Society-TROBRIANDS The Trobriand Islands are located 120 miles
directly north of the eastern tip of New Guinea. The geographical
coordinates are lat. 8 degrees 30 minutes S by long. 151 degrees E. The
islands are presently part of the Territory of Papua, which is selfgoverning and administered by Australia. The Trobriand Islanders, who
call themselves Boyowans, are closely related genetically to the people
of eastern New Guinea. The language they speak is called Kiriwina or
Kiriwinian, from the name of the main island. It is part of the Milne
Bay Group of Austronesian and is closely related to the languages
spoken on the neighboring Woodlarks, Marshall Bennetts, and Laughlin
Islands. It is also related to the languages of eastern Papua (Voegelin
and Voegelin 1964: 5, 10-11).
The population of the Trobriands appears to be very stable. From
Malinowski's 1914 estimate (1922: 477) to that of the 1963 Pacific
Islands Year Book (pp. 381-83), the figure has remained between 10,000
and 11,000, including the island of Vakuta. The latter figure also
includes 2,100 people on the islands of Lusancay and Kitava. Powell
states that there are 80 named villages on the main island, with a mean
of 89 individuals per village. The island has an area of 70 square
miles and a population density of approximately 130 persons per square
mile of inhabited territory. Certain swampy parts of the northwest are
uninhabited.
The Trobriands are flat coral islands, covered with rich heavy soil
well-suited to yam and taro cultivation. Because of the dense
population and the continual intermittent cultivation of most of the
island, the vegetation never grows very high before being burned off.
Parts of the north and west coasts are fringed by a reef. There are two
main seasons, a dry season from May to October and a rainy season from
December to March. The average yearly rainfall is around 140 inches
(Austen 1976: 16). Sailing, planting, and harvesting are usually
accomplished between these two seasons. Planting is in October, before
the rains begin, and harvesting is around April or May, before the dry
season. Sailing is best undertaken during the inter-monsoons, from
November to December and March to April.
Fauna include a large variety of fish and shellfish, as well as
crocodiles, parrots, and Torres Strait pigeons. Few other birds or
large animals are found. The bush pig, however, is prolific, and
European pigs are now widespread. Flora include a variety of yams,
tubers, bananas, pandanus, various creepers, coconuts, sago, betel, and
sugarcane. Large trees are found only on the coral ridge. They are used
for making canoes and houseposts. Europeans have introduced sweet
potatoes, pawpaw, papaya, pineapples, and mangoes, all of which survive
drought better than the native plants.
The diet consists primarily of yams, taro, coconut, sugarcane, and
bananas. The main and only cooked meal is at sunset, after the
gardening has been completed, and generally consists of yams, taro, and
occasionally fish, wild fowl, pork, or sea fowl eggs. During the day,
mangoes, breadfruit, bananas, and green coconuts and their milk may be
eaten while working. Bush pig and stingray are taboo as foods to all
but the lowest outcast group. In times of famine, when the yam harvest
has failed two years in a row, wild fruits, roots, leaves, and some
otherwise despised and unpalatable fruits are collected. Fish is an
important ceremonial food in inland villages, and fish-vegetable
exchange partnerships exist between inland and coastal villages. Other
secondary foods include limes, oranges, mandarins, nuts, maize, clams,
oysters, cockles, mussels, and other shellfish, and crayfish, rock cod,
prawns (a delicacy), dugong, and turtle. Lizards, grubs, and other
insects are also eaten. Betel chewed with lime is the popular
stimulant.
Next to the chief and sorcerer, the garden magician is the most
important person in the village. He may even be the chief. He is a
hereditary specialist in a complex system of magic handed down in the
female line. He controls the work of people and the forces of nature by
supervising different series of rituals, which run parallel with every
stage of the garden work. Communal labor plays an important part in the
gardening. The recipient of the labor supplies food in return for work.
After the harvest, the competitive display of the food is a very
important part of the whole process.
Fishing is generally a specialty of certain villages in which it is
the predominant mode of subsistence. Fishermen are organized into
detachments, each of which is led by a headman who owns the canoe,
performs the magic, and reaps the main share of the catch. Fishing
techniques include the use of nets, hooks, lines, traps, spears, and
poison. Spondylus shells, used to make the necklaces for the Kula ring
are another important marine product in which certain villages
specialize. The dwellings of the Trobrianders are rectangular log
frames, covered over with steeply-pitched, thatched roofs which reach
to the ground. The yam storage houses, usually located across a street
from the dwellings, are built on piles and are often larger and more
elaborate than the dwellings. Those of chiefs and noblemen may be
decorated with carved and painted boards.
The inland settlements are arranged in two or more concentric rings
around a central ceremonial plaza used for community-wide rituals. The
first ring consists of the yam houses, and the second ring of the
dwellings that face them. Adolescent and adult unmarried males and
females live in bachelor houses, separate from their natal families.
The chief's house often stands in the central ring of storehouses
facing the plaza. Behind the houses are the gardens, and beyond those
the groves of fruit trees. Coastal villages are ideally built on a
similar pattern, but are more affected by the topography and shoreline.
