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

It is a well-known fact that the resistance and health of a native depend on auto-suggestion more even than is the case with ourselves, though new developments in psychotherapy seem to indicate that medicine has up till now largely underrated the general influence of this factor. Even the old ethnographic observers, more in Polynesia perhaps than anywhere else, have reported clear, unmistakable instances in which the loss of interest in life and the determination to die brought about death without any other cause. My own experience, though I have no one very striking case to cite, bears this out fully from all sorts of corroborating types of evidence. It is therefore not going beyond what is fully granted by facts, to maintain that a general loss of interest in life, of the joie de vivre, the cutting of all the bonds of intense interest, which bind members of a human community to existence, will result in their giving up the desire to live altogether, and that therefore they will fall an easy prey to any disease, as well as fail to multiply.

A wise administration of natives would, on the one hand, try to govern through the chief, using his authority along the lines of old law, usage, and custom; on the other hand it would try to maintain all which really makes life worth living for the natives, for it is the most precious inheritance, which they have from the past ages, and it is no good to try to substitute other interests for those lost. It is easy to hand over one’s vices to a man racially and culturally different; but nothing is as difficult to impart as a keen interest in the sports and amusements of other people. Even from one European nation to another, the last stronghold of national peculiarity can be found in its traditional diversions, and without diversion and amusement a culture and a race cannot survive. The application of a heavy, indeed, crushing machinery of European law and moral regulations, with their various sanctions, simply destroys the whole delicate fabric of tribal authority, eradicating good and bad alike, and leaves nothing but anarchy, bewilderment and ill will97.

With a mere show of his former authority, therefore, poor old To’uluwa arrived with a handful of followers at Sinaketa. He still keeps to all the strict observances and onerous duties with which his exalted position was weighted in olden days. Thus, he may not partake of ever so many kinds of food, considered to be unclean for the members of the sub-clan of Tabalu. He may not even touch any defiled objects, that have been in contact with unclean food; he may not eat from dishes or drink out of vessels which have been used previously by other people. When he goes to Sinaketa, for instance, where even the highest chiefs do not keep the taboos, he remains almost on starvation diet; he can only eat the food which has been brought from his own village, or drink and eat green coco-nut. Of the honours attaching to his position, not many are observed. In olden days, on his approach to a village, a runner would enter first, in a loud voice cry out „O Guya’u”, whereupon all the people would stand in readiness, and at the chief’s approach the commoners would throw themselves on the ground, the headman would squat down, and men of rank would bend their heads. Even now, no commoner in the Trobriands would stand erect in the presence of To’uluwa. But he no more announces his arrival in such a loud and proud manner, and he takes his dues as they are given, not demanding them with any show of authority.

On that occasion in Sinaketa, I met him again after about two years interval since the time when I lived as his neighbour in Omarakana for some eight months, my tent pitched side by side with his lisiga (chief’s man’s abode). I found him changed and aged, his tall figure more bent, his large face, with its expression half of benevolence and half of cunning, wrinkled and clouded over. He had some grievances to tell about the offhand treatment which had been given to him in Sinaketa, where he had received no necklaces at all, although a few days before the Sinaketans had carried from Kiriwina over 150 pairs of armshells. Indeed, the relative change of position between the chiefs of Sinaketa and himself is a permanent sore point with the old chief. All coastal natives, and especially the headman of Sinaketa, have become very rich owing to the introduced industry of pearling, where their services are paid for by the white men in tobacco, betel-nut, and vaygu’a. But To’uluwa, ruined through white man’s influence, receives nothing from pearling, and compared to his Sinaketan inferiors, is a pauper. So after a day or two in Sinaketa, highly displeased, and vowing never to return again, he went back to Omarakana, his residence, and thither we shall follow him.

For Omarakana is still the centre of the Trobriand inland Kula, and, in certain respects, still one of the most important places on the ring. It is probably the only locality where the Kula is or ever was to some extent concentrated in the hands of one man, and it is also the capital of the important district of Kiriwina, which dominates all the inland Kula of the Northern Trobriands, and links up the island of Kitava with the western islands of Kuyleula and Kuyawa. It is also an important link between Kitava and Sinaketa, though between these two last mentioned places there are some minor means of communication, as we shall presently see.

