V
(C) The Social Division of Functions in the Manning and Sailing of the Canoe.
Very little is to be said under this heading here, since to understand this we must know more about the technicalities of sailing. We shall deal with this subject later on (Chap. IX, Div. II), and there the social organisation within the canoe—such as it is—will be indicated. Here it may be said that a number of men have definite tasks assigned to them, and they keep to these. As a rule a man will specialise, let us say, as steersman, and will always have the rudder given to his care. Captainship, carrying with it definite duties, powers and responsibilities, as a position distinct from that of the toliwaga, does not exist. The owner of the canoe will always take the lead and give orders, provided that he is a good sailor. Otherwise the best sailor from the crew will say what is to be done when difficulties or dangers arise. As a rule, however, everyone knows his task, and everyone performs it in the normal course of events.
A short outline of the concrete details referring to the distribution of canoes in the Trobriands must be given here. A glance at the map of Boyowa shows that various districts have not the same opportunities for sailing, and not all of them direct access to the sea. Moreover, the fishing villages on the Lagoon, where fishing and sailing have constantly to be done, will naturally have more opportunities for cultivating the arts of sailing and ship-building. And indeed we find that the villages of the two inland districts, Tilataula and Kuboma, know nothing about ship-building and sailing, and possess no canoes; the villages in Kiriwina and Luba, on the east coast, with indirect access to the sea, have only one canoe each, and few building experts; while some villagers on the Lagoon are good sailors and excellent builders. The best centres for canoe-building are found in the islands of Vakuta and Kayleula and to a lesser degree this craft flourishes in the village of Sinaketa. The island of Kitava is the traditional building centre, and at present the finest canoes as well as the best canoe carvings come from there. In this description of canoes, this island, which really belongs to the Eastern rather than to the Western branch of the N. Massim, must be included in the account, since all Boyowan canoe mythology and canoe industry is associated with Kitava.
There are at present some sixty-four Masawa canoes in the Trobriands and Kitava. Out of these, some four belong to the Northern district, where Kula is not practised; all the rest are built and used for the Kula. In the foregoing chapters I have spoken about “Kula communities,” that is, such groups of villages as carry on the Kula as a whole, sail together on overseas expeditions, and do their internal Kula with one another. We shall group the canoes according to the Kula community to which they belong.
Kiriwina
8
canoes.
Luba
3
canoes.,,
Sinaketa
8
canoes.,,
Vakuta
22
canoes.,,
Kayleula
about
20
canoes.,,
Kitava
about
12
canoes.,,
Total for all Kula communities
60
canoes.
To this number, the canoes of the Northern district must be added, but they are never used in the Kula. In olden days, this figure was, on a rough estimate, more than double of what it is now, because, first of all, there are some villages which had canoes in the old days and now have none, and then the number of villages which became extinct a few generations ago is considerable. About half a century ago, there were in Vakuta alone about sixty canoes, in Sinaketa at least twenty, in Kitava thirty, in Kiriwina twenty, and in Luba ten. When all the canoes from Sinaketa and Vakuta sailed south, and some twenty to thirty more joined them from the Amphletts and Tewara, quite a stately fleet would approach Dobu.
Turning now to the list of ownership in Kiriwina, the most important canoe is, of course, that owned by the chief of Omarakana. This canoe always leads the fleet; that is to say, on big ceremonial Kula sailings, called uvalaku, it has the privileged position. It lives in a big shed on the beach of Kaulukuba (see Plates XXII, XXX), distant about one mile from the village, the beach on which also each new canoe is made. The present canoe (see Plates XXI and XLI) is called Nigada Bu’a—“begging for an areca-nut.” Every canoe has a personal name of its own, sometimes just an appropriate expression, like the one quoted, sometimes derived from some special incident. When a new canoe is built, it often inherits the name of its predecessor, but sometimes it gets a new name. The present Omarakana canoe was constructed by a master-builder from Kitava, who also carved the ornamental prow-board. There is no one now in Omarakana who can build or carve properly. The magic over the latter stages ought to have been recited by the present chief, To’uluwa, but as he has very little capacity for remembering spells, the magic was performed by one of his kinsmen.
All the other canoes of Kiriwina are also housed in hangars, each on a beach of clean, white sand on the Eastern coast. The chief or headman of each village is the toliwaga. In Kasana’i, the sub-village of Omarakana, the canoe, called in feigned modesty tokwabu (something like “landlubber”), was built by Ibena, a chief of equal rank, but smaller power than To’uluwa, and he is also the toliwaga. Some other characteristic names of the canoes are:—Kuyamataym’—“Take care of yourself,” that is, “because I shall get ahead of you”; the canoe of Liluta, called Siya’i, which is the name of a Government station, where some people from Liluta were once imprisoned; Topusa—a flying fish; Yagwa’u—a scarecrow; Akamta’u—“I shall eat men,” because the canoe was a gift from the cannibals of Dobu.
In the district of Luba there are at present only three canoes; one belongs to the chief of highest rank in the village of Olivilevi. This is the biggest canoe in all the Trobriands. Two are in the village of Wawela, and belong to two headmen, each ruling over a section of the village; one of them is seen being relashed on Plate XXVII.
The big settlement of Sinaketa, consisting of sectional villages, has also canoes. There are about four expert builders and carvers, and almost every man there knows a good deal about construction. In Vakuta the experts are even more numerous, and this is also the case in Kayleula and Kitava.
1 Comparing the frail yet clumsy native canoe with a fine European yacht, we feel inclined to regard the former almost in the light of a joke. This is the pervading note in many amateur ethnographic accounts of sailing, where cheap fun is made by speaking of roughly hewn dug-outs in terms of “dreadnoughts” or “Royal Yachts,” just as simple, savage chiefs are referred to as “Kings” in a jocular vein. Such humour is doubtless natural and refreshing, but when we approach these matters scientifically, on the one hand we must refrain from any distortion of facts, and on the other, enter into the finer shades of the natives’ thought and feeling with regard to his own, creations. ↑
2 The crab-claw sails, used on the South Coast, from Mailu where I used to see them, to westwards where they are used with the double-masted lakatoi of Port Moresby, are still more picturesque. In fact, I can hardly imagine anything more strangely impressive than a fleet of crab-claw sailed canoes. They have been depicted in the British New Guinea stamp, as issued by Captain Francis Barton, the late Governor of the Colony. See also Plate XII of Seligman’s “Melanesians.” ↑
3 A constructive expedient to achieve a symmetrical stability is exemplified by the Mailu system of canoe-building, where a platform bridges two parallel, hollowed-out logs. Cf. Author’s article in the Transactions of the Royal Society of S. Australia, Vol. XXXIX, 1915, pp. 494–706. Chapter IV, 612–599. Plates XXXV–XXXVII. ↑
4 The whole tribal life is based on a continuous material give and take; cf. the above mentioned article in the Economic Journal, March, 1921, and the digression on this subject in Chapter VI, Division IV–VII. ↑
5 This view has been more fully elaborated in the article on “Primitive Economics” in the Economic Journal, March, 1921; compare also the remarks on systematic magic in Chapter XVII, Division VII. ↑
6 The way of hiring a masawa (sea-going) canoe is different from the usual transaction, when hiring a fishing canoe. In the latter case, the payment consists of giving part of the yield of fish, and this is called uwaga. The same term applies to all payments for objects hired. Thus, if fishing nets or hunting implements, or a small canoe for trading along the coast are hired out, part of the proceeds are given as uwaga. ↑
