After the somewhat long digression on magic, we can now return once more to the description of the Kula. So far, we have been treating only one incident in it, the overseas expedition between Sinaketa and Dobu, and the return visit. But in dealing with this one typical stage we have received a picture of the whole Kula, and we have incidentally learnt all about the fundamentals of the exchange, the magic, the mythology, and the other associated aspects. Now it remains to put the finishing touches to the general picture, that is, to say a few words, first about the manner in which it is conducted within a district, and then to follow the exchange on the remaining part of the ring. The exchange within each Kula community has been called the ‘inland Kula.’ This part of the subject I know from personal experience in the Trobriands only. All that will be said therefore in this chapter will apply primarily to that part of the ring. As Boyowa, however, is by far the biggest and most densely populated piece of land within the Kula, it is clear that in treating the inland exchange in that island, we treat it in its most developed and typical form.

It has been mentioned before, in Chapter XVI that in April, 1918, To’uluwa had come to Sinaketa in connection with the uvalaku visit of the Dobuans. To’uluwa is the present chief of Omarakana, indeed, the last chief of Kiriwina, for after his death no one will succeed him. His power has been broken by the interference of Government officials and the influence of Mission work. The power of the Trobriand chief lay mainly in his wealth, and this he was able to keep constantly at a high level through the institution of polygamy. Now that he is forbidden to acquire more wives, though he may keep his old ones; and now that his successor will not be allowed to follow this immemorial custom of polygamy practised by their dynasty, the power of the chief has no basis, and has to a great extent collapsed.

I may add that this interference, inflicted for no comprehensible purposes, except if it be an exceedingly parochial and narrow-minded application of our sense of morality and propriety, has no legal basis whatever in the regulations of that Colony, and could not be justified either formally or on account of any results it may produce. Indeed, the undermining of old-established authority, of tribal morals and customs tends on the one hand completely to demoralise the natives and to make them unamenable to any law or rule, while on the other hand, by destroying the whole fabric of tribal life, it deprives them of many of their most cherished diversions, ways of enjoying life, and social pleasures. Now once you make life unattractive for a man, whether savage or civilised, you cut the taproot of his vitality. The rapid dying out of native races is, I am deeply convinced, due more to wanton interference with their pleasures and normal occupations, to the marring of their joy of life as they conceive it, than to any other cause. In the Trobriands, for instance, the chief has always been the organiser of all the big, tribal festivities. He received large contributions from the commoners under various legal obligations (see Chap. VI, Division VI) but he gave away all his wealth again in the form of big, ceremonial distributions, of presents at festivities, of food gifts to the partakers in dances, tribal sports and diversions. These were the pleasures in which the natives found real zest, which largely gave meaning to their lives. Nowadays all these pursuits have greatly slackened, because of the lack of concentration of wealth and power in the chief’s hands. He can neither afford to finance the big pastimes of yore, nor has he influence enough to give the same energetic initiative to start them going. After his death, things will be worse still. There are reasons to fear, and even natives express their misgivings, that in a generation or two the Kula will become entirely disorganised.

It is a well-known fact that the resistance and health of a native depend on auto-suggestion more even than is the case with ourselves, though new developments in psychotherapy seem to indicate that medicine has up till now largely underrated the general influence of this factor. Even the old ethnographic observers, more in Polynesia perhaps than anywhere else, have reported clear, unmistakable instances in which the loss of interest in life and the determination to die brought about death without any other cause. My own experience, though I have no one very striking case to cite, bears this out fully from all sorts of corroborating types of evidence. It is therefore not going beyond what is fully granted by facts, to maintain that a general loss of interest in life, of the joie de vivre, the cutting of all the bonds of intense interest, which bind members of a human community to existence, will result in their giving up the desire to live altogether, and that therefore they will fall an easy prey to any disease, as well as fail to multiply.

