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Robert W. Williamson - The Mafulu

R >> Robert W. Williamson >> The Mafulu




The shields (Plate 74, Figs. 2 and 3) are thick, heavy, cumbrous
weapons, made out of the wood used for making wooden dishes. The outer
surfaces are convex, and the inner ones concave, the natural convexity
of the circular trunk of the tree from which they are made being
retained. These shields are 4 1/2 to 5 feet long, and usually about
15 or 16 inches wide in the broadest central part, getting somewhat
narrower towards the two ends, where they are rounded off. Each shield
has two strong cane handles in the centre of its internal concave
side, each of which handles is fixed by means of two pairs of holes
bored through the shield, and of thongs which are passed through
these holes and attached to the ends of the handles. The shields are
carried by passing the left arm through the upper handle downwards,
the left hand holding the lower handle.






CHAPTER XII

Hunting, Fishing and Agriculture


Hunting.

This is engaged in more or less all the year round, especially
as regards wild pigs when wanted for village killing. The animals
chiefly hunted are pigs, kangaroos, wallabies, the "Macgregor bear,"
[84] large snakes, cassowaries and other birds.

The hunting weapons and contrivances used are spears, bows and arrows,
nets and traps; but adzes and clubs are used in connection with
net hunting. The spears are those used for war. The bows and arrows
employed for hunting animals and cassowaries are also the same as
those used for war; but these are not much used. For bird-shooting
(excluding cassowary-shooting) they generally use arrows (Plate 73,
Fig. 5) the points of which are made of four rather fine pieces of
bamboo cane, closely bound together at the place of insertion into
the reed shaft, and also bound together further down, but with a
piece of stick or some other material inserted between them inside
this second binding, so as to keep them a little apart and make them
spread outwards, thus producing a four-pronged point. The arrows vary
in length from 5 to 6 or 7 feet, and their points vary from 4 to 10
inches. The adzes and clubs are the same as those used for war.

The people generally hunt in large parties for pigs (hunted with
either spears or nets), kangaroos and wallabies (hunted with nets
only), and Macgregor bears, cassowaries, and big snakes (hunted with
spears only). The hunters may be members of a single village or of a
whole community. They generally return home on the same day, except
when hunting the Macgregor bear, which is only found on the tops of
high mountains, and so requires a longer expedition. They usually
take out with them large numbers of young boys, who are not armed,
and do not take part in the actual killing, but who, when the party
reaches the hunting ground, spread out in the bush, and so find the
animals. While doing this the boys bark like dogs. Sometimes dogs
are taken instead, but this is unusual, as they have not many dogs.

A preliminary ceremony is performed by a person whose special duty
it is, and who, I think, is usually the pig-killer. He takes a
particular kind of fragrant grass, makes an incantation over it,
rubs it on the noses of the dogs (if there are any), [85] and then
ties it in several portions to the meshes of the net to be used. If
there are dogs, but no net, then, after rubbing the dogs' noses,
he throws the grass away. If there is a net, but no clogs, then,
after making the incantation, he ties the grass on to the net as
above mentioned. This appears to be the only ceremony in connection
with hunting; and there is no food or other taboo associated with it,
but some of the charms worn are intended to give success in hunting.

In spear hunting, when children and not dogs are employed, the children
shout as soon as the animal has been found, and then retreat; and,
when the animal has been found by either children or dogs, the hunting
men attack it with their spears, if possible surrounding it.

In net hunting, which of course can only be adopted in fairly open
spaces, the hunters place their net by means of pole supports in the
form of a crescent, perhaps as much as 50 or 60 yards long, this
length, however, requiring several nets put end to end together,
and 2 or 3 feet high. The net is generally put across the base of a
narrow ravine, or across a narrow ridge, these being the routes along
which the animals usually travel. The children or dogs search for
the animal, as in spear hunting; and when it is found, most of the
hunters place themselves in a crescent-shaped formation behind the
animal, so that it is between them and the net, and then gradually
close in upon it, and so drive it into the net. Behind the net are
other hunters, more or less hidden, who kill the animal with club or
adze when it is caught in the net. They sometimes use spears in the
event of an animal jumping over the net, and so trying to escape;
though in net hunting the spears are more especially carried for
purposes of self-defence in case of an attack by the animal.

