II. Sorcery and Suicide as Legal Influences
In the preceding section I have described a case of breach of tribal law and discussed the nature of criminal tendencies as well as of the forces which set about to restore order and tribal equilibrium as soon as it has been upset.
We touched in our account upon two incidents — the use of sorcery as means of coercion and the practice of suicide as expiation and challenge. A more detailed discussion must now be devoted to these two subjects. Sorcery is practised in the Trobriands by a limited number of specialists — as a rule men of outstanding intelligence and personality, who acquire the art by learning a number of spells and submitting to certain conditions. They exercise their power on their own behalf, and also professionally for a fee. Since the belief in sorcery is deeply rooted and every serious sickness and death is attributed to black magic, the sorcerer is held in great awe, and, at first sight, his position lends itself inevitably to abuse and blackmail. It has been in fact frequently affirmed that sorcery is the main criminal agency, as regards. Melanesia and elsewhere. Speaking of the region I know from personal experience, N. W. Melanesia, this view represents one side of the picture. Sorcery gives a man power, wealth, and influence; and this he uses to further his own ends, but the very fact that he has much to lose and little to gain by flagrant abuses makes him as a rule very moderate. The chief, the notables, and the other sorcerers watch over him carefully; moreover not infrequently one sorcerer is believed to be put away by another on behalf of a chief and by the chief’s orders.
As regards his services, sold professionally, those in power — chiefs, men of rank and wealth — have again the first claim on him. When appealed to by lesser people, the sorcerer would not lend himself to unjust or fantastic requests. He is too rich and big a man to do anything outside the law and he can afford to be honest and just. When a real injustice or a thoroughly unlawful act is to be punished on the other hand, the sorcerer feels the weight of public opinion with him and he is ready to champion a good cause and to receive his full fee. In such cases also the victim, on learning that a sorcerer is at work against him, may quail and make amends or come to an equitable arrangement. Thus ordinarily, black magic acts as a genuine legal force, for it is used in carrying out the rules of tribal law, it prevents the use of violence and restores equilibrium.
An interesting denouement, illustrating the legal aspect of sorcery, is furnished by the custom of finding out the reasons for which a man has been killed by witchcraft. This is achieved by the correct interpretation of certain marks or symptoms to be seen on the exhumed body. Some 12 to 24 hours after the preliminary burial, at the first subsequent sunset, the grave is opened, the body washed, anointed and examined. The custom has been forbidden by Government Orders — it is ’disgusting’ to the white man, who anyhow has no opportunity nor any business to be there — but it is still surreptitiously practised in remoter villages. I have assisted several times at an exhumation and once, when it was done somewhat earlier, before the sun had set, I was able to obtain photographs. The proceedings are highly dramatic. A throng presses round the grave, some people rapidly remove the earth amid loud wailing, others intone magical spells against mulukwausi (corpse-devouring and man-killing flying witches) and spit over all those present with chewed ginger. As they come nearer the bundle of mats enshrouding the corpse, they wail and chant louder and louder, until the body is uncovered amid an outburst of screams and the throng sweep and press nearer. All urge forward to see it, wooden platters with coco-nut cream are given to those nearest to wash the body with, ornaments are taken off the corpse, it is rapidly washed, wrapped up again and buried. During the time it is out the marks have to be registered. It is not a formal affair and differences of opinion are frequent. Often there are no clear marks and still more often people cannot agree in their verdict.
But there are marks (kala wabu) about which there can be no doubt, which unequivocally indicate a habit, propensity or characteristic of the dead one, which had provoked the hostility of some one who had then commissioned a sorcerer to kill the victim. If the body shows scratches, especially on the shoulder, similar to kimali, the erotic scratches impressed during sexual dalliance, this means that deceased has been guilty of adultery or has been too successful with women, to the annoyance of a chief, man of power, or a sorcerer. This frequent cause of death produces also other symptoms: the exhumed body is found with the legs apart; or with the mouth pursed, as if to emit the smacking sound used to call a desired person to a secret tryst. Or again the body is found swarming with lice, since lousing one another is a favourite tender occupation of lovers. Sometimes certain symptoms appear before death: the other day a dying man was observed to move his arm to and fro in a beckoning gesture, and lo! after his body was exhumed there were kimali marks on the shoulders. Again in another concrete case, the dying man was heard to emit a smacking sound, and later on at exhumation he swarmed with lice. It had been notorious that this man had allowed himself to be loused in public by some of the wives of Numakala, one of the former paramount chiefs of Kiriwina — and he had been obviously punished by high order.