A wise administration of natives would, on the one hand, try to govern through the chief, using his authority along the lines of old law, usage, and custom; on the other hand it would try to maintain all which really makes life worth living for the natives, for it is the most precious inheritance, which they have from the past ages, and it is no good to try to substitute other interests for those lost. It is easy to hand over one’s vices to a man racially and culturally different; but nothing is as difficult to impart as a keen interest in the sports and amusements of other people. Even from one European nation to another, the last stronghold of national peculiarity can be found in its traditional diversions, and without diversion and amusement a culture and a race cannot survive. The application of a heavy, indeed, crushing machinery of European law and moral regulations, with their various sanctions, simply destroys the whole delicate fabric of tribal authority, eradicating good and bad alike, and leaves nothing but anarchy, bewilderment and ill will.1

With a mere show of his former authority, therefore, poor old To’uluwa arrived with a handful of followers at Sinaketa. He still keeps to all the strict observances and onerous duties with which his exalted position was weighted in olden days. Thus, he may not partake of ever so many kinds of food, considered to be unclean for the members of the sub-clan of Tabalu. He may not even touch any defiled objects, that have been in contact with unclean food; he may not eat from dishes or drink out of vessels which have been used previously by other people. When he goes to Sinaketa, for instance, where even the highest chiefs do not keep the taboos, he remains almost on starvation diet; he can only eat the food which has been brought from his own village, or drink and eat green coco-nut. Of the honours attaching to his position, not many are observed. In olden days, on his approach to a village, a runner would enter first, and in a loud voice cry out “O Guya’u,” whereupon all the people would stand in readiness, and at the chief’s approach the commoners would throw themselves on the ground, the headman would squat down, and men of rank would bend their heads. Even now, no commoner in the Trobriands would stand erect in the presence of To’uluwa. But he no more announces his arrival in such a loud and proud manner, and he takes his dues as they are given, not demanding them with any show of authority.

On that occasion in Sinaketa, I met him again after about two years interval since the time when I lived as his neighbour in Omarakana for some eight months, my tent pitched side by side with his lisiga (chief’s man’s abode). I found him changed and aged, his tall figure more bent, his large face, with its expression half of benevolence and half of cunning, wrinkled and clouded over. He had some grievances to tell about the offhand treatment which had been given to him in Sinaketa, where he had received no necklaces at all, although a few days before the Sinaketans had carried from Kiriwina over 150 pairs of armshells. Indeed, the relative change of position between the chiefs of Sinaketa and himself is a permanent sore point with the old chief. All coastal natives, and especially the headman of Sinaketa, have become very rich owing to the introduced industry of pearling, where their services are paid for by the white men in tobacco, betel-nut, and vaygu’a. But To’uluwa, ruined through white man’s influence, receives nothing from pearling, and compared to his Sinaketan inferiors, is a pauper. So after a day or two in Sinaketa, highly displeased, and vowing never to return again, he went back to Omarakana, his residence, and thither we shall follow him.

For Omarakana is still the centre of the Trobriand inland Kula, and, in certain respects, still one of the most important places on the ring. It is probably the only locality where the Kula is or ever was to some extent concentrated in the hands of one man, and it is also the capital of the important district of Kiriwina, which dominates all the inland Kula of the Northern Trobriands, and links up the island of Kitava with the western islands of Kuyleula and Kuyawa. It is also an important link between Kitava and Sinaketa, though between these two last mentioned places there are some minor means of communication, as we shall presently see.

Previously, in Chapter III, in the definition of the fundamentals of the Kula, we saw that the population of the Ring can be divided into what we called Kula communities. These divisions, as we remember, were distinguished by the fact that each one makes overseas expeditions of its own. For example, the Sinaketans, as we saw, make their trips to Dobu in a body, and although the Vakutans may go with them at the same time, the two fleets sail and act as independent units. Again, the whole district of Kiriwina sails to the East, to Kitava, as one fleet. But no Sinaketan canoe could ever form part of it. Another distinguishing characteristic of a Kula community is that the furthest limits of partnership are the same for all its members. Thus for instance, a man from any village in Kiriwina, provided he is in the Kula, may have a partner anywhere up to the furthest limits of the Sinaketa district in the South, and in any of the villages of the island of Kitava to the East. But beyond that, no Kiriwinian, not even To’uluwa himself, can enter into Kula partnership. There are again certain differences between the manner of conducting transactions within a Kula community on the one hand, and between members of two communities on the other.

