The Solomon Islands and Their Natives

by H. B. Guppy

When a corpse is being transported in a canoe to its last resting-place in the sea by the natives of the Shortlands, they adopt a funeral stroke, pausing between each stroke of the paddle, and by a slight back-water movement partly arresting the progress of the canoe. I remember on one occasion, whilst watching a large canoe starting from Ugi to the opposite coast of St. Christoval, remarking their singular style of paddling. At every other stroke each man raised his arm and paddle much higher in the air, and gave a vigorous dig into the water, a very effective style as regards speed, and one likely to impress a timid enemy with fear. . . . . Before leaving this subject, I should refer to the paddling-posture of these natives. All of them in the different islands we visited squat down with their legs crossed, facing the bow. The New Guinea practice of standing up to paddle a canoe did not come under my observation except in the case of outrigger canoes, and in such canoes it was not the rule. I should infer that the posture of sitting or standing to paddle a canoe varies in accordance with the use of or non-employment of an outrigger. If, as in the case of the Solomon Island canoes, outriggers are rarely used, then the sitting posture will be found to be the one adopted, since the unaided stability of the canoe does not permit of the standing posture. If, on the other hand, outriggers are usually employed, it follows that, as in certain parts of New Guinea, the more effective posture of standing is preferred.

As fish form a staple diet of a large proportion of these islanders, much ingenuity is shown in the methods devised for catching them. In the eastern part of the archipelago, kite-fishing is commonly employed. A kite[136] is flown in the air from the end of a canoe, and to it a fishing-line is attached in place of the usual tail. Whilst the man in the canoe paddles slowly ahead, the movement of the kite whisks the bait about on the surface of the water; and when the fish bites, the kite goes down. Instead of a hook and bait, the natives usually employ for this mode of fishing some stout spider-web, which gets entangled around the teeth and snout of the fish, and can be used several times. The explanation of this plan of catching fish is probably as follows. The kite swaying in the air offers some resemblance to an aquatic bird hovering over the water where a shoal of small fish occurs. It thus attracts the larger fish, who are said to follow the movements of these birds, and are thus guided in the pursuit of the smaller fry. It is with this object that the natives of the Society Group tie bunches of feathers to the extremities of the long-curved poles which, projecting from the fore-part of the canoe, support the lines.[137] As bearing on this subject, I may remark that it is not uncommon in these seas to observe porpoises, large fish, and sea-birds joining together in the pursuit of small fry. On one occasion, when in my Rob Roy canoe, I got into the thick of the fray. A large number of sea-birds were hovering over the water, which was alive with fish, about a foot in length, which, in pursuit of small fry, were themselves pursued by a shoal of porpoises, and were pecked at by the birds as, in their endeavour to escape, they leapt out of the water. It was a lively spectacle. The fish jumped out of the water all around me, whilst the birds hovering within reach of my paddle swooped down on them; and the huge porpoises, joining lazily in the sport, rose quietly to the surface within a few feet of the canoe, showed their dorsal fins, and dived again in pursuit of their prey. I stupidly fired three shots with my revolver into the hovering flock of birds; but it was not until after the third report that they temporarily suspended the chase. . . . Another common method of fishing in the eastern islands, which resembles in its idea that of the kite-fishing, consists in the use of a float of wood about three feet in length and rather bigger than a walking-stick. It is weighted by a stone at one end, so that it floats upright in the water, a fishing-line with the spider-web bait being attached to its lower end. The upper end of the float, which is out of the water, is rudely cut in imitation of a wading-bird; and here we have the same idea exhibited which I have described above in the case of kite-fishing, the figure of the bird being supposed to attract the larger fish. There is, however, this difference. A glance at one of these floats, one of which is figured [elsewhere], will convince anyone that a fish is not likely to be deceived by such a sorry representation of a bird. Doubtless we have here an instance of the survival of a more effective method of fishing, in which the idea has been retained, but the utility has been lost. This plan is in fact nothing more than the employment of a float, which is thrown into the water by the fisherman, who follows it up in his canoe and looks out for its bob.

[136] Some of these kites, which I saw, had a form rudely representing a bird with expanded wings. Others had a squarish form and were made of palm leaf.

[137] Ellis’s “Polynesian Researches,” Vol. I., p. 149-50.

In the eastern islands the fishing spear is frequently employed. With this weapon in his hand, the native wades in the shallow water on the flats of the reefs, and hurls it at any passing fish. The night-time is often chosen for this mode of fishing. A party of natives provided with torches, spread themselves along the edge of the reef and stand ready to throw their spears as the fish dart by them. During the day, when the reef-flats at low-tide are covered only by a small depth of water, the fishermen advance in a semicircle until a fish is observed, when the two wings close in, and the fish is surrounded. The kind of fish-spear which they use much resembles that which Mr. Ellis describes in his account of the Society Islands.[138] As shown in the engraving ([p. 74]), the head of the fish-spear is composed of five fore-shafts of hard wood, notched at their sides, and arranged around a similar fore-shaft. These are bound together, and the whole is fitted into the end of a stout bamboo, giving the weapon a total length of about seven feet. . . . . The fish-spear does not appear to be so commonly used by the natives of Bougainville Straits. There, its place is often taken by the bow and arrow, which are weapons that are not in use amongst the natives of St. Christoval and the adjacent islands at the eastern end of the group.

[138] “Polynesian Researches,” vol. I., p. 143.

I should here remark that, when fishing on the reefs, natives are sometimes struck by the gar-fish with such force that they die from the wound. The possibility of this occurrence has recently been doubted. But that such is the case, we incidentally learned from the natives of the Shortlands. The people of Wano, on the north coast of St. Christoval, believe that the ghosts which haunt the sea, cause the flying-fish and the gar-fish to dart out of the water and to strike men in the canoes; and they hold that any man thus struck will die.[139] This superstitious belief could only have arisen from the circumstance of natives having met their death in this manner; and it is probable that in this respect the larger flying-fish would be quite as much to be feared as the gar-fish. Mr. Moseley, in his “Notes by a Naturalist,” p. 480, refers to such an event as not of uncommon occurrence in some of the Pacific Islands.[140]

[139] “Religious Beliefs and Practices in Melanesia,” by the Rev. R. H. Codrington, M.A. Journal of Anthropological Institute, vol. X.

[140] Vide also “Nature,” index of vol. XXVIII., for some further correspondence on this subject.

The material, from which the natives of Bougainville Straits manufacture the twine for their fishing-nets and lines, is usually supplied by the delicate fibres lining the bark of the young branches of a stout climber, which is known to the natives as the “awi-sulu.” This climber, which is probably a species of Lyonsia, has a main stem of the size of a man’s leg, which embraces a tree, whilst it sends its offshoots for a distance of some 40 or 50 feet along the ground. It is the delicate fibres lining the inside of the skin of the young procumbent branches that the native selects for his purpose. By scraping the thin bark or skin with the edge of a pearl-shell, the fibres are first cleared of other material: they are then dried in the sun; and when dry, they are arranged in small strands, three of which are twisted together into a fine line by rolling them with the palm of the hand on the thigh. The natives sometimes obtain the material for their nets and lines from the common littoral tree, the Hibiscus tiliaceus, which they name “dakatako.”