Some more private magic is performed later on by each canoe on its own account. The anchor stone is charmed with some red hibiscus flowers, in order to make the spondylus shell red. There is another private magic called ‘sweeping of the sea,’ which, like the magic of the mussel shell, mentioned above, makes the sea clear and transparent. Finally, there is an evil magic called ‘besprinkling with salt water.’ If a man does it over the others, he will annul the effects of their magic, and frustrate their efforts, while he himself would arouse astonishment and suspicion by the amount of shell collected. Such a man would dive down into the water, take some brine into his mouth, and emerging, spray it towards the other canoes, while he utters the evil charm.
So much for the magic and the ceremonial associated with the spondylus fishing in the Trobriand Lagoon. In Sanaroa, exactly the same proceedings take place, except that there is no attracting of the reef, probably because they are already at the original seat of the kaloma. Again I was told that some of the private magic would be performed in Sinaketa before the fleet sailed on the Kula expedition. The objects medicated would be then kept, well wrapped in dried leaves.
It may be added that neither in the one Lagoon nor in the other are there any private, proprietary rights to coral outcrops. The whole community of Sinaketa have their fishing grounds in the Lagoon, within which every man may hunt for his spondylus shell, and catch his fish at times. If the other spondylus fishing community, the Vakutans, encroached upon their grounds, there would be trouble, and in olden days, fighting. Private ownership in coral outcrops exists in the Northern villages of the Lagoon, that is in Kavataria, and the villages on the island of Kayleula.
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.
Plate LI
Working the Kaloma Shell (III.)
By means of a pump drill, a hole is bored in each disc. (See [Div. III].)