Kiriwina is one of such Kula communities, and Sinaketa is another. Yet the two are not divided by sea, and the style of exchange, when this is carried on between two Kula communities which lie in the same district, differs also from that of overseas Kula. Our first task here will be therefore to mark out clearly the lines of distinction between:

1. The transactions of Kula carried on overseas, from one district to another.

2. Kula between two distinct but contiguous ‘Kula communities.’

3. Transactions within a ‘Kula community.’

The facts belonging to the first heading have been described at length, and it will be enough to point out in what the second type differs from the first. Obviously, when two districts on the same island, such as Kiriwina and Sinaketa, make the exchange there is no overseas sailing, no preparation of canoes, no launching, no kabigidoya. Sometimes big joint expeditions are made by the one community to the other and a great haul of vaygu’a is carried home. As an example of that, we may mention the visit made by the Sinaketans to Kiriwina in the last days of March, 1918, when a great number of mwali were brought, in readiness for the Dobuan uvalaku visit. When such an important visit is made from one Trobriand district to another, some of the Kula magic will be performed, but obviously not all, for there is no lilava bundle to be medicated, since no trade is carried; no dangerous cannibals have to be tamed by the ka’ubana’i rite, for the hosts are, and always have been, friendly neighbours. But some of the beauty magic, and the enticing formula over betel-nut would be recited to obtain as many valuables as possible. There is nothing corresponding to uvalaku in such big visits between neighbouring districts, though I think that they would be held only in connection with some uvalaku visit from another part of the ring to one of the two districts, as was the case in the example quoted, that is the Sinaketan visit to Kiriwina (Chapter XVI). Of course there is no associated trade on such expeditions, for there is very little to exchange between Sinaketa and Kiriwina, and what there is, is done independently, in a regular manner all the year round. Partnership between people of such two Kula communities is very much the same as within one of them. It obtains between people speaking the same language, having the same customs and institutions, many of whom are united by bonds of actual kinship or relationship-in-law. For, as has been mentioned already, marriages between Sinaketa and Kiriwina take place frequently, especially between natives of high rank. The rule is, in such cases, that a man of Sinaketa marries a woman of Kiriwina.

Let us pass now to the relation between categories 2 and 3, that is between Kula of two contiguous ‘Kula communities,’ and the Kula within one of them. First of all, in the inland Kula within the same community, there never take place big, wholesale transactions. The circulation of vaygu’a consists of individual exchanges, sometimes more frequent, that is, whenever an overseas expedition has come home laden with many valuables, sometimes done at long intervals. No magic is performed in this type of Kula, and though there is a certain amount of ceremony accompanying each gift, there are no big, public gatherings. A concrete description of an actual case may serve best to illustrate these general statements.

During the eight months I stayed in Omarakana in 1915–1916, I had the opportunity of watching many cases of inland Kula, as there was a constant come and go between Kiriwina and Kitava, and subsequent to each influx of armshells from the East, a series of exchanges took place. In the month of November, To’uluwa went with his canoe on a small expedition across the sea to Kitava, and brought back a good haul of mwali (armshells). He arrived on an evening on the beach of Kaulukuba, and word was sent over to the village that next day he would come up with his trophies. In the morning, blows of conch-shell, heard from the distance, announced the approach of the returning party, and soon, preceded by one of his small sons carrying the conch-shell, To’uluwa made his appearance followed by his companions. Each man carried a few pairs which he had obtained, whilst the chief’s share was brought in on a stick, hanging down in a chaplet (see Plate LX).

