Bronislaw Malinowski

“Tomakam got a new waga. He blew the conch shell and went to the Koya. He spoke to his mother” (that is, before leaving), “ ‘My mother, you remain, I shall sail. One conch shell you hear, it will be a conch shell of a necklace.’ ” (That is, it will be a sign that he has been successful in getting a good Kula necklace). “ ‘The second conch shell will be the conch shell of the dead man; the sign that I have already carried out my revenge. I shall sail, I shall anchor, I shall sleep. The second day I shall sail, I shall anchor, I shall sleep. The third day I shall anchor in a village, having already arrived in the Mountain. The fourth day I shall give pari, the Kinana (the Southern foreigner) will come, I shall hit him. The fifth day I shall return. I shall sail fast, till night grows on the sea. The next day I shall anchor at Burakwa. You hear the conch shell, you sleep in the house, arise. One blow you hear of the shell—the blow of the bagi (necklace). Two blows you hear, the blow of the dead man! Then the men of Burakwa will say: ‘Two conch shells, two necklaces,’ then, you come out of the house, you speak: ‘Men of Burakwa, from one side of the village and from the other; indeed you mocked my son, Tomakam. Your speech was—go, carry out thy vendetta in Gabu. The first conch shell is that of the necklace, the second conch shell is that of the dead man. I have spoken!’ ” (Here ends the speech of Tomakam to his mother.)

“He anchored in the village in the Koya. He told his younger brother: ‘Go, tell the Kinana men these words: Your friend has a sore leg, well, if we together go to the canoe he will give the pari!’ The younger brother went and spoke those words to the headman of the Kinana: ‘Some green coco-nuts, some betel-nut, some pig, bring this to us and we shall give you pari. Your arm-shells, your big stone blade, your boar’s tusk, your whale-bone spatula await you in the canoe. The message for you is that your friend has a sore leg and cannot walk.’ Says the Kinana man: ‘Well, let us go!’ ”

“He caught a pig, he collected betel-nut, sugar cane, bananas, necklaces, betel-pod, he said: ‘Well, let us go together to the canoe.’ Pu’u he gives the necklace; pu’u, the pig; then he gave the coco-nut, the betel-nut, the sugar cane, the bananas. Tomakam lay on one side; his leg he wrapped up in a white, soft pandanus mat. Before he had spoken to his younger brother”: (i.e., he gave him this instruction also, when he sent him to meet the people of Gabu): “ ‘You all come with the Kinana man. Do not remain in the village.’ Then” (after the first gifts were exchanged) “the Kinana man stood up in the canoe. His betel-pod fell down. Spoke Tomakam, addressing the Kinana man: ‘My friend, pick up the betel-pod. It fell and went down into the canoe.’ The Kinana man bent down, he took the betel-pod. Tomakam saw that the Kinana bent down, he took an axe, and sitting he made a stroke at him. He cut off his neck. Then Tomakam took the head, threw the body into the sea. The head he stuck on a stick of his canoe. They sailed, they arrived in their village. He caught a pig, prepared a taro pudding, cut sugar cane, they had a big feast, he invented this song.”

Such was the story told me by the chief of Omarakana about the song and dance of Gumagabu, which at that time they were singing and performing in his village. I have adduced it in full, in an almost literal translation from the native text, in order to show it side by side with the song. The narrative thus reproduced shows characteristic gaps, and it does not cover even the incidents of the song.

The following is a free translation of the song, which, in its original native text, is very condensed and impressionistic. A word or two indicates rather than describes whole scenes and incidents, and the traditional commentary, handed on in a native community side by side with the song, is necessary for a full understanding.

The Gumagabu Song

I

The stranger of Gumagabu sits on the top of the mountain.

‘Go on top of the mountain, the towering mountain ….’

——They cry for Toraya …——

The stranger of Gumagabu sits on the slope of the mountain.

——The fringe of small clouds lifts above Boyowa;

The mother cries for Toraya——

‘I shall take my revenge.’

The mother cries for Toraya.

II

Our mother, Dibwaruna, dreams on the mat.

She dreams about the killing.

‘Revenge the wailing;

Anchor; hit the Gabu strangers!’

——The stranger comes out;

The chief gives him the pari;

‘I shall give you the doga;

Bring me things from the mountain to the canoe!’

III

We exchange our vaygu’a;

The rumour of my arrival spreads through the Koya

We talk and talk.

He bends and is killed.

His companions run away;

His body is thrown into the sea;

The companions of the Kinana run away,

We sail home.

IV

Next day, the sea foams up,

The chief’s canoe stops on the reef;

The storm approaches;

The chief is afraid of drowning.

