The Mafulu Part 12

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 ca.s.sowaries); but parties of two or three will go after larger game, such as pigs, ca.s.sowaries, etc. Such parties hunt the larger game with spears, clubs and adzes, and shoot the birds, other than ca.s.sowaries, 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 gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 ca.s.sowaries, 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 s.p.a.ce or pa.s.sage about 2 or 3 yards wide is cut in the bush, across the ridge; and across this pa.s.sage are suspended three parallel nets, the inner or central one being of a close and impa.s.sable 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 pa.s.sage. A bird flying from the valley on either side towards the ridge is attracted by this open pa.s.sage, 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.

Fis.h.i.+ng.

Fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng lines, as is done in Mekeo; and even their weir and net systems are different from the Mekeo ones. Fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng expedition; and everyone in the village or community shares more or less in the spoil. The fis.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 s.p.a.ce 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 fis.h.i.+ng, and there is no food or other taboo a.s.sociated 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 fis.h.i.+ng party will often stay and live for some days at the place where they are fis.h.i.+ng, 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 stalact.i.te, 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 superst.i.tious origin-witness the facts that only men may plant it and that it is the only vegetable in the planting of which superst.i.tious 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 superst.i.tion 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 gra.s.s, digging up the taro, putting it on the gra.s.s in the hole, covering and surrounding it with more gra.s.s, 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 coa.r.s.e-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.

Panda.n.u.s 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, cuc.u.mber 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 ap.r.o.ns and ribbons. Netting is used for fis.h.i.+ng 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Panda.n.u.s, 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.

Netting.

In dealing with netting, I should begin with the making of the string; but, as I think the method adopted is not confined to the mountains, it is perhaps sufficient to refer to my previous description of thread-making in connection with the manufacture of leg-bands; though in most netting the strings are necessarily very much thicker and stronger than are the threads used for leg-bands, and they are three-stranded.

Hunting and fis.h.i.+ng nets are made by men in a simple open form of netting, worked on the common principle of the reef knot, and having diamond-shaped holes, with a knot at each corner of each hole. I shall refer to this form of netting as "ordinary network." The nets are made of thick, strong material, except as regards the hand fis.h.i.+ng nets, which are made of the fine material used for making leg-bands. These nets are never coloured.

Hammocks are made by men. They are sometimes done entirely with ordinary network, and are then, I think, similar to Mekeo-made hammocks; but often only two or three lines of netting are done in this way, the rest of the net being made in a closer and finer pattern of interlacing knotless network, which is never adopted on the coast and Mekeo plains (all nets of this description found there having come down from the mountains) and which I will call "Mafulu network." [90]

I have watched the making of one of these nets, and will endeavour to describe the process. The ultimate result of the Mafulu network part of this is shown in Plate 81.

The maker first formed a base line of three strands of native string stretched out horizontally. This base line is marked _a b_ in Fig. 8. He then wound a long length of netting string round a rough piece of stick to be used as a sort of netting shuttle. He next worked the netting string on to the base line by a series of loops or slip-knots as shown in Fig. 8, strand _c_ of each loop bending upwards and becoming strand _d_ of the next loop to the right, and the series of loops extending for the whole length of the base line, and thus const.i.tuting the first loop line of the net. The hitches of the loops, which appear loose and open in the figure for the purpose of showing their construction, were really drawn tight on the base line. On to these loops he then worked one line of ordinary network, as shown in Fig. 9, the strings _a b c d_ in this figure being the loops above mentioned, and the knots of this also being, of course, drawn tight, and not made loose and open, as shown in the figure. The base of this line again formed a series made one of these lines of mesh for my instruction; but it is usual in the making of hammocks to have two or three of them, as appears in the figure. The next stage commenced the Mafulu network. The form of this is shown in Fig. 10; and here again the actual network was more closely drawn than is shown in the ill.u.s.tration, though it was not drawn tight, as in the case of the ordinary network. The first line of Mafulu network was worked on to the loops above it, so as to form a continuous line, in which many loops of Mafulu work were attached to each loop of the line of ordinary work above, the former being considerably smaller than the latter. The rest of the network is similarly made in the Mafulu method, each loop of each line being connected with a loop of the line above, until the worker almost reaches the other end of the hammock, which latter is finished off with ordinary network and a final base line, so as to correspond with the commencing end. Often there are only four or five loops of Mafulu network attached to each loop of ordinary network above them; and I have seen hammocks in which the mesh of the ordinary network part is much smaller, so that each loop of the bottom line of this mesh has attached to it only one loop of the top line of Mafulu mesh; and this last variation is common as regards carrying bags.

The hammocks are never coloured; but they are sometimes decorated with a few Panda.n.u.s or _malage_ seeds hung from their borders.

The different forms of carrying bags have already been referred to. I will now deal with their manufacture and colouring. They are made exclusively by women; and the fibres used in their manufacture are not the same as those employed for making nets and hammocks. I will deal separately with the five forms already described by me.

Nos. 1 and 2 are made of either ordinary or Mafulu network, and are never coloured. When these, or any other bags, are made of Mafulu network, their elasticity is very great. No. 3 is always made of Mafulu network, and coloured. No. 4 is made of Mafulu network, and is sometimes coloured, and sometimes not. No. 5 is made of Mafulu network, and is sometimes coloured. The string used in making this bag is different from that used for the others, and is obtained from the bark of a small shrub.

The question of manufacture introduces another form of bag (Plate 53, Fig 3), which I may call No. 6. It is used by men for the purposes of No. 4, and No 5 is also sometimes made in the same way. The method of manufacture of No. 6 is, I was told, an uncommon one; and, though I was able to procure one of these bags, I had not an opportunity of observing the process by which it was made. The appearance of the bag, however, suggests a process not unlike that of knitting. Its outer surface displays a series of thick, strong trie ord-plaited, vertical ridges, all close together, and looking very like the outside ridges of a knitted woollen stocking; but on the inner surface these ridges are not to be seen, and the general appearance of this inside is one of horizontal lines. The material of this bag is much closer, thicker and heavier than is that of any of the others.