CASAGRANDE, J. B. in The Company of Man
CASAGRANDE, J. B. in The Company of Man
CASAGRANDE, J. B. in The Company of Man
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Courtesy, Belgian Tourist Bureau
In
the Company
of Man
Courtesy, Australian News Information
Bureau
Edited by
Joseph B.
Casagrande
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In
the Company
of Man
Twenty Portraits
by Anthropologists
IN THE COMPANY OF MAN:
TWENTY PORTRAITS BY ANTHROPOLOGISTS
Copyright © I960 by Joseph B. Casagrande
Printed in the United States of America
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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2011 with funding from
LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation
http://www.archive.org/details/incompanyofmantwOOincasa
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Preface ix
3. Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
(Australia) w. e. h. stanner 63
Contents
Contributors 533
Courtesy, Milwaukee Public Museum
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world, be they the primitive hunters in the remote corners of the earth
or the sophisticates of the florescent civiHzations. He is interested aUke
in the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert and the sculptors of Benin, in
the naked Tierra del Fuegans and the empire-building Inca. In recent
years anthropologists have also turned in increasing numbers to the
study of peasant communities of the Old World and to the complex
societies of modern nations, including their own. But despite the greater
compass of his interests the anthropologist's basic methods of research,
and perhaps more importantly, his way of looking at human behavior
as a whole, remain those that have evolved from his work with the
simpler groups.
Where there areno archives and no books other than the memories
of men, the anthropologist perforce must take his primary data from
life, so to speak —
from the actions and words of the people among
whom he lives and works. Even if he has recourse to documents, he
still relies heavily on his own observations of behavior and on the
their ways.
Like any stranger anywhere the anthropologist on arrival in his
community will be an object of curiosity. He will be visited, queried,
courted, perhaps resented or suspected. He may be a nuisance and
something of a social irritant. He may be a source of some pride. But
in either case he will, in the natural course of events, come to terms
with the people. The total process of mutual adjustment will not be
unlike that, say, of any rather mysterious newcomer who comes to
some small provincial town.
settle in
With luck and in good time the anthropologist will find an accepted
Preface
place in the community. His presence will be taken for granted. The
people will answer his questions, see that he is fed, invite him to cere-
monies, and apprise him of events that they have learned will be of
interest.They will laugh at his mistakes and breaches of native eti-
quette, and they will be amused or perplexed by his queer customs.
What was strange will in time become familiar. He will become con-
versant with village gossip, privy to all that is both commonplace and
momentous in the daily lives of the people. Individuals, too, will
psychiatrist and his patient. There is much of the same depth and
intimacy, the same desire to gain insight, in the one case into the
personality and in the other into the culture as it is reflected in the
personality. There is the same constraint to maintain objectivity, and
many of the same psychodynamic currents of transference, counter-
transference, and identification are at work in the two forms of rela-
tionship. But there are marked differences. The relationship between
the anthropologist and an informant usually bridges two cultures, it
is less episodic, there is greater reciprocity, and it is entered into
close relationship cannot but be highly significant for both parties to it.
and to the people among whom we have lived and worked. Most
particularly, significant relationships with individuals who have been
our close associates for many months are as a rule memorialized in a
mere footnote or a few brief prefatory sentences.
resumo: In this book we wish to share with the reader the personal experi-
ence of field work, and to communicate the essentially humane quality
of our discipHne in a way that is at once aesthetically, emotionally,
and scientifically satisfying. It is first of all a collection of personal
memoirs written by anthropologists about individuals they have come
to know well during the course of their work. Here are the people who
have served us so well in the collaborative enterprise of field work.
They are the prismatic lenses, as it were, through which we see re-
fracted the life we would observe.
Preface
than in full biographical detail. The authors' aim has been to reveal
the unique personality, to delineate the individual as a credible human
being seen against the background of his own locale and culture, and
to show him in the context of his social roles rather than simply to
chronicle a While the native subjects are the central figures,
life.
xiit
Preface
tinental Asia is included, nor are Central America, the Middle East,
Bantao the New Guinea "Opening Man," and Ohnainewk the Eskimo
hunter, encounters with whites had shattering effects. For them the
clash was swift and brutal, leaving them bewildered wanderers in
the midst of cultural chaos. These three, all "primitives" living on the
world's last frontiers, unhke Marcus the Pueblo G.I., Josie Billie
the Seminole, or Bill Begay the Navaho, had neither the personal nor
the cultural defenses of those long accustomed to fending off the thrusts
of white encroachment. Mrs. Parkinson stands in sharp contrast to all
of these. With sustaining pride in her own Polynesian heritage, she
skillfully wove the strands of European civilization that reached her
islands into the pattern of her own life.
Joseph B. Casagrande
Darien, Connecticut
January, 1960
Courtesy, Belgian Tourist Bureau
In
the Company
of Man
Pa Fenuatara as He Appeared
in 1929 (right) and in 1952
(below).
From Raymond Firth, We, the Tikopia,
George Allen & Unwin Ltd. and The
Macmillan Company.
1
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,1? iP A Polynesian
lb* It «^ ji 3^F
f Aristocrat
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Raymond Firth
•f^^^^xS 1
i
^ —
my friend.
A friendship of an institutionalized character
—"bond" friendship
{tau sou) as the Tikopia express it — is a recognized feature in their
skin under which the muscles rippled smoothly, and with an erect
carriage, he announced a commanding personality. His chest, back,
and upper arms were marked with the blue tattoo patterns of birds,
fish, and geometric shapes, commonly worn by Tikopia men. He
then was heavily bearded and wore his hair long over his shoulders.
