With a strong South-Easterly wind, which blows here for three quarters of the year, we approach the islands very fast, and the two most important ones, Gumawana and Ome’a, almost seem to leap out of the mist. As we anchor in front of Gumawana village at the S. E. end of the island, we cannot but feel impressed. Built on a narrow strip of foreshore, open to the breakers, and squeezed down to the water’s edge by an almost precipitously rising jungle at its back, the village has been made sea-proof by walls of stone surrounding the houses with several bulwarks, and by stone dykes forming small artificial harbours along the sea front. The shabby and unornamented huts, built on piles, look very picturesque in these surroundings (see Plates VII and XLIII).
The inhabitants of this village, and of the four remaining ones in the archipelago, are a queer people. They are a numerically weak tribe, easily assailable from the sea, getting hardly enough to eat from their rocky islands; and yet, through their unique skill in pottery, their great daring and efficiency as sailors, and their central position half way between Dobu and the Trobriands, they have succeeded in becoming in several respects the monopolists of this part of the world. They have also the main characteristics of monopolists: grasping and mean, inhospitable and greedy, keen on keeping the trade and exchange in their own hands, yet unprepared to make any sacrifice towards improving it; shy, yet arrogant to anyone who has any dealings with them; they contrast unfavourably with their southern and northern neighbours. And this is not only the white man’s impression29. The Trobrianders, as well as the Dobuans, give the Amphlett natives a very bad name, as being stingy and unfair in all Kula transactions, and as having no real sense of generosity and hospitality.
When our boat anchors there, the natives approach it in their canoes, offering clay pots for sale. But if we want to go ashore and have a look at their village, there is a great commotion, and all the women disappear from the open places. The younger ones run and hide in the jungle behind the village, and even the old hags conceal themselves in the houses. So that if we want to see the making of pottery, which is almost exclusively women’s work, we must first lure some old woman out of her retreat with generous promises of tobacco and assurances of honourable intentions.
This has been mentioned here, because it is of ethnographic interest, as it is not only white men who inspire this shyness; if native strangers, coming from a distance for trade, put in for a short time in the Amphletts, the women also disappear in this fashion. This very ostentatious coyness is, however, not a sham, because in the Amphletts, even more than in Dobu, married and unmarried life is characterised by strict chastity and fidelity. Women here have also a good deal of influence, and take a great part in gardening and the performance of garden magic. In social institutions and customs, the natives present a mixture of Northern and Southern Massim elements. There are no chiefs, but influential elders wield authority, and in each village there is a head man who takes the lead in ceremonies and other big tribal affairs. Their totemic clans are identical with those of Murua (District II). Their somewhat precarious food supply comes partly from the poor gardens, partly from fishing with kite and fish trap, which, however, can only seldom be carried out, and does not yield very much. They are not self-supporting, and receive, in form of presents and by trade, a good deal of vegetable food as well as pigs from the mainland, from Dobu and the Trobriands. In personal appearance they are very much like the Trobrianders, that is, taller than the Dobuans, lighter skinned, and with finer features.
We must now leave the Amphletts and proceed to the Trobriand Islands, the scene of most of the occurrences described in this book, and the country concerning which I possess by far the largest amount of ethnographic information.
Chapter II. The natives of the Trobriand Islands
I — Arrival in the coral Islands. First impression of the native. Some significant appearances and their deeper meaning. II — Position of women; their life and conduct before and after marriage. III — Further exploration in the villages. A cross country walk. Gardens and gardening. IV — The native’s working power; their motives and incentives to work. Magic and work. A digression on Primitive Economics. V — Chieftainship, power through wealth; a plutocratic community. List of the various provinces and and political divisions in the Trobriands. VI — Totemism, the solidarity of clans and the bonds of kinship. VII — Spirits of the dead. The overweening importance of magic. Black magic. The prowling sorcerers and the flying witches. The malevolent visitors from the South, and epidemics. VIII — The Eastern neighbours of of the Trobrianders. The remaining districts of the Kula.
I
Leaving the bronzed rocks and the dark jungle of the Amphletts for the present — for we shall have to revisit them in the course of our study, and then shall learn more about their inhabitants — we sail North into an entirely different world of flat coral islands; into an ethnographic district, which stands out by ever so many peculiar manners and customs from the rest of Papuo-Melanesia. So far, we have sailed over intensely blue, clear seas, where in shallow places the coral bottom, with its variety of colour and form, with its wonderful plant and fish life, is a fascinating spectacle in itself — a sea framed in all the splendours of tropical jungle, of volcanic and mountainous scenery, with lively watercourses and falls, with steamy clouds trailing in the high valleys. From all this we take a final farewell as we sail North. The outlines of the Amphletts soon fade away in tropical haze, till only Koyatabu’s slender pyramid, lifted over them, remains on the horizon, the graceful form, which follows us even as far as the Lagoon of Kiriwina.
We now enter an opaque, greenish sea, whose monotony is broken only by a few sandbanks, some bare and awash, others with a few pandanus trees squatting on their air roots, high in the sand. To these banks, the Amphlett natives come and there they spend weeks on end, fishing for turtle and dugong. Here is also laid the scene of several of the mythical incidents of primeval Kula. Further ahead, through the misty spray, the line of horizon thickens here and there, as if faint pencil marks had been drawn upon it. These become more substantial, one of them lengthens and broadens, the others spring into the distinct shapes of small islands, and we find ourselves in the big Lagoon of the Trobriands, with Boyowa, the largest island, on our right, and with many others, inhabited and uninhabited, to the North and North-West.