The Big Feast
This is the greatest and most important social function of a Mafulu community of villages. I was unable to get any information as to its real intent and origin, but a clue to this may, I think, be found in the formal cutting down of the grave platform of a chief, the dipping of chiefs’ bones in the blood of the slain pigs, and the touching of other chiefs’ bones with the bones so dipped, which constitute such important features of the function, and which perhaps point to an idea of in some way finally propitiating or driving away or “laying” the ghosts of the chiefs whose bones are the subject of the ceremony.
The feast, though only to be solemnised in one village, is organised and given by the whole community of villages. There is no (now) known matter or event with reference to which it is held. It is decided upon and arranged and prepared for long beforehand, say a year or two, and feasts will only be held in one village at intervals of perhaps fifteen or twenty years. The decision to hold a feast is arrived at by the chiefs of the clans of the community which proposes to give it. The village at which the feast is to be held will not necessarily be the largest one of the community, or one in which is a then existing chiefs emone. The guests to be invited to it will be the people of some other (only one other) community, and at the outset it will be ascertained more or less informally whether or not they will be willing to accept the invitation.
When the feast has been resolved upon, the preparations for it begin immediately, that is a year or two before the date on which it is to be held. Large quantities will be required of yam, taro and sugar-cane, and of a special form of banana (not ripening on the trees, and requiring to be cooked); also of the large fruit of the ine, a giant species of Pandanus (see Plate [80]—the figure seated on the ground near to the base of the tree gives an idea of the size of the latter and of the fruit head which is hanging from it), which is cultivated in the bush, and the fruit heads of which are oval or nearly round, and have a transverse diameter of about 18 inches; and of another fruit, called by the natives malage, which grows wild, chiefly by streams, and is also cultivated, and the fruit of which was described to me as being rather like an apple, almost round, green in colour, and 4 or 5 inches in diameter.[1] And above all things will be wanted an enormous number of village pigs (not wild pigs); and sweet potatoes must be plentiful for the feeding of these pigs. And finally they will need plenty of native tobacco for their guests. In view of these requirements it is obvious that a year or two is by no means an excessive period for the preparations for the feast.
The existing yam and taro gardens, intended for community consumption alone, will be quite insufficient for the purpose, and fresh bush land is at once cleared, and new gardens are made and planted, the products of these new gardens being allocated specially for the feast, and not used for any other purpose. There is also an extensive planting of sugar-cane, probably in old potato gardens. For bananas there will probably be no great need of preparation, as they are grown plentifully, and there is no specific appropriation of these; but the sufficiency of the supply of the tobacco for the visitors, and of the sweet potatoes for the pigs, has to be seen to, also that of the ine Pandanus trees, the fruit of which has often to be procured from elsewhere, and of the trees. And finally the village pigs must be bred and fattened, for which latter purpose it is a common practice to send young pigs to people in other communities; and these people will be invited to the big feast, and will have pig given to them, though not members of the invited community; but never in any case will any of them have a part of a pig which he himself has fattened. The cultivated vegetable foods and the pigs are not provided on a communistic basis, but are supplied by the individual members of the community, each household of which is expected to do its duty in this respect; and no person who or whose family has not provided at least one pig (some of them provide more than one) will be allowed to take part in the preliminary feast and subsequent dancing, to be mentioned below.
The bringing in and storing of the ine and malage fruits commence at an early stage. The ine fruits are collected when quite ripe; they split the large fruit heads up into two or more parts, put these into baskets roughly made of cane (at least half a fruit head in each basket), and place these baskets in the avale or ceiling of the emone, where the fruits get dried and smoked by the heat and smoke of the fire constantly burning beneath. If, as is sometimes the case, the emone has no avale one is constructed specially for the purpose. The fruits are left there until required; in fact, if taken away from the smoke, they would go bad. Sometimes, instead of putting portions of the fruit heads into baskets, they take out from them the almond-shaped seeds, which are the portions to be eaten, string these together, each seed being tied round and not pierced, and hang them to the roof of the emone above the avale. The fruits of the malage are gathered and put into holes or side streams by a river, and there left for from seven to ten months, until the pulp, which is very poisonous, is all rotted away, a terrible smell being emitted during the process; they then take the pips or seeds, the insides of which, after the surrounding shells have been cracked, are the edible parts, and place these in baskets made out of the almost amplexicaul bases of the leaves of a species of palm tree, and so store them also on the avale of the emone.[2]
Large preparations of a structural and repairing nature are also required in the village where the feast is to be held. The emone, the true chiefs emone, of the village is repaired or pulled down and entirely rebuilt; or, if that village does not possess such an emone, one is erected in it. In point of fact the usual practice is, I was informed, to build a new emone, the occasion of an intended feast being the usually recognised time for the doing of this.[3] The houses of the village are put into repair. The people of the other villages of the same community build houses for themselves in the feast village, so that on the occasion of the feast all the members of the community (the hosts) will be living in that village. View platforms, from which the dancing can be watched, are built by all the people of the community. These are built between the houses where possible, or at all events so as to obstruct the view from the houses as little as possible. They are built on upright poles, and are generally between 12 and 20 feet high, each platform having a roof, which will probably be somewhat similar to the roofs of the houses. Sometimes there are two platforms under one roof, but this is not usual. Sometimes the platforms, instead of being on posts, are in trees, being, however, roofed like the others. Two or more houses may join in making one platform for themselves and their friends. All the above works are put in hand at an early stage.