His beard was black, contrasting strikingly with his hair that was
bleached with lime sometimes to a reddish brown and sometimes to a
golden hue. His broad-winged nose was aquiline, his lips fairly thin,
his chin well developed. His cheek bones were also prominent,
giving his face that faintly hexagonal look which is often characteristic
of aristocratic Polynesians. His eyes were dark brown, clear, alert,
and expressive. His forehead was high for a Tikopia and scarred
by old vertical cuts made with a knife to draw blood as a symbol
of sympathy at some of the many funerals he had attended. He was
usually clad simply in a rough bark-cloth waist garment such as all
Tikopia wear. His appearance was marred only in two respects. His
skin in general was of good texture, smooth and velvety, save for
—
an unsightly patch of ringworm on one buttock a refractory afflic-
tion which distressed him greatly and which he was finally able to
overcome with European medicine. His other defect was in his walk.
Years ago in a fish drive a garfish had pierced his knee with its
sharp beak and the injury caused him to walk a little stiffly ever
after. But he loved dancing and at times when it was not barred
and other ornaments in his ears, nose septum, and around the neck.
Pa Fenuatara was prominent in the general economic life of
Tikopia. Under the aegis of his father, the Ariki Kafika, he acted
as senior executive in the affairs of the Kafika lineage, and as a leader
in the affairs of his clan. He was not among the hardest workers in
the community. However, he was very interested in matters of tech-
nique and often devoted himself with quiet, conscientious care to
some quite minor employment. As a premier adzeman he took a very
active role working with a canoe builder on the repair of a sacred
canoe of the Kafika clan. But he also delighted in fashioning for me
a noose rat-trap out of bamboo in order to demonstrate traditional
Tikopia technology, although for his own use he preferred a Eu-
ropean spring trap of the "break-back" variety. He spent much time
A Polynesian Aristocrat
they wished it to be so. They agreed with me; some people objected,
but they did not say so to me. They protested silently. Thereupon I
asked in this fashion, 'Let whatever man objects announce it tome
instantly.' Thereupon all the people called out, 'Oh, there is no man
that objects. We give assent completely to you.' " This is a typical
instance of his skill in political manoeuvre. Knowing that there was
objection he deliberately challenged it, setting the weight of his status
against the mute objector and receiving what could only be pub-
licly regarded as the unanimous mandate of the gathering.
or so later, when another dance occurred, he did not take part al-
though requested to do so by his father. He had danced for the earlier
festival only at the insistence of the Ariki Kafika and Pa Fenuatara,
but for less important occasions he still preserved some remnants
of his mourning. I heard then that he had said earlier he would not
allow his mourning to be broken, that if any of the people of his own
district had come to anoint him with turmeric he would have killed
them. But Pa Fenuatara, as a man of equivalent rank and as the
representative of another district, was entitled to be treated with
utmost courtesy; he could perform the ceremony with impunity.
out incident. Apart from the usual small accidents, two of which
have been referred to, he seems to have had only one serious illness.
He was carried first to the Ariki Taumako, felt better, and stayed
ten days in the chief's house. Then he fell very ill again. He crawled
out one night when it was raining heavily and sat at the base of a
tree by the oven-house on an old basket. He said that he felt spirits
moving all around him, but so grave was his illness he did not feel
afraid. For a time he slept, while the rain was falling on him. His
wife, who had felt on his sleeping mat beside her with her hand
and found it vacant, came out to search for him. She found him and
said, "What are you sitting here in the rain for?" "I can't stand it any
longer," he replied. Together they made their way very slowly to-
wards the shore for him to empty his bowels, but he was weak
and on the way they had to sit down for a time. Finally his wife
said she was feeling cold. He told her to go into an adjacent house
and sleep and she did so. He stopped outside and again lay down
to sleep — still in the rain. After a time, near morning, he dreamed
that a spirit came and him an orange turmeric-dyed bark-
offered
cloth. This garment for him to wear in the spirit world and
was a
was a sign that he would not recover. "I knew then," he said,
"that I would die." But he did not die. He crawled into a small
house and felt terribly ill. Suddenly his bowels opened and a dis-
charge of blood came in great quantity. As one piece of
fast as
bark-cloth was placed beneath him it had to be removed and an-
other substituted. At last the discharge ceased. The Ariki Taumako,
who had been unable to effect a cure by the intervention of his
gods, said that it was no longer with
better that they should stay
him but seek aid elsewhere. So he was carried to the Ariki Fan-
garere. This chief, too, applied oil and prayed for health. The
and then collapsed again.
patient felt but a brief access of vigour
Pa Fenuatara was then carried to Faea on the backs of people
of his clan, who set him down at intervals for a rest. When he
arrived at the village of the Ariki Tafua he was laid out at the
12
A Polynesian Aristocrat
13
Raymond Firth
taken to the then Ariki Kafika, predecessor of his father. The chief
took a bottle of coconut poured some into his hand, announced
oil,
15
Raymond Firth
village over there." Then he said to me, "Are you living in this village
here?" "Yes, I myself am living in this village but your brother-in-law
has gone to the village over there." ThenI asked him, "Where did you
come from?" He replied, "I simply went to Namo. I went simply to our
place in Namo." Then I said to him, "Let us go up inland farther"
[meaning to sit in Pa Fenuatara's house for food and conversation]. He
replied, "Oh, you go off inland but I am going. I simply came according
to what I told you. I shall go to my brother-in-law in the village over
there. Then I shall off home
to Faea." So he went and he was wearing
go
two kie [decorated pandanus waist mats]. He did not fly up above, he
went on the level ground. Now as I lifted off my hand to go to the village
I woke.
not in fact the Ariki Tafua: "It was a spirit impersonating him.
