Argonauts of the Western Pacific

by Bronisław Malinowski

III

We must now follow the later stages of the kaloma industry. The technology of the proceedings is so mixed up with remarkable sociological and economic arrangements that it will be better to indicate it first in its main outlines. The spondylus consists of a shell, the size and shape of a hollowed out half of a pear, and of a flat, small lid. It is only the first part which is worked. First it has to be broken into pieces with a binabina or an utukema (green stone imported from Woodlark Island) as shown on Plate L (A). On each piece, then, can be seen the stratification of the shell: the outside layer of soft, chalky substance; under this, the layer of red, hard, calcareous material, and then the inmost, white, crystalline stratum. Both the outside and inside have to be rubbed off, but first each piece has to be roughly rounded up, so as to form a thick circular lump. Such a lump (see foregrounds of Plates L (A), L (B)) is then put in the hole of a cylindrical piece of wood. This latter serves as a handle with which the lumps are rubbed on a piece of flat sandstone (see Plate L (B)). The rubbing is carried on so far till the outside and inside layers are gone, and there remains only a red, flat tablet, polished on both sides. In the middle of it, a hole is drilled through by means of a pump drill gigi’u (see Plate LI), and a number of such perforated discs are then threaded on a thin, but tough stick (see Plate LII), with which we have already met in the myth. Then the cylindrical roll is rubbed round and round on the flat sandstone, until its form becomes perfectly symmetrical (see Plate LII). Thus a number of flat, circular discs, polished all round and perforated in the middle, are produced. The breaking and the drilling, like the diving are done exclusively by men. The polishing is as a rule woman’s work.

This technology is associated with an interesting sociological relation between the maker and the man for whom the article is made. As has been stated in Chapter II, one of the main features of the Trobriand organisation consists of the mutual duties between a man and his wife’s maternal kinsmen. They have to supply him regularly with yams at harvest time, while he gives them the present of a valuable now and then. The manufacture of kaloma valuables in Sinaketa is very often associated with this relationship. The Sinaketan manufacturer makes his kutadababile (necklace of large beads) for one of his relatives-in-law, while this latter pays him in food. In accordance with this custom, it happens very frequently that a Sinaketan man marries a woman from one of the agricultural inland villages, or even a woman of Kiriwina. Of course, if he has no relatives-in-law in one of these villages, he will have friends or distant relatives, and he will make the string for one or the other of them. Or else he will produce one for himself, and launch it into the Kula. But the most typical and interesting case is, when the necklace is produced to order for a man who repays it according to a remarkable economic system, a system similar to the payments in instalments, which I have mentioned with regard to canoe making. I shall give here, following closely the native text, a translation of an account of the payments for kaloma making.

Account of the kaloma making

Supposing some man from inland lives in Kiriwina or in Luba or in one of the villages nearby; he wants a katudababile. He would request an expert fisherman who knows how to dive for kaloma. This man agrees; he dives, he dives... till it is sufficient; his vataga (large folding basket) is already full, this man (the inlander) hears the rumour; he, the master of the kaloma (that is, the man for whom the necklace will be made) says: „Good! I shall just have a look!” He would come, he would see, he would not give any vakapula payment. He (here the Sinaketan diver is meant) would say: „Go, tomorrow, I shall break the shell, come here, give me vakapula”. Next day, he (the inlander) would cook food, he would bring, he would give vakapula; he (the diver) would break the shell. Next day, the same. He (the inlander) would give the vakapula, he (the diver) would break the shell. Supposing the breaking is already finished, he (the diver) would say: „Good! already the breaking is finished, I shall polish”. Next day, he (the inlander) would cook food, would bring bananas, coco-nut, betel-nut, sugar cane, would give it as vakapula; this man (the diver) polishes. The polishing already finished, he would speak : „Good! To-morrow I shall drill”. This man (the inlander) would bring food, bananas, coco-nuts, sugar cane, he would give it as vakapula: it would be abundant, for soon already the necklace will be finished. The same, he would give a big vakapula on the occasion of the rounding up of the cylinder, for soon everything will be finished. When finished, we thread it on a string, we wash it. (Note the change from the third singular into the first plural). We give it to our wife, we blow the conch shell; she would go, she would carry his valuable to this man, our relative-in-law. Next day, he would yomelu; he would catch a pig, he would break off a bunch of betel-nut, he would cut sugar cane, bananas, he would fill the baskets with food, and spike the coco-nut on a multi-forked piece of wood. By-and-by he would bring it. Our house would be filled up. Later on we would make a distribution of the bananas, of the sugar cane, of the betel-nut. We give it to our helpers. We sit, we sit (i.e., we wait); at harvest time he brings yams, he karibudaboda (he gives the payment of that name), the necklace. He would bring the food and fill out our yam house.

This narrative, like many pieces of native information, needs certain corrections of perspective. In the first place, events here succeed one another with a rapidity quite foreign to the extremely leisurely way in which natives usually accomplish such a lengthy process as the making of a katudababile. The amount of food which, in the usual manner, is enumerated over and over again in this narrative, would probably not be exaggerated, for such is native economy a man who makes a necklace to order would get about twice as much or even more for it than it would fetch in any other transaction. On the other hand, it must be remembered that what is represented here as the final payment, the karibudaboda, is nothing else but the normal filling up of the yam house, always done by a man’s relations-in-law. None the less, in a year in which a katudababile would be made, the ordinary yearly harvest gift would be styled the „karibudaboda payment for the necklace”. The giving of the necklace to the wife, who afterwards carries it to her brother or kinsman, is also characteristic of the relation between relatives-in-law.

In Sinaketa and Vakuta only the necklaces made of bigger shell and tapering towards the end are made. The real Kula article, in which the discs are much thinner, smaller in diameter and even in size from one end of the necklace to the other, these were introduced into the Kula at other points, and I shall speak about this subject in one of the following chapters (Chapter XXI), where the other branches of the Kula are described.