IV

Another important activity of the two districts of Kavataria and Kayleula is their production of armshells. As Sinaketa and Vakuta are the only two places in the Trobriands where spondylus discs are made, so Kavataria and Kayleula are the only localities where the natives fished for the large Conus millepunctatus shell, and made out of it the ornaments so highly valued yet so seldom used. The main reason for the exclusive monopoly, held by these two places in the manufacture of mwali, is the inertia of custom and usage which traditionally assigns to them this sort of fishing and manufacture. For the shells are scattered all over the Lagoon, nor is the fishing and diving for them more difficult than any of the pursuits practised by all the Lagoon villages. Only the communities mentioned, however, carry it on, and they only are in possession of a system of elaborate magic, at least as complex as that of the kaloma.

The actual manufacturing of the armshells presents also no difficulties. The ornament is made out of a belt of the shell cut out nearest to its base. With a stone, the natives knock out the circular base along the rim, and they also knock a circle at some distance from the base and parallel to it, by which the broad band of shell is severed, from which the ornament is to be made. It has then to be polished, and this is done on the outside by rubbing off the soft calcareous surface on a flat sandstone. The interior is polished off with a long, cylindrical stone.8

It was the custom in Kavataria that when a man found a fine Conus shell, he would give it to his wife’s brother as a youlo present, who in turn would send the finder a return present of food, such as specially fine yams, bananas, betel-nut, and also a pig if it were an especially fine shell. He then would work out the shell for himself. This arrangement is a pendant to the one described with reference to Sinaketa, where a man would fish as well as work out a necklace for one of his wife’s kinsmen.

An even more interesting custom obtains in Kayleula. A pair of shells would be fished and broken in one of the villages of that island, or in one of its small sister islands, Kuyawa and Manuwata. In this unfinished state, as a band of coarse shell, called as such makavayna, it is then brought to the Amphletts, and there given as a Kula gift. The Gumasila man, who receives the shells, will then polish them up, and in that state again kula them to Dobu. The Dobuan who receives them then bores holes in the side, where one rim overlaps the other (clearly to be seen on Plate XVI) and attaches there the ornaments of black, wild banana seeds, and spondylus discs. Thus, only after it has travelled some one hundred miles and passed through two stages of the Kula, has the mwali received its proper shape and final outfit.

In this manner does a new-born Kula article enter into the ring, taking shape as it goes through its first few stages, and at the same time, if it is a specially fine specimen, it is christened by its maker. Some of the names express simply local associations. Thus, a celebrated pair of mwali, of which the shell was found not long ago by a Kavataria man near the island of Nanoula, is named after that place. It may be added that, in each pair there is always a ‘right’ and a ‘left’ one, the first the bigger and more important of the two, and it is after that the name is given. Of course, they never are found at the same time, but if a man has succeeded in obtaining a specially fine specimen, he will be busy trying to find its slightly inferior companion, or some of his relatives-in-law, friends or kinsmen will give him one. ‘Nanoula’ is one of the most celebrated pairs, and it was known all over the Trobriands, at that moment, that it was soon to come to Kitava, and the general interest hung round the question who was going to get it in Boyowa. A pair called ‘Sopimanuwata,’ which means, ‘water of Manuwata’ was found in olden days by a man of that island close to its shores. Another famous pair, made in Kayleula, was called ‘Bulivada,’ after a fish of this name. The larger shell of this pair was found, according to tradition, broken, with a hole near its apex. When they brought it to the surface they found a small bulivada fish which had taken up its abode in the shell. Another pair was called ‘Gomane ikola,’ which means ‘it is entangled in a net,’ as, according to the story, it was brought up in a net. There are many other celebrated mwali, the names of which are so familiar that boys and girls are named after them. But the majority of the names cannot be traced as to their origins.

Another point at which the armshells enter into the ring is Woodlark Island. I do not know for certain, but I believe that the industry is quite or almost extinct now in that island. In the olden days, Murua probably was quite as productive a centre of this manufacture as the Trobriands, and in these latter though Kayleula and the Western islands fish and work the mwali as much as ever, the natives of Kavataria are almost entirely out of it, busy all the time diving for pearls. Both the main places of origin of the armshells, therefore, are within the Kula ring. After they are made, or, as we saw in Kayleula, in the process of making, they enter the circulation. Their entry into the ring is not accompanied by any special rite or custom, and indeed it does not differ from an ordinary act of exchange. If the man who found the shell and made the mwali were not in the Kula himself, as might happen in Kavataria or Kayleula, he would have a relative, a brother-in-law, or a head man to whom he would give it in the form of one or other of the many gifts and payments obligatory in this society.