It was not Pa Tafua. It was a spirit creating a resemblance to him.
His body was the semblance of that of the living Ariki Tafua and
I thought was the Ariki Tafua." Pa Fenuatara went on, "When a
it
16
A Polynesian Aristocrat
ambivalent role. The other factor was that very recently there had
been some speculation that the Ariki Tafua might possibly abandon
his Christianity and return to participate in the pagan rites in which
he had formerly taken such a prominent part. Pa Fenuatara's dream
may then well have been a symbolization of his wish for a resump-
tion in ritual and spiritual matters of the intercourse which now
existed only at the social level. The initial identification of the
Ariki Tafua as a bird descending from the sky —which is the home
of spirits —could support this interpretation.
This is, of course, my speculation. Pa Fenuatara himself had
no such interpretation. But I did know at the time that this dream
was an illustration of the inadequacy of Durkheim's idea that dreams
could be proved false by comparing notes afterwards between the
dreamer and the person about whom he dreamed. The Tikopia
belief that the figure seen in a dream is not a human being but an
impersonation of him by a spirit precludes such an attempt to
disprove the actuality of the dream. The Tikopia, although they
are very interested in dream interpretation, very reasonably do not
try this naive method of consulting the person about whom they
dreamed, because in advance they regard this as useless.
Pa Fenuatara
In his beliefs in spirits and in the validity of dreams
was not without critical faculty. On one occasion when we were
travelling by canoe over the lake he wondered musingly if a certain
rite demanding the offering of a large fish would be performed the
following day. Then he related a dream of his from the night before.
He said that in his dream he went to sea, but as he pushed out
his canoe he stepped in some excrement. He asked his companions
whether this was a dream portending that they would catch a
large fish. One of the crew answered, "A fish dream for certain."
"I don't know," said Pa Fenuatara reflectively, and he continued to
ponder the matter for some time. On another occasion talk turned
to the nets set for salmon trout in the lake. The nets were becoming
black, possibly with some organic growth, and tended to rot easily.
Pa Fenuatara then told a story to the crowd assembled in the house
about how, out on the lake with his nets one time, he felt a spirit
going along the net and making it soft. When he held the net up
he found it slimy. The spirit had been at work. I asked him then
if this was a traditional piece of knowledge that spirits were re-
17
Raymond Firth
uttered the conventional phrase, "E aiie toku soa," literally, "Oh,
alas, my friend," that he was much affected. I exchanged personal
and family news with him and his aged father who was now some-
what infirm. We were soon immersed in urgent public discussion
of the effects of a recent hurricane on the island and the imminent
food shortage; but every now and again Pa Fenuatara caught my
eye and gave me a warm smile. He was always loyal to his friends,
and after more than twenty years it was as if we had only recently
parted. From then on, with few intermissions, I saw Pa Fenuatara
almost daily or every other day until I left Tikopia again. He had
aged markedly in the intervening years. His face was wrinkled, he
was much thinner and his cheeks had fallen in through the loss of
many of his teeth. His hair was grey and much sparser; and he had
shaved his beard. But he had not lost his kindliness or his percep-
tiveness, and he had acquired a kind of philosophic sweetness which
made him even more attractive. His personal dignity was much as
it had ever been, but there was now an added authority because of
18
A Polynesian Aristocrat
of Tongarutu." Then he asked me, "Do you know what house she
is a daughter of?" "No," I rephed. He then said, "Te taina tou
taina e nofo i Uta." This expression can be translated as, "the sibling
of your sibling who is living in Uta." Now, my sibling living in Uta
might be either a man or a woman, but most generally taina means
sibling of the same sex, so presumably it was Pa Fenuatara. But
since the person referred to was a woman, the first "sibling" is
21
Raymond Firth
22
A Polynesian Aristocrat
What the song conveys is first the tenseness of beginning the opera-
tion, then the anxiety as the wave knocks the canoe sideways, then,
as the result of mastery with a strong paddle, the exultation as the
canoe races onwards with the breaking wave.
Pa Fenuatara's interest in dancing was not a purely personal one.
He had views on its general character and on its functions. He
believed, in common with most Tikopia, that dancing was good
for the heart of man. But he looked a further into it than most
little
23
Raymond Firth
They gaze upon these children who eat at the side of their parents.
They say, 'Oh, what kind of a thing is that that eats at the side of
my parents while I am absent [am dead].' " When I asked Pa
Fenuatara specifically if this was kaimeo, the Tikopia term for
jealousy, he said, "Just that."
After my departure, in the famine of 1952 that followed in the
wake of a hurricane and drought, one ofPa Fenuatara's twin sons
died. He apparently was the smaller and weaker of the two. (Ac-
cording to Spillius, to whom I owe information on this incident,
it is generally reckoned by the Tikopia that one twin is liable to
an early death.) The lad himself, his body covered with ringworm,
had not been a very prepossessing boy though Pa Fenuatara had
seemed reasonably fond of him. His death was a matter of no
24
A Polynesian Aristocrat
surface. I had known that things were not equable between him and
his wife. Overtly he was not a man of strong sexual proclivities
unlike his father, who had rather a name for his pursuit of women
— but apparently Pa Fenuatara had sought satisfaction elsewhere.
I learned that fairly soon after I left Tikopia he had contracted a
25
Raymond Firth
like the earlier one, did not last very long. The woman bore Pa
Fenuatara a daughter —who was later lost by swimming out to sea
with a number of her companions in a mass suicide. Nau Karua
was soon "chased away," as the Tikopia put it, by Nau Fenuatara,
and went to live in a house of her brother in Namo. Later she became
a Christian.
