III

In the short outline of the Amphlett tribe which was given in Chapter II, Division IV, I called them ‘typical monopolists,’ both with reference to their economic position and to their character. Monopolists they are in two respects, namely as manufacturers of the wonderful clay pots which form the only supply for the surrounding districts; and in the second place, as a commercial community, situated half-way between the populous country of Dobu, with its rich gardens and coco-nut plantations, on the one hand, and the Trobriands, the main industrial community in Eastern New Guinea on the other.

The expression ‘monopolists’ must, however, be correctly understood. The Amphletts are not a centre of commercial middle-men, constantly busy importing and exporting desirable utilities. Only about once or twice a year, a big expedition comes to their Islands, and every few months they themselves will sail South-East or North and again receive visits from smaller expeditions from one of the neighbours or the other. It is through just such small expeditions that they collect a relatively considerable amount of utilities from all surrounding districts, and these they can give to such visitors as need and desire them. Nor would they impose high prices on any such exchange, but they are certainly considered less liberal, less ready to give or to trade and always on the look out for higher return gifts and extras. In their bartering away of the clay pots, they also cannot ask extortionate prices, such as, according to the laws of supply and demand, they could impose on their neighbours. For, no more than any other natives, can they run counter to customary rules, which regulate this exchange as much as all others. Indeed, considering the great amount of trouble which they have in obtaining the clay, and the high degree of skill necessary to produce the pots, the prices for which they sell them are very low. But here again, their manners over this transaction are distinctly haughty, and they are well aware of their value as potters and distributors of pots to the other natives.

A few more words must be said about their pot making industry as well as about the trade in these islands.

The natives of the Amphletts are exclusive manufacturers of pottery, within a wide radius. They are the only purveyors to the Trobrianders, to the inhabitants of the Marshall Bennett Islands, and also, I believe, all the clay-pots in Woodlark come from the Amphletts.3 To the South, they export their pots to Dobu, Du’a’u, and further South as far as Milne Bay. This is not all, however, for although in some of these farther districts the Amphlett pots are used side by side with other ones, they are infinitely superior to any earthenware found in the whole of British New Guinea. Of a large size, yet extremely thin, they possess great durability, and in form they are extremely well shaped and finished (see Plate XLVI).

The best Amphlett pots owe their high quality to the excellence of their material as well as their workmanship. The clay for them has to be imported into the Islands from Yayawana, a quarry on the Northern shore of Fergusson Island, about a day’s journey from the Amphletts. Only a very inferior clay can be found in the islands of Gumasila and Nabwageta, good enough to make small pots, but quite useless for the big ones.

There is a legend, explaining why the good clay cannot be obtained nowadays in the Amphletts. In olden days, two brothers, Torosipupu and Tolikilaki, lived on one of the summits of Gumasila called Tomonumonu. There was plenty of fine clay there at that time. One day Torosipupu went to fish with a trap. He caught a very fine giant clam-shell. When he came back, Tolikilaki said: “O my shell! I shall eat it!” Torosipupu refused it and answered with a very obscene allusion to the bivalvular mollusc and to the uses he was going to make of it. Tolikilaki asked again; Torosipupu refused. They quarrelled. Tolikilaki then took part of the clay with him, and went to Yayawana on the main island. Torosipupu afterwards took the rest and followed him. What were their further destinies, the legend does not say. But on Gumasila there remained only very poor clay, which is all that can be found there ever since.

Since then, the men have to go about twice yearly to Yayawana in order to bring the clay from which the women afterwards will manufacture the pots. It takes them about a day to reach Yayawana, to which, as it lies to the South-West, they can travel with any of the prevailing winds and return equally well. They remain for a couple of days there, digging the clay, drying it and filling a few vataga baskets with it. I estimate that each canoe carries about two ton weight on its return journey. This will last the women for half a year’s production. The pale, straw-coloured clay is kept under the houses in big troughs made of sides of discarded canoes.

In olden days, before the white man’s advent, the conditions were a little more complicated. Only one island, Kwatouto, being on friendly terms with the natives had the freedom of the Northern shore. Whether the other islands used also to fetch the clay from there, doing so armed and ready for attack; or whether they used to acquire the clay by barter from Kwatouto, I could not definitely establish. The information one receives in the Amphletts is exceedingly unsatisfactory, and my several informants gave contradictory accounts on this point. The fact seems clear, in my case, that Kwatouto, then as now, was the source of the best pottery, but that both Gumasila and Nabwageta also always manufactured pots, though perhaps inferior ones. The fourth island, Domdom, never participated in this trade, and up to the present there is not a single woman in Domdom who can shape a pot.

