Landing in the Main Village of Gumasila.
(See [Div. I].)
Without any preliminary welcoming ceremony or formal reception, the Sinaketan guests now leave their canoes and disperse among the villagers, settle down in groups near the houses of their friends, and engage in betel chewing and conversations. They speak in Kiriwinian, a language which is universally known in the Amphletts. Almost as soon as they go ashore, they give to their partners presents of pari (opening gift), some small object, such as a comb, a lime pot, or a lime stick. After that, they await some Kula gifts to be given them. The most important headman will offer such a gift first to Kouta’uya, or To’udawada, whichever of them is the toli’uvalaku of the occasion. The soft, penetrating sound of a conch-shell soon announces that the first gift has been given. Other blasts of conch-shells follow, and the Kula is in full swing. But here again, what happens in the Amphletts, is only a minor interlude to the Sinaketan adventurers, bent on the bigger goal in Dobu. And in order for us to remain in harmony with the native perspective we shall also wait for the detailed and circumstantial description of the Kula proceedings till we arrive on the beach of Tu’utauna, in Dobu. The concrete account of how such a visiting fleet is received and behaves on arrival will be given, when I describe a scene I saw with my own eyes in the village of Nabwageta, another Amphlett island, when sixty Dobuan canoes arrived there on their uvalaku, en route for Boyowa.
To give a definite idea of the conversations which take place between the visitors and the Amphlettans, I shall give a sample noted down, during a visit of some Trobrianders to Nu’agasi, the smaller village of Gumasila. A few canoes had arrived a day or two before, in the neighbouring island, Nabwageta, coming from the small Western islands of the Trobriands on a Kula. One of them paddled across to Nu’agasi with a crew of some six men, in order to offer pari gifts to their partners and see what was to be done in the way of Kula. The canoe was sighted from a distance, and its purpose was guessed at once, as word had been brought before of the arrival in Nabwageta of this small expedition. The headman of Nu’agasi, Tovasana, hurried back to his house from my tent, where I was taking great pains to obtain some ethnographic information from him.
Tovasana is an outspoken character, and he is the most important headman in the Amphletts. I am not using the word ‘chief,’ for in the Amphletts, as I have said, the natives do not observe either the court ceremonial with crouching and bending, nor do the headmen have any power or economic influence, at all comparable with those of the Trobriands. Yet, although I came from the Trobriands, I was struck by the authoritative tone used, and the amount of influence evidently wielded by Tovasana. This is partly due undoubtedly to the lack of white man’s interference, which has so undermined native authority and morality in the Trobriands, whereas the Amphletts have so far escaped to a large extent Missionary teaching and Government law and order. On the other hand, however, the very narrow sphere of his powers, the authority over a small village, consolidates the headman’s influence. The oldest and the most aristocratic by descent of all the headmen, he is their acknowledged ‘doyen.’
In order to receive his visitors he went to the beach in front of his house and sat there on a log, looking impassively over the sea. When the Trobrianders arrived each man took a gift and went to his partner’s house. The chief did not rise to meet them, nor did they come in a body to greet him. The toliwaga came towards the place where Tovasana was sitting; he carried a bundle of taro and a piece of gugu’a (objects of small value, such as combs, lime pots, etc.). These he laid down near the seated headman, who, however, took no notice of it. A small boy, a grandchild of Tovasana, I think, took up the gifts and put them into his house. Then, without having yet exchanged a word, the toliwaga sat down on the platform next to Tovasana. Under a shady tree, which spread its branches like a canopy above the bleached canoe, the men formed a picturesque group sitting cross-legged on the platform. Beside the slim, youthful figure of the Kaduwaga man, the old Tovasana, with his big, roughly carved features, with his large aquiline nose sticking out from under an enormous turban-like wig, looked like an old gnome. At first exchanging merely a word or two, soon they dropped into more animated conversation, and when other villagers and the rest of the visitors joined them, the talk became general. As they spoke in Kiriwinian, I was able to jot down the beginning of their conversation.
Tovasana asked:
“Where have you anchored?”
“In Nabwageta.”
“When did you come?”
“Yesterday.”
“From where did you start on the last day before arriving?”
“From Gabuwana.”
“When?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“What wind?”
“Started from home with yavata; wind changed. Arrived on sandbank (Gabuwana); we slept; so-and-so made wind magic; wind changed again; good wind.”
Then Tovasana asked the visitors about one of the chiefs from the island of Kayleula (to the West of Kiriwina), and when he was going to give him a big pair of mwali. The man answered they do not know; to their knowledge that chief has no big mwali at present. Tovasana became very angry, and in a long harangue, lapsing here and there into the Gumasila language, he declared that he would never kula again with that chief, who is a topiki (mean man), who has owed him for a long time a pair of mwali as yotile (return gift), and who always is slow in making Kula. A string of other accusations about some clay pots given by Tovasana to the same chief, and some pigs promised and never given, were also made by the angry headman. The visitors listened to it with polite assent, uttering here and there some noncommital remark. They, in their turn, complained about some sago, which they had hoped to receive in Nabwageta, but which was churlishly refused for some reason or other to all the men of Kaduwaga, Kaysiga and Kuyawa.
Tovasana then asked them, “How long are you going to stay?”
“Till Dobu men come.”
“They will come,” said Tovasana, “not in two days, not in three days, not in four days; they will come tomorrow, or at the very last, the day after tomorrow.”
“You go with them to Boyowa?”
“I sail first to Vakuta, then to Sinaketa with the Dobu men. They sail to Susuwa beach to fish, I go to your villages, to Kaduwaga, to Kaysiga, to Kuyawa. Is there plenty of mwali in your villages?”
“Yes, there are. So-and-so has …”
Here followed a long string of personal names of big armshells, the approximate number of smaller, nameless ones, and the names of the people in whose possession they were at the time.
The interest of both hearers and speakers was very obvious, and Tovasana gave the approximate dates of his movements to his visitors. Full moon was approaching, and the natives have got names for every day during the week before and after full moon, and the following and preceding days can therefore be reckoned. Also, every seven-day period within a moon is named after the quarter which falls in it. This allows the natives to fix dates with a fair exactitude. The present example shows the way in which, in olden times, the movements of the various expeditions were known over enormous areas; nowadays, when white men’s boats with native crews often move from one island to the other, the news spreads even more easily. In former times, small preliminary expeditions such as the one we have just been describing, would fix the dates and make arrangements often for as much as a year ahead.
The Kaduwaga men next inquired as to whether any strangers from the Trobriands were then staying in Gumasila. The answer was that there was in the village one man from Ba’u, and one from Sinaketa. Then inquiries were made as to how many Kula necklaces there were in Gumasila, and the conversation drifted again into Kula technicalities.
It is quite customary for men from the Trobriands to remain for a long time in the Amphletts, that is, from one expedition to another. For some weeks or even months, they live in the house of their partner, friend, or relative, careful to keep to the customs of the country. They will sit about with the men of the village and talk. They will help in the work and go out on fishing expeditions. These latter will be specially attractive to a Trobriander, a keen fisherman himself, who here finds an entirely new type of this pursuit. Whether an expedition would be made on one of the sandbanks, where the fishermen remain for a few days, casting their big nets for dugong and turtle; or whether they would go out in a small canoe, trying to catch the jumping gar fish with a fishing kite; or throwing a fish trap into the deep sea—all these would be a novelty to the Trobriander, accustomed only to the methods suitable to the shallow waters of the Lagoon, swarming with fish.