When signs are discovered which suggest decoration, face painting or certain dancing ornamentations, or when the corpse’s hand trembles, as does the masterdancer’s in wielding the kaydebu (dancing shield) or the bisila (bunch of pandanus leaves) — his personal beauty or those achievements which gain favour with the fair sex had set sorcery against the defunct Don Juan. Red, black and white hues on the skin, patterns suggestive of the designs on a noble’s house and store, swellings like the beams of a rich yam-house — signify that the dead one indulged in too ambitious decorations of his hut or store, and thus aroused the chief’s resentment. Taro-shaped tumours or an inordinate craving for this vegetable shortly before death indicate that deceased had too splendid taro-gardens or did not pay sufficient tribute of this commodity to the chief. Bananas, coco-nuts, sugar-cane produce mutatis mutandis19 similar effects, while betel-nut colours the mouth of the corpse red. If the body is found foaming at the mouth, it shows that the man was too much addicted to opulent and ostentatious eating or bragging about food. A loose skin, peeling off in folds means in particular abuse of pork diet or dishonest dealing in the stewardship of pigs, which are the chief’s monopoly and only given into the care of lesser men. The chief also resents it when a man has not kept to the ceremonial and not bent before him low enough; such a man will be found doubled up in his grave. Putrid matter flowing in strings out of the nostrils represents, in this post-mortem sorcery code, the valuable necklaces of shell-discs and thus too great a success in the Kula trade; while circular swellings on the arms indicate the same through the means of mwali (armshells). Finally, a man killed for the reason that he is a sorcerer himself, produces, besides the normal spirit (baloma), also a material ghost (kousi), which spooks round the grave and plays various pranks.20 The body of a sorcerer is also often found disarranged, distorted in the grave.
I have obtained this list by discussing concrete cases and noting symptoms actually registered. It is very important to realize that frequently, I should say in most cases, no signs are found on the body or there is no agreement about them. Needless to say, a sick man always suspects, in fact thinks he knows who is the sorcerer guilty of his ailment, on whose behalf he acts and for what reason. So that the ’finding’ of a mark has all the characters of an a posteriori verification of what is already known. In this light, the above list, which includes the ’causes of death’ openly discussed and readily found, receives a special significance: it shows us which offences are not altogether considered dishonourable or contemptible, and also those which are not too burdensome on the survivors. In fact sexual success, beauty, skill in dancing, ambition for wealth and recklessness in display and in the enjoyment of worldly goods, too much power by sorcery — these are enviable failings or sins, dangerous, since they arouse the jealousy of the mighty, but surrounding the culprit with a halo of glory. On the other hand, since almost all these offences are resented by the chief of the district, rightly resented at that and legally punished, the survivors are relieved of the burdensome duty of vendetta.
The point of real importance in our argument, however, is that all these standard symptoms show us how much resented is any prominence, any excess of qualities or possessions not warranted by social position, any outstanding personal achievement or virtue not associated with rank or power. These things are punishable and the one who watches over the mediocrity of others is the chief, whose essential privilege and duty to tradition is to enforce the golden mean upon others. The chief, however, cannot use direct bodily violence in such matters, when only a suspicion or a shade of doubt or a tendency tell against the delinquent. The proper legal means for him is to resort to sorcery and be it remembered he has to pay for it out of his private purse. He was allowed to use violence (i. e. before white man’s ’orders’ came in), to punish any direct breach of etiquette or ceremonial as well as flagrant offences, such as adultery with any of his wives, theft of his private possessions or any personal insult. A man who would dare to place himself above the chief’s head, to touch that tabooed part of his neck or shoulders, to use certain filthy expressions in his presence, to commit such breach of etiquette as sexually to allude to his sister — would have been immediately speared by one of the chief’s armed attendants. This applies in full stringency to the paramount chief of Kiriwina only. Cases are on record in which by an accident a man offended the chief, and had to fly for his life. A recent case is that of a man who during warfare from the opposite camp had hurled an insult at the chief. This man was actually killed after peace had been concluded, and his death was regarded as a just retribution for his offence and no vendetta followed.
