Crime and Custom in Savage Society

by Bronisław Malinowski

In the accounts to which we now proceed — and which will be given concretely and with some detail — we shall keep before us the main problems still unsolved: the nature of criminal acts and procedure and their relation to civil law; the main factors active in the restitution of the disturbed equilibrium; the relations and the possible conflicts between the several systems of native law.

While engaged in my field-work in the Trobriands, I used always to live right among the natives, pitching my tent in the village, and being thus forcibly present at all that happened, trivial or solemn, hum-drum or dramatic. The event which I now proceed to relate happened during my first visit in the Trobriands, a few months only after I had started my field-work in the archipelago.

One day an outbreak of wailing and a great commotion told me that a death had occurred somewhere in the neighbourhood. I was informed that Kima’i, a young lad of my acquaintance, of sixteen or so, had fallen from a coco-nut palm and killed himself.

I hastened to the next village where this had occurred, only to find the whole mortuary proceedings in progress. This was my first case of death, mourning, and burial, so that in my concern with the ethnographical aspects of the ceremonial, I forgot the circumstances of the tragedy even though one or two singular facts occurred at the same time in the village which should have aroused my suspicions. I found that another youth had been severely wounded by some mysterious coincidence. And at the funeral there was obviously a general feeling of hostility between the village where the boy died and that into which his body was carried for burial.

Only much later was I able to discover the real meaning of these events: the boy had committed suicide. The truth was that he had broken the rules of exogamy, the partner in his crime being his maternal cousin, the daughter of his mother’s sister. This had been known and generally disapproved of, but nothing was done until the girl’s discarded lover, who had wanted to marry her and who felt personally injured, took the initiative. This rival threatened first to use black magic against the guilty youth, but this had not much effect. Then one evening he insulted the culprit in public — accusing him in the hearing of the whole community of incest and hurling at him certain expressions intolerable to a native.

For this there was only one remedy; only one means of escape remained to the unfortunate youth. Next morning he put on festive attire and ornamentation, climbed a coco-nut palm and addressed the community, speaking from among the palm leaves and bidding them farewell. He explained the reasons for his desperate deed and also launched forth a veiled accusation against the man who had driven him to his death, upon which it became the duty of his clansmen to avenge him. Then he wailed aloud, as is the custom, jumped from a palm some sixty feet high and was killed on the spot. There followed a fight within the village in which the rival was wounded; and the quarrel was repeated during the funeral.

Now this case opened up a number of important lines of inquiry. I was here in the presence of a pronounced crime: the breach of totemic clan exogamy. The exogamous prohibition is one of the corner-stones of totemism, mother-right, and the classificatory system of kinship. All females of his clan are called sisters by a man and forbidden as such. It is an axiom of Anthropology that nothing arouses a greater horror than the breach of this prohibition, and that besides a strong reaction of public opinion, there are also supernatural punishments, which visit this crime. Nor is this axiom devoid of foundation in fact. If you were to inquire into the matter among the Trobrianders, you would find that all statements confirm the axiom, that the natives show horror at the idea of violating the rules of exogamy and that they believe that sores, disease and even death might follow clan incest. This is the ideal of native law, and in moral matters it is easy and pleasant strictly to adhere to the ideal — when judging the conduct of others or expressing an opinion about conduct in general.

When it comes to the application of morality and ideals to real life, however, things take on a different complexion. In the case described it was obvious that the facts would not tally with the ideal of conduct. Public opinion was neither outraged by the knowledge of the crime to any extent, nor did it react directly — it had to be mobilized by a public statement of the crime and by insults being hurled at the culprit by an interested party. Even then he had to carry out the punishment himself. The ’group-reaction’ and the ’supernatural sanction’ were not therefore the active principles. Probing further into the matter and collecting concrete information, I found that the breach of exogamy — as regards intercourse and not marriage — is by no means a rare occurrence, and public opinion is lenient, though decidedly hypocritical. If the affair is carried on sub rosa¹⁶ with a certain amount of decorum, and if no one in particular stirs up trouble — ’public opinion’ will gossip, but not demand any harsh punishment. If, on the contrary, scandal breaks out — every one turns against the guilty pair and by ostracism and insults one or the other may be driven to suicide.

As regards the supernatural sanction, this case led me to an interesting and important discovery. I learned that there is a perfectly well established remedy against any pathological consequences of this trespass, a remedy considered practically infallible, if properly executed. That is to say the natives possess a system of magic consisting of spells and rites performed over water, herbs, and stones, which when correctly carried out, is completely efficient in undoing the bad results of clan incest.

That was the first time in my field-work that I came across what could be called a well-established system of evasion and that in the case of one of the most fundamental laws of the tribe. Later on I discovered that such parasitic growths upon the main branches of tribal order exist in several other cases, besides the counteraction of incest. The importance of this fact is obvious. It shows clearly that a supernatural sanction need not safeguard a rule of conduct with an automatic effect. Against magical influence there may be counter-magic. It is no doubt better not to run the risk — the counter-magic may have been imperfectly learned or faultily performed — but the risk is not great. The supernatural sanction shows then a considerable elasticity, in conjunction with a suitable antidote.