The following are done later, perhaps not till after the sending out of the formal invitation (see below), but they may conveniently be dealt with here. The people erect near to, but outside, the village in which the feast is to be held one or more sheds for the accommodation of the guests, the number of sheds depending upon the requirements of the case. These are merely gable and ridge-shaped roofs, which descend on each side down to the ground, or very close to it, being supported by posts, and there being no flooring. They are called olor’ eme, which means dancers’ houses. Posts about 20 or 25 feet high and 12 inches or nearly so in diameter are erected in various places in the village enclosure, and each of these posts is surrounded with three, four, or five upright bamboo stems, which are bound to the post so as together to make a composite post of which the big one is the strong supporting centre. The leaf branches of these bamboos, starting out from the nodes of the stems, are cut off 3 or 4 inches from their bases, thus leaving small pegs or hooks to which vegetables, etc., can be afterwards hung; and in the case of each post one only of its surrounding bamboos has the top branches and leaves left on. Each household is responsible for the erection of one post. I may here say in advance that upon these post clusters will be hung successively, yams and taro in the upper parts, human skulls and bones lower down, and croton leaves by way of decoration at the bottom. The sugar-cane and banana and ine and malage are dealt with in another way. There is a further erection of thin poles, which will be mentioned in its proper place.
About six months before the anticipated date of the big feast there is a preliminary festivity, which is regarded as a sort of intimation that the long-intended feast is shortly to take place. To this festivity people of villages of any neighbouring communities, say within an hour or two’s walk, are invited. There is no dancing, but there is a distribution among the guests of a portion of each of the vegetables and fruits which will be consumed at the feast, and a village pig is killed and cut up, and its parts are also distributed among the guests, who then return home.
After this preliminary festivity dancing begins in the village in which the feast is to be held and in the other villages of the same community, and this dancing goes on, subject to weather, every day until the evening prior to the day upon which the feast takes place. The men dance in the villages, beginning at about sundown, and going on through the evening, and perhaps throughout the night. Only men who or whose families have provided at least one pig for the feast are allowed to join in the dancing. Bachelors join in the dancing, subject to the above condition. The women dance outside their villages, and, as regards them, there is no pig qualification.
About a month before the date on which the feast is proposed to be held, a formal invitation is sent out to the community which is to be invited to it, and who, as above stated, have already been approached informally in the matter. For this purpose a number, perhaps ten, twenty, or thirty, of the men of the community giving the feast start off, taking with them several bunches of croton leaves—one bunch for each village of the invited community. These men, if the invited community be some distance off, only carry the croton leaves as far as some neighbouring community, probably about one day’s journey off, where they stay the night, and then return. During their progress, and particularly as they arrive at their destination, they are all singing. Then the men of this neighbouring community carry the croton leaves a stage further; and so on till they reach their ultimate destination. This may involve two or three sets of messengers, but occasionally one or two of the original messengers may go the whole way. These croton leaves are delivered to the chiefs of the several clans of the invited community, and they are tied to the front central posts of the village emone, the true emone of the chiefs village, and, as regards other villages, the emone of the sub-chiefs.[4]
The exact date of the feast depends upon the guests, who may come in a month after receiving the croton leaves, or may be later; and the community giving the feast do not know on what date their guests will arrive until news comes that they are actually on their way, though in the meantime messengers will be passing backwards and forwards and native wireless telegraphy (shouting from ridge to ridge) will be employed.