Plate XLIV 

Technology of Pot Making (I.)

Top picture: the clumps of clay have been put in a circle and joined up, forming thick, circular roll. Bottom picture: the roll is being worked upwards, caving in all round. (See Div. III.)

Plate XLV 

Technology of Pot Making (II.)

Top picture: the dome-shaped mass of clay is worked near the hole in the top; presently the latter will be closed, and, as this is a small pot, only after that is the pot beaten, as shown in the picture below. (See Div. III.)

The manufacturing of this article, as said, is exclusively the work of women. They sit in groups of two or three under the houses, surrounded by big clumps of clay and the implements of their craft, and produce in these very shabby and mean conditions, veritable masterpieces of their art. Personally I had only the opportunity of seeing groups of very old women at work, although I spent about a month in the Amphletts.

With regard to the technology of pot-making, the method is that of first roughly moulding the clay into its form and then beating with a spatula and subsequently scraping the walls to the required thinness with a mussel-shell. To give the description in detail, a woman starts first by kneading a certain amount of clay for a long time. Of this material she makes two semi-circular clumps, or several clumps, if a big pot is to be made. These clumps are then placed in a ring, touching one another upon a flat stone or board, so that they form a thick, circular roll (Plate XLIV, top). The woman now begins to work this roll with both hands, gradually pressing it together, and at the same time bringing it up all round into a slanting wall (see Plate XLIV, bottom). Her left hand works as a rule on the inside, and her right on the outside of this wall; gradually it begins to shape into a semi-spherical dome. On the top of the dome there is a hole, through which the woman thrusts her left hand, working with it on the inside of the dome (see Plate XLV, top). At first the main movements of her hands were from downward up, flattening out the rolls into thin walls. The traces of her fingers going up and down on the outside leave longitudinal furrows (see details on Plate XLV, top). Towards the end of this stage her hands move round and round, leaving concentric, horizontal marks on the dome. This is continued until the pot has assumed a good curvature all round.

It seems almost a miracle to see how, in a relatively short time, out of this after all brittle material, and with no implements whatever, a woman will shape a practically faultless hemisphere, often up to a metre in diameter.

After the required shape has been obtained the woman takes a small spatula of light-wood into her right hand and she proceeds to tap the clay gently (see Plate XLV, bottom). This stage lasts a fairly long time, for big pots about an hour. After the dome has been sufficiently worked in this way small pieces of clay are gradually fitted in at the top, closing the orifice, and the top of the dome is beaten again. In the case of small pots the beating is done only after the orifice has been closed. The pot is put with the mat into the sun, where it remains for a day or two to harden. It is then turned round, so that its mouth is now uppermost, and its bottom is carefully placed into a basket. Then, round the rim of the mouth, a flat strip of clay is placed horizontally, turned towards the inside, forming a graceful lip. Three small lumps of clay are put 120° distance from each other near the lip as ornaments, and, with a pointed stick, a design is scratched in round the lip and sometimes down the outside of the body. In this state the pot is again left in the sun for some length of time.

After it has sufficiently hardened to be handled with safety, though it must be done with the utmost care, it is placed on some dried sticks, mouth downwards, supported by stones put between the sticks. It is surrounded with twigs and pieces of wood on its outside, fire is kindled, the sticks below bake it from the inside, and those from above on the outside. The final result is a beautiful pot, of a brick red colour when new, though after several uses it becomes completely black. Its shape is not quite semi-spherical; it is rather half an ellipsoid, like the broader half of an egg, cut off in the middle. The whole gives the feeling of perfection in form and of elegance, unparalleled in any South Sea pottery I know (see Plate XLVI).

These pots in Kiriwinian language kuria, are called by the Amphlett natives kuyana or va’ega. The biggest specimens are about a metre across their mouth, and some sixty centimetres deep; they are used exclusively for the ceremonial cooking of mona (see Plate XXXV), and are called kwoylamona (in the Amphletts: nokunu). The second size kwoylakalagila (in the Amphletts, nopa’eva) are used for ordinary boiling of yams or taro. Kwoylugwawaga (Amphletts, nobadala), are used for the same purposes but are much smaller. An especial size, kwoylamegwa (Amphletts, nosipoma) are used in sorcery. The smallest ones, which I do not remember ever having seen in the Trobriands though there is a Trobriand word for them, kwoylakekila, are used for everyday cooking in the Amphletts where they are called va’ega, in the narrower sense of the word.

