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

other preparations, running to the shore and back, filling baskets with yams for the sagali, getting ready their festive dress and decorations for the morrow. Festive dress means, for a woman, a new grass skirt, resplendent in fresh red, white and purple, and for the man a newly bleached, snow-white pubic leaf, made of the stalk of areca palm leaf.

Early in the morning of the appointed day, the food was packed into baskets of plaited leaf, the personal apparel on top of it, all covered as usual with folded mats and conveyed to the beach. The women carried on their heads the large baskets, shaped like big inverted bells, the men shouldered a stick with two bag-shaped baskets at each end. Other men had to carry the oars, paddles, rigging and sail, as these paraphernalia are always kept in the village. From one of the villages, one of the large, prismatic receptacles for food made of sticks was carried by several men right over the raybwag (coral ridge) to be offered to the chief of Omarakana as a share in the sagali. The whole village was astir, and on its outskirts, through the surrounding groves, parties from inland could be seen making their way rapidly to the shore. I left the village with a party of notables at about eight o’clock in the morning. After leaving the grove of fruit and palm trees which grows especially densely around the village of Omarakana, we entered between the two walls of green, the usual monotonous Trobriand road, which passes through the low scrub. Soon, emerging on a garden space, we could see, beyond a gentle declivity, the rising slope of the raybwag, a mixture of rank vegetation with monumental boulders of grey coral standing out here and there. Through this, the path led on, following in an intricate course between small precipices and towering outcrops, passing huge, ancient ficus trees, spreading around them their many trunks and aerial roots. At the top of the ridge, all of a sudden the blue sea shone through the foliage, and the roar of waves breaking on the reef struck our ears. Soon we found ourselves among the crowd assembled on the beach, near to the big boat-shed of Omarakana.

By about nine o’clock, everybody was ready on the beach. It was fully exposed to the Eastern sun, but this was not yet sufficiently high to drop its light right from above, and thus to produce that deadly effect of tropical mid-day, where the shadows instead of modelling out the details, blur every vertical surface and make everything dull and formless. The beach appeared bright and gaudy, and the lively brown bodies looked well against the background of green foliage and white sand. The natives were anointed with coco-nut oil, and decorated with flowers and facial paint. Large red hibiscus blossoms were stuck into their hair, and wreaths of the white, wonderfully scented butia flowers crowned the dense black mops. There was a good display of ebony carvings, sticks and lime spoons. There were decorated lime pots, and such objects of personal adornment as belts of red shell discs or of small cowrie shells, nose sticks (very rarely used nowadays), and other articles so well known to everybody from ethnological collections in museums, and usually called „ceremonial”, though, as said above (Chapter III, Div. III) the description „objects of parade” would be much more in agreement with the correct meaning of the words.

Such popular festivities as the one just being described are the occasions on which these objects of parade, some of which astonish us by their artistic perfection, appear in native life. Before I had opportunities to see savage art in actual display, in its proper, „living” setting, there seemed to me always to exist some incongruity between the artistic finish of such objects and the general crudity of savage life, a crudity marked precisely on the aesthetic side. One imagines greasy, dirty, naked bodies, moppy hair full of vermin, and other realistic features which make up one’s idea of the „savage” and in some respects reality bears out imagination. As a matter of fact though, the incongruity does not exist when once one has seen native art actually displayed in its own setting. A festive mob of natives, with the wonderful golden-brown colour of their skins brought out by washing and anointing and set off by the gaudy white, red and black of facial paint, feathers and ornaments, with their exquisitely carved and polished ebony objects, with their finely worked lime pots, has a distinct elegance of its own, without striking one as grotesque or incongruous in any aesthetic detail. There is an evident harmony between their festive mood, the display of colours and forms, and the manner in which they put on and bear their ornaments.

Those who have come from a distance, and who would spoil their decorations by the long march, wash with water and anoint themselves with coco-nut grease immediately before arriving at the scene of festivities. As a rule the best paint is put on later on, when the climax of the proceedings approaches. On this occasion, after the preliminaries (distribution of food, arrival of other canoes) were over, and when the races were just going to be started, the aristocracy of Omarakana the wives and children of To’uluwa, his relatives and himself withdrew behind the shelters, near the boat shed, and proceeded to put on the red, white and black of full facial paint. They crushed young betel-nut, mixed it with lime, and put it on with the pestles of betel mortars; then some of the aromatic black resin (sayaku) and white lime were applied. As the habit of mirrors is not quite well established yet in the Trobriands, the painting was done by one person on the face of another, and great care and patience were displayed on both sides.

