Argonauts of the Western Pacific

by Bronisław Malinowski

It is easy to see that, not less than the words, the substances here used are associated with the aim of the magic, that is, with lightness, with swiftness and with flying.

In the magic of the Kula we find betel-nut, crushed with lime in a mortar, used to redden the tip of the canoe. Betel-nut is also given to a partner, after it has been charmed over with a seducing spell. Aromatic mint, boiled in coco-nut oil and ginger root are also used in the mwasila. The conch-shell, and the cosmetic ingredients, charmed over on Sarubwoyna beach are really part of the outfit, and so is the lilava bundle. All the substances used in this magic are associated either with beauty and attractiveness (betel-nut, cosmetics, the mint plant) or with excitement (conch-shell, chewed betel-nut). Here therefore, it is not with the final aim — which is the obtaining of valuables — that the magic is concerned, but with the intermediate one, that is that of being agreeable to one’s partner, of putting him into a state of excitement about the Kula.

XIV

I wish to close this chapter by adducing a few texts of native information. In the previous chapters, several statements and narratives have been put into the natives’ mouths and given in quotations. I wish now to show some of the actual linguistic data from which such quotations have been derived. Numerous utterances of the natives were taken down by me as they were spoken. Whenever there was a native expression covering a point of crucial importance, or a characteristic thought, or one neatly formulated, or else one especially hazy and opalescent in meaning — I noted them down in quick handwriting as they were spoken. A number of such texts, apart from their linguistic importance, will serve as documents embodying the native ideas without any foreign admixture, and it will also show the long way which lies between the crude native statement and its explicit, ethnographic presentation. For what strikes us at first sight most forcibly in these texts is their extreme bareness, the scantiness of information which they appear to contain. Couched in a condensed, disjointed, one might say telegraphic style, they seem to lack almost everything which could throw light on the subject of our study. For they lack concatenation of ideas, and they contain few concrete details, and few really apt generalisations. It must be remembered, however, that, whatever might be the importance of such texts, they are not the only source of ethnographic information, not even the most important one. The observer has to read them in the context of tribal life. Many of the customs of behaviour, of the sociological data, which are barely mentioned in the texts, have become familiar to the Ethnographer through personal observation and the direct study of the objective manifestations and of data referring to their social constitution (compare the observations on Method in the Introduction). On the other hand, a better knowledge of and acquaintance with the means of linguistic expression makes the language itself much more significant to one who not only knows how it is used, but uses it himself. After all, if natives could furnish us with correct, explicit and consistent accounts of their tribal organisation, customs and ideas, there would be no difficulty in ethnographic work. Unfortunately, the native can neither get outside his tribal atmospheres and see it objectively, nor if he could, would he have intellectual and linguistic means sufficient to express it. And so the Ethnographer has to collect objective data, such as maps, plans, genealogies, lists of possessions, accounts of inheritance, censuses of village communities. He has to study the behaviour of the native, to talk with him under all sorts of conditions, and to write down his words. And then, from all these diverse data, to construct his synthesis, the picture of a community and of the individuals in it. But I have dwelt on these aspects of method already in the Introduction and here I want only to exemplify them with regard to the linguistic material directly representing some of the natives’ thoughts on ethnographic subjects.

XV

I shall give here first a text on the subject of the priority in sailing, which as described in Chapter IX, is the privilege of a certain sub-clan in Sinaketa. I was discussing with a very good informant, Toybayoba of Sinaketa, the customs of launching the canoes, and I tried, as usually, to keep my interlocutor as much as possible to concrete details and to the stating of the full sequence of events. In his account he uttered this sentence:

„The Tolabwaga launch their canoe first; by this the face of the sea is cleared”.

I thereupon perceived that a new subject had been brought within my notice, and I headed my informant on to it, and obtained the following text, sentence after sentence:

The tolabwaga sub-clan and their sea-faring privileges

1 Bikugwo (He might be first), ikapusi (he fall down) (it is launched) siwaga (their canoe) Tolabwaga (Tolabwaga), boge (already) bimilakatile (he might be clear)bwarita (sea).