Argonauts of the Western Pacific - Bronisław Malinowski (darmowa biblioteka online .TXT) 📖

Tubetube and Dobu. I myself never saw it practised in the Trobriands, but I saw a similar custom among the Massim of the South Coast of New Guinea. At a so’i feast which I witnessed in three different villages as it progressed from one to the other, the party who brought in gifts of pigs to a man attempted to do some damage to his trees or his house. A pig is always slung by its legs on a long, stout pole, dangling head downwards (see Plates V and LXIII): with this pole the natives would ram a young coco-nut or betel-nut palm or a fruit tree and if not stopped by the owners would break or uproot it, the pig squealing and the women of the damaged party screaming in unison. Again, a party entering a village with gifts to one of the inhabitants, would throw miniature spears at his house. A distinct show of fierceness and hostility is displayed on both sides by the natives on such occasions. Although the somewhat histrionic attack, and the slight but real damage to property were sanctioned by tribal usage, not infrequently among the Southern Massim serious quarrels and scrimmages were started by it. This custom has been observed by Professor Seligman among the natives of Bartle Bay. „As a man passed the house, they speared the wall with the branches they had been waving, and left them stuck in the walls”. And again: „ ...the people bringing them (the pigs) in, carried branches of trees or pieces of stick with a wisp of grass tied to the end, and with these speared the house of the man to whom the pigs were given100”.

When we remember what has been said about the style in which all gifts are given; that is, so to speak, thrown down fiercely and almost contemptuously by the giver; when we remember the taunts with which gifts are often accompanied, as well as the manner in which they are received, the youlawada custom appears only as an exaggerated form of this manner of giving, fixed into a definite ceremonial. It is interesting from this point of view to note that the youlawada is only done in association with vaga (initial gifts) and not with the yotile (return gifts).

The Kiriwinian party, after having paid their preliminary ceremonial visit in the village, given their gifts, both of the Kula and of the pari type, and had a long chat with their partners and friends, return in the evening to the beach, where they camp near their canoes. Sometimes temporary huts are erected, sometimes in fine weather the natives sleep under mats on the sand beach. Food is brought to them from the village by young, unmarried girls, who very often on that occasion arrange their intrigues with the visitors. The party will remain for a few days paying calls to the other villages of the island, talking, inspecting the gardens and hoping for more Kula presents. The food of Kitava is not tabooed to the chiefs, as the Kitavans abstain from the worst abominations. At parting the visitors receive their talo’i gifts which are brought down to their canoes.

The visits are returned by the Kitavans in very much the same manner. They camp on the sand beaches of the Eastern Coast. When weather-bound they erect temporary habitations, and I have seen whole families, men, women, and children living for days on some of the Eastern shores. For it is the custom of the men of Kitava to carry their women and small children on their trips. The Kiriwinians take sometimes unmarried girls, but they would never take their wives and small children, whilst in the South no Sinaketan women at all go on a Kula voyage, however small and unimportant a one it may be. From big uvalaku expeditions, women are excluded in all the districts.

It has been mentioned in the last chapter that Kitava enjoys a privileged position in the Ring, for every single piece of valuables has to pass through it. The island of Kitava is a „Kula community” in itself. All its neighbours to the West, the Kula communities of Kiriwina, Luba, Wawela, Southern Boyowa (that is, the villages of Okayyauio, Bwaga and Kumilabwaga) cannot skip Kitava when they are exchanging, and the same refers to the Kitavan neighbours in the East. In other words, a man from the Eastern islands beyond Kitava, if he wants to pass an armshell westwards, has to give it to a Kitava man, and may not give it directly to some one beyond. The islands East of Kitava, Iwa, Gawa, and Kwayawata form one community. This is shown on Map V, where each „Kula community” is represented by one circle. The Kula stream, after having concentrated in Kitava, spreads out again, but by no means as broadly as when it runs to the Westward, and overflows over the broad area of the Trobriands. Another point, in which the Kula of Kitava differs from that of Sinaketa or Kiriwina, a point on which I have touched already once before (in Chapter XIII, Division I) is that the small island has to make overseas exchanges on both sides. As we saw, the Sinaketans carry on big expeditions and make uvalaku only to their Southern partners, so that they receive only the one Kula article, the necklaces in this manner, while their armshells come to them by inland Kula, from their Northern and Eastern neighbours. The same mutatis mutandis101 refers to the Kiriwinians, who receive all their necklaces overland and make overseas Kula for their armshells only. The two islands of Kitava and Vakuta, as well as the other Marshall Bennetts are, so to speak, ambidextrous in the Kula and have to fetch and carry both articles overseas. This, of course, results primarily from the geographical position in a district and a glance at Map V will easily show which Kula communities have to carry all their transactions overseas and which of them have to do one half of them overland. These latter are only the Trobriand districts mentioned in the previous Chapter and the districts in Dobu.

