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

of fishing and manufacture. For the shells are scattered all over the Lagoon, nor is the fishing and diving for them more difficult than any of the pursuits practised by all the Lagoon villages. Only the communities mentioned, however, carry it on, and they only are in possession of a system of elaborate magic, at least as complex as that of the kaloma.

The actual manufacturing of the armshells presents also no difficulties. The ornament is made out of a belt of the shell cut out nearest to its base. With a stone, the natives knock out the circular base along the rim, and they also knock a circle at some distance from the base and parallel to it, by which the broad band of shell is severed, from which the ornament is to be made. It has then to be polished, and this is done on the outside by rubbing off the soft calcareous surface on a flat sandstone. The interior is polished off with a long, cylindrical stone113.

It was the custom in Kavataria that when a man found a fine Conus shell, he would give it to his wife’s brother as a youlo present, who in turn would send the finder a return present of food, such as specially fine yams, bananas, betel-nut, and also a pig if it were an especially fine shell. He then would work out the shell for himself. This arrangement is a pendant to the one described with reference to Sinaketa, where a man would fish as well as work out a necklace for one of his wife’s kinsmen.

An even more interesting custom obtains in Kayleula. A pair of shells would be fished and broken in one of the villages of that island, or in one of its small sister islands, Kuyawa and Manuwata. In this unfinished state, as a band of coarse shell, called as such makavayna, it is then brought to the Amphletts, and there given as a Kula gift. The Gumasila man, who receives the shells, will then polish them up, and in that state again kula them to Dobu. The Dobuan who receives them then bores holes in the side, where one rim overlaps the other (clearly to be seen on Plate XVI) and attaches there the ornaments of black, wild banana seeds, and spondylus discs. Thus, only after it has travelled some one hundred miles and passed through two stages of the Kula, has the mwali received its proper shape and final outfit.

In this manner does a new-born Kula article enter into the ring, taking shape as it goes through its first few stages, and at the same time, if it is a specially fine specimen, it is christened by its maker. Some of the names express simply local associations. Thus, a celebrated pair of mwali, of which the shell was found not long ago by a Kavataria man near the island of Nanoula, is named after that place. It may be added that, in each pair there is always a „right” and a „left” one, the first the bigger and more important of the two, and it is after that the name is given. Of course, they never are found at the same time, but if a man has succeeded in obtaining a specially fine specimen, he will be busy trying to find its slightly inferior companion, or some of his relatives-in-law, friends or kinsmen will give him one. „Nanoula” is one of the most celebrated pairs, and it was known all over the Trobriands, at that moment, that it was soon to come to Kitava, and the general interest hung round the question who was going to get it in Boyowa. A pair called „Sopimanuwata”, which means, „water of Manuwata” was found in olden days by a man of that island close to its shores. Another famous pair, made in Kayleula, was called „Bulivada” after a fish of this name. The larger shell of this pair was found, according to tradition, broken, with a hole near its apex. When they brought it to the surface they found a small bulivada fish which had taken up its abode in the shell. Another pair was called „Gomane ikola”, which means „it is entangled in a net” as, according to the story, it was brought up in a net. There are many other celebrated mwali, the names of which are so familiar that boys and girls are named after them. But the majority of the names cannot be traced as to their origins.

Another point at which the armshells enter into the ring is Woodlark Island. I do not know for certain, but I believe that the industry is quite or almost extinct now in that island. In the olden days, Murua probably was quite as productive a centre of this manufacture as the Trobriands, and in these latter though Kayleula and the Western islands fish and work the mwali as much as ever, the natives of Kavataria are almost entirely out of it, busy all the time diving for pearls. Both the main places of origin of the armshells, therefore, are within the Kula ring. After they are made, or, as we saw in Kayleula, in the process of making, they enter the circulation. Their entry into the ring is not accompanied by any special rite or custom, and indeed it does not differ from an ordinary act of exchange. If the man who found the shell and made the mwali were not in the Kula himself, as might happen in Kavataria or Kayleula, he would have a relative, a brother-in-law, or a head man to whom he would give it in the form of one or other of the many gifts and payments obligatory in this society.