The conch shell is blown:

It sounds in the mountain.

They all weep on the reef.

V

They paddle in the chief’s canoe;

They circle round the point of Bewara.

‘I have hung my basket.

I have met him.’

So cries the chief,

So cries repeatedly the chief.

VI

Women in festive decoration

Walk on the beach.

Nawaruva puts on her turtle rings;

She puts on her luluga’u skirt.

In the village of my fathers, in Burakwa,

There is plenty of food;

Plenty is brought in for distribution.

The character of this song is extremely elliptic, one might even say futuristic, since several scenes are crowded simultaneously into the picture. In the first strophe we see the Kinana, by which word all the tribesmen from the d’Entrecasteaux Archipelago are designated in Boyowa, on the top of his Mountain in Gabu. Immediately afterwards, we are informed of the intentions of Tomakam to ascend the mountain, while the women cry for Toraya, for the slain chief—probably his kinswomen and widows. The next picture again spans over the wide seas, and on the one shore we see the Gabuan sitting on the slopes of his hill and far away on the other, under the fringe of small clouds lifting above Boyowa, the mother cries for her son, the murdered chief. Tomakam takes a resolve, ‘I shall take my revenge,’ hearing her cry.

In the second strophe, the mother dreams about the expedition; the words about revenge to be taken on the Gabu men and the directions to anchor and hit him are probably taken from her dream. Then suddenly we are transported right across to the mountain, the expedition having arrived there already. The strangers, the Kinana are coming down to the canoe, and we assist at the words spoken between them and the people of Buakwa.

Then in the third strophe, we arrive at the culminating scene of the drama; even here, however, the hero, who is also his own bard, could not help introducing a few boastful words about his renown resounding in the Koya. In a few words the tragedy is described: the Kinana bends down, is killed, and his body is thrown into the water. About his head we hear nothing in this verse.

In the next one, a storm overtakes the returning party. Signals of distress are re-echoed by the mountain, and like Homeric heroes, our party are not ashamed to weep in fear and anguish. Somehow they escape, however, and in the next verse, they are already near their village and Tomakam, their leader, bursts into a pÆan of triumph. It is not quite clear what the allusion to the basket means, whether he keeps there his Kula trophies or the slain enemy’s head; this latter, in contradiction to what we heard in the prose story of its being impaled. The song ends with a description of a feast. The woman mentioned there is Tomakam’s daughter, who puts on festive attire in order to welcome her father.

Comparing now the song with the story, we see that they do not quite tally. In the story, there is the dramatic interest of the mother’s intervention. We gather from it that Tomakam, goaded by the aspersions of his fellow-villagers, wishes to make his return as effective as possible. He arranges the signals of the two conch shell blasts with his mother, and asks her to harangue the people at the moment of his return. All this finds no expression in the song. The ruse of the chief’s sore leg is also omitted from there, which, however, does not mean that the hero was ashamed of it. On the other hand, the storm described in the song is omitted from the story, and there is a discrepancy about the head of the Gabu man, and we do not know whether it really is conveyed in a basket as the song has it or impaled, as the story relates!

I have adduced in detail the story and the song, because they are a good illustration of the native’s attitude towards the dangers, and towards the heroic romance of the Koya. They are also interesting as documents, showing which salient points would strike the natives’ imagination in such a dramatic occurrence. Both in the story and in the song, we find emphasised the motives of social duty, of satisfied self-regard and ambition; again, the dangers on the reef, the subterfuge in killing, finally the festivities on return home. Much that would interest us in the whole story is omitted, as anyone can see for himself.

Other stories, though not made illustrious through being set into a song, are told about the Koya. I met myself an old man in the island of Vakuta, who, as a boy, had been captured with a whole party by a village community of Dobu-speaking people on Normanby Island. The men and another small boy of the party were killed and eaten, but some women took pity on him, and he was spared, to be brought up amongst them. There is another man, either alive or recently dead in Kavataria, who had a similar experience in Fergusson Island. Another man called Kaypoyla, from the small island of Kuyawa in the Western Trobriands, was stranded with his crew somewhere in the West of Fergusson Island, but not in the district where they used to trade. His companions were killed and eaten. He was taken alive and kept to fatten for a proximate feast. His host, or rather the host of the feast in which he was going to furnish the piÈce de rÉsistence, was away inland, to invite the guests, while the host’s wife went for a moment behind the house, sweeping the ground. Kaypoyla jumped up and ran to the shore. Being chased by some other men from the settlement, he concealed himself in the branches of a big tree standing on the beach, and was not found by his pursuers. At night he came down, took a canoe or a raft, and paddled along the coast. He used to sleep on shore during the night, and paddle on in day time. One night he slept among some sago-palms, and, awakening in the morning, found himself, to his terror, surrounded by Kinana men. What was his joyful surprise after all, when he recognised among them his friend and Kula partner, with whom he always used to trade! After some time, he was sent back home in his partner’s canoe.

