In 1992, when Daniel Wemp was about twenty-two years old, his beloved paternal uncle Soll was killed in a battle against the neighboring Ombal clan. In the New Guinea Highlands, where Daniel and his Handa clan live, uncles and aunts play a big role in raising children, so an uncle’s death represents a much heavier blow than it might to most Americans. Daniel often did not even distinguish between his biological father and other male clansmen of his father’s generation. And Soll had been very good to Daniel, who recalled him as a tall and handsome man, destined to become a leader. Soll’s death demanded vengeance.

Daniel told me that responsibility for arranging revenge usually falls on the victim’s firstborn son or, failing that, on one of his brothers. “Soll did have a son, but he was only six years old at the time of his father’s death, much too young to organize the revenge,” Daniel said. “On the other hand, my father was felt to be too old and weak by then; the avenger should be a strong young man in his prime. So I was the one who became expected to avenge Soll.” As it turned out, it took three years, twenty-nine more killings, and the sacrifice of three hundred pigs before Daniel succeeded in discharging this responsibility.

I first met Daniel half a dozen years after these events, while he was working for the Papua New Guinea branch of ChevronTexaco, which was then managing oil fields in the Southern Highlands, about thirty miles from Daniel’s home village. The fields, where I was doing environmental studies, lie in forest-covered hills near the beautiful Lake Kutubu. The weather is warm but wet—the region gets hundreds of inches of rain a year. As the driver assigned to me, Daniel picked me up an hour before dawn each day, drove me out along narrow dirt roads, waited while I jumped out every mile or so to record birdsongs, and drove me back to the oil camp in time for lunch. He was slim but muscular, and, like other New Guinea Highlanders, dark-skinned, with tightly coiled dark hair, dark eyes, and a strongly contoured face. From the outset, I found him to be a happy, enthusiastic, sociable person. During our hours together on the road, we enjoyed sharing our life stories. Despite some big differences between our backgrounds—Daniel’s Highland village life focussed on growing sweet potatoes, raising pigs, and fighting, and my American city life focussed on college teaching and research—we enjoyed many of the same things, such as our wives and children, conversation, sports, birds, and driving cars. It was in these conversations that he told me the story of his revenge.

Daniel’s homeland and other parts of the New Guinea Highlands have been of interest to anthropologists ever since the nineteen-thirties, when Australian and Dutch prospectors and patrols “discovered” a million stone-tool-using tribespeople previously unknown to the outside world, and began to introduce them to metal, writing, missionaries, and state government. Since then, changes have been rapid. When I first visited New Guinea as a scientist, in 1964, most Highlanders still lived in thatched huts with walls of hand-hewn planks, and many wore grass skirts and no shirts; now many huts have tin roofs and most people wear T-shirts and shorts or trousers. And yet Highlanders still inhabit two worlds simultaneously. Daniel’s loyalties are first to his Handa clan and to his Nipa tribe, and then to his nation of Papua New Guinea, which is attempting to weld its thousands of clans and hundreds of tribes into a peaceful democracy.

State government is now so nearly universal around the globe that we forget how recent an innovation it is; the first states are thought to have arisen only about fifty-five hundred years ago, in the Fertile Crescent. Before there were states, Daniel’s method of resolving major disputes—either violently or by payment of compensation—was the worldwide norm. Papua New Guinea is not the only place where those traditional methods of dispute resolution still coexist uneasily with the methods of state government. For example, Daniel’s methods might seem quite familiar to members of urban gangs in America, and also to Somalis, Afghans, Kenyans, and peoples of other countries where tribal ties remain strong and state control weak. As I eventually came to realize, Daniel’s thirst for vengeance and his hostility to rival clans are really not so far from our own habits of mind as we might like to think.