26
A Polynesian Aristocrat
The interpreter said, "Now the gun which has been brought here
for the Ariki Kafika is the gun for the whole community." But I
noted at the time that Pa Fenuatara had his eye on the weapon.
He said, "It was I who asked for it and the chiefs have their sprays"
(to destroy mosquitoes). The interpreter replied, "Oh it will go round
the island, the bats falling before it." To this Pa Fenuatara said,
"We will see, we will dispose of it as we will." In fact, he took
possession of the gun when the meeting was over and as far as I
know it continued to remain his property. His eldest son took it
from time to time and after some practice became quite expert
at killing bats. I was called upon to produce cartridges for it, but
Pa Fenuatara and his son were not backward in putting up money
to buy cartridges themselves. In a sense, the gun was the property
of the community and the killing of bats with it was of public benefit.
But the real point was that a gun in Tikopia was a mark of prestige.
In former days a Snider carbine or other gun used to be given by
labour recruiters as part payment for men whom they took away
to work on the plantations. Such guns, of which a few were left
27
Raymond Firth
to his son then his gods say among themselves, "Now his things
there he has announced completely to his son. He there, will he
die?" When a chief imparts his knowledge to his son while still
young and vigorous he always leaves a few things unrevealed until
the time comes when he can no longer walk about. Then he tells his
son to come and he pillows his head on his father's arm. The
chief covers them both with one blanket and tells him finally all
the formulae of the kava and other sacred things. Then he asks his
son, "Now you tell me that I may listen and see if it is complete."
The son repeats all he knows while the father corrects him and
makes additions. When the chief is satisfied he says to his son,
"Now all your things are complete." The Ariki Kafika explained
to me that he had withheld this particular item from Pa Fenuatara
because he himself was still hale and hearty. He did not wish the
gods to imagine that he was tired of living. Only much later would
he complete his son's knowledge. At this period indeed the Ariki
Kafika was very active and there was no reason to think that Pa
Fenuatara had any immediate prospects of succeeding him.
On my I found the chief an aged man, and
return to Tikopia,
his relationship Pa Fenuatara had undergone a subtle change.
to
When in ordinary health he was still quite active, though he travelled
across the lake by canoe and could no longer go by land. With the
aid of a staff he used to find his way alone to our house for a cup of
28
A Polynesian Aristocrat
tea, and he was so tough that shortly after a severe illness he was
to be seen bathing in the cold sea as usual. He was still capable of
performing the traditional rituals, but he was infirm, and the regular
daily rites of the Work of the Gods were a very great strain upon
him. Pa Fenuatara did his best to spare him effort, while at the
same time showing respect to his priestly duties and to the chief's
right of decision.
One conversation between Pa Fenuatara, his father, and the Ariki
Fangarere which I recorded concerned the number of days to be
devoted to the of one of the sacred temples. Pa Fenuatara
rites
29
Raymond Firth
level. The ultimate role of the chief was illustrated on two other
occasions. In one, the manufacture of turmeric, the old chief was
present but very ill, lying on a mat in the house where the work
was going on with a bark-cloth sheet drawn over him. The turmeric
liquid and the wooden oven in which it was to be cooked had
been prepared. The next step was to pour the liquid into the cylin-
drical oven. But this was a ritual as well as a technological act and
at this point the chief had to be brought in. Pa Fenuatara, who
was the technical expert, went over to his father and said, "Father!
The turmeric!" The old chief refused to move and told his son to
carry on. So Pa Fenuatara said, "Well, uncover your face then,"
and he went back to the work. When everything was ready one of
the team took coconut oil and poured it into the hand of Pa
Fenuatara. He stretched his hand out and called, "Father! Father!"
The old chief strained round and stared as Pa Fenuatara tilted his
hand and let the drops of sacred oil run as libation on the coconut
leaf mat. Pa Fenuatara muttered a formula of invocation to the
gods and after a moment the old chief too murmured a few words
and then sank back onto his bed, while Pa Fenuatara continued
his task. A little later, when the turmeric liquid was about to be
poured into its cylinder. Pa Fenuatara again called, "Father!
Father!" and held up the bowl to pour. He looked at the chief,
who this time was lying still with his eyes closed. Pa Fenuatara
himself then recited some phrases, looking at his father as he did
so, and then continued the work. Here the contribution of the
to act in this matter. Indeed, his wife complained again at his slow-
ness and it seemed to me as if he were almost reluctant to assume
some of the functions of the chief.
The question of the succession to the chieftainship lay at the heart
of the matter. What were Pa Fenuatara's own feelings and the
30
A Polynesian Aristocrat
the interpreter, and another man of rank. The chiefs took their
places, at the specific invitation of a prominent Tikopia, when it
developed that they were waiting for the Government officer. Pa
Fenuatara sat in the background. When
one of the leading
at last
Tikopia called out to him, "Brother-in-law, go and join, the as-
sembly of chiefs," he stood up and very slowly went forward, a
stately figure, finely dressed with leaf ornaments in his ears. He
moved the stool from the place assigned to him on the mat and
gravely set it on the bare ground at the rear where he insisted on
sitting despite protests from his neighbour, the Ariki Taumako.
