[4] As a matter of fact, this custom is not so prominent in the Trobriands as in other Massim districts and all over the Papuo-Melanesian world, cf. for instance Seligman, op. cit., p. 56 and Plate VI, Fig. 6. [↑]
[5] Again, in explaining value, I do not wish to trace its possible origins, but I try simply to show what are the actual and observable elements into which the natives’ attitude towards the object valued can be analysed. [↑]
[6] These natives have no idea of physiological fatherhood. See [Chapter II, Division VI]. [↑]
[7] Compare [Plate XXXIII], where the yam houses of a headman are filled by his wife’s brothers. [↑]
[8] This advantage was probably in olden days a mutual one. Nowadays, when the fishermen can earn about ten or twenty times more by diving for pearls than by performing their share of the wasi, the exchange is as a rule a great burden on them. It is one of the most conspicuous examples of the tenacity of native custom that in spite of all the temptation which pearling offers them and in spite of the great pressure exercised upon them by the white traders, the fishermen never try to evade a wasi, and when they have received the inaugurating gift, the first calm day is always given to fishing, and not to pearling. [↑]
Chapter VII
The Departure of an Overseas Expedition
We have brought the Kula narrative to the point where all the preparations have been made, the canoe is ready, its ceremonial launching and presentation have taken place, and the goods for the subsidiary trade have been collected. It remains only to load the canoes and to set sail. So far, in describing the construction, the tasasoria and kabigidoya, we spoke of the Trobrianders in general. Now we shall have to confine ourselves to one district, the southern part of the Island, and we shall follow a Kula expedition from Sinaketa to Dobu. For there are some differences between the various districts and each one must be treated separately. What is said of Sinaketa, however, will hold good so far as the other southern community, that of Vakuta, is concerned. The scene, therefore, of all that is described in the following two chapters will be set in one spot, that is, the group of some eight component villages lying on the flat, muddy shore of the Trobriand Lagoon, within about a stone’s throw of one another. There is a short, sandy beach under a fringe of palm trees, and from there we can take a comprehensive view of the Lagoon, the wide semi-circle of its shore edged with the bright green of mangroves, backed by the high jungle on the raised coral ridge of the Raybwag. A few small, flat islands on the horizon just faintly thicken its line, and on a clear day the mountains of the d’Entrecasteaux are visible as blue shadows in the far distance.
From the beach, we step directly into one of the villages, a row of houses faced by another of yam-stores. Through this, leaving on our right a circular village, and passing through some empty spaces with groves of betel and coco-nut palms, we come to the main component village of Sinaketa, to Kasiyetana. There, overtopping the elegant native huts, stands an enormous corrugated iron shed, built on piles, but with the space between the floor and the ground filled up carefully with white coral stones. This monument testifies both to native vanity and to the strength of their superstitions—vanity in aping the white man’s habit of raising the house, and native belief in the fear of the bwaga’u (sorcerer), whose most powerful sorcery is applied by burning magical herbs, and could not be warded off, were he able to creep under the house. It may be added that even the missionary teachers, natives of the Trobriands, always put a solid mass of stones to fill the space beneath their houses. To’udawada, the chief of Kasiyetana, is, by the way, the only man in Boyowa who has a corrugated iron house, and in fact in the whole of the island there are not more than a dozen houses which are not built exactly according to the traditional pattern. To’udawada is also the only native whom I ever saw wearing a sun-helmet; otherwise he is a decent fellow (physically quite pleasant looking), tall, with a broad, intelligent face. Opposite his iron shanty are the fine native huts of his four wives.