The war between the Handa clan and the Ombal clan began many years ago; how many, Daniel didn’t say, and perhaps didn’t know. It could easily have been several decades ago, or even in an earlier generation. Among Highland clans, each killing demands a revenge killing, so that a war goes on and on, unless political considerations cause it to be settled, or unless one clan is wiped out or flees. When I asked Daniel how the war that claimed his uncle’s life began, he answered, “The original cause of the wars between the Handa and Ombal clans was a pig that ruined a garden.” Surprisingly to outsiders, most Highland wars start ostensibly as a dispute over either pigs or women. Anthropologists debate whether the wars really arise from some deeperlying ultimate cause, such as land or population pressure, but the participants, when they are asked to name a cause, usually point to a woman or a pig. Any Westerner who knows the story of Helen and the Trojan War will not be surprised to hear women named as a casus belli, but the equal importance of pigs is less obvious. However, New Guinea Highlanders, whose main food staples are starchy root crops like sweet potato and taro, are chronically starved for protein, of which the island’s dark, bristly pigs traditionally furnished the only large source. As a result, pigs are prized symbols of prestige and wealth. Peaceful competition and ostentatious displays involve pigs, and they are also used as currency for buying women. Pigs are individually owned and named, and, as piglets, they are sometimes nursed at one breast by a woman nursing an infant at her other breast.

A typical Highland village is a cluster of huts housing between a few dozen and a few hundred people plus their pigs, traditionally surrounded by a fence, and situated a mile or a few miles from the next village. A village’s pigs are taken out to forage during the day, and are prone then to wander into people’s vegetable gardens, breaking down or digging under fences erected to keep them out. A single pig can root up and ruin an entire garden in a few hours. If the intrusion happens at night, or if the offending pig is not caught in the act, it is virtually impossible to prove which particular pig was responsible.

That was how the Handa-Ombal war began. An Ombal man found that his garden had been wrecked by a pig. He claimed that the offending pig belonged to a certain Handa man, who denied it. The Ombal man became angry, demanded compensation, and assaulted the Handa pig owner when he refused. Relatives of both parties then joined in the dispute, and soon the entire membership of both clans—between four and six thousand people—was dragged into a war that had now raged for longer than Daniel could remember. He told me that, in the four years of fighting leading up to Soll’s death, seventeen other men had been killed.

Soll was killed in a so-called “public fight”—one fought in the open between large groups of warriors separated by a considerable distance. With the air full of arrows and spears, it is often impossible to tell who was responsible for a kill. Even if the side achieving the kill does know, it is always careful to keep the killer’s identity secret. For that reason, the target of Daniel’s revenge was not Soll’s killer but another Ombal man, named Henep Isum, who had organized the fight for the Ombals. By accepting the official role known as “owner of the fight,” Isum took responsibility for the killing, and Daniel became the owner of fights to kill Isum. Isum suited Daniel’s needs perfectly, because he was tall, handsome, and marked as a future leader, just as Soll had been. By killing Isum, Daniel would exact appropriate revenge for Soll’s death.

Daniel explained to me that Handas are taught from early childhood to hate their enemies and to prepare themselves for a life of fighting. “If you die in a fight, you will be considered a hero, and people will remember you for a long time,” he said. “But if you die of a disease you will be remembered for only a day or a few weeks, and then you will be forgotten.” Daniel was proud both of the aggressiveness displayed by all the warring clans of his Nipa tribe and of their faultless recall of debts and grievances. He likened Nipa people to “light elephants”: “They remember what happened thirty years ago, and their words continue to float in the air. The way that we come to understand things in life is by telling stories, like the stories I am telling you now, and like all the stories that grandfathers tell their grandchildren about their relatives who must be avenged. We also come to understand things in life by fighting on the battlefield along with our fellow-clansmen and allies.”

Though we might wonder how Daniel’s society came to revel in killing, ethnographic studies of traditional human societies lying largely outside the control of state government have shown that war, murder, and demonization of neighbors have been the norm. Modern state societies rate as exceptional by the standards of human history, because we instead grow up learning a universal code of morality that is constantly hammered into us: promulgated every week in our churches and codified in our laws. But the differences between the norms of states and of Handa clan society are not actually so sharp. In times of war, even modern state societies quickly turn the enemy into a dehumanized figure of hatred, only to enjoin us to stop hating again as soon as a peace treaty is signed. Such contradictions confuse us deeply. Neither pacific ideals nor wartime hatreds, once acquired, are easily jettisoned. It’s no wonder that many soldiers who kill suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. When they come home, far from boasting about killing, as a Nipa tribesman would, they have nightmares and never talk about it at all, unless to other veterans.