On other formal occasions he acted in a similar way, emphasizing
that he laid no claim to chiefly status. On the other hand, he re-
garded himself as fully entitled to consideration as the leader in
31
—
Raymond Firth
the Ariki Kafika, who is the agent of the supreme god of the Kafika
clan, should die young in order that a virile succession be main-
tained. Otherwise, as the chief grows old and infirm so also in-
firmities come upon the land as a whole. But even in explaining to
32
A Polynesian Aristocrat
33
Raymond Firth
36
A Polynesian Aristocrat
in its affairs. When I returned, although the kava rites still remained
and the cycles of the Work of the Gods were still performed, the
flow of participants had shrunk to a trickle. It was a dying religion,
young
especially since the people, even Pa Fenuatara's own family,
were more and more being drawn to the novelty and the sociability
of the Church.
37
Raymond Firth
place the primary religious responsibility was not his but that of
the chiefs, who were also the major priests. Again, the attitude
of leading Tikopia consistently almost from the moment of entry of
the Mission had been not to oppose the Mission in any forcible way,
but to welcome it socially without conceding its religious claims.
Hence, as time went on, the pagans found that in their desire for
Western contacts they had conceded a large part of the field before
the struggle had really begun. But whatever the element of personal
Pa Fenuatara was by 1952 confronted with a clear
responsibility,
failure of thepagan system. It was apparent that in a short while
the system would not be able to maintain itself even at the very low
level of ritual participation that then existed. In our discussion of
these things Pa Fenuatara's comments were often bitter. This was
not surprising since from his point of view the religion which was
replacing his own had few obvious advantages. The supreme God
it claimed was not very different from mosthis own. He, like
38
A Polynesian Aristocrat
was intelligible, even logical, because of the rank of the man con-
cerned. To him (as to most Tikopia) it was proper that the young
woman should have been driven off to sea "because she did not
desire the man." The action was justified because "it was a man of
chiefly family who took umbrage."
There is no doubt that Pa Fenuatara's ethical and religious views
were to a considerable degree bound up with his conception of
chiefly status and of his own relation thereto. In our discussions about
religion I asked him one day what he thought would be the future
of Christianity in Tikopia. He answered in effect, "That's as may
be," refusing to commit himself, but it was clear that his thoughts
were gloomy. I asked him if he himself had ever thought of becom-
ing a Christian. He said, "No." When I asked him why, he answered
in effect that Christianity did not make proper provision for the
status of the chief. He drew my attention to one of the Christian
chiefs who had to undertake menial tasks such as tending the oven
like any common man. In part this offended Pa Fenuatara's notions
of the dignity of the office. He was not concerned with his own
personal dignity because he himself often undertook such menial
tasks, but his conception of a chief was of someone set apart and he
did not see why Christianity should alter this status position. But I
think that there was more to it than that. In all his discussions about
chieftainship. Pa Fenuatara emphasized the responsibility that a
chief has to his people, to care for their welfare, not to bewitch people,
to act in ways which promote good for all the people and not
merely the prosperity of the individual. I think he saw Christianity
as an assertion of the rights of the individual to promote his own
interest and a reduction of the responsibility of the chief to that
of a common man. At no time did I hear him say that Christianity
in its religious aspects was untrue. He challenged specific assertions
of Christians —
for example that the ghosts of Christians did not
walk abroad. He reacted sharply against Christian assertions as to
the evils of paganism. But he did not deny the possibility that the
Christian dogma was true. He merely preferred his own and associ-
ated with it notions of communal responsibility which he thought
were lacking in Christianity. Here his appreciation of the whole
situation was inadequate, due very largely one might think to his
lack of education. But in conversation with him one forgot that here
39
Raymond Firth
able to find out as yet whether he did in fact ever succeed as chief.
Whether he did so or not, the conversion of all the pagan Tikopia
shortly afterwards means that he was one of the last of the Tikopia
leaders to live and die in the ancient faith.
A man of principle, he had a firm conviction of what was good
for his society. Born to high status in it, he was not a careerist. Ham-
pered in the attainment of supreme authority by the accident of his
father's longevity, it was not that he had no place in the power
structure of his community but that he had had to hold on to his role
of heir-apparent too long. Though he was never to achieve the posi-
tion for which he seemed destined, he did by his personal character
succeed in winning a public respect which went far beyond the role
his society set out for him. Disposing of his resources skilfully
and sparingly, though somewhat indolently, to achieve his ends, he
was an example of how acts of personal appreciation and decision
can be brought to fulfillment with considerable effect within a given
social structure and may, in their turn, help to provide a new frame-
work within which that structure itself must operate.
40
2
Petrus Mailo,
Chief of Moen
Thomas Gladv\riii
X etrus is a man secure, and therefore humble, in the cer-
Mailo
sabedoria político
own wisdom. He is a statesman who, but for the setting
tainty of his
and character of his tasks, could take his place among the historic
molders of our common destiny.^ But he is not a leader of armies and
nations, bending the will of multitudes to a great cause. Rather he
is the elected chief of a small island boasting perhaps 2000 souls.
He stands protectively over his people, who go through their days
satisfied that his decisions in a thousand petty matters are unques-
tionably wise. At the same time he stands, on the organization chart
at least,below a group of American administrators, men of good will
but often of limited experience. Their understanding of the Trukese
can often be clouded by stereotypes they brought with them from
America, stereotypes perhaps of the simple savage who knows no
morals, of South Sea magic, or of the unique and indispensable vir-
tues of American democracy and free enterprise.
As the pressures and problems, protests and policies flow up
and down, Petrus is the eye of the needle through which they all
must pass. As each matter goes through his hands it must be scruti-
nized, and often transformed, so that the cumulative effect of all
these transactions will somehow keep his people in harmony with
the ever-changing and often dimly seen new patterns of life which
diplomacia
constantly emerge. The measure of his statesmanship, then, lies not
in conquests or in monuments, but in an endless procession of
episodes, most with a fortunate outcome.