Many such stories have a wide currency, and they supply one of the heroic elements in tribal life, an element which now, with the establishment of white man’s influence, has vanished. Yet even now the gloomy shores which our party are leaving to the right, the tall jungle, the deep valleys, the hill-tops darkened with trailing clouds, all this is a dim mysterious background, adding to the awe and solemnity of the Kula, though not entering into it. The sphere of activities of our traders lies at the foot of the high mountains, there, where a chain of rocks and islands lies scattered along the coast. Some of them are passed immediately after leaving Gumasila. Then, after a good distance, a small rock, called Gurewaya, is met, remarkable for the taboos associated with it. Close behind it, two islands, Tewara and Uwama, are separated by a narrow passage, the mythical straits of Kadimwatu. There is a village on the first-mentioned, and the natives of this make gardens on both islands. The village is not very big; it may have some sixty to eighty inhabitants, as it can man three canoes for the Kula. It has no commercial or industrial importance, but is notable because of its mythological associations. This island is the home of the mythological hero, Kasabwaybwayreta, whose story is one of the most important legends of the Kula. Here indeed, in Tewara, we are right within the mythological heart of the Kula. In fact, we entered its legendary area with the moment the Sinaketan fleet sailed out of the Lagoon into the deep waters of Pilolu.

Once more we must pause, this time in an attempt to grasp the natives’ mental attitude towards the mythological aspect of the Kula. Right through this account it has been our constant endeavour to realise the vision of the world, as it is reflected in the minds of the natives. The frequent references to the scenery have not been given only to enliven the narrative, or even to enable the reader to visualise the setting of the native customs. I have attempted to show how the scene of his actions appears actually to the native, to describe his impressions and feelings with regard to it, as I was able to read them in his folk-lore, in his conversations at home, and in his behaviour when passing through this scenery itself.

Here we must try to reconstruct the influence of myth upon this vast landscape, as it colours it, gives it meaning, and transforms it into something live and familiar. What was a mere rock, now becomes a personality; what was a speck on the horizon becomes a beacon, hallowed by romantic associations with heroes; a meaningless configuration of landscape acquires a significance, obscure no doubt, but full of intense emotion. Sailing with natives, especially with novices to the Kula, I often observed how deep was their interest in sections of landscape impregnated with legendary meaning, how the elder ones would point and explain, the younger would gaze and wonder, while the talk was full of mythological names. It is the addition of the human interest to the natural features, possessing in themselves less power of appealing to a native man than to us, which makes the difference for him in looking at the scenery. A stone hurled by one of the heroes into the sea after an escaping canoe; a sea passage broken between two islands by a magical canoe; here two people turned into rock; there a petrified waga—all this makes the landscape represent a continuous story or else the culminating dramatic incident of a familiar legend. This power of transforming the landscape, the visible environment, is one only of the many influences which myth exercises upon the general outlook of the natives. Although here we are studying myth only in its connection with the Kula, even within these narrow limits some of its broader connections will be apparent, notably its influence upon sociology, magic and ceremonial.

The question which presents itself first, in trying to grasp the native outlook on the subject is: what is myth to the natives? How do they conceive and define it? Have they any line of demarcation between the mythical and the actual reality, and if so, how do they draw this line?

Their folk-lore, that is, the verbal tradition, the store of tales, legends, and texts handed on by previous generations, is composed of the following classes: first of all, there is what the natives call libogwo, ‘old talk,’ but which we would call tradition; secondly, kukwanebu, fairy tales, recited for amusement, at definite seasons, and relating avowedly untrue events; thirdly, wosi, the various songs, and vinavina, ditties, chanted at play or under other special circumstances; and last, not least, megwa or yopa, the magical spells. All these classes are strictly distinguished from one another by name, function, social setting, and by certain formal characteristics. This brief outline of the Boyowan folk-lore in general must suffice here, as we cannot enter into more details, and the only class which interests us in the present connection is the first one, that called libogwo.

This, the ‘old talk,’ the body of ancient tradition, believed to be true, consists on the one hand of historical tales, such as the deeds of past chiefs, exploits in the Koya, stories of shipwreck, etc. On the other hand, the libogwo class also contains what the natives call lili’u—myths, narratives, deeply believed by them, held by them in reverence, and exercising an active influence on their conduct and tribal life. Now the natives distinguish definitely between myth and historic account, but this distinction is difficult to formulate, and cannot be stated but in a somewhat deliberate manner.

