„I want a beku (ceremonial axe blade)”. And here my informants were positive that real bargaining would take place. „If they give us an insufficient quantity, we expostulate, then they bring another portion. They would go to the village, fetch some more goods, return and give it to us, If it is enough, we give him the beku”.
Thus the barter would be carried on till the visitors had exhausted their stock in trade and received as much from the local natives as they could.
These expeditions are interesting in that we see the same type of magic and a number of similar customs, as in the Kula, associated with ordinary trading expeditions. I am not certain about the nature of partnership obtaining in these trading relations, except that Kavataria and Kayleula have their own districts each with whom they trade.
As said already, the main objects for which they make these distant trips are sago, betel-nut, pig; also the various feathers, especially those of the cassowary and the red parrot; rattan-cane belts; plaited fibre belts; obsidian; fine sand for polishing axe blades; red ochre; pummice stone; and other products of the jungle and of the volcanic mountains. For that, they exported to the Koya, to mention the most valuable first, armshells, the valuable axe blades, boars’ tusks and imitations; and, of lesser value, wooden dishes, combs, lime pots, armlets, baskets, wayugo creeper, mussel shells and lime spatulae of ebony. Spondylus shell necklaces were not exported to the Koya.
IV
Another important activity of the two districts of Kavataria and Kayleula is their production of armshells. As Sinaketa and Vakuta are the only two places in the Trobriands where spondyius discs are made, so Kavataria and Kayleula are the only localities where the natives fished for the large Conus millepunctatus shell, and made out of it the ornaments so highly valued yet so seldom used. The main reason for the exclusive monopoly, held by these two places in the manufacture of mwali, is the inertia of custom and usage which traditionally assigns to them this sort of fishing and manufacture. For the shells are scattered all over the Lagoon, nor is the fishing and diving for them more difficult than any of the pursuits practised by all the Lagoon villages. Only the communities mentioned, however, carry it on, and they only are in possession of a system of elaborate magic, at least as complex as that of the kaloma.
The actual manufacturing of the armshells presents also no difficulties. The ornament is made out of a belt of the shell cut out nearest to its base. With a stone, the natives knock out the circular base along the rim, and they also knock a circle at some distance from the base and parallel to it, by which the broad band of shell is severed, from which the ornament is to be made. It has then to be polished, and this is done on the outside by rubbing off the soft calcareous surface on a flat sandstone. The interior is polished off with a long, cylindrical stone113.
It was the custom in Kavataria that when a man found a fine Conus shell, he would give it to his wife’s brother as a youlo present, who in turn would send the finder a return present of food, such as specially fine yams, bananas, betel-nut, and also a pig if it were an especially fine shell. He then would work out the shell for himself. This arrangement is a pendant to the one described with reference to Sinaketa, where a man would fish as well as work out a necklace for one of his wife’s kinsmen.
An even more interesting custom obtains in Kayleula. A pair of shells would be fished and broken in one of the villages of that island, or in one of its small sister islands, Kuyawa and Manuwata. In this unfinished state, as a band of coarse shell, called as such makavayna, it is then brought to the Amphletts, and there given as a Kula gift. The Gumasila man, who receives the shells, will then polish them up, and in that state again kula them to Dobu. The Dobuan who receives them then bores holes in the side, where one rim overlaps the other (clearly to be seen on Plate XVI) and attaches there the ornaments of black, wild banana seeds, and spondylus discs. Thus, only after it has travelled some one hundred miles and passed through two stages of the Kula, has the mwali received its proper shape and final outfit.
In this manner does a new-born Kula article enter into the ring, taking shape as it goes through its first few stages, and at the same time, if it is a specially fine specimen, it is christened by its maker. Some of the names express simply local associations. Thus, a celebrated pair of mwali, of which the shell was found not long ago by a Kavataria man near the island of Nanoula, is named after that place. It may be added that, in each pair there is always a „right” and a „left” one, the first the bigger and more important of the two, and it is after that the name is given. Of course, they never are found at the same time, but if a man has succeeded in obtaining a specially fine specimen, he will be busy trying to find its slightly inferior companion, or some of his relatives-in-law, friends or kinsmen will give him one. „Nanoula” is one of the most celebrated pairs, and it was known all over the Trobriands, at that moment, that it was soon to come to Kitava, and the general interest hung round the question who was going to get it in Boyowa. A pair called „Sopimanuwata”, which means, „water of Manuwata” was found in olden days by a man of that island close to its shores. Another famous pair, made in Kayleula, was called „Bulivada” after a fish of this name. The larger shell of this pair was found, according to tradition, broken, with a hole near its apex. When they brought it to the surface they found a small bulivada fish which had taken up its abode in the shell. Another pair was called „Gomane ikola”, which means „it is entangled in a net” as, according to the story, it was brought up in a net. There are many other celebrated mwali, the names of which are so familiar that boys and girls are named after them. But the majority of the names cannot be traced as to their origins.