Argonauts of the Western Pacific

by Bronisław Malinowski

The natives of Sinaketa, as we have seen in the last chapter, acquire a certain amount of the Koya produce by means of trade. There are, however, certain articles, useful yet unobtainable in the Trobriands, and freely accessible in the Koya, and to these the Trobrianders help themselves. The glassy forms of lava, known as obsidian, can be found in great quantities over the slopes of the hills in Sanaroa and Dobu. This article, in olden days, served the Trobrianders as material for razors, scrapers, and sharp, delicate, cutting instruments. Pummice-stone abounding in this district is collected and carried to the Trobriands, where it is used for polishing. Red ochre is also procured there by the visitors, and so are the hard, basaltic stones (binabina) used for hammering and pounding and for magical purposes. Finally, very fine silica sand, called maya, is collected on some of the beaches, and imported into the Trobriands, where it is used for polishing stone blades, of the kind which serve as tokens of value and which are manufactured up to the present day.

II

But by far the most important of the articles which the Trobrianders collect for themselves are the spondylus shells. These are freely, though by no means easily, accessible in the coral outcrops of Sanaroa Lagoon. It is from this shell that the small circular perforated discs (kaloma) are made, out of which the necklaces of the Kula are composed, and which also serve for ornamenting almost all the articles of value or of artistic finish which are used within the Kula district. But, only in two localities within the district are these discs manufactured, in Sinaketa and in Vakuta, both villages in Southern Boyowa. The shell can be found also in the Trobriand Lagoon, facing these two villages. But the specimens found in Sanaroa are much better in colour, and I think more easily procured. The fishing in this latter locality, however, is done by the Sinaketans only.

Whether the fishing is done in their own Lagoon, near an uninhabited island called Nanoula, or in Sanaroa, it is always a big, ceremonial affair, in which the whole community takes part in a body. The magic, or at least part of it, is done for the whole community by the magician of the kaloma (towosina kaloma), who also fixes the dates, and conducts the ceremonial part of the proceedings. As the spondylus shell furnishes one of the essential episodes of a Kula expedition, a detailed account both of fishing and of manufacturing must be here given. The native name, kaloma (in the Southern Massim districts the word sapi-sapi is used) describes both the shell and the manufactured discs. The shell is the large spondylus shell, containing a crystalline layer of a red colour, varying from dirty brick-red to a soft, raspberry pink, the latter being by far the most prized. It lives in the cavities of coral outcrop, scattered among shallow mud-bottomed lagoons.

This shell is, according to tradition, associated with the village of Sinaketa. According to a Sinaketan legend, once upon a time, three guya’u (chief) women, belonging to the Tabalu sub-clan of the Malasi clan, wandered along, each choosing her place to settle in. The eldest selected the village of Omarakana; the second went to Gumilababa; the youngest settled in Sinaketa. She had kaloma discs in her basket, and they were threaded on a long, thin stick, called viduna, such as is used in the final stage of manufacture. She remained first in a place called Kaybwa’u, but a dog howled, and she moved further on. She heard again a dog howling, and she took a kaboma (wooden plate) and went on to the fringing reef to collect shells. She found there the momoka (white spondylus), and she exclaimed: „Oh, this is the kaloma!” She looked closer, and said: „Oh no, you are not red. Your name is momoka”. She took then the stick with the kaloma discs and thrust it into a hole of the reef. It stood there, but when she looked at it, she said: „Oh, the people from inland would come and see you and pluck you off”. She went, she pulled out the stick; she went into a canoe, and she paddled. She paddled out into the sea. She anchored there, pulled the discs off the stick, and she threw them into the sea so that they might come into the coral outcrop. She said: „It is forbidden that the inland natives should take the valuables. The people of Sinaketa only must dive”. Thus only the Sinaketa people know the magic, and how to dive.

This myth presents certain remarkable characteristics. I shall not enter into its sociology, though it differs in that respect from the Kiriwinian myths, in which the equality of the Sinaketan and the Gumilababan chiefs with those of Omarakana is not acknowledged. It is characteristic that the Malasi woman in this myth shows an aversion to the dog, the totem animal of the Lukuba clan, a clan which according to mythical and historical data had to recede before and yield its priority to the Malasi (compare Chapter XII, Division IV). Another detail of interest is that she brings the kaloma on their sticks, as they appear in the final stage of manufacturing. In this form, also, she tries to plant them on the reef. The finished kaloma, however, to use the words of one of my informants, „looked at her, the water swinging it to and fro; flashing its red eyes”. And the woman, seeing it, pulls out the too accessible and too inviting kaloma and scatters them over the deep sea. Thus she makes them inaccessible to the uninitiated inland villagers, and monopolises them for Sinaketa. There can be no doubt that the villages of Vakuta have learnt this industry from the Sinaketans. The myth is hardly known in Vakuta, only a few are experts in diving and manufacturing; there is a tradition about a late transference of this industry there; finally the Vakutans have never fished for kaloma in the Sanaroa Lagoon.

Now let us describe the technicalities and the ceremonial connected with the fishing for kaloma. It will be better to give an account of how this is done in the Lagoon of Sinaketa, round the sandbank of Nanoula, as this is the normal and typical form of kaloma fishing. Moreover, when the Sinaketans do it in Sanaroa, the proceedings are very much the same, with just one or two phases missed out.

The office of magician of the kaloma (towosina kaloma) is hereditary in two sub-clans, belonging to the Malasi clan, and one of them is that of the main chief of Kasi’etana. After the Monsoon season is over, that is, some time in March or April, ogibukuvi (i.e., in the season of the new yams) the magician gives the order for preparations. The community give him a gift called sousula, one or two bringing a vaygu’a, the rest supplying gugu’a (ordinary chattels), and some food. Then they prepare the canoes, and get ready the binabina stones, with which the spondylus shell will be knocked off the reef.

Next day, in the morning, the magician performs a rite called „kaykwa’una la’i”, „the attracting of the reef”, for, as in the case of several other marine beings, the main seat of the kaloma is far away. Its dwelling place is the reef Ketabu, somewhere between Sanaroa and Dobu. In order to make it move and come towards Nanoula, it is necessary to recite the above-named spell. This is done by the magician as he walks up and down on the Sinaketa beach and casts his words into the open, over the sea, towards the distant seat of the kaloma. The kaloma then „stand up” (itolise), that is start from their original coral outcrop (vatu) and come into the Lagoon of Sinaketa. This spell I obtained from To’udavada, the present chief of Kasi’etana, and descendant of the original giver of this shell, the woman of the myth. It begins with a long list of ancestral names; then follows a boastful picture of how the whole fleet admires the magical success of the magician’s spell. The key-word in the main part is the word „itolo”: „it stands up”, i.e., „it starts”, and with this, there are enumerated all the various classes of the kaloma shell, differentiated according to size, colour and quality. It ends up with another boast; „My canoe is overladed with shell so that it sinks”, which is repeated with varying phraseology.

This spell the magician may utter once only, or he may repeat it several times on successive days. He fixes then the final date for the fishing expedition. On the evening before that date, the men perform some private magic, every one in his own house. The hammering stone, the gabila, which is always a binabina (it is a stone imported from the Koya), is charmed over. As a rule it is put on a piece of dried banana leaf with some red hibiscus blossoms and leaves or flowers of red colour. A formula is uttered over it, and the whole is then wrapped up in the banana leaf and kept there until it is used. This will make the stone a lucky one in hitting off many shells, and it will make the shells very red.