Then, too, for Americans old enough to recall our hatred of Japan after Pearl Harbor, Daniel’s intense hatred of the Ombals may not seem so remote. After Pearl Harbor, hundreds of thousands of American men volunteered to kill and did kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese, often in face-to-face combat, by brutal methods that included bayonets and flamethrowers. Soldiers who killed Japanese in particularly large numbers or with notable bravery were publicly decorated with medals, and those who died in combat were posthumously remembered as heroes. Meanwhile, even among Americans who had never seen a live Japanese soldier or the dead body of an American relative killed by the Japanese, intense hatred and fear of Japanese became widespread. Traditional New Guineans, by contrast, have from childhood onward often seen warriors going out and coming back from fighting; they have seen the bodies of relatives killed by the enemy, listened to stories of killing, heard fighting talked about as the highest ideal, and witnessed successful warriors talking proudly about their killings and being praised for them. If New Guineans end up feeling unconflicted about killing the enemy, it’s because they have had no contrary message to unlearn.

Normally, a clan first tries to obtain vengeance within three weeks. During that period, the situation is tense, and people feel especially aggressive. As Daniel described it to me, a clan has four rapid-response options: ambush parties deployed along public roads; a special type of long-range arrow; surprise attacks on enemy houses at night; and sorcery and magic. Daniel, however, was unable to pursue any of these courses, because at the time of Soll’s death he was in the coastal town of Madang, about two hundred miles from his homeland. He didn’t even receive the news until two weeks later, after which the journey home took him a further week. A consequence of that delay which evidently upset Daniel was that he never got to see Soll’s corpse; he saw only the site where Soll was buried.

Once home, Daniel assumed his role as owner of the fight and quickly organized efforts by his demoralized relatives to take revenge. On the first day of the resulting fight, Daniel was wounded. “I was advancing in battle with my biological father, who was holding a shield to protect me, while I myself held the weapons,” he told me. “As my father and I went up a hill towards a stone quarry from which the Ombal enemy was throwing stones as well as spears, a stone hit my father on his leg. So I took the shield to protect my father, and I told him to go faster. That was when I was left unprotected, and an Ombal spear struck me on the back of my lower left leg.” He showed me an inch-long scar and explained apologetically, “If, in a fight, you receive a wound on your forehead, then you are considered to have done well, but if you only have a spear wound on the back of your leg, like this one of mine, then you are viewed as not having fought well.”

All in all, Daniel’s first attempt at quick revenge was a failure, and so the war entered a slower, more complex and costly second phase, involving alliance-building, negotiation, and incessant plotting. Daniel’s clan realized that it would have to enlist supporters from other villages. The selection of allies posed tricky and dangerous problems. The New Guinea Highlands are full of aggressive men seeking revenge for their own reasons, and skilled at using treachery to achieve it. Whenever a battle takes place, men not hired by either side are likely to present themselves, hoping for the opportunity to kill an enemy of their own. “You have to make sure that the men that you hire as paid killers or allies are real enemies of your target, bearing grievances of their own from years ago,” Daniel said. “If you make the mistake of hiring a man who actually does not consider your target to be his own enemy, he may seize the chance to kill you, then go to your enemies and claim a reward.”

Another factor complicating the plans is that, if two people die in a fight, there will be at least two owners of the next fight to avenge those two deaths. In the case of Daniel’s campaign, there were actually three owners, because, in the fighting in which Soll was killed, another Handa man, named Fukal Limbuzu, was also killed, and a man called Wiyo was speared in the eye and blinded, which was regarded as equivalent in gravity to being killed. Hence Daniel and the brothers of Fukal Limbuzu and of Wiyo became from the outset the three Handa owners of the next fight. Meanwhile, the Ombals, too, had their own motives for revenge, because an Ombal man named Sande had been killed in the same fight as Soll, and Isum himself had been wounded.