First of all, it must be borne in mind, that a native would not trouble spontaneously to analyse such distinctions and to put them into words. If an Ethnographer succeeded in making the problem clear to an intelligent informant (and I have tried and succeeded in doing this) the native would simply state:

“We all know that the stories about Tudava, about Kudayuri, about Tokosikuna, are lili’u; our fathers, our kadada (our maternal uncles) told us so; and we always hear these tales; we know them well; we know that there are no other tales besides them, which are lili’u. Thus, whenever we hear a story, we know whether it is a lili’u or not.”

Indeed, whenever a story is told, any native, even a boy, would be able to say whether this is one of his tribal lili’u or not. For the other tales, that is the historical ones, they have no special word, but they would describe the events as happening among ‘humans like ourselves.’ Thus tradition, from which the store of tales is received, hands them on labelled as lili’u, and the definition of a lili’u, is that it is a story transmitted with such a label. And even this definition is contained by the facts themselves, and not explicitly stated by the natives in their current stock of expressions.

For us, however, even this is not sufficient, and we have to search further, in order to see whether we cannot find other indices, other characteristic features which differentiate the world of mythical events from that of real ones. A reflection which would naturally present itself would be this: “Surely the natives place their myths in ancient, pre-historic times, while they put historical events into recent ages?” There is some truth in this, in so far as most of the historical events related by the natives are quite recent, have occurred within the community where they are told and can be directly connected with people and conditions existing at present, by memory of living man, by genealogies or other records. On the other hand, when historical events are told from other districts, and cannot be directly linked with the present, it would be erroneous to imagine that the natives place them into a definite compartment of time different from that of the myth. For it must be realised that these natives do not conceive of a past as of a lengthy duration, unrolling itself in successive stages of time. They have no idea of a long vista of historical occurrences, narrowing down and dimming as they recede towards a distant background of legend and myth, which stands out as something entirely different from the nearer planes. This view, so characteristic of the naive, historical thinking among ourselves, is entirely foreign to the natives. Whenever they speak of some event of the past, they distinguish whether it happened within their own memory or that of their fathers’ or not. But, once beyond this line of demarcation, all the past events are placed by them on one plane, and there are no gradations of ‘long ago’ and ‘very long ago.’ Any idea of epochs in time is absent from their mind; the past is one vast storehouse of events, and the line of demarcation between myth and history does not coincide with any division into definite and distinct periods of time. Indeed, I have found very often that when they told me some story of the past, for me obviously mythological, they would deem it necessary to emphasise that this did not happen in their fathers’ time or in their grand-fathers’ time, but long ago, and that it is a lili’u.

Again, they have no idea of what could be called the evolution of the world or the evolution of society; that is, they do not look back towards a series of successive changes, which happened in nature or in humanity, as we do. We, in our religious and scientific outlook alike, know that earth ages and that humanity ages, and we think of both in these terms; for them, both are eternally the same, eternally youthful. Thus, in judging the remoteness of traditional events, they cannot use the co-ordinates of a social setting constantly in change and divided into epochs. To give a concrete example, in the myths of Torosipupu and Tolikalaki, we saw them having the same interest and concerns, engaged in the same type of fishing, using the same means of locomotion as the present natives do. The mythical personages of the natives’ legends, as we shall presently see, live in the same houses, eat the same food, handle the same weapons and implements as those in use at present. Whereas in any of our historical stories, legends or myths, we have a whole set of changed cultural conditions, which allow us to co-ordinate any event with a certain epoch, and which make us feel that a distant historical event, and still more, a mythological one, is happening in a setting of cultural conditions entirely different from those in which we are living now. In the very telling of the stories of, let us say, Joan of Arc, Solomon, Achilles, King Arthur, we have to mention all sorts of things and conditions long since disappeared from among us, which make even a superficial and an uneducated listener realise that it is a story of a remote and different past.

I have said just now that the mythical personages in the Trobriand tradition are living the same type of life, under the same social and cultural conditions as the present natives. This needs one qualification, and in this we shall find a very remarkable criterion for a distinction between what is legendary and what is historical: in the mythical world, although surrounding conditions were similar, all sorts of events happened which do not happen nowadays, and people were endowed with powers such as present men and their historical ancestors do not possess. In mythical times, human beings come out of the ground, they change into animals, and these become people again; men and women rejuvenate and slough their skins; flying canoes speed through the air, and things are transformed into stone.