Trobriand society is divided into 4 exogamous matrilineal clans, which
are subdivided into between 30 and 50 subclans. Membership in a subclan
is through descent from a common ancestress, who, belief has it, was
not born, but emerged from a specific hole in the earth at the
subclan's original locality. While the nonlocal and nonpolitical clans
have some totemic and ceremonial significance, it is the subclans that
are most important in the functions of daily life. The subclans are
ranked, and each village is owned by a particular subclan. The headman
of a village is the oldest male of the dominant subclan.
"Mother-right. . .is the most important and the most comprehensive
principle of law, underlying all customs and institutions" (Malinowski
1922: 107). Although descent is matrilineal, postmarital residence is
patrilocal. Thus wives are newcomers to the husbands' villages. When a
male reaches maturity, he goes to live in the village of his mother's
brother, so that the matrilineage is kept together. While the father
has a warm relation with his children, it is the mother's brother who
is legally responsible for them, as well as for their mother.
The village is an important unit. A chief's authority is principally
over his own village, and then only secondarily over other villages in
his district. There is high village solidarity. Villagers cultivate
their own gardens, perform their own ceremonies, and undertake their
own trading expeditions. In pre-European times, they also fought their
own battles. In multivillage gatherings, they act as a unit.
A district is formed by a number of villages, which are tributary to
a particular headman of high rank, a chief. These villages would
traditionally have been allies in war, and now they must supply goods
and labor to the chief when needed. (The chief must pay them for these
services, however.) A chief has a wife from each subject village. This
is the only form of polygyny found. Each village is then tied to the
chief by the gift-giving obligations of in-laws. Since these wives are
also likely to be related in some way to their own village headmen,
whole villages are indirectly indebted to the district chief.
The presence of subclan ranking results in a system of aristocrats
and commoners. The matrilineal relatives of the subclan that owns the
village, the headman's relatives, are the nobility. Below them may be
the members of a subclan who are the dispossessed original owners of
the village. (In many cases, a village has been expropriated from one
subclan by another of higher rank.) Third are the people of low rank,
who do not live in the village as citizens, but as vassals or servants
of the headman. The chief's wives and offspring form another group,
since they are of a different subclan, but they share the chief's
status. If a woman of noble lineage marries a commoner, her husband
must always acknowledge her status in public and keep his head below
hers. An important aspect of high rank is the system of taboos,
especially those on foods and on water except that taken from certain
holes in the coral ridge. Only the lowest subclans eat stingray or
shark.
The Kula, the institution that has become a classic anthropological
example of "primitive" exchange, is a complex system of ceremonial
reciprocity between partners. It involves two classes of gifts-armshells and shell necklaces--each of which circulates in the opposite
direction among a number of neighboring islands off eastern New Guinea.
Exchange takes place only between partners, and on inter-island Kula
expeditions it is the visitors who receive. Because of the different
directions taken by the objects, a man will always receive armshells
from some partners, to whom he gives necklaces, and necklaces from
other partners, to whom he gives armshells. The traded objects never
(or very rarely) cease circulating. They are like valued trophies, to
be displayed for their pride of possession and then within a year or
two passed on.
The Kula is not overtly trade or barter. It is a highly formalized
gift-giving ceremony, in which equality of gifts is insured by the
desire for a generous reputation and the prestige of giving great
gifts. Not only objects, but songs, art motifs, and general cultural
influences move along the Kula route. Other subsidiary items are also
exchanged, often as solicitory gifts to encourage a partner to give a
particularly desired piece in return. These include pigs, bananas,
yams, taro, axe blades, and finely crafted lime spoons of whale bone,
used in the betel chew. Religion, in the sense of dealings with the
supernatural world, is almost completely concerned with the magic that
is used to influence the outcome of gardening, fishing, and Kula
endeavors. Malinowski's works provide one of the most extensive and
detailed bodies of data available on any culture by a single
ethnographer (e.g., 1922, 1926, 1929). Moreover, Malinowski wrote well;
and the result is a highly readable and coherent account.
Culture summary by Martin J. Malone
Austen, Leo. The Trobriand
Islands of Papua. Australian Geographer, 3, no. 2 (1936): 10-22.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the western Pacific: an account of
native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New
Guinea. London, George Routledge and Sons, 1922. 25, 527 p. illus.,
maps. Malinowski, Bronislaw. Crime and custom in savage society.
London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner; New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1926.
12, 132 p. illus. Malinowski, Bronislaw. The sexual life of savages
in northwestern Melanesia: an ethnographic account of courtship,
marriage and family life among the natives of the Trobriand Islands,
British New Guinea. v. 1 and 2. With a preface by Havelock Ellis.
New York, Horace Liveright, 1929. v. 1 (28, 278 p.), v. 2 (8, 281-603
p.). illus. Pacific Islands Year Book and Who's Who. 9th ed.
Sydney, Pacific Publications Pty., 1963. Powell, H. A. Competitive
leadership in Trobriand political organization. Royal Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Journal, 90 (1960): 118-145.
Voegelin, Carl F. Languages of the world: Indo-Pacific fascicle three.
By Carl F. Voegelin and Florence M. Voegelin. Anthropological
Linguistics, 6 (1964).