"payback"

[Victor Steinbok]

Let's fix this, shall we? Here's the University of Hawaii record for
something that cannot be found anywhere else, apparently.

> Main Author: Taylor, Merlin Moore.
> Title: The payback / by Merlin Moore Taylor.
> Publisher: [New York : C.B. Van Tassel, 1923]
> Description: p.558-562, 605 : ill. 31cm.
> Subject(s): Crime -- Papua New Guinea.
> Papua New Guinea -- Social life and customs.
> Notes: Caption title.
> Local Notes: UHM: Detached from Asia, v.23, no.8, August 1923.
> Location: UH Manoa: Hamilton Pacific-Library Use Only
> Call Number: GN671.N5 T3  → Text me this call number
> Copy Number: Copy 1
> Status: Not Checked Out

The record appears in Amazon.com with no copies available. It also
appears in GB with no preview. WorldCat lists UH as the only available copy.

Indeed, the title can be confirmed in the Journal Asia and the Americas,
Volume 23.

http://goo.gl/1twrD

Perhaps someone can track down the original journal in which it
appeared--note the bibliographic info. I have no access to university
libraries, at the moment, so I'll take a pass.

In the Heart of Black Papua appears to have been reprinted--at least,
according to Amazon--last year. There are both hardcover and paperback
copies available, but they require exorbitant funds--$49 or $34,
respectively. On the other hand, this book can be tracked down a lot
easier than The Payback.

Merlin Moore Taylor was W.B. Joyce's secretary on the 1920 expedition to
Mount Chapman, where a series of photographs were taken and later
published as Where Cannibals Roam (London, 1924). I'm using passive here
because it is not clear whether the photographs had been taken by Taylor
or the expedition's official photographer Harry Downing (whom Taylor
fails to mention), but all indications are that the pictures were
Downing's (per Max Quanchi, Photographing Papua, 2007).

There is a war-time source--Osmar White's Green Armor, apparently
published by Norton (NY) in 1945. The snippet does not contain the word,
but the preview does. The snippet, however, makes it clear that this is
war-time context (zeros are mentioned):

http://goo.gl/FcNnY [preview]
> "Payback" made pacification very difficult. A wrong was done. The
> wronged family paid back — with a little over for ... It had been far
> harder to wean the native from his addiction to payback than it had
> been to cure him of a taste for ...

There is also an earlier mention (1927) in New York Central RR magazine
Travel.

http://goo.gl/pNme6
> "The payback, I think, is the strongest native institution. Once
> started, it can not come to an end until one side to ... That is one
> reason why punishment for a payback- murder always is as severe as
> circumstances indicate will make it ...

In this case, the snippet does show the first passage and there is an
additional page (earlier) where the word appears (likely the same
article). Given that it talks about a "native institution", I presume it
is an article on New Guinea.

VS-)

On 2/28/2012 2:28 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> ...
>
>   Earliest cite is 1935.
>
> 1926 Merlin Moore Taylor _In the Heart of Black Papua_  (N.Y.: Robert M. McBride) 67: One "pay-back" inevitably leads to another, with the roles reversed. Ibid.171:  "It will not be over until the handcuffs are on the man who led the pay-back," retorted Humphries grimly.

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