Now this line of demarcation between the world of myth and that of actual reality—the simple difference that in the former things happen which never occur nowadays—is undoubtedly felt and realised by the natives, though they themselves could not put it into words. They know quite well that to-day no one emerges from underground; that people do not change into animals, and vice versa; nor do they give birth to them; that present-day canoes do not fly. I had the opportunity of grasping their mental attitude towards such things by the following occurrence. The Fijian missionary teacher in Omarakana was telling them about white man’s flying machines. They inquired from me, whether this was true, and when I corroborated the Fijian’s report and showed them pictures of aeroplanes in an illustrated paper, they asked me whether this happened nowadays or whether it were a lili’u. This circumstance made it clear to me then, that the natives would have a tendency, when meeting with an extraordinary and to them supernatural event, either to discard it as untrue, or relegate it into the regions of the lili’u. This does not mean, however, that the untrue and the mythical are the same or even similar to them. Certain stories told to them, they insist on treating as sasopa (lies), and maintain that they are not lili’u. For instance, those opposed to missionary teaching will not accept the view that Biblical stories told to them are a lili’u, but they reject them as sasopa. Many a time did I hear such a conservative native arguing thus:—

“Our stories about Tudava are true; this is a lili’u. If you go to Laba’i you can see the cave in which Tudava was born, you can see the beach where he played as a boy. You can see his footmark in a stone at a place in the Raybwag. But where are the traces of Yesu Keriso? Who ever saw any signs of the tales told by the misinari? Indeed they are not lili’u.”

To sum up, the distinction between the lili’u and actual or historical reality is drawn firmly, and there is a definite cleavage between the two. Prima facie, this distinction is based on the fact that all myth is labelled as such and known to be such to all natives. A further distinctive mark of the world of lili’u lies in the super-normal, supernatural character of certain events which happen in it. The supernatural is believed to be true, and this truth is sanctioned by tradition, and by the various signs and traces left behind by mythical events, more especially by the magical powers handed on by the ancestors who lived in times of lili’u. This magical inheritance is no doubt the most palpable link between the present and the mythical past. But this past must not be imagined to form a pre-historic, very distant background, something which preceded a long evolution of mankind. It is rather the past, but extremely near reality, very much alive and true to the natives.

As I have just said, there is one point on which the cleavage between myth and present reality, however deep, is bridged over in native ideas. The extraordinary powers which men possess in myths are mostly due to their knowledge of magic. This knowledge is, in many cases, lost, and therefore the powers of doing these marvellous things are either completely gone, or else considerably reduced. If the magic could be recovered, men would fly again in their canoes, they could rejuvenate, defy ogres, and perform the many heroic deeds which they did in ancient times. Thus, magic, and the powers conferred by it, are really the link between mythical tradition and the present day. Myth has crystallised into magical formulÆ, and magic in its turn bears testimony to the authenticity of myth. Often the main function of myth is to serve as a foundation for a system of magic, and, wherever magic forms the backbone of an institution, a myth is also to be found at the base of it. In this perhaps, lies the greatest sociological importance of myth, that is, in its action upon institutions through the associated magic. The sociological point of view and the idea of the natives coincide here in a remarkable manner. In this book we see this exemplified in one concrete case, in that of the relation between the mythology, the magic, and the social institution of the Kula.

Thus we can define myth as a narrative of events which are to the native supernatural, in this sense, that he knows well that to-day they do not happen. At the same time he believes deeply that they did happen then. The socially sanctioned narratives of these events; the traces which they left on the surface of the earth; the magic in which they left behind part of their supernatural powers, the social institutions which are associated with the practice of this magic—all this brings about the fact that a myth is for the native a living actuality, though it has happened long ago and in an order of things when people were endowed with supernatural powers.

I have said before that the natives do not possess any historical perspective, that they do not range events—except of course, those of the most recent decades—into any successive stages. They also do not classify their myths into any divisions with regard to their antiquity. But in looking at their myths, it becomes at once obvious that they represent events, some of which must have happened prior to others. For there is a group of stories describing the origin of humanity, the emerging of the various social units from underground. Another group of mythical tales gives accounts of how certain important institutions were introduced and how certain customs crystallised. Again, there are myths referring to small changes in culture, or to the introduction of new details and minor customs. Broadly speaking, the mythical folk-lore of the Trobrianders can be divided into three groups referring to three different strata of events. In order to give a general idea of Trobriand mythology, it will be good to give a short characterisation of each of these groups.

