CHAPTER IX
TOTEMISM AND THE CULT OF KWOIAM
It was very interesting living among a people in the totemistic stage of culture, but this custom is now gradually dying out, and the young men do not know much about it. An old man, named Gizu, whose services I secured as referee, was a great authority on various old customs, beliefs, and legends, and we found his knowledge invaluable when Waria, or our other informants, were at fault, but his knowledge of English was too imperfect for us to rely on his services alone.
There appear to have been five chief clans in Mabuiag: kodal (crocodile), tabu (snake), sam (cassowary), dungal (dugong), and kaigas (shovel-nose skate), to which subsidiary or small totems were added. The members of the first three clans were called koi augŭd kadsi, or children of the great augŭd, or totem; and those of the two latter were the mŭgi augŭd kadzi, or children of the small augŭd. These two clans formerly had their headquarters on the windward or south-east side of Mabuiag, whereas the three others were mainly located on the opposite side of the island.
I was informed that the hammer-headed shark (kursi), the shark (baidam), the sting-ray (tapimul), and the turtle (waru or surlal) totems were associated with the skate-dugong group, the phrase used was, “They all belong water; they all friends.” On the other hand, the dog (umai) was a subsidiary totem to the snake-cassowary-crocodile group; with the exception of the amphibious crocodile, these are all land animals.
There undoubtedly was supposed to be an intimate connection between the totem and its clansmen. For example, the crocodile-men were bloodthirsty, lusty, and always ready to fight any number of the water group; they had “no pity for people.” If a crocodile-man killed a crocodile, the other members of the clan would kill him; a member of another clan might kill a crocodile with impunity, but the kodal-men would mourn for it.
The snake-men were always ready for a row, and were handy with stone clubs. They used to put out their tongues and wag them as snakes do, and they had two small holes in the tip of their noses, which were evidently made to represent the nostrils of the snake.
The shark-men, like those previously mentioned, were “spoiling” for a fight. Sometimes the dog-men were fierce, at other times friendly, and “glad to see other people.” If a dog-man killed a dog, his fellow-clansmen would “fight” him, but they would not do anything if an outsider killed one. A member of this clan was supposed to have great sympathy with dogs, and to understand them better than did other men.
No cassowary-man would kill a cassowary; if one was seen doing so, his clansmen would “fight” him, as they felt sorry. “Sam, he all same as relation; he belong same family.” The members of the cassowary clan prided themselves on being specially good runners. If there was to be a fight a sam-man would say to himself, “My leg is long and thin; I can run and not feel tired; my legs will go quickly, and the grass will not entangle them.” It is worth noting that the cassowary does not occur in the islands of Torres Straits; if it ever did, it must have been exterminated very shortly after the islands were inhabited. Possibly Mabuiag men occasionally visited the mainland of New Guinea; but the adoption of the cassowary as a totem points to a time when the ancestors of the Mabuiag people actually inhabited New Guinea. The same argument applies, though with less force, to the crocodile. It is true crocodiles occur sparsely on some of the islands, and that reptile might thus be, so to speak, an indigenous totem, but they are very common and dangerous in the swamps of the New Guinea coast.
On certain occasions each of the dugong-men was painted with a red line from the tip of his nose up his forehead and down his spine to the small of the back. I obtained in this island a wooden model of a dugong that was used as a charm, and which was painted with a red line in a corresponding manner. The men’s foreheads were decked with upright leaves to represent the spouting of the dugong when it comes to the surface of the water to breathe, and leaves were also inserted in the arm-bands like water splashing off the dugong when it comes into very shallow water. This decoration was made when the dugong-man performed a magical rite in the kwod (or taboo ground) that was situated in their particular region of the island. A number of different plants were put on the ground, and a dugong was placed on the top. Several men took the dugong by the tail and hoisted up the tail in such a way as to make the dugong face the rest of the island—for the kwod was near the seashore, and faced the great reefs on which the dugong abound. There can be little doubt that this was a magical rite performed by the dugong-men to make the dugong come towards the island of Mabuiag. The dugong used in this ceremony was given to the turtle-men.
When only one turtle was obtained on a turtle expedition it was taken to the kwod of the turtle-men, who performed a pantomimic ceremony which symbolised the increase of turtle.