There is always an enormous amount of shouting all through the
hunt. When the animal has been caught, they generally kill it then and
there, except as regards pigs required alive for village ceremony,
and which are disabled, but not killed. The huntings, except when
pigs are specially required, are usually general; and when any sort
of animal has been killed the hunters are content. They surround the
beast, and make three loud shouting screams, by which the people of the
village or community know, not only that an animal has been killed,
but also what the animal is. It is then brought home, and eaten by
the whole village, if the hunt be a village hunt, or by the community,
if it be a community hunt.

Individual hunting, in which I include hunts by parties of two or
three, is also common. Solitary hunters are generally only searching
for birds (not cassowaries); but parties of two or three will go after
larger game, such as pigs, cassowaries, etc. Such parties hunt the
larger game with spears, clubs and adzes, and shoot the birds, other
than cassowaries, with bows and arrows. They kill their victims as
they can, and bring them home; and they, and probably some of their
friends, eat them.

Trap hunting is much engaged in by single individuals. A common form
of trap used for pigs is a round hole about 6 feet deep and 2 feet in
diameter, which is dug in the ground anywhere in the usual tracks of
the pigs, and is covered over with rotten wood, upon which grass is
spread; and into this hole the pig falls and cannot get out. The maker
of the hole does not necessarily stay by it, but will visit it from
time to time in the hope of having caught a pig. Small tree-climbing
animals are often caught by a plan based upon the inclination of an
animal, seeing a continuous line, to go along it. A little pathway
of sticks is laid along the ground, commencing near a suitable tree,
and carried up to the base of that tree, and then taken up the trunk,
and along a branch, on which it terminates, the parts upon the tree
being bound to it with cane. At the branch termination of this path
is either a noose trap, made out of a piece of native string tied at
one end to the branch, and having at the other end a running noose in
which the animal is caught, or a very primitive baitless framework
trap, so made that the animal, having once got into it, cannot get
out again. Or instead of a trap, the man will erect a small rough
platform upon the same tree, upon which platform he waits, perhaps
all night, until the animal comes, and then shoots it with his bow
and arrow. Another form of trap for small animals is a sort of alley
along the ground, fenced in on each side by a palisading of sticks,
and having at its end a heavy overhanging piece of wood, supported
by an easily moved piece of stick, which the animal, after passing
along the alley, disturbs, so bringing down the piece of wood on to
the top of it; this trap also has no bait. Large snakes are caught
in nooses attached to the ground or hanging from trees.

Birds of all kinds, except cassowaries, are killed with bows and
arrows. There is also a method of killing certain kinds of birds of
paradise which dance on branches of trees, and certain other kinds
and bower birds, which dance on the ground, [86] by means of nooses
as above described, these being tied to the branch of the tree,
or, in the case of ground nooses, tied to a stick or something in
the ground. The natives know the spots where the birds are dancing,
and place the noose traps there. Another method of killing birds is
adopted on narrow forest-covered ridges of the mountains. An open
space or passage about 2 or 3 yards wide is cut in the bush, across
the ridge; and across this passage are suspended three parallel nets,
the inner or central one being of a close and impassable mesh, and the
two outer ones having a mesh so far open that a bird striking against
it can get through. These nets are made of very fine material, and so
are not easily seen, especially as they are more or less in shade from
the trees on each side of the passage. A bird flying from the valley
on either side towards the ridge is attracted by this open passage,
and flies into and along it; it strikes against one of the more open
outer nets, and gets through it, but is confused and bewildered,
and so is easily stopped by the central close-meshed net, where it
is shot with bow and arrow.


Fishing.

Fishing is carried on by the Mafulu people by means of weirs placed
across streams, the weirs having open sluices with intercepting nets,
and smaller nets being used to catch such fish as escape the big
ones. They do not fish with spears, hooks, or bows and arrows, or
with fishing lines, as is done in Mekeo; and even their weir and net
systems are different from the Mekeo ones. Fishing with them is more
or less communistic, as it is generally engaged in by parties of ten
or twenty men (women do not fish), and sometimes nearly all the men
of a village, or even of a community, join in a fishing expedition;
and everyone in the village or community shares more or less in
the spoil. The fishing season is towards the end of the dry season,
say in October or November, when work in the gardens is over, and the
rivers are low. I cannot give the names of the fishes caught, but was
told that the chief ones are large full-bodied carp-like fish and eels.