1. The Oldest Myths, referring to the origin of human beings; to the sociology of the sub-clans and villages; to the establishment of permanent relations between this world and the next. These myths describe events which took place just at the moment when the earth began to be peopled from underneath. Humanity existed, somewhere underground, since people emerged from there on the surface of Boyowa, in full decoration, equipped with magic, belonging to social divisions, and obeying definite laws and customs. But beyond this we know nothing about what they did underground. There is, however, a series of myths, of which one is attached to every one of the more important sub-clans, about various ancestors coming out of the ground, and almost at once, doing some important deed, which gives a definite character to the sub-clan. Certain mythological versions about the nether world belong also to this series.

2. Kultur-myths.—Here belong stories about ogres and their conquerors; about human beings who established definite customs and cultural features; about the origin of certain institutions. These myths are different from the foregoing ones, in so far as they refer to a time when humanity was already established on the surface of the earth, and when all the social divisions had already assumed a definite character. The main cycle of myths which belong here, are those of a culture hero, Tudava, who slays an ogre and thus allows people to live in Boyowa again, whence they all had fled in fear of being eaten. A story about the origins of cannibalism belongs here also, and about the origin of garden making.

3. Myths in which figure only ordinary human beings, though endowed with extraordinary magical powers. These myths are distinguished from the foregoing ones, by the fact that no ogres or non-human persons figure in them, and that they refer to the origin, not of whole aspects of culture, such as cannibalism or garden-making, but to definite institutions or definite forms of magic. Here comes the myth about the origins of sorcery, the myth about the origins of love magic, the myth of the flying canoe, and finally the several Kula myths. The line of division between these three categories is, of course, not a rigid one, and many a myth could be placed in two or even three of these classes, according to its several features or episodes. But each myth contains as a rule one main subject, and if we take only this, there is hardly ever the slightest doubt as to where it should be placed.

A point which might appear contradictory in superficial reading is that before, we stressed the fact that the natives had no idea of change, yet here we spoke of myths about ‘origins’ of institutions. It is important to realise that, though natives do speak about times when humanity was not upon the earth, of times when there were no gardens, etc., yet all these things arrive ready-made; they do not change or evolve. The first people, who came from underground, came up adorned with the same trinkets, carrying their lime-pot and chewing their betel-nut. The event, the emergence from the earth was mythical, that is, such as does not happen now; but the human beings and the country which received them were such as exist to-day.

The myths of the Kula are scattered along a section of the present Kula circuit. Beginning with a place in Eastern Woodlark Island, the village of Wamwara, the mythological centres are spread round almost in a semi-circle, right down to the island of Tewara, Where we have left for the present our party from Sinaketa.

In Wamwara there lived an individual called Gere’u, who, according to one myth, was the originator of the Kula. In the island of Digumenu, West of Woodlark Island, Tokosikuna, another hero of the Kula, had his early home, though he finished his career in Gumasila, in the Amphletts. Kitava, the westernmost of the Marshall Bennetts, is the centre of canoe magic associated with the Kula. It is also the home of Monikiniki, whose name figures in many formulÆ of the Kula magic, though there is no explicit myth about him, except that he was the first man to practice an important system of mwasila (Kula magic), probably the most widespread system of the present day. Further West, in Wawela, we are at the other end of the Kasabwaybwayreta myth, which starts in Tewara, and goes over to Wawela in its narrative of events, to return to Tewara again. This mythological narrative touches the island of Boyowa at its southernmost point, the passage Giribwa, which divides it from Vakuta. Almost all myths have one of their incidents laid in a small island between Vakuta and the Amphletts, called Gabuwana. One of the myths leads us to the Amphletts, that of Tokosikuna; another has its beginning and end in Tewara. Such is the geography of the Kula myths on the big sector between Murua and Dobu.

Although I do not know the other half through investigations made on the spot, I have spoken with natives from those districts, and I think that there are no myths localised anywhere on the sector Murua (Woodlark Island), Tubetube, and Dobu. What I am quite certain of, however, is that the whole of the Trobriands, except the two points mentioned before, lie outside the mythological area of the Kula. No Kula stories, associated with any village in the Northern half of Boyowa exist, nor does any of the mythical heroes of the other stories ever come to the Northern or Western provinces of the Trobriands. Such extremely important centres as Sinaketa and Omarakana are never mentioned. This would point, on the surface of it, to the fact that in olden days, the island of Boyowa, except its Southern end and the Eastern settlement of Wawela, either did not enter at all or did not play an important part in the Kula.

I shall give a somewhat abbreviated account of the various stories, and then adduce in extenso the one last mentioned, perhaps the most noteworthy of all the Kula myths, that of Kasabwaybwayreta, as well as the very important canoe myth, that of the flying waga of Kudayuri.