The people in the village sat before their huts, and according to native custom, there was no special concourse to meet the chief, nor any outward signs of excitement. The chief went straight to one of his bulaviyaka, that is, one of his wives’ houses, and sat on the platform before it, waiting for some food to come. That would be the place where he would seat himself, if he wanted just to have a domestic chat with some of his wives and children. Had any strangers been there, he would have received them at his place of official reception, in front of his lisiga, the extremely large and high chief’s house, standing in the inner row of yam houses, and facing the main place, the baku (see Plate II). On that occasion he went to the hut of Kadamwasila, his favourite wife, the mother of four sons and one daughter. She is quite old now, but she was the first wife married by To’uluwa himself, that is, not inherited, and there is an unmistakable attachment and affection between the two, even now. Though the chief has several much younger and one or two really fine looking wives, he is usually to be found talking and taking his food with Kadamwasila. He has also a few older wives, whom, according to the custom, he inherited from his predecessor, in that case, his elder brother. The eldest of them, Bokuyoba, the Dean of the Body of the chief’s wives, has been twice inherited; she is now a source of income—for her male kinsmen have to supply yams to the chief—and an object of veneration, and is now even relieved of the duty of cooking the chief’s food.

To’uluwa sat, ate, and talked about his journey to myself and some of the village elders assembled there. He spoke of the amount of mwali at present in Kitava, told us from whom and how he obtained those at which we were then looking, naming the most important ones, and giving bits of their histories. He commented on the state of gardens in Kitava, which in one respect, in the production of the big yams (kuvi) are the admiration of all the surrounding districts. He spoke also about future Kula arrangements, expeditions to arrive from the East in Kiriwina, and of his own planned movements.

On the afternoon of the same day, people from other villages began to assemble, partly to hear the news of the chief’s expedition, partly in order to find out what they could obtain themselves from him. Headmen from all the dependent villages sat in one group round the chief, who now had moved to the official reception ground, in front of his lisiga. Their followers, in company with the chief’s henchmen, and other inhabitants of Omarakana, squatted all over the baku (central place), engaged in conversation. The talk in each group was of the same subjects, and did not differ much from the conversation, I had heard from the chief on his arrival. The newly acquired armshells were handed round, admired, named, and the manner of their acquisition described.

Next day, several soulava (spondylus shell necklaces) were brought to Omarakana by the various men from neighbouring villages to the West, and ceremonially offered to To’uluwa (see Plates LXI, LXII, and Frontispiece). This was, in each case a vaga (opening gift), for which the giver expected to receive his yotile (clinching gift) at once from the store of mwali. In this case we see the influence of chieftainship in the relation between Kula partners. In the inland Kula of Kiriwina, all gifts would be brought to To’uluwa, and he would never have to fetch or carry his presents. Moreover, he would always be given and never give the opening gift (vaga); while his gift would invariably be a yotile. So that the chief sometimes owes a Kula gift to a commoner, but a commoner never owes a gift to a chief. The difference between the rules of procedure here and those of an uvalaku overseas expedition is clear: in a competitive overseas expedition, valuables for exchange are never carried by the visiting party, who only receive gifts and bring them back home; in the inland Kula, the determining factor is the relative social position of the two partners. Gifts are brought to the man of superior by the man of inferior rank, and the latter has also to initiate the exchange.