I have expatiated on this singular and artistic achievement of the natives of the Amphletts, because from all points of view it is important to know the details of a craft so far in advance of any similar achievement within the Melanesian region.

A few words must now be said about trade in the Amphletts. The central position of this little archipelago situated between, on one side, the big, flat, extremely fertile coral islands, which, however, are deprived of many indispensable, natural resources; and on the other, the rich jungle and varied mineral supplies of the volcanic regions in the d’Entrecasteaux archipelago, indicates on which lines this trade would be likely to develop. To this natural inequality between them and their neighbours are added social elements. The Trobrianders are skilful, industrious, and economically highly organised. In this respect, even the Dobuans stand on a lower level, and the other inhabitants of the d’Entrecasteaux much more so.

If we imagine a commercial diagram drawn on the map, we would first of all notice the export in pottery, radiating from the Amphletts as its source. In the inverse direction, flowing towards them, would be imports in food such as sago, pigs, coco-nut, betel-nut, taro and yams. An article very important in olden days, which had to be imported into the Amphletts, was the stone for implements coming via the Trobriands from Woodlark Island. These indeed would be traded on by the Amphlettans, as all the d’Entrecasteaux relied, for the most part at least, on the imports from Woodlark, according to information I obtained in the Amphletts. The Amphlett islands further depended on the Trobriands for the following articles: wooden dishes, manufactured in Bwoytalu; lime-pots manufactured in several villages of Kuboma; three-tiered baskets and folding baskets, made in Luya; ebony lime pots and mussel shells, these latter fished mainly by the village of Kavataria in the lagoon. These articles were paid for, or matched as presents by the following ones: first of all, of course the pots; secondly, turtle-shell earrings, special nose sticks, red ochre, pumice stone and obsidian, all of these obtainable locally. Further, the natives of the Amphletts procured on Fergusson Island, for the Trobrianders, wild banana seeds used for necklaces, strips of rattan used as belts and for lashing, feathers of the cassowary and red parrot, used for dancing decorations, plaited fibre-belts, bamboo and barbed spears.

It may be added that in olden days, the natives in the Amphletts would not sail freely to all the places on the main island. Each Amphlett village community had a district on the mainland, with which they were on friendly terms and with which they could trade without incurring any danger. Thus, as said above, only the village of Kwatouto, in the southernmost inhabited Amphlett island, was free to go unmolested to the district round Yayawana, from whence they obtained the pale yellow clay, so excellent for pottery. The natives of Nabwageta had a few villages eastwards from Yayawana to deal with, and those of Gumasila went further East still. Domdom natives were never great traders or sailors. The trading conditions in the islands were further complicated by the constant internal quarrels and warfare between the districts. Kwatouto and Domdom on the one side, Gumasila and Nabwageta on the other were allies, and between these two factions there was a constant, smouldering hostility, preventing any development of friendly commercial intercourse, and breaking out now and then into open warfare. This was the reason why the villages were all perched on high, inaccessible ledges, or like Gumasila, were built so as to be protected by the sea and reefs from attack.

Plate XLVI  

Fine Specimens of Amphlett Pots.

The largest type of cooking pots, used only for the preparation of taro pudding, are an article of high value and often handled and displayed in connection with ceremonial distributions (sagali) and communal cooking. (See Div. III.)

Plate XLVII  

A Canoe in Gumasila Loading Pots.

The main article of export from the Amphletts has to be stowed away very carefully. (See Div. I.)

The influence of the surrounding great districts, that is, of the Trobriands and of Dobu upon the Amphletts neither was nor is merely commercial. From the limited linguistic material collected in the Amphletts, I can only say that their language is related both to that of the Trobriands and of Dobu. Their social organisation resembles closely that of the Trobrianders with the exception of chieftainship, which is lacking in the Amphletts. In their beliefs as to sorcery, spirits, etc., they seem to be more akin to the Dobuans than to the Trobrianders. Their canoe magic has come from the Trobriands, but the art of building their canoes is that of Dobu, which as we have seen before is also the one adopted by the Trobrianders. The magic of the Kula, known in the Amphletts, is partly adopted from the Trobriands, and partly from Dobu. There is only one indigenous system of magic which originated in the islands. Long ago there lived a man of the Malasi clan, who had his abode in the rock of Selawaya, which stands out of the jungle, above the big village of Gumasila. This man knew the magic of ayowa, which is the name given to mwasila (Kula magic) in the language of the Amphletts and of Dobu. Some people passed near the stone while it was being recited within it; they learned it, and handed it over to their descendants.