I

Our party, sailing from the North, reach first the main island of Gumasila, a tall, steep mountain with arched lines and great cliffs, suggesting vaguely some huge Gothic monument. To the left, a heavy pyramid, the island of Domdom, recedes behind the nearer mountain as the travellers approach. The fleet now sails along the westerly shore of Gumasila, on which side the jungle, interspersed with bald patches, ascends a steep slope, ribbed with rocky ridges, and creased by valleys which run at their foot into wide bays. Only here and there can be seen triangular clearings, signs of cultivation made by the natives from the other side of the island, where the two villages are situated. At the South-West end of Gumasila, a narrow promontory runs into a flat, low point with a sandy beach on both sides. On the North side of the point, hidden from the villages, the fleet comes to a halt, on the beach of Giyawana (called by the Trobrianders Giyasila). This is the place where all the fleets, arriving from the North, stop before approaching the villages. Here also the inhabitants of the Amphletts rest for a day, after the first false start they have made from the villages, and before they actually set off for the Trobriands. This beach, in short, is the Amphlettan counterpart of the sandbank Muwa. It was also here that I surprised the Gumasilan canoes on a full moon night, in March, 1918, after they had started to join the uvalaku expedition to Sinaketa.

On this beach, the Sinaketans perform the final stage of Kula magic, before approaching their partners in Gumasila. The same magic will be repeated before arriving in Dobu, and as a matter of fact, when the objective of the big uvalaku is Dobu, the full and ceremonial performance of the magic might usually be deferred till then. It will be better therefore to postpone the description of this magic till we have brought our fleet to the beach of Sarubwoyna. Here it will be enough to mention that on occasions when magic is performed, after an hour’s or half hour’s pause on the beach of Giyawana, all the men get into their canoes, take the paddles and oars, and the fleet sails round the point where, in a small, very picturesque bay, there lies the smaller village of Gumasila, called Nu’agasi (see Plate I). This village in olden days was perched on a narrow ledge some one hundred metres above the sea level, a fastness difficult of access, and overlooking all its approaches. Now, after the white man’s influence has rendered unnecessary all precautions against raiding parties, the village has come down to the narrow strip of foreshore, a bridge between the sea and a small swamp formed at the foot of the hill. Some of the canoes will come to this beach, the others will sail further, under a precipitous black rock of some 150 metres high and 300 metres wide (see Plate XLII). Turning another corner, they arrive at the big village of Gumasila, built on artificial stone terraces, surrounded by dykes of small stones, forming square lagoons and diminutive harbours (compare the description given above in Chapter I, Division V). This is the old village which, practically inaccessible by sea, formed a fastness of a different kind from the other, high-perched villages typical of this district. Exposed to the full onslaught of the South-Easterly winds and seas, against which it was protected by its stone bulwarks and dykes, it was approachable only in all weathers by a small channel to the South, where a big rock and a reef shelter it from the rough waters.

Plate XLII  

Scenery in the Amphletts.

(See Div. I.)

Plate XLIII  

Landing in the Main Village of Gumasila.

(See Div. I.)

Without any preliminary welcoming ceremony or formal reception, the Sinaketan guests now leave their canoes and disperse among the villagers, settle down in groups near the houses of their friends, and engage in betel chewing and conversations. They speak in Kiriwinian, a language which is universally known in the Amphletts. Almost as soon as they go ashore, they give to their partners presents of pari (opening gift), some small object, such as a comb, a lime pot, or a lime stick. After that, they await some Kula gifts to be given them. The most important headman will offer such a gift first to Kouta’uya, or To’udawada, whichever of them is the toli’uvalaku of the occasion. The soft, penetrating sound of a conch-shell soon announces that the first gift has been given. Other blasts of conch-shells follow, and the Kula is in full swing. But here again, what happens in the Amphletts, is only a minor interlude to the Sinaketan adventurers, bent on the bigger goal in Dobu. And in order for us to remain in harmony with the native perspective we shall also wait for the detailed and circumstantial description of the Kula proceedings till we arrive on the beach of Tu’utauna, in Dobu. The concrete account of how such a visiting fleet is received and behaves on arrival will be given, when I describe a scene I saw with my own eyes in the village of Nabwageta, another Amphlett island, when sixty Dobuan canoes arrived there on their uvalaku , en route for Boyowa.