As soon as the formal invitation has been sent the people of the community giving the feast begin to bring in the yams from the gardens, which they do day by day, singing as they do so; and these yams are stored away in the houses as they are brought in. When the yams have all been collected, they are brought out and spread in one, two, or three long lines along the centre of the village open space. The owner of each post knows which are his own yams, and they will go to his post. When the yams are laid out on the ground, the chiefs inspect them, and select the best ones, which are to be given to the chiefs of the community invited to the dance. To these selected yams they tie croton leaves as distinguishing marks. Then each man stands by his own yams, and has a boy standing by his own post; each man picks up his best yams, and whilst holding these they all (only the men with the yams) begin to sing. The moment the song is over, each man rushes with his selected best yam to his post, and hands the yam to the boy, who climbs up the post, and hangs up the yam. After this they hang the rest of the yams, each man running with them to the post, and giving them to the boy, who climbs up and hangs the yam whilst the man runs back for another, the performance being all in apparent disorder and there being no singing. Some of the best-shaped yams are hung to little cross-sticks about 3 or 4 feet long, which the boys then and there attach to those bamboo stems which have their top branches and leaves left upon them, the sticks being attached just below these branches. These selected yams will include those with the croton leaves, which are intended for chiefs. Of the rest the better yams are hung up higher on the posts, and the poorer ones lower down. The lowest of them will probably be 5 or 6 feet from the ground.
After hanging the yams, the next step is to erect in the ground all round the village enclosure and in front of the houses a number of tall young slender straight-stemmed tree poles, with the top branches and leaves only left upon them. These poles are connected with one another by long stems, fixed horizontally to them at a height of 7 or 8 feet from the ground, the stems thus forming a sort of long line or girdle encircling the village enclosure.
The men then go to their gardens and bring in the sugar-canes, singing as they do so, and these they hang to the horizontal stems, but without ceremony. The sugar-canes are all in thick bundles, perhaps 12 or 18 inches thick, and these bundles are hung horizontally end to end immediately under the line of stems, so as also to make a continuous encircling line.
Next they bring in the bananas, again singing, and these they hang up on the tall, slender tree poles, and on the platforms of the houses, and under the view platforms, but without ceremony.
Lastly, again singing, they bring in the taro, and hang these up, mixed with the yams (not below them) on the posts, again without ceremony. The hanging up of the taro is left to the last, and, in fact, is not done till it is known that the guests are on their way, as the taro would be spoilt by bad weather.
In hanging the yam and the taro the people all work simultaneously—that is, they are all hanging yams at the same time and all hanging taro at the same time. But as regards the sugar cane and banana each man works in his own time without waiting for, or being waited for by, the others. Women may help the men in all these things, except the ceremonious hanging up of the yams.
They do not, however, hang all the yam, sugar-cane, banana and taro, some of each being kept back in the houses for a purpose which will appear hereafter.
The ine and malage fruits are not hung up at all, but are kept in the avale of the village emone until the day of the actual feast, when the various vegetables and fruits are, as will be seen, put in heaps for distribution among the guests.
They then further decorate the posts with human skulls and bones, which are hung round in circles below the yams and taro, but not reaching to the ground. These are the skulls and bones of chiefs and members of their families and sub-chiefs and important personages only of the community, and the bones used are only the larger bones of the arms and legs; skulls will, so far as possible, be used for the purpose in preference to the other bones. These skulls and bones are taken from wherever they may then happen to be; some of them will be in burial boxes on trees,[5] some may be in graves underground, and some may be hung up in the village emone; though it may here be mentioned that those underground and in the emone are not, as I shall show later, in their original places of sepulture.
Finally croton leaves, tied in sheaves, are arranged round the posts below the skulls and bones, so as to decorate the posts down to the ground.
One other specially important matter must here be mentioned. There will probably be in or by the edge of the village enclosure a high box-shaped wooden burial platform,[6] supported on poles, and containing the skull and all the bones of a chief, these platforms and a special sort of tree being, as will be explained later on, the only places where they and their families and important personages are originally buried. If so, the people add to the bones on this platform such of the other skulls and special arm and leg bones, collected as above mentioned, as are not required for decorating the posts. If, as is most improbable, there is no such burial platform, then they erect one, and upon it place all the available skulls and special bones not required for the posts.
These various preparations bring us to the evening before the day of the feast, upon which evening the women, married and unmarried, of the community, whose families have supplied pigs for the feast, dance together in full dancing decorations in the village enclosure, beginning at about sundown, and, if weather permits, dancing all through the night. There is no ceremony connected with this dancing.
The next day is the feast day. The guests are in the special guest houses outside the village, where they are dressing for the dance. They have probably arrived the day before, in which case they may have come into the village to watch the women dancing in the evening; but they are not regarded as having formally arrived. These guests include married and unmarried men, women and children, nobody of the invited community being left behind, except old men and women who cannot walk. The women have brought with them their carrying bags, in which they carry all their men’s and their own goods (e.g., knives, feathers, ornaments, etc.), including not only the things used for the ceremony, but all their other portable property, which they do not wish to expose to risk of theft by leaving at home.