III

This exhausts all the peculiarities of the Kula in Kitava except one, and that a very important one. It has been mentioned before, in fact it is obvious from the account of the uvalaku custom that the Kula does not run with an even flow, but in violent gushes. Thus the uvalaku expedition from Dobu described in Chapter XVI carried about 800 pairs of armshells from Boyowa. Such sudden rushes of the Kula articles are associated with an important institution, which is not known in the Trobriands or in Dobu, but which we find in Kitava and further along the Ring, as far as Tubetube (see Map V). When a man dies, custom imposes a taboo upon the inhabitants of that village. This means that no one on a visit is received in the village, and no Kula articles are given away from there. The community lying under the taboo, however, expect to receive as many Kula gifts as possible, and busy themselves in that matter. After a certain time, a big ceremony and distribution of goods, called so’i is held, and invitations are sent out to all the Kula partners, and, in the case of a big affair, even to people from districts beyond the boundary of partnership. A big distribution of food takes place in which all the guests receive their share, and then the Kula valuables are given in great quantities to the partners of that community.

The association of taboo on economic goods with mourning is a wide-spread feature of the Melanesian customs in New Guinea. I found it among the Mailu on the South Coast of New Guinea, where a taboo, called gora, is put on coco-nuts as one of the features of mourning102. The same institution, as we saw, obtains in Dobu. Similar taboos are to be found among the Southern Massim103.

The importance of such economic taboos at times of mourning is due to another wide-spread association, that namely which obtains between mourning and feasts, or, more correctly, distributions of food, which are made at intervals during a more or less prolonged period after a person’s death. An especially big feast, or rather distribution, is made at the end of the period, and on this occasion the accumulated goods, usually coco-nut, betel-nut and pigs, are distributed. Death among all the coastal natives of Eastern New Guinea causes a great and permanent disturbance in the equilibrium of tribal life. On the one hand, there is the stemming of the normal flow of economic consumption. On the other hand, an innumerable series of rites, ceremonies and festive distributions, which one and all create all sorts of reciprocal obligations, take up the best part of the energy, attention and time of the natives for a period of a few months, or a couple of years according to the importance of the dead. The immense social and economic upheaval which occurs after each death is one of the most salient features of the culture of these natives, and one also which on its surface strikes us as enigmatic and which entices into all sorts of speculations and reflections. What makes the problem still more obscure and complex is the fact that all these taboos, feasts, and rites have nothing whatever to do, in the belief of the natives, with the spirit of the deceased. This latter has gone at once and settled definitely in another world, entirely oblivious of what happens in the villages and especially of what is done in memory of his former existence.

The so’i (distribution of food) as found in Kitava is the final act in a long series of minor distributions. What distinguishes it from its Boyowan counterparts and the similar ceremonies among the other Massim, is the accumulation of Kula goods. In this case, as we have said, the taboo extends also to the valuables. Immediately after death has occurred in a village, a large stick is placed on the reef in front of its landing beach, and a conch shell is tied to it. This is a sign that no visitors will be received who come to ask for Kula goods. Besides this, a taboo is also imposed on coco-nut, betel-nut and pigs.

These details, as well as the following ones, I received from an intelligent and reliable Kit a van informant, who has settled in Sinaketa. He told me that according to the importance of the death, and the speed with which the goods were accumulating after a year or so, word would be sent round to all the partners and muri-muri (partners once removed).