To give a definite idea of the conversations which take place between the visitors and the Amphlettans, I shall give a sample noted down, during a visit of some Trobrianders to Nu’agasi, the smaller village of Gumasila. A few canoes had arrived a day or two before, in the neighbouring island, Nabwageta, coming from the small Western islands of the Trobriands on a Kula. One of them paddled across to Nu’agasi with a crew of some six men, in order to offer pari gifts to their partners and see what was to be done in the way of Kula. The canoe was sighted from a distance, and its purpose was guessed at once, as word had been brought before of the arrival in Nabwageta of this small expedition. The headman of Nu’agasi, Tovasana, hurried back to his house from my tent, where I was taking great pains to obtain some ethnographic information from him.

Tovasana is an outspoken character, and he is the most important headman in the Amphletts. I am not using the word ‘chief,’ for in the Amphletts, as I have said, the natives do not observe either the court ceremonial with crouching and bending, nor do the headmen have any power or economic influence, at all comparable with those of the Trobriands. Yet, although I came from the Trobriands, I was struck by the authoritative tone used, and the amount of influence evidently wielded by Tovasana. This is partly due undoubtedly to the lack of white man’s interference, which has so undermined native authority and morality in the Trobriands, whereas the Amphletts have so far escaped to a large extent Missionary teaching and Government law and order. On the other hand, however, the very narrow sphere of his powers, the authority over a small village, consolidates the headman’s influence. The oldest and the most aristocratic by descent of all the headmen, he is their acknowledged ‘doyen.’

In order to receive his visitors he went to the beach in front of his house and sat there on a log, looking impassively over the sea. When the Trobrianders arrived each man took a gift and went to his partner’s house. The chief did not rise to meet them, nor did they come in a body to greet him. The toliwaga came towards the place where Tovasana was sitting; he carried a bundle of taro and a piece of gugu’a (objects of small value, such as combs, lime pots, etc.). These he laid down near the seated headman, who, however, took no notice of it. A small boy, a grandchild of Tovasana, I think, took up the gifts and put them into his house. Then, without having yet exchanged a word, the toliwaga sat down on the platform next to Tovasana. Under a shady tree, which spread its branches like a canopy above the bleached canoe, the men formed a picturesque group sitting cross-legged on the platform. Beside the slim, youthful figure of the Kaduwaga man, the old Tovasana, with his big, roughly carved features, with his large aquiline nose sticking out from under an enormous turban-like wig, looked like an old gnome. At first exchanging merely a word or two, soon they dropped into more animated conversation, and when other villagers and the rest of the visitors joined them, the talk became general. As they spoke in Kiriwinian, I was able to jot down the beginning of their conversation.

Tovasana asked:

“Where have you anchored?”

“In Nabwageta.”

“When did you come?”

“Yesterday.”

“From where did you start on the last day before arriving?”

“From Gabuwana.”

“When?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“What wind?”

“Started from home with yavata; wind changed. Arrived on sandbank (Gabuwana); we slept; so-and-so made wind magic; wind changed again; good wind.”

Then Tovasana asked the visitors about one of the chiefs from the island of Kayleula (to the West of Kiriwina), and when he was going to give him a big pair of mwali. The man answered they do not know; to their knowledge that chief has no big mwali at present. Tovasana became very angry, and in a long harangue, lapsing here and there into the Gumasila language, he declared that he would never kula again with that chief, who is a topiki (mean man), who has owed him for a long time a pair of mwali as yotile (return gift), and who always is slow in making Kula. A string of other accusations about some clay pots given by Tovasana to the same chief, and some pigs promised and never given, were also made by the angry headman. The visitors listened to it with polite assent, uttering here and there some noncommital remark. They, in their turn, complained about some sago, which they had hoped to receive in Nabwageta, but which was churlishly refused for some reason or other to all the men of Kaduwaga, Kaysiga and Kuyawa.

Tovasana then asked them, “How long are you going to stay?”

“Till Dobu men come.”

“They will come,” said Tovasana, “not in two days, not in three days, not in four days; they will come tomorrow, or at the very last, the day after tomorrow.”

“You go with them to Boyowa?”

“I sail first to Vakuta, then to Sinaketa with the Dobu men. They sail to Susuwa beach to fish, I go to your villages, to Kaduwaga, to Kaysiga, to Kuyawa. Is there plenty of mwali in your villages?”

“Yes, there are. So-and-so has …”

Here followed a long string of personal names of big armshells, the approximate number of smaller, nameless ones, and the names of the people in whose possession they were at the time.

The interest of both hearers and speakers was very obvious, and Tovasana gave the approximate dates of his movements to his visitors. Full moon was approaching, and the natives have got names for every day during the week before and after full moon, and the following and preceding days can therefore be reckoned. Also, every seven-day period within a moon is named after the quarter which falls in it. This allows the natives to fix dates with a fair exactitude. The present example shows the way in which, in olden times, the movements of the various expeditions were known over enormous areas; nowadays, when white men’s boats with native crews often move from one island to the other, the news spreads even more easily. In former times, small preliminary expeditions such as the one we have just been describing, would fix the dates and make arrangements often for as much as a year ahead.