The large weir nets are simply ordinary frameless nets about 3 to 5
yards long, and 1 yard wide, with a fairly small mesh. The smaller ones
are hand nets, made in two forms. One of these is made of ordinary fine
netting, and is bag-shaped, being strung on a round looped end of cane,
of which the other end is the handle, the net being about the size of
a good-sized butterfly net. The other form is also framed on a looped
cane; but the loop in this case is larger and more oval in shape,
and the netting is made of the web of a large spider. To make it they
take the already looped cane to where there are a number of such webs,
and twist the looped end round and round among the webs, until there
is stretched across the loop a double or treble or quadruple layer of
web, which, though flat when made, is elastic, and when used becomes
under pressure more or less bag-shaped.

The fishers first make a weir of upright sticks placed close together
among the stones in the river bed, the weir stretching across the
greater part of, or sometimes only half-way across, the river. The
side of the river left open and undammed is filled up with stones
to such a height that the water flowing over it is shallow, and the
fish do not escape across it. In the middle of the weir they leave
an open space or sluice, behind which they fasten the big net. [87]
Plate 76 shows a weir on the Aduala river, a portion of the open sluice
being seen on the left. After forming the weir, but before fixing the
net, the fishers all join in a sort of prayer or invocation to the
river. For example, on the Aduala river they will say, "Aduala, give
us plenty of fish, that we may eat well." This is the only ceremony
in connection with the fishing, and there is no food or other taboo
associated with it; but here again charms are often relied upon. The
big net catches most of the fish which are carried down by the rush
of water through the opening in the weir; but a group of fishermen
stand round it with their hand nets, with which they catch any fish
that leap out of the big net, and would otherwise escape, the ordinary
hand nets being usually used for larger fish, and the cobweb ones for
the smaller fish. They often have two or three of these weirs in the
same stream, at some little distance from each other.

A fishing party will often stay and live for some days at the place
where they are fishing, and eat the fish each day as they catch it;
so that what they bring home for the village or community may only
be the result of the last day's sport. But the women will sometimes
come to the fishers, bring them food, and take some fish back to the
village or community. Each community has waters which it regards as
being its own; but disputes as to this apparently do not arise.

A solitary individual sometimes goes off to catch fish with one of
the hand nets above described or with his hands, and eats or keeps
what he catches; but this is unusual.


Agriculture.

Agriculture is never communistic, being entirely an individual or
family matter, men and households and families having their own
gardens and plantations. The trees and plants chiefly cultivated are
those already mentioned as being used for food.

The clearing of the ground is done by men, and is begun about the
end of June. The trees and their branches are used for fencing, the
fencing being also done by men. The clearing away of the undergrowth
is done by women, who pile it in small heaps, which are spread over
the cleared space, being so close together that they almost touch one
another. When these have got quite dry, which may be in a few days, or
not for some time, they burn them, and the ashes add fertility to the
soil. There is no general digging up of the ground, as distinguished
from the digging of holes for individual plants. The clearing of the
trees is done with stone adzes, or in difficult cases by fire; but some
of the people now have European axes, of which some have been acquired
from white men, and some from plain and coast natives. In clearing for
planting yam and plants of the yam type they leave the upright stems of
some of the trees and shrubby undergrowth for the yams, etc., to trail
over. Cultivation of some of the more usual plants is done as follows.

Sweet potatoes and vegetables of similar type are planted by the women
in August and September. They make little holes in the ground about 2
feet apart, and in them plant the potatoes, the roots used being the
young sarmentose runners, which they cut off from the parent plants,
the latter being merely cut down to the ground, and the old tubers
being left in it. These runners are left to grow, and in about three
or four months the young potatoes are ready for eating, and afterwards
there will be a continuous supply from the runners. The digging up of
the day-to-day supply of potatoes is done by the women, the work in
this, and in all other digging, being done with small pointed sticks,
roughly made and not preserved; though now they sometimes have European
knives, these knives and axes being the two European implements which
they use in agriculture, if they possess them.

