protects in battle the warriors of the clan that holds the stones: the cleaning of the stones with grease of ceremonial pig, wam wisa, is the most sacred of all rituals.
Profile Image for Nick.
433 reviews7 followers
April 28, 2018
This is a fascinating account of the Kurelu tribe of western New Guinea just prior to western contact in 1961. Matthiessen was a part of an expedition to observe the Kurelu rituals, inter-tribal conflicts and daily ways of life. The Kurelu appear to be totally untouched by European ways. Violence was constant between neighbouring tribes and among personalities- it is amazing how much warfare was a part of their existence. This is a glimpse at a culture and existence that will never return. 4.5 stars.
Profile Image for Dixie.
Author 2 books20 followers
December 13, 2022
3-1/2 stars. I found this really interesting for the first hundred pages or so, but couldn't keep my interest level up for the last 150 which were basically more of the same.
13 reviews1 follower
January 17, 2018
A book like this will never be written again. The writing is capable and honest, but this is not fine literature. What is unique is the characters, real characters that lived in a radically different culture from the modern day. There simply are no longer tribal societies this large left to find on earth and since shortly after this was written the Baliem valley changed radically. Take a Google Earth satellite view and find the sprawl of Wamena and the network of roads ceaselessly branching off. Even the remote Yali have tin roofs in most villages. Much of this occurred in the last 10 years. Mathiessen gives us a glimpse into a simpler (yet violent) way of life. Still there is much to admire in these simple people and I cam away at the end feeling that we are the ones that have come away with something missing in our modern comfort and near complete divorce from the natural world.
Profile Image for Peter Murray.
146 reviews1 follower
July 10, 2017
An intimate look at the daily lives of the traditional peoples of highland Papua New Guinea. Peter Matthiessen paints brilliantly both a portrait of the Kurelu and the land in which they live, so much so you feel as though you're there. If his mission was to connect two people so vastly distant in all ways imaginable, he's accomplished that triumphantly. After reading this poetic book you'll never think about "primitive" people the same way again. The differences between our societies are vast, but they are dwarfed by our similarities. Matthiessen, a member of the 1961 Harvard-Peabody expedition - and co-founder of the Paris Review - is not only a documenter with a voracious appetite for detail, but a master of prose.
Profile Image for Rue Matthiessen.
Author 3 books9 followers
February 27, 2021
Wonderfully informative about stone age people who've lived the same way for millinnea. Tells the essential story of what it is to be human. Tender and poetic as well. Absolutely loved it.
283 reviews5 followers
August 12, 2018
This book is good anthropology writing, faithfully done. But it is not good pleasure reading. I stopped halfway through which I rarely do with a book. Matthiessen goes with a group of anthropologists to a pacific island to live with and study a tribe that had previously had no outside contacts with white man. This tribe is living in a remote area and their culture is based on an endless round of war, squabbles and killing with other tribal bands in the area. The men kill over garden raids, stealing pigs, raping and kidnapping wives. The men and women have very separate lives. The women garden, cook, raise children and occasionally run away from their husbands. The men hunt and fight and help only a bit with the gardening. I found it painful to read this and quit when I realized it wasn't going to be getting better.

In fact I looked up some information about the culture in the area now and along with the mentions of primitive art and dance was the fact that this area has some of the highest levels of violence in the world at this time with over 70% of their women experiencing rape and physical violence.

If you want to read the anthropological story of a sick culture, this is your book. It is faithfully detailed and there are photos.
Profile Image for Heep.
831 reviews6 followers
August 20, 2022
"At first light a dusky green emerged slowly from the gray, and the surrounding woods took shape. Somewhere on a limb, the nightjar ruffled its loose feathers and blinked its yellow eye, camouflaged like a great moth, it would grow into the wood until night came again. Its place was taken by the honey eater, for this was the morning-of-bird-voices."

Even in an early work, Matthiessen writes with clarity and precision guided by careful observation and dispassion. The events and culture of the Kurelu are a challenge to Western ideals - what may seem like arbitrary violence reflect a rhythm of life and values calibrated to a delicate balance in the harsh circumstances of subsistence.

About 60 years ago, the author lived in the Baliem Valley in New Guinea among what the book's cover describes as a "Stone Age tribe". Western contact had, as yet, left little mark. In less skilled hands, such a report would not evoke awe and insight. Events and people are described in their own context thus establishing a testament to a transitional moment in human history. Only in the last page does Matthiessen describe the introduction of a new flower and a different kind of bee to foreshadow, like the first tiny ripples on the ocean, the coming relentless tsunami of the "developed" world.
Profile Image for Skip.
236 reviews26 followers
September 19, 2018
This is a story, more a chronology, of what Stone Age people's lives are like. Their most modern tools, including weapons, are made of stone. As to their everyday lives, Stone Age or not, the people of this time, the people of this area, seek the same things any of us do in any time, in any culture, anywhere in the world. They want to be survive, they want to be happy, and they do all and anything, all and everything to make those things manifest in their lives. Their lives outwardly may be vastly different from our own, but by learning, by knowing what they are about, we in turn learn what we are about in this modern technological age. I gave it a three because the writing is the equivalent of a three. However, the research and information the result of that research knocks it up to a four.
Profile Image for David Cirauqui.
8 reviews
January 19, 2022
I expected it to be a bit more both enjoyable and informative. Instead of being an essay about the life of the peoples of new guinea it is more of a compendium of stories (sometimes disconected between each other) the author was able to observe in his stays there. I am not saying that it is a bad book, just that I expected something different, more like a Jared Diamond style book.
Author 5 books7 followers
April 10, 2019
Enough to lead one to attribute some efficacy to group selection.
Profile Image for Meredith.
54 reviews2 followers
January 17, 2021
Very good but it was difficult to keep up with all the names, people, places and tribes.
127 reviews
September 12, 2025
Early Matthiessen, but his talent always obvious. This is anthropology and fascinating in this way. The many words of native language can be confusing.
Profile Image for Barbara Carder.
173 reviews9 followers
December 24, 2023
The world culture should thank the 1961 Harvard-Peabody expedition to Western Papua New Guinea and Peter Matthiessen for this incredible account of the people and how they lived so untouched by any but their own evolution. Perhaps all the books on history and civilization are nothing more than rationalizations and excuses for our behavior whereas this book shows unflinchingly the world before books, before written literacy and details cultures and traditions that are based on all the same big questions: who do we trust/who do we fight . . . what to do about theft, infidelity, rape, honoring the dead, the ancestors . . . who is in charge and why should they have the leadership . . . . in a no-clothes, not-hiding, jungle environment. Brilliant brilliant exquisite book which I will never forget. Not to mention his brilliant observations on ritual combat. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Profile Image for Christina.
17 reviews
August 7, 2008
An educational and interesting look into one of the last true aboriginal hunter/gatherer tribes in the world. It's dated but still an interesting read. Just to do what Matthiessen has had the opportunity to do in his lifetime!
Profile Image for Golding.
55 reviews11 followers
September 6, 2016
Great, beautiful book giving more detail about tribal life than I've ever seen before. It covers what they actually do all day, how they feel about each other, what people talk about etc. in detail. The writing about nature is beautiful, too.
Profile Image for Jeff Harr.
2 reviews2 followers
April 2, 2013
A great look into a few seasons in the native culture of New Guinea.
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