The Kaduwaga men next inquired as to whether any strangers from the Trobriands were then staying in Gumasila. The answer was that there was in the village one man from Ba’u, and one from Sinaketa. Then inquiries were made as to how many Kula necklaces there were in Gumasila, and the conversation drifted again into Kula technicalities.

It is quite customary for men from the Trobriands to remain for a long time in the Amphletts, that is, from one expedition to another. For some weeks or even months, they live in the house of their partner, friend, or relative, careful to keep to the customs of the country. They will sit about with the men of the village and talk. They will help in the work and go out on fishing expeditions. These latter will be specially attractive to a Trobriander, a keen fisherman himself, who here finds an entirely new type of this pursuit. Whether an expedition would be made on one of the sandbanks, where the fishermen remain for a few days, casting their big nets for dugong and turtle; or whether they would go out in a small canoe, trying to catch the jumping gar fish with a fishing kite; or throwing a fish trap into the deep sea—all these would be a novelty to the Trobriander, accustomed only to the methods suitable to the shallow waters of the Lagoon, swarming with fish.

In one point the Trobriander would probably find his sojourn in the Amphletts uncongenial; he would be entirely debarred from any intercourse with women. Accustomed in his country to easy intrigues, here he has completely to abstain, not only from sexual relations with women married or unmarried, but even from moving with them socially, in the free and happy manner characteristic of Boyowa. One of my main informants, Layseta, a Sinaketa man, who spent several years in the Amphletts, confessed to me, not without shame and regret, that he never succeeded in having any intrigues with the women there. To save his face, he claimed that he had had several Amphlett belles declaring their love to him, and offering their favours, but he always refused them:

“I feared; I feared the bowo’u of Gumasila; they are very bad.”

The bowo’u are the local sorcerers of the Amphletts. Whatever we might think about Layseta’s temptations—and his personal appearance and charm do not make his boastings very credible—and whether he was afraid of sorcery or of a sound thrashing, the fact remains that a Trobriander would have to change his usual mode of behaviour when in the Amphletts, and keep away from the women entirely. When big parties arrive in Gumasila, or Nabwageta, the women run away, and camp in the bush till the beach is clear.

The Amphlettans, on the contrary, were used to receive favours from unmarried women in Sinaketa. Nowadays, the male inhabitants of that village, always disapproving of the custom, though not to the extent of taking any action, tell the Amphlettans that the white man’s Government has prohibited the men from Gumasila and Nabwageta to have sexual relations in Sinaketa. One of the very few occasions, when the men from the Amphletts showed any interest in talking to me was when they asked me whether this was true.

“The Sinaketa men tell us that we will go to jail if we sleep with girls in Sinaketa. Would the Government put us into jail, in truth?”

As usually, I simply disclaimed all knowledge of the white man’s arcana in such matters.

The small party of Kaduwaga men, whose visit to Tovasana I have just been describing, sat there for about two hours, smoked and chewed betel-nut, the conversation flagging now and then, and the men looking into the distance with the habitual self-important expression worn on such occasions. After the final words about mutual plans were exchanged, and a few pots had been brought by small boys to the canoe as taio’i (farewell gift to the visitors), they embarked, and paddled back three or four miles across to Nabwageta.

We must imagine the big Kula party from Sinaketa, whom we just watched landing in the two villages of Gumasila, behaving more or less in the same manner; conducting similar conversations, offering the same type of pari gifts to their partners. Only everything happens of course on a much bigger scale. There is a big group seated before each house, parties walk up and down the village, the sea in front of it is covered with the gaudy, heavily laden canoes. In the little village, of which Tovasana is headman, the two chiefs, To’udawada and Kouta’uya, will be seated on the same platform, on which we saw the old man receiving his other guests. The other headmen of the Sinaketans will have gone to the bigger village round the corner, and will encamp there under the tall palms, looking across the straits towards the pyramidal forms of Domdom, and further South, to the main island fronting them with the majestic form of Koyatabu. Here, among the small houses on piles, scattered picturesquely through the maze of little harbours, lagoons and dykes, large groups of people will be seated on mats of plaited coco-nut, each man as a rule under the dwelling of his partner, chewing betel-nut stolidly, and watching stealthily the pots being brought out to be presented to them, and still more eagerly awaiting the giving of Kula gifts, although he remains to a superficial glance quite impassive.