They have also brought special ornamental bags to be used in the dance as mentioned below.
The people of the village in the meantime erect one, two, or three (generally three) trees in a group in the very centre of the village enclosure.
And now come the successive ceremonies of the feast, in which both married and unmarried men and women take part; in describing these ceremonies I will call the people of the community giving the feast the “hosts,” and the visitors attending it the “guests.”
First: All or nearly all the men hosts go in a body out of the village to the guests’ houses, singing as they go. They are all fully ornamented for a feast, but do not wear their special dancing ornaments, and they do not carry their spears, or as a rule any other weapons. Each chiefs ornaments include a bunch of black cassowary feathers tied round his head behind, and falling down over his shoulders, this being his distinctive ornament; but otherwise his ornaments do not differ from those of the rest, except probably as regards quantity and quality. The object of this visit is to ascertain if the guests are ready, and if they are not ready the men hosts wait until they are so. Then the men hosts return to the village, singing as before, and all the guests, men and women, follow them; but they do not sing, and they do not enter the village. The men hosts, on returning, retire to their houses and the view platforms, where also are the women hosts, thus leaving the village enclosure empty.
Second: All the women guests, except two, then enter the village. They are fully ornamented for the feast, but do not wear their special dancing ornaments. They all have large carrying bags on their backs, not the common ones of everyday use, but the ornamental ones; and in these they carry and show off all their own and their husbands’ riches other than what they respectively are actually wearing. They enter at one end of the village enclosure (I will hereafter call this the “entrance end”) by the side of the end emone of the village (this may be the chiefs true emone or it may be the secondary emone), and walk in single file along one side of the village enclosure, and half of them walk round the other end (which I will call the “far end”) in front of the emone there (which also will be either the true one or the other one), and back again along the other side, until there are two rows of them, vis-à-vis at opposite sides of the enclosure, none of them remaining at the far end in front of the emone there. If they are very numerous, there may be lines on both sides of the enclosure, stretching from end to end; whereas if they are few only, they would be in facing lines at the far end only of the enclosure. This is all done silently.
Third: All the women hosts, fully ornamented for a feast, but without special dancing ornaments, then enter the enclosure at the entrance end, and congregate at the far end of it, in front of the far emone and between the two facing lines of women guests, and facing towards the centre of the enclosure. The group of them stretches as far forward towards the centre of the enclosure as their number allows; but it will never extend beyond the special trees, which have been last erected in the centre. This also is done in silence.
Fourth: The two women guests excluded from the general entry now come in. They are presumably the wives of chiefs. They are also decorated for the feast, but without full dancing ornaments. Each of them, however, holds in her mouth something intended to give her a terrible appearance, probably two pairs of pigs’ tusks, one pair curling, crescent-like, upwards, and the other pair similarly curling downwards, or a piece of cloth; but this is only carried by her for this particular scene of the performance, and not afterwards. Each of them also carries two spears, one in each hand. These two women rush into the village enclosure, one entering at each side of the emone at the entrance end. They run along the two sides of the enclosure, one at each side, in front of the lines of women guests already there (between them and the central group of host women), brandishing their spears as they do so, but in silence. When they reach the far end of the enclosure they meet each other in front of the emone there; and then, if that happens to be the true (chief’s) emone, they brandish their spears in a hostile manner at the building, the spears sometimes even striking it, though they do not leave the women’s hands, and there is probably a little pause or halt in their running for the purpose of this attack. They then pass each other, and return as they had come, still brandishing their spears, but each on the opposite side, until they are both at the entrance end of the enclosure. If the emone at this end is the true emone, then the attack is made upon it, instead of upon the other one. They then generally again pass each other, and go round the enclosure a second time, and again attack the emone exactly as before. During the first part of this performance the host women congregated in the far end of the enclosure are all dancing a sort of non-progressive goose step, there being, however, no singing. But, when the two guest women on the return journey of their second circuit reach the front row of the host women, the latter advance in a body silently dancing (but not travelling so fast as the two guest women) down the enclosure, and so following the two guest women, until they are all congregated at the entrance end of the enclosure. The positions of the dramatis personæ up to and including the stage of proceedings lastly described will be better understood by reference to [Fig. 7] and its accompanying notes. At the end of this stage the lines of guest women are still as shown; but the two special guest women and all the host women are at the entrance end of the enclosure.