[5] I cannot follow Professor Seligman in his use of the word currency, which is not very clearly defined by him. This word can be correctly applied to the armshells, spondylus discs, big polished blades of green stones, etc., only if we give it simply the meaning of “objects” or “tokens of wealth.” Currency as a rule means a medium of exchange and standard of value, and none of the Massim valuables fulfil these functions. [↑]
[6] A short article on this subject has been published by the Rev. M. Gilmour, now head of the Methodist Mission in New Guinea. (Annual Report of British New Guinea, 1904–5, p. 71.) I used this article in the field, going over it with several natives of Kavataria, and I found it substantially correct, and on the whole formulated with precision. The need for extreme compression of statement has, however, led the Author into one or two ambiguities. Thus, the constant mention of “feasting” might give a wrong impression, for it is always the matter of a public distribution of food, which is then eaten apart, or in small groups, while the word “feast” suggests eating in common. Again, the data about the “sea-chief,” as Mr. Gilmour calls the leader of the privileged clan in Kavataria (cf. [Chapter IX, Division III]), seemed to me over-stated, when he is said to be “supreme,” to have “the right of determining an expedition,” and especially when it is said that he “had the right of first choice of a canoe.” This latter phrase must involve a misunderstanding; as we saw, each sub-clan (that is, each sub-division of the village) build their own canoe, and a subsequent swapping and free choice are out of the question. Mr. Gilmour was fully acquainted with the facts of the Kula, as I learnt from personal conversation. In this article, he mentions it only in one phrase, saying that some of the expeditions “were principally concerned in the exchange of the circulated articles of native wealth … in which trade was only a secondary consideration.” [↑]
[7] Mr. Gilmour’s statement to the contrary namely that “the trips from the West—Kavataria and Kaileuna—were pure trading expeditions” (loc. cit.)—is incorrect. First, I am inclined to think that some of the Kavataria men did make the Kula in the Amphletts, where they always stopped on their way South, but this might have been only on a very small scale, and entirely overshadowed by the main object of the expedition, which was the trade with the Southern Koya. Secondly, as to the natives of Kayleula, I am certain that they made the Kula, from conclusive data collected both in the Trobriands and in the Amphletts. [↑]
[8] I have given a more detailed description of this process which I had often opportunities to observe among the Mailu on the South coast. I never saw the making of an armshell in the Trobriands, but the two processes are identical according to detailed information which I obtained. (Compare the monograph on “The Natives of Mailu” by the Author, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of S. Australia, 1915, pp. 643–644.) [↑]
[9] Both statements of Professor Seligman in the “Melanesians” (p. 89) are in entire agreement with the information I obtained among the Mailu. See Transactions of the Royal Society of S. Australia, 1915, pp. 620–629. [↑]
Chapter XXII
The Meaning of the Kula
We have been following the various routes and ramifications of the Kula, entering minutely and meticulously into its rules and customs., its beliefs and practices, and the mythological tradition spun round it, till, arriving at the end of our information, we have made its two ends meet. We shall now put aside the magnifying glass of detailed examination and look from a distance at the subject of our inquiry, take in the whole institution with one glance, let it assume a definite shape before us. This shape will perhaps strike us as being something unusual, something not met before in ethnological studies. It will be well to make an attempt at finding its place among the other subjects of systematic ethnology, at gauging its significance, at assessing how much we have learned by becoming acquainted with it.
After all there is no value in isolated facts for science, however striking and novel they might seem in themselves. Genuine scientific research differs from mere curio-hunting in that the latter runs after the quaint, singular and freakish—the craving for the sensational and the mania of collecting providing its twofold stimulus. Science on the other hand has to analyse and classify facts in order to place them in an organic whole, to incorporate them in one of the systems in which it tries to group the various aspects of reality.