The Muruan myth, which I obtained only in a very bald outline, is localised in the village of Wamwara, at the Eastern end of the island. A man called Gere’u, of the Lukuba clan, knew very well the mwasila magic, and wherever he went, all the valuables were given to him, so that all the others returned empty-handed. He went to Gawa and Iwa, and as Soon as he appeared, pu-pu went the conch shells, and everybody gave him the bagi necklaces. He returned to his village, full of glory and of Kula spoils. Then he went to Du’a’u, and obtained again an enormous amount of arm-shells. He settled the direction in which the Kula valuables have to move. Bagi necklaces have ‘to go,’ and the arm-shells ‘to come.’ As this was spoken on Boyowa, ‘go’ meant to travel from Boyowa to Woodlark, ‘come’ to travel from Gere’u’s village to Sinaketa. The culture hero Gere’u was finally killed, through envy of his success in the Kula.

I obtained two versions about the mythological hero, Tokosikuna of Digumenu. In the first of them, he is represented as a complete cripple, without hands and feet, who has to be carried by his two daughters into the canoe. They sail on a Kula expedition through Iwa, Gawa, through the Straits of Giribwa to Gumasila. Then they put him on a platform, where he takes a meal and goes to sleep. They leave him there and go into a garden which they see on a hill above, in order to gather some food. On coming back, they find him dead. On hearing their wailing, an ogre comes out, marries one of them and adopts the other. As he was very ugly, however, the girls killed him in an obscene manner, and then settled in the island. This obviously mutilated and superficial version does not give us many clues to the native ideas about the Kula.

The other version is much more interesting. Tokosikuna, according to it, is also slightly crippled, lame, very ugly, and with a pitted skin; so ugly indeed that he could not marry. Far North, in the mythical land of Kokopawa, they play a flute so beautifully that the chief of Digumenu, the village of Tokosikuna, hears it. He wishes to obtain the flute. Many men set out, but all fail, and they have to return half way, because it is so far. Tokosikuna goes, and, through a mixture of cunning and daring, he succeeds in getting possession of the flute, and in returning safely to Digumenu. There, through magic which one is led to infer he has acquired on his journey, he changes his appearance, becomes young, smooth-skinned and beautiful. The guya’u (chief) who is away in his garden, hears the flute played in his village, and returning there, he sees Tokosikuna sitting on a high platform, playing the flute and looking beautiful. “Well,” he says, “all my daughters, all my granddaughters, my nieces and my sisters, you all marry Tokosikuna! Your husbands, you leave behind! You marry Tokosikuna, for he has brought the flute from the distant land!” So Tokosikuna married all the women.

The other men did not take it very well, of course. They decided to get rid of Tokosikuna by stratagem. They said: “The chief would like to eat giant clam-shell, let us go and fish it.” “And how shall I catch it?” asks Tokosikuna. “You put your head, where the clam-shell gapes open.” (This of course would mean death, as the clam-shell would close, and, if a really big one, would easily cut off his head). Tokosikuna, however, dived and with his two hands, broke a clam-shell open, a deed of super-human strength. The others were angry, and planned another form of revenge. They arranged a shark-fishing, advising Tokosikuna to catch the fish with his hands. But he simply strangled the big shark, and put it into the canoe. Then, he tears asunder a boar’s mouth, bringing them thus to despair. Finally they decide to get rid of him at sea. They try to kill him first by letting the heavy tree, felled for the waga, fall on him. But he supports it with his outstretched arms, and does no harm to himself. At the time of lashing, his companions wrap some wayaugo (lashing creeper) into a soft pandanus leaf; then they persuade him to use pandanus only for the lashing of his canoe, which he does indeed, deceived by seeing them use what apparently is the same. Then they sail, the other men in good, sea-worthy canoes, he in an entirely unseaworthy one, lashed only with the soft, brittle pandanus leaf.

And here begins the real Kula part of the myth. The expedition arrives at Gawa, where Tokosikuna remains with his canoe on the beach, while the other men go to the village to kula. They collect all the smaller armshells of the soulava type, but the big ones, the bagi, remain in the village, for the local men are unwilling to give them. Then Tokosikuna starts for the village after all the others have returned. After a short while, he arrives from the village, carrying all the bagido’u bagidudu, and bagiriku—that is, all the most valuable types of spondylus necklaces. The same happens in Iwa and Kitava. His companions from the other canoes go first and succeed only in collecting the inferior kinds of valuables. He afterwards enters the village, and easily obtains the high grades of necklace, which had been refused to the others. These become very angry; in Kitava, they inspect the lashings of his canoe, and see that they are rotten. “Oh well, to-morrow, Vakuta! The day after, Gumasila,—he will drown in Pilolu.” In Vakuta the same happens as before, and the wrath of his unsuccessful companions increases.