V

Let us follow the ring of the Kula, noticing its commercial side tracks, of which so far we only described the trading routes of Kavataria and Kayleula. To the Eastward, the section from Kitava to Woodlark Island is the one big portion of the Kula from which no lateral offshoots issue, and on which all the trade follows the same routes as the Kula. The other branch, of which I have got a good knowledge, that from the Trobriands to Dobu, has the commercial relations of which I have just spoken. The Amphletts, as described in Chapter XI trade with the natives of Fergusson Island. The Dobuanspeaking natives from Tewara, Sanaroa, and the Dawson Straits make exchange, though perhaps not on a very big scale, with the inland natives of Fergusson. The Dobuan-speaking communities on Normanby Island, and the natives of Du’a’u, on the Northern coast of Normanby, all of whom are in the Kula, trade with the other natives of Normanby Island who are not in the ring, and with the natives of the mainland of New Guinea from East Cape Westwards. But, all this trade aftects little the main current of the Kula. From its main stream, possibly some of the less valuable articles ebb away into the jungle, which, in its turn, gives its produce to the coast.

The most important leakage out and into the main stream takes place on the Southern section, mainly at Tubetube and Wari, and at some points of lesser importance around these two main centres. The North coast of New Guinea was connected with this district through the seafaring community at East Cape. But this side branch is of very small importance as regards the main articles of the Kula. It is the two connections to East and West, at the extreme southern point of the Kula ring, which matter most. One of them links up the South Coast of New Guinea with the Kula ring, the other joins the ring to the big islands of Sud-Est (Tagula) and Rossel with several adjacent small islands.

The South Coast, going from East to West, is at first inhabited by natives of the Massim stock, speaking the Su’a’u and Bonabona dialects. These are in constant intercourse with the Southern section of the Kula district, that is with the natives of Rogea, Sariba, Basilaki, Tubetube and Wari. The Massim of the Southern coast are again in commercial relations with the Mailu, and from this point, a chain of trading relations unites the Eastern districts with the Central ones, inhabited by the Motu. The Motu again as we know from Captain Barton’s contribution to Professor Seligman’s work, are in annual trading relations with the Gulf of Papua, so that an article could travel from the delta of any of the Papuan rivers to Woodlark in the Trobriands, and many things were in fact traded over all this distance.

There is, however, one movement which specially interests us from the Kula point of view, namely that of the two types of Kula valuables. One of these articles, the armshells, travels on the South Coast from East to West. There is no doubt that this article leaks out from the Kula current at its Southernmost point, and is carried away towards Port Moresby, where the value of armshells is, and was, in olden days much higher than in the Eastern district. I found in Mailu that the local native traders purchased, for pigs, armshells in the Su’a’u district, and carried them West towards Aroma, Hula, and Kerepunu. Professor Seligman, from his notes taken at Port Moresby, informs us that Hula, Aroma, and Kerepunu import armshells into Port Moresby. Some of these armshells, according to the same authority, travel further West as far as the Gulf of Papua114.

It was much more difficult to ascertain what was the direction in which the spondylus shell necklaces moved on the Southern Coast. Nowadays, the industry of making these articles, which was once very highly developed among the Port Moresby natives is partially, though not completely in decay. I have myself still had the opportunity of watching the natives of Bo’era at work on the ageva, the very small and fine shell discs, such as the very finest bagi would consist of. They were using in their manufacture a native pump-drill with a quartz point, in a place within a few miles of a large white settlement, in a district where white man’s influence on a big scale has been exercised for the last fifty years. Yet, this is only a vestige of the once extremely developed industry. My inquiries into this subject could not be exhaustive, for when I worked on the South Coast, I did not have the problem before me, and on my second and third expeditions to New Guinea I only passed through Port Moresby. But I think it may be considered certain that in olden days the shell strings moved from Port Moresby Eastwards and were introduced into the Kula ring, at the East end of New Guinea.

However this might be, unquestionable sources of this Kula article are the islands of Sud-Est, Rossel, and the surrounding small islands. The best spondylus shell, with the reddest colours is fished in these seas, and the natives are expert workers of the discs, and export the finished article to the island of Wari, and, I believe, to the islands of Misima and Panayati. The most important articles for which the necklaces are traded are the canoes, and the large polished axe blades.

Casting now a glance at the Kula ring we see that one class of Kula article, the mwali or armshells, are produced within the ring at two points, that is, in Woodlark Island and in Western Boyowa. The other article, that is the soulava or bagi (necklaces) are poured into the ring at its southernmost point. One of these sources (Rossel Island) is still active, the other (Port Moresby) most probably furnished a good supply in olden days, but is now disconnected with the Kula ring. The necklaces produced in Sinaketa are not the real Kula article, and though they are sometimes exchanged, they sooner or later disappear from the ring according to a sort of Gresham’s Law, which operates here on an article which is not money, and therefore acts in the opposite sense! The third type of valuable which sometimes flows in the Kula stream but is not really