Previously, in Chapter III, in the definition of the fundamentals of the Kula, we saw that the population of the Ring can be divided into what we called Kula communities. These divisions, as we remember, were distinguished by the fact that each one makes overseas expeditions of its own. For example, the Sinaketans, as we saw, make their trips to Dobu in a body, and although the Vakutans may go with them at the same time, the two fleets sail and act as independent units. Again, the whole district of Kiriwina sails to the East, to Kitava, as one fleet. But no Sinaketan canoe could ever form part of it. Another distinguishing characteristic of a Kula community is that the furthest limits of partnership are the same for all its members. Thus for instance, a man from any village in Kiriwina, provided he is in the Kula, may have a partner anywhere up to the furthest limits of the Sinaketa district in the South, and in any of the villages of the island of Kitava to the East. But beyond that, no Kiriwinian, not even To’uluwa himself, can enter into Kula partnership. There are again certain differences between the manner of conducting transactions within a Kula community on the one hand, and between members of two communities on the other.

Kiriwina is one of such Kula communities, and Sinaketa is another. Yet the two are not divided by sea, and the style of exchange, when this is carried on between two Kula communities which lie in the same district, differs also from that of overseas Kula. Our first task here will be therefore to mark out clearly the lines of distinction between:

1. The transactions of Kula carried on overseas, from one district to another.

2. Kula between two distinct but contiguous „Kula communities”.

3. Transactions within a „Kula community”.

The facts belonging to the first heading have been described at length, and it will be enough to point out in what the second type differs from the first. Obviously, when two districts on the same island, such as Kiriwina and Sinaketa, make the exchange, there is no overseas sailing, no preparation of canoes, no launching, no kabigidoya. Sometimes big joint expeditions are made by the one community to the other and a great haul of vaygu’a is carried home. As an example of that, we may mention the visit made by the Sinaketans to Kiriwina in the last days of March, 1918, when a great number of mwali were brought, in readiness for the Dobuan uvalaku visit. When such an important visit is made from one Trobriand district to another, some of the Kula magic will be performed, but obviously not all, for there is no lilava bundle to be medicated, since no trade is carried; no dangerous cannibals have to be tamed by the ka’ubana’i rite, for the hosts are, and always have been, friendly neighbours. But some of the beauty magic, and the enticing formula over betel nut would be recited to obtain as many valuables as possible. There is nothing corresponding to uvalaku in such big visits between neighbouring districts, though I think that they would be held only in connection with some uvalaku visit from another part of the ring to one of the two districts, as was the case in the example quoted, that is the Sinaketan visit to Kiriwina (Chapter XVI). Of course there is no associated trade on such expeditions, for there is very little to exchange between Sinaketa and Kiriwina, and what there is, is done independently, in a regular manner all the year round. Partnership between people of such two Kula communities is very much the same as within one of them. It obtains between people speaking the same language, having the same customs and institutions, many of whom are united by bonds of actual kinship or relationship-in-law. For, as has been mentioned already, marriages between Sinaketa and Kiriwina take place frequently, especially between natives of high rank. The rule is, in such cases, that a man of Sinaketa marries a woman of Kiriwina.

Let us pass now to the relation between categories 2 and 3, that is between Kula of two contiguous „Kula communities” and the Kula within one of them. First of all, in the inland Kula within the same community, there never take place big, wholesale transactions. The circulation of vaygu’a consists of individual exchanges, sometimes more frequent, that is, whenever an overseas expedition has come home laden with many valuables, sometimes done at long intervals. No magic is performed in this type of Kula, and though there is a certain amount of ceremony accompanying each gift, there are no big, public gatherings. A concrete description of an actual case may serve best to illustrate these general statements.

During the eight months I stayed in Omarakana in 1915–1916, I had the opportunity of watching many cases of inland Kula, as there was a constant come and go between Kiriwina and Kitava, and subsequent to each influx of armshells from the East, a series of exchanges took place. In the month of November, To’uluwa went with his canoe on a small expedition across the sea to Kitava, and brought back a good haul of mwali (armshells). He arrived on an evening on the beach of Kaulukuba, and word was sent over to the village that next day he would come up with his trophies. In the morning, blows of conch-shell, heard from the distance, announced the approach of the returning party, and soon, preceded by one of his small sons carrying the conch-shell, To’uluwa made his appearance followed by his companions. Each man carried a few pairs which he had obtained, whilst the chief’s share was brought in on a stick, hanging down in a chaplet (see Plate LX).

The people in the village sat before their huts, and according to native custom, there was no special concourse to meet the chief, nor any outward signs of excitement. The chief went straight to one of his bulaviyaka, that is, one of his wives’ houses, and sat on the platform before it, waiting for some food to come. That would be the place where he would seat himself, if he wanted just to have a domestic chat with some of his wives and children. Had any strangers been