[1] This is subject to the qualification which arises from the fact (stated below) that a member of one clan who migrates to a village of another clan retains his imbele relationship to the members of his own old clan, although he has by his change of residence obtained a similar relationship to the members of the clan in whose village he has settled.
[2] See Annual Report for June, 1910, which on p. 5 speaks of “several villages round about the Mission, known as Sivu.”
[3] Compare the Koita system, under which under certain conditions the son of a chief’s sister might succeed him (Seligmann, Melanesians of British New Guinea, p. 52). Such a thing could not take place among the Mafulu.
[4] I do not know how far this pig-killer may be compared with the Roro ovia akiva, or chief of the knife, referred to by Dr. Seligmann (Melanesians of British New Guinea, p. 219). The Mafulu pig-killer cannot be regarded as being even a quasi-chief, and his office is not hereditary. It is noticeable also that he is the man who kills the pigs, whereas the ovia akiva only cuts up the bodies after the pigs have been killed by someone else.
Villages, Emone, Houses and Modes of Inter-Village Communication
Villages and Their Emone and Houses.
The Mafulu villages are generally situated on narrow plateaux or ridges, sloping down on each side; but the plateaux are not usually so narrow, nor the slopes so steep, as are those of the Kuni district, and the villages themselves are not generally so narrow, as the contour of the country does not involve these conditions to the same extent. Also the Mafulu villages are on the lower ridges only, and not on the high mountains; but the actual elevations above sea-level of these lower ridges are, I think, generally higher than those of the top ridges of the Kuni. Plate [54] shows the position and surroundings of the village of Salube (community of Auga), and is a good representative example, except that the plate does not show any open grassland.
The villages are, or were, protected with stockades and with pits outside the stockades, and sometimes with platforms on trees near the stockade boundaries, from which platforms the inhabitants can shoot and hurl stones upon an enemy climbing up the slope. The stockade is made of timber, is about 15 to 25 feet high, and is generally constructed in three or more parallel rows or lines, each of the lines having openings, but the openings never being opposite to one another. These protections have now, however, been largely, though not entirely, discontinued.[1] It is, or was, also the practice, when expecting an attack, to put into the ground in the approaches to the village calthrop-like arrow-headed objects, with their points projecting upwards.
The average size of the villages is small compared with that of the large villages of Mekeo, some of them having only six or eight houses, though many villages have thirty houses, and some of them have fifty or sixty or more. The houses and emone are much smaller than those of Mekeo, and much ruder and simpler in construction and they have no carving or other decoration. There are no communal houses.