Petrus is chief of Moen Island, seat of the American administra-
tion and one of half a dozen major islands scattered, along with
many smaller ones, throughout the large lagoon of Truk in the west-
ern Pacific. Like most tropical islands, these combine the lush beauty
of richly wooded slopes, clean white beaches and jewel-clear water
have shared the pleasure of writing this chapter with several others whose
1 I
42
Petrus Mailo, Chief of Moen
with stagnant inland swamps, areas of drab marsh grass, and occa-
sional inlets which seem somehow to have trapped all the flotsam
and refuse of the oceans. Most of the villages are strung along near
the water, clusters of unpainted frame houses fashioned of salvaged
Japanese lumber and corrugated iron. They are far from beautiful,
varanda
yet their open porches seem to invite in the trade winds and thus
symbolize an appealingly easy relationship with nature. The soil here
near the beach is sandy, accenting patterns of light and shadow as the
warm sunlight streams through constantly moving coconut fronds.
In many villages the South Sea paradise of our dreams becomes a
reality—although again our dreams do not usually include the flies
of these steep but fertile volcanic islands can grow turmeric, hard-
woods, tapioca, and other vital crops impossible to cultivate on low
coral islands. Consequently Truk has been since times long forgotten
the pivot and focus of all intercourse between islands to the north,
to the south, and for hundreds of miles to the west. The cultural
influence of Truk extends to the edge of Indonesia, and embraces
all of the Caroline Islands except the Palaus, Yap, and Ponape and its
43
Thomas Gladwin
figure on the political scene of all of Truk for most of this time.
This does not appear to be a long time until one realizes that sus-
tained contact with the outer world began for Truk only a scant
hundred years ago, and direct foreign rule has been imposed for
httle over fifty years. Petrus has thus had a share in molding a sig-
nificant proportion of Truk's recorded history.
44
—
45
Thomas Gladwin
—
Up on the beach, roads instead of trails in short, it brought vast
changes to the Trukese scene and complex problems in their wake.
The old masters of itang went into eclipse and with them much of the
old culture, yet the new synthesis which evolved lost nothing in
vitality or security for the Trukese, and particularly for Petrus. Dur-
ing these years of bewildering change Petrus was at his father's side,
except for a couple of interruptions when he went first to work for a
year on Saipan, and later in the phosphate deposits of Angaur over
a thousand miles to the east. His perspective broadened and his
understanding of the ways of administration and of administrators
matured under the tutelage of his father and still further when he
was apprenticed for a year as assistant to a chief of one of the villages
on Moen.
As enterprises continued to grow on Moen Petrus tried his hand
at them: a year operating a powerboat based on the island, three
years in the copra trading business on his own, several more years
as agricultural supervisor for the Japanese, and finally he was in
charge of labor gangs when the Japanese began fortifying the islands
in earnest before Pearl Harbor.
With the coming of war and the subsequent blockade of Truk,
when the Trukese were competing with four times their number of
Japanese for the available food resources, Petrus withdrew from the
Japanese to tend the family garden plots and see that his kin did not
starve, a responsibility made the greater when his father died at last
in 1944 at the age of 90. Petrus remained with his family until, in the
atendeu
closing days of the war, he heeded the urgings of a Japanese admin-
istrator of good will. He stepped forward in an attempt to soften the
impact on the people of Moen of the undisciplined chaos of despair-
ing soldiers, helpless in the face of the imminent downfall of Im-
perial Japan.
After the surrender all the Japanese were interned on the neigh-
boring island of Dublon, administrative center for the defeated re-
gime, and Moen shuddered under the impact of Seabees' bulldozers
and dynamite as the white quonset huts of a new American regime
blossomed on the ridges and valleys of the island.
Guided by the advice of those few half-castes who could speak
a little English, the Americans looked to old Mailo's family for a new
chief for the island on which they had settled. Petrus, perhaps
fortunately, deferred to his older brother, Albert. These were times
46
Petrus Mailo, Chief of Moen
47
Thomas Gladwin
It was shortly after he became chief of Moen that I first met Petrus.
His very dark skin, black wavy hair, rotund but compact build, and
a mobile face which is also rotund, do not necessarily distinguish him
48
Petrus Mailo, Chief of Moen
49
Thomas Gladwin
our labors were very slim. Yet he never flagged in his determination
to see that the work was done properly. (Compensation was finally
paid in 1956 on the basis of new maps, the fruition of eight years of
unstinting labor by Petrus.)
Many landmarks had been obliterated by time or bulldozers, claims
were conflicting, rights of ownership and of usage had to be separately
defined, and so on. For hours of every day we walked over the land,
surrounded by a vocal group of elders, by interested parties of all
sorts, and by curious children. Agreement among the claimants was
a display of its use nor reached a decision until those who might
prove wiser than he had spoken their piece.
With me at this time he was friendly but reserved, businesslike in
bajular se submeter
carrying forward our joint task. He did not flatter or defer to an
American, nor did he make me uncomfortable in my frequent ig-
norance of the customs of land tenure. He recognized that anyone
who was to do this task would have to be educated. Since the task
was an important one even if it might not bear fruit, it must be done
properly, and I therefore had to be taught. I recognized this equally
with Petrus, so my training proceeded without apology or condescen-
sion. conclusão
After some months, with interruptions, our map neared comple-
tion. Meanwhile the Native Affairs Officer in our Navy administration
reached the end of his tour of duty and departed for the United
States. To our consternation a change in orders diverted his intended
replacement, already en route to Truk, to another post. By default
his duties fell to me, and I retained them — later with the official
space for spreading out sleeping mats. A few of these youths settled in
fairly permanently and became the nucleus of the constantly changing
work force which, with great good humor and minimal efliciency,
operated our household.
