The Solomon Islands and Their Natives

by H. B. Guppy

The females in these islands of the Straits perform most of the work in the “patches” or plantations. Towards the evening, they may usually be seen returning in their canoes from the more distant “patches” bringing home a goodly quantity of taro, bananas, and other vegetables. There is generally a man in the stern who steers with a paddle; whilst the crew of eight or ten women, sitting in pairs, paddle briskly along with their light paddles.

The powerful chiefs of the islands of Bougainville Straits usually possess a large number of wives of whom only the few that retain their youth and comeliness enjoy much of the society of their lord. The majority, having been supplanted in the esteem of their common husband, have sunk into a condition of drudgery, finding their employment and their livelihood in toiling for the master whose affections they once possessed. I learned from Gorai, the Shortland chief, who has between eighty and a hundred wives, that the main objection he has against missionaries settling on his islands is, that they would insist on his giving up nearly all his wives, thereby depriving him of those by whose labour his plantations are cultivated and his household supplied with food. A great chief, he remarked, required a large staff of workers to cultivate his extensive lands; or, in other words, numerous women to work in his plantations and to bring the produce home. Such a plea for polygamy is in this condition of society somewhat plausible. The domestic establishment of such a chief may be compared in its internal economy to a social community of bees. The head of the society is, in this case, a male who, whilst living on the fat produce of his lands and increasing his species, performs no active office for the good of the community. The workers consist of his numerous cast-off wives, who having been supplanted in their lord’s affections as their personal attractions diminished in the course of years, have at length subsided into the position of drudges to procure food for the king and his progeny.

Mule’s marital establishment is on a smaller scale than that of the more powerful Shortland chief. This Treasury chief possesses between twenty-five and thirty wives, and has numerous young sons who were my frequent companions during my excursions in this island. In both establishments there is a favourite wife who exercises some authority over the others, and is known among white men as the queen. The principal wives are generally distinguished from the others by a more dignified deportment, a slim graceful figure, and more delicate features. The coarser features, bigger limbs, and more ungainly persons of many of the wives at once mark the women of more common origin. The chief secures the fidelity of his wives by the summary punishment of death, suspicion being tantamount to proof, and an unwary action being held presumptive of guilt. Many of their wives are obtained by purchase from the Bougainville natives; whilst others represent the tribute owed by some of the smaller chiefs.

The majority of the Treasury men have two wives who are usually widely separated by age. They are originally obtained by making a handsome present to the parents. Each wife in working on her husband’s land has her own patch allotted to her to which she confines her labours. My association with the natives of Treasury gave me some insight into their social life, in which, I should add, the women occupy a somewhat better position than in the islands we visited to the eastward. Men have introduced me to their wives with an air of politeness which supplied an index of the social status of their helpmates: and to show that the position of authority may be reversed—although from the absence of clothing one cannot employ the expressive phrase applied to those women who rule their husbands in more civilized lands—I may here observe that on one occasion an able-bodied man complained to me that his wife chastised him on the previous night.

I had one very pleasing experience of the domestic establishment of the Treasury chief. Having informed Mule that I was desirous to witness the manufacture of the cooking-pots employed by the natives, he despatched four of his wives into the interior of the island to get the clay; and in due time I was summoned to his house where I found myself in the midst of a dozen of his wives who were already hard at work, for the women are the potters here as in other parts of “savagedom.” Mule’s wives received me with much politeness, and made me sit down on a mat to watch the proceedings, being evidently much pleased with the idea of exhibiting their skill. For about five minutes there was but little work done as my curiosity led me to look more closely into the different steps of the process, a proceeding which caused much hilarity and elicited frequent exclamations of “tion drakono,” often preceded by “Dokus,” which implied that the doctor was a very good man. At last, after I had smiled on them to the best of my ability, and had gained their further approbation by taking on my knee a little well-scrubbed urchin that could hardly toddle, who in the most matter-of-fact manner made a vigorous onslaught on my chin and then went tooth-and-nail at my shirt-cuff, all in the best of humour and seemingly in an absent-minded kind of fashion as though its little mind was already occupied by far weightier matters—after all this, the more serious part of the entertainment became fairly under way. At its conclusion, I gave the principal wife a quantity of beads and a number of jews-harps to be distributed among her companions.

The marital establishment of Tomimas, one of the principal Faro chiefs, is small as compared with those of Gorai and Mule. He has only four wives who are named respectively, Domari, Duia, Bose, and Omakau, the first being the mother of the chief’s eldest son, Kopana, an intelligent young man about twenty-two years of age.

In connection with the names of the women of Bougainville Straits, I should observe that there was always some reluctance on the part of the men to give me such names; and that when they did so, they usually uttered them in a low tone as though it was not the proper thing to speak of the women by name to others. This is especially noticeable when a man of the common class is asked the name of one of the chief’s wives. On more than one occasion, when referring by name to the chief’s principal wife in the course of a conversation with a native, I learned from the look of surprise, which the mention of the name elicited, that I had, unwittingly, been guilty of a breach of etiquette.

During the surveying season of 1883, which we passed among the islands of Bougainville Straits, we were witnesses of the mourning ceremonials that were observed in connection with the death of Kaika, the principal wife of the Shortland chief, or the queen as Gorai was pleased to call her. It was in the beginning of July that I first made the acquaintance of Kaika, Gorai having asked me to visit her as she was suffering from some indisposition. A month passed away before I again saw my royal patient, and on this occasion the chief accompanied me to his house. Here I found Kaika quite recovered from her illness, a result which she attributed to some medicine which I had given her. She was reclining in a broken down easy-chair, the gift of a trader, engaged in working an armlet of beads, and clad only in the usual “sulu” or waist-handkerchief. In age Kaika was probably between 25 and 30, her general appearance being that of a woman superior in caste to most of her fellow-wives. For a native, her features were good and regular, her figure slim but well proportioned, her carriage graceful. Her clean skin and bushy head of hair, dyed a magenta hue by the use of red ochreous earth, added to the general effect of her appearance.

Whilst sitting down beside Gorai and his spouse, the latter showed me her little boy who was nearly blind. I was much struck with the tenderness displayed in the manner of both the parents towards their little son, who, seated on his mother’s lap, placed his hand in that of his father, when he was directed to raise his eyes towards the light for my inspection.

The work of the ship took us away from Alu; and when we returned after an absence of five weeks, we learned that Kaika was dying. Landing on the ensuing day to see if I could be of any service, I was told that Kaika was dead; and as I stepped out of my Rob Roy, I received a message from Gorai to come and visit him. I found the old chief seated on the ground in front of his house, looking very dismal. Near by, there were nine or ten of his wives all well past the prime of life, withered and haggish, with heads shaven and faces plastered with lime as a token of mourning. They were squatting on the ground, and were engaged in droning out a dismal chant, reminding me of a group of witches. Accompanying Gorai into his house, I found there a numerous gathering of his wives all with their faces plastered with lime; their dead-white features, peering strangely at us through the gloom of the building, gave the whole scene quite an uncanny look. The old chief appeared to feel the loss of his favourite wife and broke down more than once when talking to me of her. He told me that the end came when we dropped our anchor in the bay, and he excused himself on account of his grief from coming off to the ship—“too much cry,” as he remarked of himself to me. When I was leaving him, he asked me on the arrival of the ship at Treasury to inform Mule of his loss, Kaika being the sister of the Treasury chief, and to request that his own sister, Bita, who was Mule’s principal wife, should come and visit him. Returning to my canoe I passed some of Gorai’s head-men who had plastered their foreheads and a part of their cheeks with lime, an observance, however, which was not followed by either the chief or his sons.