The Solomon Islands and Their Natives

by H. B. Guppy

Two Treasury war-canoes, it appears, attempted to land at Tuluba Islet one evening, where the crews were going to encamp for the night. Ostensibly the Treasury men were on their way to Bougainville to buy spears; but since they were led by Olega, the brother of Mule and the fighting-chief of the island, it is probable that they were intending a descent on Alu from this islet of Tuluba. When the Treasury men discovered Kopana’s party were already there, the fighting at once began. During the conflict, for which the Alu natives were ill-prepared, seeing that they were largely composed of Kopana’s wives, one of the Treasury canoes was dashed to pieces on a reef and all the occupants were thrown into the water. In this unequal contest, the Alu natives had a man and a woman killed and a man and a woman wounded, both the women being wives of Kopana. In addition four other of Kopana’s wives were captured by the Treasury men, who returned to their own island in the remaining canoe with a loss of four men wounded, of whom one subsequently died.

The unfortunate wives of Kopana had indeed borne the brunt from the very beginning. Within two months, three of them had suffered violent death, one of them was wounded apparently beyond recovery, and four had been carried off prisoners to Treasury. The singular feature of this breach between the Treasury and Alu natives, was that the animosity of the former was directed against Gorai’s eldest son and not against the old chief, his father, who did not think it incumbent on him to interfere except for the purpose of pacifying the two parties.

I visited the two wounded brought back to Alu. Five days had already elapsed since the fight, and I found the wounds of both in a horrible condition. The wife of Kopana had a severe tomahawk wound of the thigh just above the knee, smashing the bone and implicating the joint. The man had a rifle-bullet wound through the fleshy part of the thigh and a pistol-bullet wound in the opposite groin. Nothing had been done in either case, and after the lapse of five days in a tropical climate, the condition of the wounds could be scarcely described. I was allowed to do but little, and considered recovery in either case most improbable. Both, however, recovered to my great astonishment. I found afterwards, on visiting the wounded at Treasury, that one man had been shot through the elbow-joint by one of his own party.

The subsequent events in connection with this outbreak of hostilities in the Straits may be soon related. Although there was now open war between Alu and Treasury, it assumed a passive character, each side awaiting or expecting an attack from the other. Gorai was much concerned at this turn of events, seeing that, as he told me, he thought he had come to an amicable arrangement with Mule when he allowed him to take the life of one of his son’s wives. The canoe-houses at Alu were usually filled during the day by a number of natives, all carrying their tomahawks and debating on the topic of the day. In the midst of them I once found Gorai talking in his quiet way to an attentive circle of armed natives. In the meanwhile the Treasury natives held a feast in celebration of their success; and the four wives of Kopana were distributed about the village, but they experienced no ill treatment. In a few weeks the animosity displayed between the peoples of the two islands began to cool down; and it soon became evident that the war was one only in name. At length peace was once more restored. In the beginning of October a number of Treasury natives came over to the west coast of Alu where Gorai was then residing, bringing with them Mule’s principal wife, Bita, the sister of the Alu chief, together with a large present of bananas, taro, and other vegetables; and lastly, what was the most significant act of all, they brought with them the four wives of Kopana who had been captured on the islet of Tuluba. Gorai told me that amity was now perfectly restored, and that he was going to exchange visits with the Treasury chief to confirm the compact. Fortunately for the happiness of the natives of Bougainville Straits, war rarely disturbs the peaceful atmosphere in which they live.

I cannot doubt that, in the lives of the natives of these straits, we have the brighter side of the existence of the Solomon Islander; and this result may, I think, be attributed in the main to the influence of Gorai, the Alu chief, who in his intercourse with white men, not always the best fitted to represent their colour, as I need scarcely remark, has learned some lessons in his own crude way which he could hardly have learned under any other conditions. Natives of the islands of the Straits can count with some confidence on the tenure of their lives, but this is simply due to the influence of the name of the Alu chief. And yet, however secure the surroundings of a native may be, he will never be entirely off his guard. Suspicion is a quality inherent in his mind, and it shows itself in most of the actions of his life. Even of those natives, who, in the capacity of interpreters, lived on board the ship for weeks together, one was always keeping watch over his comrades during the long hours of the night whenever we were at any anchorage away from their own island; and I have been told by the officers in charge of the detached surveying parties, that even after a hard day’s work in the boat, they have found their natives keeping a self-imposed watch during the night.