We can see thus that in many, in fact in most cases, black magic is regarded as the chief’s principal instrument in the enforcement of his exclusive privileges and prerogatives. Such cases pass, of course, imperceptibly into actual oppression and crass injustice, of which I could mention also a number of concrete instances. Even then, since it invariably ranges itself on the side of the powerful, wealthy, and influential, sorcery remains a support of vested interest; hence in the long run, of law and order. It is always a conservative force, and it furnishes really the main source of the wholesome fear of punishment and retribution indispensable in any orderly society. There is hardly anything more pernicious, therefore, in the many European ways of interference with savage peoples, than the bitter animosity with which Missionary, Planter, and Official alike pursue the sorcerer.21 The rash, haphazard, unscientific application of our morals, laws, and customs to native societies, and the destruction of native law, quasi-legal machinery and instruments of power leads only to anarchy and moral atrophy and in the long run to the extinction of culture and race.
Sorcery, in fine, is neither exclusively a method of administering justice, nor a form of criminal practice. It can be used both ways, though it is never employed in direct opposition to law, however often it might be used to commit wrongs against a weaker man on behalf of a more powerful. In whatever way it works, it is a way of emphasizing the status quo, a method of expressing the traditional inequalities and of counteracting the formation of any new ones. Since conservatism is the most important trend in a primitive society, sorcery on the whole is a beneficent agency, of enormous value for early culture.
These considerations show clearly how difficult it is to draw a line between the quasi-legal and quasi-criminal applications of sorcery. The ’criminal’ aspect of law in savage communities is perhaps even vaguer than the ’civil’ one, the idea of ’justice’ in our sense hardly applicable and the means of restoring a disturbed tribal equilibrium slow and cumbersome.
Having learnt something about Trobriand criminology from the study of sorcery, let us now pass to suicide. Though by no means a purely juridical institution, suicide possesses incidentally a distinct legal aspect. It is practised by two serious methods: lo’u (jumping off a palm top) and the taking of irremediable poison from the gall bladder of a globefish (soka); and by the milder method of partaking of some of the vegetable poison tuva, used for stunning fish. A generous dose of emetic restores to life one poisoned by tuva, which is therefore used in lovers’ quarrels, matrimonial differences, and similar cases, of which several occurred during my stay in the Trobriands, none fatal.
The two fatal forms of suicide are used as means of escape from situations without an issue and the underlying mental attitude is somewhat complex, embracing the desire of self-punishment, revenge, re-habilitation, and sentimental grievance. A number of concrete cases briefly described will illustrate best the psychology of suicide.
A case somewhat similar to that of Kima’i, described above, was that of a girl, Bomawaku, who was in love with a youth of her own clan and had an official and acceptable suitor, for whom she did not care. She lived in her bukumatula (unmarried peoples’ dormitory), built for her by her father and received there her unlawful lover. Her suitor discovered this, insulted her in public, upon which she put on festive dress and ornamentation, wailed from the palm top, and jumped off. This is an old story, told me by an eye-witness, in reminiscence of the Kima’i event. The girl had also sought an escape from an intolerable impasse, into which her passion and the traditional prohibitions had placed her. But the immediate and the real cause of the suicide was the moment of insult. If not for that, the deeper but less poignant conflict between love and taboo would never have led to a rash act.