The arrival of Petrus on our doorstep invariably precipitated a
flurry of activity, rather more activity than took place even when
our commanding oflicer appeared. A chair, centrally located.
Coffee, cream, sugar. Someone
get a spoon you —
you forgot it.
fool,
Cigarettes, ashtray, the table lighter —
no mere' matches for Petrus.
And get hold of Mr. Tom. I might be anywhere and, with wild
turning of the crank of the old wall telephone and a stream of in-
structions to the Trukese switchboard operator, the base telephone
system would be immobilized until I had been located. No other
island chief merited this treatment, although all were received with
courtesy. I had certainly never given instructions for special deference
to Petrus, but both my brothers and he recognized it immediately
as his natural due.
51
Thomas Gladwin
By this time Susie would have heard that Petrus was waiting at the
house and rushed in breathlessly to greet him. Susie is our younger
daughter, not yet 3 years old when she and Petrus became instant
friends.She was burned brown by the tropical sun, clad usually only
in a pair of shorts, and her hair a rag mop bleached by the same
sun to a dazzling blond. She was, and really still is, one of those
children who seems to be half wood sprite, loving and being loved
by every living being, all the way from stray cats and injured birds to
Petrus.
Her standard greeting, whether at our house or, more commonly,
in the busy setting of the Moen Island office whither she rode with
me in my was "Hi, Petrus!" The reply from large, black,
jeep,
august Petrus to this blonde mite was equally invariable: "Hi, Susie!"
although Petrus did not otherwise essay any words of English in
public during these early years. They conversed volubly, she in a
child's English and he in equally incomprehensible Trukese, both
seemingly quite comfortable in their communication.
The bond between Susie and Petrus was cemented over the island
of Mwokomwok. Mwokomwok is a preposterously tiny bit of black
rock and red which lies in the narrow strait between the big
soil
islands of Moen and Dublon. Its handful of coconut trees find them-
selves so crowded that they stick out at all angles. It is beautiful, yet
so tiny that one has difficulty taking it seriously. It has a cave through
its center, dug by the Japanese for guns to block the strait, a little
52
Petrus Mailo, Chief of Moen
Petrus ever bestowed upon me, and the proceedings went forward.
Ever afterward they met on terms of equality: Susie had her island,
and Petrus his.
which keep alive our fondness for Petrus. But he and I met most
rely upon the wisdom of Petrus' judgment. They also enjoyed the
experience so gratifying to an anthropologist but denied to me by
the pressure of time, of gathering data on the culture and folklore
of the past from an informant who knew his facts and could organize
them well, and who could dictate a text with the accuracy and pa-
tience necessary for a true transcription.
Another person who respected Petrus and valued his opinion was
our Civil Administrator and commanding officer. Commander Robert
D. Law, Jr. To him fell the trying responsibility not only of admin-
istering wisely the destinies of 10,000 Trukese and their 5000 outer
island cousins, but also of maintaining the efficiency, discipline, and
morale of a sizeable number of Navy officers and men who were do-
ing jobs they had for the most part definitely not joined the Navy to do.
Add to this the special problems of dependents who joined their men
in a remote and isolated community, of civilian schoolteachers in a
similar situation, of a steady flow of not always appropriate policy
directives from higher echelons, of ships which did not arrive on time
or arrived without the proper supplies, of the sometimes conflicting
interest of missionaries, and of dozens of other situations which he did
not join the Navy to —
meet either add all these together and Bob
53
Thomas Gladwin
ties of the other. Standing between them, I could ask for no more.
The bulk of the time and work Petrus devotes to his job is directed,
of course, to the routine of keeping the affairs of his island running
smoothly and efficiently. He hears and adjudicates disputes large
and work on roads,
small, plans sanitation, or construction for the
island-wide workday each week, discusses local problems with the
village chiefs, and so on. In these tasks he had the help of his two
right hand men: quiet, serious Meipung, Assistant Chief, who was
often rather puzzled by the humor which so often punctuated my
discussions with Petrus, and Efou, the island secretary, a man of
intelligence, diplomacy, and dry humor who used to vie with me in
solving problems —
he with the abacus and I with a slide rule, neither
of us ever really understanding or appreciating the other's instrument.
Petrus had been married, but after some years he and his wife had
separated. He remarried while I was on Truk, taking a young and
attractive bride, but she remained in the background. Trukese wives
do not intrude themselves into the affairs of their men, particularly
54
Petrus Mailo, Chief of Moen
True power means not merely giving orders, but also making deci-
sions, decisions which will manipulate people so that they will serve
the leader's ends. This, above all, is the skill Petrus learned at his
father's side —
and the skill he must at all costs not abuse. If he is to
help and lead his people Petrus must constantly rise in authority and
prestige to be able to meet an ever-growing challenge. He can, and
certainly docs, relish the power which is his, but he must also remind
himself that he was given itang and its heritage of wisdom for the
56
—
manipulated with full and open confidence even if they are friends.
I discovered how trying this can be one day when Petrus left the
island office with the avowed intent of going home to get drunk. Word
of this of course spread like wildfire and soon reached me. I felt I
relationship within which to discuss issues. He had closed the door and
was not inviting me to try to open it again.
I left, walking through his swamp on a
gardens and over his taro
narrow bridge, bewildered, angry, and thoroughly frustrated. Sud-
denly, I recalled that two nights before there had been a disturbance
in Mwan, the village closest to the Navy base and the island office.
