Argonauts of the Western Pacific

by Bronisław Malinowski

After another sitting of a few days, the whole outside of the canoe is painted in three colours. Over each of them a special spell is chanted again, the most important one over the black colour. This is never omitted, while the red and white spells are optional. In the rite of the black colour, again, a whole mixture of substances is used a dry bracken leaf, grass, and a posisiku nest all this is charred with some coco-nut husk, and the first strokes of the black paint are made with the mixture. The rest is painted with a watery mixture of charred coco-nut. For red colour, a sort of ochre, imported from the d’Entrecasteaux Islands, is used; the white one is made of a chalky earth, found in certain parts of the sea shore.

Sail-making is done on another day, usually in the village, by communal labour, and, with a number of people helping, the tedious and complicated work is performed in a relatively short time. The triangular outline of the sail is first pegged out on the ground, as a rule the old sail being used as a pattern. After this is done, tapes of dried pandanus leaf (see Plates XXVIII, XXIX) are stretched on the ground and first fixed along the borders of the sail. Then, starting at the apex of the triangle, the sail-makers put tapes radiating towards the base, sewing them together with awls of flying fox bone, and using as thread narrow strips of specially toughened pandanus leaf. Two layers of tapes are sewn one on top of the other to make a solid fabric.

IV

The canoe is now quite ready to be launched. But before we go on to an account of the ceremonial launching and the associated festivities, one or two general remarks must be made retrospectively about the proceedings just described.

The whole of the first stage of canoe-building, that is, the cutting of the tree, the scooping out of the log, and the preparation of the other component parts, with all their associated magic, is done only when a new canoe is built.

But the second stage has to be performed over all the canoes before every great overseas Kula expedition. On such an occasion, all the canoes have to be re-lashed, re-caulked, and re-painted. This obviously requires that they should all be taken to pieces and then lashed, caulked and painted exactly as is done with a new canoe. All the magic incidental to these three processes is then performed, in its due order, over the renovated canoe. So that we can say about the second stage of canoe-building that not only is it always performed in association with the Kula, but that no big expedition ever takes place without it.

We have had a description of the magical rites, and the ideas which are implied in every one of them have been specified. But there are one or two more general characteristics which must be mentioned here. First, there is what could be called the „ceremonial dimension” of magical rites. That is, how far is the performance of the rite attended by the members of the community, if at all; and if so, do they actively take part in it, or do they simply pay keen attention and behave as an interested audience; or, though being present, do they pay little heed and show only small interest?

In the first stage of canoe-building, the rites are performed by the magician himself, with only a few helpers in attendance. The general village public do not feel sufficiently interested and attracted to assist, nor are they bound by custom to do so. The general character of these rites is more like the performance of a technicality of work than of a ceremony. The preparing of herbs for the ligogu magic, for instance, and the charming it over, is carried out in a matter-of-fact, businesslike manner, and nothing in the behaviour of the magician and those casually grouped around him would indicate that anything specially interesting in the routine work is happening.

The rites of the second stage are ipso facto attended by all those who help in piecing together and lashing, but on the whole those present have no special task assigned to them in the performance of these rites. As to the attention and behaviour during the performance of the magic, much depends of course on whether the magician officiating is a chief of great importance or someone of low rank. A certain decorum and even silence would be observed in any case. But many of those present would turn aside and go away, if they wanted to do so. The magician does not produce the impression of an officiating high priest performing a solemn ceremony, but rather of a specialised workman doing a particularly important piece of work. It must be remembered that all the rites are simple, and the chanting of the spells in public is done in a low voice, and quickly, without any specially effective vocal production. Again, the caulking and the wayugo rites are, in some types of magic at least, performed in the magician’s hut, without any attendance whatever, and so is that of the black paint.

Another point of general importance is what could be called the stringency of magic rites. In canoe magic, for instance, the expulsion of the tokway, the ritual cutting of the pulling rope, the magic of the adze (ligogu), that of the lashing creeper (wayugo), of the caulking, and of the black paint can never be omitted. Whereas the other rites are optional, though as a rule some of them are performed. But even those which are considered indispensable do not all occupy the same place of importance in native mythology and in native ideas, which is clearly expressed in the behaviour of the natives and their manner of speaking of them. Thus, the general term for canoe magic is either wayugo or ligogu, from which we can see that these two spells are considered the most important. A man will speak about his wayugo being better than that of the other, or of having learnt his ligogu from his father. Again, as we shall see in the canoe myth, both these rites are explicitly mentioned there. Although the expulsion of the tokway is always done, it is definitely recognised by the natives as being of lesser importance. So are also the magic of caulking and of the black paint.