Mwakenuwa of Liluta, a man of high rank, great magical powers, and outstanding personality, whose fame has reached down to our times across a couple of generations, had among other wives one Isowa’i, to whom he was very attached. He used to quarrel with her sometimes and one day in the course of a violent dissention he insulted her by one of the worst formulae (kwoy lumuta) which, especially from husband to wife, is regarded as unbearable.22 Isowa’i acted up to the traditional idea of honour and committed suicide on the spot by lo’u (jumping off a palm). Next day, while the wailing for Isowa’i was in progress, Mwakenuwa followed her and his corpse was placed beside hers to be bewailed together. Here it was rather a matter of passion than of law. But the case well shows how strongly the traditional feeling and sense of honour was averse to any excess, to any transgression of the even calm tone. It shows also how strongly the survivor could be moved by the self-inflicted fate of the one who had taken her life.
A similar case occurred some time ago, in which the husband accused his wife of adultery, upon which she jumped off a palm and he followed her. Another event of more recent date, was the suicide by poisoning of Isakapu of Sinaketa, accused by her husband of adultery. Bogonela, a wife of the chief Kouta’uya of Sinaketa, discovered guilty of misconduct during his absence by a fellow wife, committed suicide on the spot. A few years ago in Sinaketa a man pestered by one of his wives, who accused him of adultery and other transgressions, committed suicide by poisoning.
Bolubese, wife of one of the previous paramount chiefs of Kiriwina, ran away from her husband to her own village, and threatened by her own kinsmen (maternal uncle and brothers) to be sent back by force, killed herself by lo’u. There came to my notice a number of similar cases, illustrating the tensions between husband and wife, between lovers, between kinsmen.
Two motives must be registered in the psychology of suicide: first, there is always some sin, crime or passionate outburst to expiate, whether a breach of exogamous rules, or adultery, or an unjust injury done, or an attempt to escape one’s obligations; secondly, there is a protest against those who have brought this trespass to light, insulted the culprit in public, forced him into an unbearable situation. One of these two motives may be at times more prominent than the other, but as a rule there is a mixture of both in equal proportions. The person publicly accused admits his or her guilt, takes all the consequences, carries out the punishment upon his own person, but at the same time declares that he has been badly treated, appeals to the sentiment of those who have driven him to the extreme if they are his friends or relations, or if they are his enemies appeals to the solidarity of his kinsmen, asking them to carry on a vendetta (lugwa).
Suicide is certainly not a means of administering justice, but it affords the accused and oppressed one — whether he be guilty or innocent — a means of escape and rehabilitation. It looms large in the psychology of the natives, is a permanent damper on any violence of language or behaviour, on any deviation from custom or tradition, which might hurt or offend another. Thus suicide, like sorcery, is a means of keeping the natives to the strict observance of the law, a means of preventing people from extreme and unusual types of behaviour. Both are pronounced conservative influences and as such are strong supports of law and order.
What have we learned from the facts of crime and its punishment recorded in this and the foregoing chapters? We have found that the principles according to which crime is punished are very vague, that the methods of carrying out retribution are fitful, governed by chance and personal passion rather than by any system of fixed institutions. The most important methods, in fact, are a by-product of non-legal institutions, customs, arrangements and events such as sorcery and suicide, the power of the chief, magic, the supernatural consequences of taboo and personal acts of vindictiveness. These institutions and usages, far from being legal in their main function, only very partially and imperfectly subserve the end of maintaining and enforcing the biddings of tradition. We have not found any arrangement or usage which could be classed as a form of ’administration of justice’ according to a code and by fixed methods. All the legally effective institutions we found are rather means of cutting short an illegal or intolerable state of affairs, of restoring the equilibrium in social life and of giving vent to the feelings of oppression and injustice felt by individuals. Crime in the Trobriand society can be but vaguely defined — it is sometimes an outburst of passion, sometimes the breach of a definite taboo, sometimes an attempt on person or property (murder, theft, assault), sometimes an indulgence in too high ambitions or wealth, not sanctioned by tradition, in conflict with the prerogatives of the chief or some notable. We have also found that the most definite prohibitions are elastic, since there exist methodical systems of evasion.
I shall now proceed to the discussion of instances in which law is not broken by an act of definitely illegal nature, but where it is confronted by a system of legalized usage, almost as strong as traditional law itself.