Daniel engaged more than two hundred men as allies for his own revenge agenda: about seventy from each of the three neighboring villages of Ingin, Komea, and Poya. Naturally, the Ombal clan was simultaneously trying to enlist allies for its cause. Eventually, out of the fourteen neighboring clans, five (the Aralinja, Ungupi, Tapol, Sandap, and Ak clans) decided to join the Handa; four (the Henep, Inga, Solopen, and Mungan clans) joined the Ombal; and five (the Yup, Ulal, Twen, Hukup, and Tang clans) opted to remain neutral.

Hiring, supporting, and rewarding all those allies was a complex logistical operation. Daniel had to feed them during the actual days of combat, to arrange for houses in which they could sleep, and even, as he delicately phrased it, “to provide ladies for the warriors when they were homesick.” Daniel estimated that, in the three years that it took him to get his revenge, he had to furnish about three hundred pigs. By custom, the pigs to be slaughtered during that long phase of preparation should be not one’s own but, rather, stolen from the enemy clan. Yet Daniel had to be careful to steal only Ombal pigs and not to make the mistake of stealing pigs from other clans; otherwise, he would acquire new enemies. Ombal pigs were stolen either by day or at night, with the treacherous help of three Handa women who had married into the Ombal clan, and who hid occasionally from their Ombal husbands and in-laws and advised Daniel where best to steal Ombal pigs. In a small village, it isn’t easy to slip away unnoticed, and the women might have been killed if their treachery had been detected. The Handa men arranged to meet their kinswomen at secret places close to Ombal villages; though this increased the risk of the Handa men being caught, it made the women’s absences as brief as possible. I asked Daniel whether, conversely, any Ombal women who had married into the Handa clan might have been equally treacherous. He answered, “If we had found that a woman married into our clan was squealing, we would have tied her up and burned her with hot wires and hot pieces of wood. That was our plan, but in fact we never found any woman married into our clan who squealed; they all remained loyal to us, not to their blood relatives.”

Intermarriage complicated Daniel’s preparations in other ways, because it created restrictions on who was permitted to kill whom. Because the three female relatives of Daniel’s had married into the Ombal clan, Isum had become Daniel’s relative by marriage—Daniel referred to Isum as an uncle—and so Daniel was not permitted to kill him, or, indeed, any other Ombal clan member, by his own hand. Yet hiring killers to kill Isum was permissible. “By killing Isum or arranging for Isum’s killing,” Daniel explained, “I would lose Isum as an uncle, but that would be worth it, because I would gain my revenge.”

Fighting among the Nipas differs in several respects from fighting among other New Guinea Highland groups, such as the Baliem Valley Dani, made known to Western readers and viewers through Robert Gardner’s film “Dead Birds,” Peter Matthiessen’s book “Under the Mountain Wall,” and Karl Heider’s monograph “The Dugum Dani.” In these accounts, Dani public battles emerged as somewhat ritualized, announced in advance by the issuance of challenges, confined to daylight hours, and abandoned in case of rain. By contrast, Nipa fighting is unannounced and takes place day or night, rain or shine, so clans must be always on the alert. Warriors post guards constantly, up to ten kilometres away from their village, in order to protect their houses, families, gardens, and domestic animals.

Daniel emphasized the importance of distinguishing between long-range public fights and close-range private ones. He contemptuously described the former as a “small boys’ game shoot.” As he explained it to me, “Public battles are open not just to experienced fighters but also to new trainees, new allies hired to come and gain confidence, and fun-seekers. In a public battle, the fight-owners have the opportunity to see who really are the best marksmen, with the necessary experience to make quick but correct decisions.” Such warriors are selected for the much more dangerous task of private fights, in which hired teams of stealth killers prepare ambushes. “That requires nerve, judgment, and presence of mind, to select the right target, and not to panic and shoot the first man who moves into a shootable position,” he said. “Boys and young men are prone to make such mistakes and hence are excluded from the stealth parties.”