The following entry is quoted literally from my notes, made in Omarakana, on November the 13th, 1915. “This morning, the headman of Wagaluma brought a bagido’u (fine necklace). At the entrance to the village (it is Omarakana), they (the party) halted, blew the conch shell, put themselves in order. Then, the conch shell blower went ahead, the men of highest rank took the stick with the bagido’u, a boy carrying the heavy wooden bell pendant on a kaboma (wooden dish).” This requires a commentary. The ceremonial way of carrying the spondylus shell necklaces is by attaching each end to a stick, so that the necklace hangs down with the pendant at its lowest point (see Frontispiece and Pl. LXI and LXII). In the case of very long and fine necklaces, in which the pendant is accordingly big and heavy, while the actual necklace is thin and fragile, the pendant has to be taken off and carried apart. Resuming the narrative:—“The headman approached To’uluwa and said: ‘Agukuleya, ikanawo; lagayla lamaye; yoku kayne gala mwali.’ This he said in thrusting the stick into the thatch of the chief’s house.” The words literally mean: ‘My kuleya (food left over), take it; I brought it to-day; have you perhaps no armshells?’ The expression ‘food left over,’ applied to the gift was a depreciating term, meaning something which is an overflow or unwanted scrap. Thus he was ironically depreciating his gift, and at the same time implying that much wealth still remained in his possession. By this, in an oblique manner, he bragged about his own riches, and with the last phrase, expressing doubt as to whether To’uluwa had any armshells, he threw a taunt at the chief. This time the gift was returned immediately by a fine pair of armshells.

It was in connection with the same expedition that the little exchange between two of the chief’s wives took place, mentioned before (in Chapter XI, Division II, under 4) and one or two more domestic Kula acts were performed, a son of To’uluwa offering him a necklace (see Plates LXI and LXII) and receiving a pair of armshells afterwards. Many more transactions took place in those two days or so; sounds of conch shells were heard on all sides as they were blown first in the village from which the men started, then on the way, then at the entrance to Omarakana, and finally at the moment of giving. Again, after some time another blast announced the return gift by To’uluwa, and the receding sounds of the conch marked the stages of the going home of the party. To’uluwa himself never receives a gift with his own hands; it is always hung up in his house or platform, and then somebody of his household takes charge of it; but the commoner receives the armshell himself from the hands of the chief. There was much life and movement in the village during this time of concentrated exchange; parties came and went with vaygu’a, others arrived as mere spectators, and the place was always full of a gazing crowd. The soft sounds of the conch shell, so characteristic of all South Sea experiences, gave a special flavour to the festive and ceremonial atmosphere of those days.

Not all the armshells brought from Kitava were thus at once given away. Some of them were kept for the purposes of more distant Kula; or to be given on some future, special occasion when a present had to be handed over in association with some ceremony. In the inland Kula, there is always an outbreak of transactions whenever a big quantity of valuables is imported into the district. And afterwards, sporadic transactions happen now and then. For the minor partners who had received armshells from To’uluwa would not all of them keep them for any length of time, but part of them would be sooner or later passed on in inland transactions. But, however these valuables might spread over the district, they would be always available when an expedition from another Kula community would come and claim them. When the party from Sinaketa came in March, 1918, to Omarakana, all those who owned armshells would either come to the capital or else be visited in their villages by their Sinaketan partners. Of the 154 or so armshells obtained in Kiriwina on that occasion, only thirty came from To’uluwa himself, and fifty from Omarakana altogether, while the rest were given from other villages, in the following proportions:

Thus the inner Kula does not affect the flow of the main stream, and, however, the valuables might change hands within the ‘Kula community,’ it matters little for the outside flow.

It will be necessary to give a more detailed account of the actual conditions obtaining in Boyowa with regard to the limits of the various Kula communities in that district. Looking at Map IV, p. 50, we see there the boundaries of Kiriwina, which is the easternmost Kula community in the Northern part of the islands. To the west of it the provinces of Tilataula, Kuboma, and Kulumata form another Kula community, or, it would be more correct to say, some of the men in these districts make the inland Kula with members of neighbouring communities. But these three provinces do not form as a whole a Kula community. In the first place, many villages are quite outside the Kula, that is, not even their headmen belong to the inter-tribal exchange. Remarkably enough, all the big industrial centres, such as Bwoytalu, Luya, Yalaka, Kadukwaykela, Buduwaylaka, do not take part in the Kula. An interesting myth localised in Yalaka tells how the inhabitants of that village, prevented by custom from seeing the world on Kula expeditions, attempted to erect a high pillar reaching to heaven, so as to find a field for their adventures in the skies. Unfortunately, it fell down, and only one man remained above, who is now responsible for thunder and lightning.