The numerous crowd spent the day without taking much refreshment — a feature strongly differentiating Kiriwinian festivities from our ideal of an entertainment or picnic. No cooking was done, and only a few bananas were eaten here and there, and green coco-nuts were drunk and eaten. But even these refreshments were consumed with great frugality.

As always on such occasions, the people collected together in sets, the visitors from each village forming a group apart. The local natives kept to their own boat houses, those of Omarakana and Kurokaiwa having their natural centres on the beach of Kaulukuba. The other visitors similarly kept together in their position on the beach, according to their local distribution; thus, men from the Northern villages would keep to the Northern section of the beach, those from the South would stick to that point of the compass, so that villages which were neighbours in reality would also be side by side on the shore. There was no mingling in the crowd, and individuals would not walk about from one group to another. The aristocrats, out of personal dignity, humble folk because of a modesty imposed by custom, would keep in their places. To’uluwa sat practically during the whole performance, on the platform erected for this purpose, except when he went over to his boat, to trim it for the race.

The boat shed of Omarakana, round which the chief, his family and the other villagers were grouped, was the centre of all the proceedings. Under one of the palms, a fairly high platform was put up to accommodate To’uluwa. In a row in front of the sheds and shelters, there stood the prismatic food receptacles (pwata’i). They had been erected by the inhabitants of Omarakana and Kasana’i, on the previous day, and partially filled with yams. The rest had to be supplied by people from the other villages, on the day of the boat races. As the natives came to the beach on that day, village after village, they brought their contribution, and before settling down on their particular spot on the shore, they paid a visit to the chief and offered him their tributes. These would be put into one of the pwata’i. All the villages did not contribute their share, but the majority did, though some of them brought only a few baskets. One of the villages brought one complete pwata’i, filled with yams, and offered the whole to the chief.

In the meantime, the eight canoes arrived, including that of Kasana’i, which had been ceremonially launched that morning with the accompanying magical rite, on its own beach about half a mile away. The canoe of Omarakana had also been launched on this morning (Plate XXX), and the same rite performed over it. It ought to have been done by To’uluwa, the chief. As he, however, is quite incapable of remembering magical spells — in fact, he never does any of the magic which his rank and office impose on him — the rite was performed on this occasion by one of his kinsmen. This is a typical case of a rule very stringently formulated by all informants when you ask about it, yet in reality often observed with laxity. If you inquire directly, everyone will tell you that this rite, as all others of the mwasila (Kula magic) has to be done by the toliwaga. But every time when he ought to perform it, To’uluwa will find some excuse, and delegate it to another.

When all the canoes were present, as well as all the important villages, at about eleven o’clock a.m., there took place the sagali (ceremonial distribution). The food was given to people from various villages, especially such as took part in the races, or had assisted in the building of the new canoe. So we see that food contributed by all the villages before the sagali was simply redistributed among them, a considerable quantity having been added first by the chief; and this indeed is the usual procedure at a sagali. In this case, of course, the lion’s share was taken by the Kitavans who helped at the building.

After the sagali was over, the canoes were all brought up to one spot, and the natives began to prepare them for the race. The masts were stepped, the fastenings trimmed, the sails made ready (see Plate XXXI). After that the canoes all put off and gathered about half a mile off the shore, beyond the fringing reef; and at a sign given by some one on one of them, they all started. As said before, such a run is not a race properly speaking, in which the canoes would start scrupulously at the same minute, have the same distance to cover, and which would clearly show which is the fastest. In this case, it was merely, as always, a review of the boats sailing along as well as they were able, a review in which they all began to move, more or less at the same time, went in the same direction, and covered practically the same distance.

As to the time table of the events, the sagali was over before mid-day. There was a pause; and then, at about one p.m., the natives began rigging the canoes. Then all hands had a spell, and not before three p.m. were the races started. The whole affair was over by about four o’clock, and half an hour later, the boats from the other villages started to sail home, the people on the shore dispersed, so that by sunset, that is, about six o’clock, the beach was almost deserted.

Such was the tasasoria ceremony which I saw in February, 1916. It was a fine sight from the spectacular point of view. A superficial onlooker could have hardly perceived any sign of white man’s influence or interference. I was the only white man present, and besides myself only some two or three native missionary teachers were dressed in white cotton. Amongst the rest of us there could be seen sparsely a coloured rag, tied round as a neckerchief or head-dress. But otherwise there was only a swarm of naked brown bodies, shining with coco-nut oil, adorned in new festive dress, with here and there the three-coloured grass