Yams and similar vegetables are planted by men in August and
September, near to the young tree stems up which they are to trail,
and at distances apart of 2 or 3 yards. In this case, however, there
are two plantings. In the first instance the yam tubers are planted
in pretty deep holes, the tubers being long. The yams then grow,
and twine over the tree stems, and spread. After about ten months
the men dig up the tubers, which in the meantime have grown larger,
and cut away from them all the trailing green growth, and then hang
the tubers up in the houses and _emone_, to let the new growing points
sprout. Then in about another two months the men replant the smaller
tubers, while the larger ones are retained for food.

There are two curious Mafulu practices in connection with
yam-planting. First, before planting each tuber they wrap round it
an ornamental leaf, such as a croton, which they call the "sweetheart
of the yam." Against this leaf they press a piece of limestone. They
then plant the tuber with its sweetheart leaf around it and the piece
of limestone pressing against its side, and fill in the soil; but as
they do the latter they withdraw the piece of limestone, which they
use successively for other yams, and, indeed, keep in their houses
for use year by year. In the villages near the Mafulu Mission Station
the limestone used is generally a piece of stalactite, which they
get from the limestone caves in the mountains. The belief is that by
planting in this way the yams will grow stronger and better. Secondly,
there is a little small-leafed plant of a spreading nature, only a
few inches high, which grows wild in the mountains, but which is
also cultivated, and a patch of which they always plant in a yam
plantation. This plant they also call the "sweetheart of the yam";
and they believe that its presence is beneficial to the plantation.

Yams are ready for supplying food eight or ten months after
planting. They are not, like the potatoes, dug up from day to day,
as they can be stored. The usual period of digging and storing is
about June or July, and this digging is done by both men and women,
the former dealing with the larger yams, which are difficult to get
up, and the latter with the smaller ones.

The yam is apparently regarded by the Mafulu people as a vegetable
possessing an importance which one is tempted to think may have a
more or less superstitious origin-witness the facts that only men
may plant it and that it is the only vegetable in the planting of
which superstitious methods are employed, and the special methods and
ceremonies adopted in the hanging of the yams at the big feast. But
I fancy this idea as to the yam is not confined to the Mafulu; and
indeed Chalmers tells us of a Motu superstition which attributes to
it a human origin; [88] and a perusal of the chapter on sacrifices
in Dr. Codrington's book, _The Melanesians_, leaves the impression
on one's mind that among these people the yam is the one vegetable
which is specially used for sacrificial purposes.

Taro and similar vegetables are planted by women in August and
September among the yams, at distances of 2 or 3 feet apart. For this
purpose they take the young secondary growths which crop up round the
main central plants during the year. [89] They are ready for eating
in, say, May or June of the following year. They are dug up by women
from day to day as wanted, as they, like the sweet potato, cannot
be kept, as the yams are, after being taken up. There is, however,
a method when the taro is ripe and needs digging up, but is not then
required for eating, of making a large hole in the ground, filling it
with grass, digging up the taro, putting it on the grass in the hole,
covering and surrounding it with more grass, and then filling up with
soil, and so preserving the taro for future use by a sort of ensilage
system. I was told that this was not done on the plains.

Bananas are planted by men, this being done every year, and off and on
all through the year, generally in old potato gardens. In this case
they take the young offshoots, which break out near the bases of the
stems. The closeness of planting varies considerably. The fruit is
gathered all through the year by men. A banana will generally begin
to bear fruit about twelve months after planting, though some sorts
of banana take as long as two years.

Sugar-cane is planted by men off and on during the whole year,
generally in old potato gardens, the growing points at the tops
of the canes being put into the ground at distances of 5 or 6 feet
apart. Each plant produces a number of canes, and these begin to be
edible after six or eight months. They are then cut for eating by
both men and women.

As regards both banana and sugar-cane, the people, after planting
them in the potato gardens, allow the potatoes to still go on growing
and spreading; but these potatoes are merely used for the pigs,
the people only eating those grown in their open patches.

Beans of a big coarse-growing sort, with large pods from 8 to 18 inches
long, are planted by women about September by the garden fences of the
potato and yam gardens, and allowed to creep up these fences. They
furnish edible fruit in about three or four months from the time of
planting, and are then gathered by the women. Only the inside seeds
are eaten (not the pod); and even these are so hard that twenty--four
hours' boiling does not soften them--indeed, they are usually roasted.