I pass on now to the subject of the power of the “tambu,” or “taboo” as it is more usually termed. The tambu ban constitutes the real authority of a petty chief in times of peace. In the eastern islands, the tambu sign is often two sticks crossed and placed in the ground. In such a manner, the St. Christoval native secures his patch of ground from intrusion. In the islands of Bougainville Straits, posts six to eight feet in height, rudely carved in the form of the head and face, are erected facing sea-ward on the beach of a village to keep off enemies and sickness. Similar posts are erected on the skirts of a plantation of cocoa-nut palms to warn off intruders. On one occasion, whilst ascending the higher part of a stream in Treasury, my natives unexpectedly came upon the faint footprint of a bushman; and my sheath-knife was at once borrowed by the chief’s eldest son, who happened to be one of the party, to cut out a face in the soft rock as a tambu mark for the bushman, or in other words to preserve the stream. I have only touched on the exercise of the right of tambu in its narrowest sense. Scattered about in the pages of this work will be found numerous allusions to customs which would be comprised under this head in its widest meaning: for the power of the tambu is but the power of a code which usually prohibits and rarely commands; and in enumerating its restrictions and defining its limits, one would be in reality describing a negative system of public and private etiquette. It is worthy of note, that the term “tambu” is not included in the vocabulary of the language of the natives of Bougainville Straits, its equivalent being “olatu.”

It may be here apposite to make some observations on the slavery which is practised in connection with the bush-tribes of these islands. As already remarked, a wide distinction usually prevails in the Solomon Group between the inhabitants of the coast and those of the interior; and although this distinction is most evident in the case of the larger islands, it also prevails, but to a less degree, in those of smaller size. It is a noteworthy fact that the bushmen are always looked down upon by their brethren of the coast. “Man-bush” is with the latter a term of reproach, implying stupidity and crass ignorance. I have frequently heard this epithet applied to natives who handled their canoes in an awkward manner or who stumbled in their walk whilst accompanying me in my excursions. On one occasion, when trying to obtain stone axes from the natives of Alu, I was referred with a smile to the bushmen of the neighbouring island of Bougainville, who still employ these tools. In the larger islands the bush-tribes and the coast natives wage an unceasing warfare, in which the latter are usually the aggressors and the victors—the bushmen captured during these raids either affording materials for the cannibal feast or being detained in servitude by their captors. But there prevails in the group a recognized system of slave-traffic, in which a human being becomes a marketable commodity—the equivalent being represented in goods either of native or of foreign manufacture. This custom which came under the notice of the officers of Surville’s expedition, during their visit to Port Praslin in Isabel, in 1769,[12] obtains under the same conditions at the present time. These natives were in the habit of making voyages of ten and twelve days’ duration with the object of exchanging men for “fine cloths covered with designs,” articles which were manufactured by a race of people much fairer than their own, who were in all probability the inhabitants of Ontong Java.

[12] “Discoveries to the south-east of New Guinea,” by M. Fleurieu, p. 143, Eng. edit.

The servitude to which the victims of this traffic are doomed is not usually an arduous one. But there is one grave contingency attached to his thraldom which must be always before the mind of the captive, however lightly his chains of service may lie upon him. When a head is required to satisfy the offended honour of a neighbouring chief, or when a life has to be sacrificed on the completion of a tambu-house or at the launching of a new war-canoe, the victim chosen is usually the man who is not a free-born native of the village. He may have been bought as a child and have lived amongst them from his boyhood up, a slave only in name, and enjoying all the rights of his fellow natives. But no feelings of compassion can save him from his doom; and the only consideration which he receives at the hands of those with whom he may have lived on terms of equality for many years is to be found in the circumstance that he gets no warning of his fate.