They sail and passing the sandbank of Gabula (this is the Trobriand name for Gabuwana, as the Amphlettans pronounce it) Tokosikuna eases his helm; then, as he tries to bring the canoe up to the wind again, his lashings snap, and the canoe sinks. He swims in the waves, carrying the basket-full of valuables in one arm. He calls out to the other canoes: “Come and take your bagi! I shall get into your waga!” “You married all our women,” they answer, “now, sharks will eat you! We shall go to make Kula in Dobu!” Tokosikuna, however, swims safely to the point called Kamsareta, in the island of Domdom. From there he beholds the rock of Selawaya standing out of the jungle on the eastern slope of Gumasila. “This is a big rock, I shall go and live there,” and turning towards the Digumenu canoes, he utters a curse:

“You will get nothing in Dobu but poor necklaces, soulava of the type of tutumuyuwa and tutuyanabwa. The big bagido’u will stop with me.” He remains in the Amphletts and does not return to Digumenu. And here ends the myth.

I have given an extensive summary of this myth, including its first part, which has nothing to do with the Kula, because it gives a full character sketch of the hero as a daring sailor and adventurer. It shows, how Tokosikuna, after his Northern trip, acquired magic which allowed him to change his ugly and weak frame into a powerful body with a beautiful appearance. The first part also contains the reference to his great success with women, an association between Kula magic and love magic, which as we shall see, is not without importance. In this first part, that is, up to the moment when they start on the Kula, Tokosikuna appears as a hero, endowed with extraordinary powers, due to his knowledge of magic.

In this myth, as we see, no events are related through which the natural appearance of the landscape is changed. Therefore this myth is typical of what I have called the most recent stratum of mythology. This is further confirmed by the circumstance that no allusion is made in it to any origins, not even to the origins of the mwasila magic. For, as the myth is at present told and commented upon, all the men who go on the Kula expedition with our hero, know a system of Kula magic, the mwasila of Monikiniki. Tokosikuna’s superiority rests with his special beauty magic; with his capacity to display enormous strength, and to face with impunity great dangers; with his ability to escape from drowning, finally, with his knowledge of the evil magic, bulubwalata, with which he prevents his companions from doing successful Kula. This last point was contained in a commentary upon this myth, given to me by the man who narrated it. When I speak about the Kula magic more explicitly further on, the reader will see that the four points of superiority just mentioned correspond to the categories into which we have to group the Kula magic, when it is classified according to its leading ideas, according to the goal towards which it aims.

One magic Tokosikuna does not know. We see from the myth that he is ignorant of the nature of the wayugo, the lashing creeper. He is therefore obviously not a canoe-builder, nor acquainted with canoe-building magic. This is the point on which his companions are able to catch him.

Geographically, this myth links Digumenu with the Amphletts, as also did the previous version of the Tokosikuna story. The hero, here as there, settles finally in Gumasila, and the element of migration is contained in both versions. Again, in the last story, Tokosikuna decides to settle in the Amphletts, on seeing the Selawaya rock. If we remember the Gumasilan legend about the origin of Kula magic, it also refers to the same rock. I did not obtain the name of the individual who is believed to have lived on the Selawaya rock, but it obviously is the same myth, only very mutilated in the Gumasilan version.

Moving Westwards from Digumenu, to which the Tokosikuna myth belongs, the next important centre of Kula magic is the island of Kitava. With this place, the magical system of Monikiniki is associated by tradition, though no special story is told about this individual. A very important myth, on the other hand, localised in Kitava, is the one which serves as foundation for canoe magic. I have obtained three independent versions of this myth, and they agree substantially. I shall adduce at length the story as it was told to me by the best informant, and written down in Kiriwinian, and after that, I shall show on what points the other versions vary. I shall not omit from the full account certain tedious repetitions and obviously inessential details, for they are indispensable for imparting to the narrative the characteristic flavour of native folk-lore.

To understand the following account, it is necessary to realise that Kitava is a raised coral island. Its inland part is elevated to a height of about three hundred feet. Behind the flat beach, a steep coral wall rises, and from its summit the land gently falls towards the central declivity. It is in this central part that the villages are situated, and it would be quite impossible to transport a canoe from any village to the beach. Thus, in Kitava, unlike what happens with some of the Lagoon villages of Boyowa, the canoes have to be always dug out and lashed on the beach.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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