Pandanus trees are grown in the bush and not in the gardens. The _ine_
which is a large form (Plate 80), is always grown at a height of not
less than 5,000 feet; but there is a smaller one which is grown by
a river or stream. The _malage_ is always grown in the valleys near
brooks and rivers.

As regards the gardens generally, they may be roughly divided into
sweet potato gardens and yam gardens. In the former are also grown
bananas, sugar-cane, beans, pumpkin, cucumber and maize; and in the
latter taro and beans, and the reed plant with the asparagus flavour
to which I have already referred. The general tending of the bananas
and sugar-canes, and to a certain extent the yams, is done by men;
but in other respects the garden produce is looked after by women,
who also attend to the weeding and keeping of the gardens clean,
the men looking after the fences.

Having planted a certain crop in a garden, they let it go on until
it is exhausted, the period for this being different for different
crops; but afterwards they never again plant the same crop in the same
garden. When a crop is exhausted, they may possibly use the same garden
for some other purpose; but as a rule they do not do so, except as
regards the use of old potato gardens for banana and sugar-cane. When
fresh gardens are wanted, fresh portions of bush are cleared; and the
old deserted gardens are quickly re-covered by nature with fresh bush,
the growth of vegetation being very rapid. Most of the gardens are bush
gardens, and, though these may sometimes be close to the village, you
do not find a regular system of gardens within the village clearing,
as you do in the Mekeo district, the situations of the villages being
indeed hardly adapted for this.






CHAPTER XIII

Bark Cloth Making, Netting and Art.


Bark Cloth Making and Netting.

I put the two processes of bark cloth making and netting together,
as being the only forms in which material is made in pieces of
substantial size.

Bark cloth is used for making perineal bands, men's caps,
illness-recovery capes, bark cloth head strings, mourning strings and
dancing aprons and ribbons. Netting is used for fishing and hunting
nets, sleeping hammocks, the various forms of carrying bags and the
mourning vests worn by the widows of chiefs.


Bark Cloth Making.

Bark cloth is made by both men and women out of the bark of three
different kinds of tree; but I do not know what these are. They strip
the bark from the tree, and from the bark they strip off the outer
layer, leaving the inner fibrous layer, which is about 1/8th of an
inch in thickness. They have no method of fastening two pieces of
bark or cloth together, so every garment has to be a single piece,
and the size of the piece to be made depends upon the purpose for
which it is wanted. The cloth is made in the usual way by soaking the
prepared bark in water for about twenty-four hours, and then hammering
it with a heavy mallet upon the rounded surface of a cut-down tree
trunk (Plate 79).

The mallet used (Plate 51, Fig. 3), however, differs from the wooden
mallet of Mekeo and the coast. It is a heavy black roller-shaped
piece of stone, tapering a little at one or both ends, and being
broader at the beating end than at the holding end. It varies in
length from 10 to 18 inches, and has a maximum width of about 2 or
2 1/2 inches. The beating surface is not flattened, as is the case
with the Mekeo beaters, but it is rather deeply scored with a series
of longitudinal and transverse lines, crossing each other at right
angles, or nearly so. This scoring generally covers a surface space
of about 3 inches by 1 or 2 inches, and is done with pointed pieces
of similar stone, or with the tusks of wild pigs.

As the hammering proceeds the bark becomes thinner and larger in
surface, and when this process is finished, the cloth is hung up
to dry.

The colouring of the cloth, if and when this is added, is done by men
only, and, like body-staining, is nearly always in either red, yellow,
or black. The red stain is obtained from the two sorts of earth used
for red face and body-staining, being, as in the other case, mixed with
water or animal fat, so as to produce a paste. Another source of red
stain used for cloth is the fruit of a wild tree growing in the bush,
which fruit they chew and spit out. I do not know what the tree is,
but I do not think it is the Pandanus, whose fruit is, I believe,
used for body-staining. The yellow stain is obtained from the root of
a plant which I understand to be rather like a ginger. They dry the
root in the sun, and afterwards crush it and soak it in water, and the
water so coloured becomes the pigment to be used. The black stain is
obtained in the same way as that used for face-staining. These dyes are
put on to the cloth with the fingers, which the men dip into the dye,
or with feathers. In making a design they do not copy from a pattern
placed before them, nor do they first trace the design on the cloth.

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