Another important omission in the Kula is that of the Northern villages of Laba’i, Kaybola, Lu’ebila, Idaleaka, Kapwani and Yuwada. If we remember that Laba’i is the very centre of Kiriwinian mythology, that there lies the very hole out of which the original ancestors of the four clans emerged from underground, that the highest chiefs of Kiriwina trace their descent from Laba’i, this omission appears all the more remarkable and mysterious.

Thus the whole Western half of the Northern Trobriands forms a unit of sorts in the chain of Kula communities, but it cannot be considered as a fully fledged one, for only sporadic individuals belong to it, and again, that district as a whole, or even individual canoes from it, never take part in any overseas Kula expedition. The village of Kavataria makes big overseas sailings to the Western d’Entrecasteaux Islands. Though these expeditions really have nothing to do with the Kula we shall say a few words about this in the next chapter but one.

Passing now to the West, we find the island of Kayleula, which, together with two or three smaller islands, to its South, Kuyawa, Manuwata, and Nubiyam, form a ‘Kula community’ of its own. This community is again slightly anomalous, for they make Kula only on a small scale, on the one hand with the chiefs and headmen of Kiriwina, and of the North-Western district of Boyowa, and on the other hand with the Amphletts, but never with Dobu. They also used to make long and perilous trips to the Western d’Entrecasteaux, sailing further West and for longer distances than the natives of Kavataria.

The main Kula communities in the South of Boyowa, Sinaketa and Vakuta, have been described already, and sufficiently defined in the previous chapters. Sinaketa is the centre for inland Kula of the South, which, though on a smaller scale than the inland Kula of the North, still unites half-a-dozen villages round Sinaketa. That village also carries on Kula with three coastal villages in the East, Okayaulo, Bwaga, and Kumilabwaga, who link it up with Kitava, to where they make journeys from time to time. These villages form again the sort of imperfect ‘Kula community,’ or perhaps one on a very small scale, for they would never have an uvalaku of their own, and the amount of transactions which pass through them is very small. Another such small community, independent as regards Kula, is the village of Wawela. The district of Luba, which sometimes joins with Kiriwina in carrying on a big expedition, also sometimes joins with Wawela on small expeditions. Such nondescript or intermediate phenomena of transition are always to be found in studying the life of native races, where most social rules have not got the same precision as with us. There is among them neither any strong, psychological tendency to consistent thinking, nor are the local peculiarities and exceptions rubbed off by the influence of example or competition.

I cannot say very much about the inland Kula in other regions besides the Trobriands. I have seen it done in Woodlark Island, at the very beginning of my work among the Northern Massim, and that was the first time that I came across any of the symptoms of the Kula. Early in 1915, in the village of Dikoyas, I heard conch shells blown, there was a general commotion in the village, and I saw the presentation of a large bagido’u. I, of course, inquired about the meaning of the custom, and was told that this is one of the exchanges of presents made when visiting friends. At that time I had no inkling that I had been a witness of a detailed manifestation, of what I subsequently found out was Kula. On the whole, however, I have been told by natives from Kitava and Gawa, later on whilst working in the Trobriands, that the customs of Kula exchange there are identical with those obtaining in Kiriwina. And the same I was told is the case in Dobu. It must be realised, however, that the inland Kula must be somewhat different in a community where, as in Kitava, for instance, the strands of the Kula all come together in a small space, and the stream of valuables, which has been flowing through the broad area of the Trobriands, there concentrates into three small villages. If we estimate the inhabitants of the Trobriands with Vakuta at up to ten thousand, while those of Kitava at no more than five hundred, there will be about twenty times as many valuables per head of inhabitants in Kitava as compared to the Trobriands.

Another such place of concentration is the island of Tubetube, and I think one or two places in Woodlark Island, where the village of Yanabwa is said to be an independent link in the chain, through which every article has to pass. But this brings us already to the Eastern Kula, which will form the subject of the next chapter.