In a battle, each warrior faces dozens or hundreds of enemy warriors who constitute quickly moving targets but to many of whom he is related by various degrees of closeness, and some of whom he is not permitted to kill. Decisions must be made instantly among a seething mass of enemy warriors. Intermarriage creates further complications: many or even most warriors may be motivated to protect relatives on the other side, and they carry blunt-tipped arrows for warning unshootable close relatives as well as sharp ones for firing at shootable enemies. Daniel mentioned that an “uncle” of his on the opposing side in a battle (presumably an uncle by marriage) had once shot a blunt arrow at him to warn him that he was in danger. Even before a fight, people on one side, such as women married into a clan other than their natal clan, make hand signs or smoke signals at a distance to warn their natal relatives that the enemy is coming to attack.

On one occasion, I asked Daniel whether there are any rules that limit how one may kill enemies. He said, “In a night raid in which we sneak into an enemy village and surround the hut of a targeted enemy individual, we can tear down the hut to force the enemy to come out so that we can kill him. But it’s not acceptable to set fire to the hut and burn him to death.” I then asked, “Is it acceptable for six of you surrounding a hut to attack and kill a single outnumbered enemy?” Daniel answered, “Yes, that’s considered fair, because it’s already extremely dangerous for us to penetrate enemy territory, where we are greatly outnumbered.” From conversations with other New Guineans, I’ve learned that fighting etiquette varies among groups. For instance, the quest of a Tudawhe friend of mine, Kariniga, to avenge the killing of his father and many other relatives by the Daribi tribe culminated when Kariniga and his surviving relatives marched through the jungle at night to surround the Daribi village just before dawn, set fire to the huts, and speared the sleepy occupants as they stumbled out.

The psychology of fighting is a theme that Daniel discussed with me at length—especially the inevitable tension between the anger that drives one to fight, and the clear mind necessary for fighting well. Daniel summarized his philosophy as “fighting while thinking.” He said, “When you hear that your own brother has been killed in a fight, then you have bad feelings, you feel anger inside yourself, you become aggressive, you cannot think clearly, and you want to tear someone apart with your bare hands.” He went on, “But, if you fight when that feeling of anger is on top of your mind, you’ll expose yourself, and it will be easy for the enemy to kill you.” In a public fight, both sides sing taunts across the battlefield to provoke rash actions. “Both men and women on the other side sing out unexpected words, which you can hear from far away and which make you feel badly. They’ll sing, ‘We killed your brother, and he was a coward.’ They’ll sing war songs to bring up old memories in you: ‘I was there on that day of battle, I tried to kill you then, we should have killed you then, you were our target and we missed, but now we won’t miss.’ Those words make you want to go straight to the attack and to kill the other side, but then you’ll end up being killed yourself, because you are not thinking clearly and you’re incautious.”

In the three years following Soll’s death, there were six battles. (A public fight is counted as a battle only if a man is killed.) In any given battle, different participants and their hired allies were pursuing different agendas. While Daniel’s agenda was to avenge Soll, his co-owners of the fight on the Handa side were out to avenge Limbuzu’s death and Wiyo’s blinding; the Ombals aimed at avenging Sande’s death and Isum’s wounding in the same battle in which Soll and Limbuzu had been killed; and both sides sought vengeance for accumulated unavenged deaths and maimings and woundings from earlier battles. In total, about thirty people were killed in those six battles.

In the sixth battle, while a public fight was raging, the Handas sent out several groups of stealth killers—one that went up to the north end of Karinja Village, another that went down the main road, still another that went down along the side of the river, and so on. Daniel described what happened next: “Isum was in the public fight, with his bow and arrow ready for a long-range battle, and he was shooting and dodging arrows in the open. He was concentrating on that public fight, looking at our men far away in the open, and he wasn’t prepared for our attack from behind and nearby by one of our hidden parties. It was our group that had gone down along the side of the river that got him. Only one arrow hit Isum, but it was a bamboo arrow, flat and sharp as a knife, and it cut his spinal cord. That’s even better than killing him, because he’s now still alive today, eleven years later, paralyzed in a wheelchair, and maybe he’ll live for another ten years. People will see his constant suffering. Isum may be around for a long time, for people to see his suffering, and to be reminded that this happened to him as proper vengeance for his having killed my uncle Soll.”