One of the enlisted men had gone to the village after hours, pre-
sumably to find a Trukese woman for his entertainment. This hap-
pened all too frequently, but such forays were usually negotiated in
57
Thomas Gladwin
58
Petrus Mailo, Chief of Moen
his people on the block. In return he had won an issue which was
never again disputed. He might well have lost had our commanding
officerbeen one to react first to the indisputable challenge to Navy
authority Petrus had thrown down. Bob's view was never so limited,
but I like to believe Petrus would have done the same regardless of
who stood above him. But perhaps he would not. With other players
on the stage he might have devised an entirely different drama. But
whatever the means he might employ, he would never evade the
challenge.
This was Petrus in time of travail. It is happier to remember him
in times of achievement and acclaim. Perhaps the happiest of these
was his dedication of the assembly hall of the Truk Intermediate
School.
This building, a dazzling white quonset as large as any built in
earlier days by the Seabees on the base, was no mere routinely author-
ized addition to the base facilities. In fact requests for funds for such
a building had repeatedly been struck from the budget. Classroom
and dormitory facilities were considered to be all such a school re-
quired. Yet on a little ridge across the road stood the consolidated
teacher training school for all of the Trust Territory, a showplace for
visitors, pride and creation of the High Commissioner's staff —and
replete with an admirable assembly hall. The Intermediate School
in comparison thus not only lacked any building adequate for student
assemblies, but also felt like a neglected poor relative.
This long frustration finally became a challenge to Bob Beck, the
Education Officer on the Civil Administration staff. A Naval Acad-
emy graduate, he was living refutation of the often cited contention
that an officer with primarily military training can never embrace
wholeheartedly the tasks of civil administration. He finally obtained
little more than a token sum of money with which to start, and per-
mission to salvage any building materials he could find in the supply
compound near the dock. He drew up ambitious plans, seemingly
totally unrelated to the very limited resources available. Fired by
his enthusiasm and a newly found pride in their school, the students
worked heroically for months during most of their free time. The
whole of the base personnel, American and Trukese alike, and many
of the people of Moen, became personally committed to the project
as the building took form. As the day of the dedication approached
59
Thomas Gladwin
60
Petrus Mailo, Chief of Moen
sense he is his own anthropologist, yet a far surer one than any out-
side student of his culture could hope to be. It was doubtless for this
reason that I could take almost for granted most major issues
and discuss with him only details.
For this same reason Petrus stands foremost in my memory not as
61
Thomas Gladwin
62
3
Durixiugam,
A Nangiomeri
W. E. H. Stanner
One wintry afternoon in 1932 on the Daly River in North Aus-
tralia I saw that some of the men in an aboriginal camp near my
own had painted themselves garishly with earth-pigment. I knew this
64
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
power was apparent in his bulk but it was the grace and intensity
of his fighting which captured my attention. His favourite posture was
to fling arms and legs as wide as possible as though to make himself
the maximum target. Having drawn and evaded a spear he would
often counter with a dexterity and speed remarkable in so large a
—
man. His fluent movements in avoiding injury an inclination of the
65
—
W. E. H. Stanner
head, a sway of the body, the lifting of an arm or leg, a half turn
always seemed minimal. I saw his spears strike home several times.
As they did, the roars of exultation from his own side, and of rage
from the other, would bring a rally to both. He himself stayed un-
wounded through the afternoon after a peerless display of skill and
courage.
The by agreement, towards sundown and some
battle died, as if
66
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
and other gifts, and went to pains to see that I was honoured, even
to the point of taking me within the screen which hid the act of cir-
cumcision from the throng. Durmugam too was within the screen,
seated with three others —
all, by rule, classificatory wife's brothers of
the initiate —
so that their legs made a floor between the boy and the
ground.
I saw little of Durmugam during the great events of the ceremony
— the vigil of the night, after a warning spear told of the boy's return
from isolation; the spectacular, serpentine rush of the boy's abductors
frofti afar soon after dawn; the massed, chanting escort to Mununuk,
the camp of the hosts; the rite of sorrow as the boy was passed from
kin to kin to be fondled before circumcision; and, later, the healing
by and the presentation of valuables and insignia. But, as
fire
night came on, and the preparations for dancing and festivity were
in hand, Durmugam joined me at one of the fires. I soon began to feel
that we could become friends. I could not fault his manner and found
him quick to see the drift of questions. When he pointed out some
of the ceremony's features had missed, I began to see him
which I
flung himself into this dance with zest and gaiety. He must have been
at his best but even so was outclassed by Tjimari, a restless wanderer
from the distant Murinbata tribe. Where Durmugam had grace and
67
W. E. H. Stanner
skill, Tjimari had polish and a set of artful tricks which made each
dance end in a furore. He would introduce a comical contrast of
position and expression, prolong a stance so that it seemed absurd
even to my eye, or use some form of caricature too subtle for me to
grasp. But the roar of appreciative laughter from the watchers told
its own story. I could see no mortification or jealousy in Durmugam
or the other dancers. The performances are competitive in a sense
but the prestige men gain through them does not seem necessarily to
depreciate others.
Durmugam and Tjimari made an interesting comparison. Both
were notable men in their own ways. Tjimari was at least Durmugam's
equal with fighting weapons, though only half his size. He was so
extraordinarily agile that was almost impossible to hit him with
it
principles, and ready for any villainy that paid. Durmugam was no
manipulator, and had a rocklike steadiness that Tjimari lacked. I
feel that he had a deeper and more passionate conviction than
Tjimari of the rightness of aboriginal ways. I sometimes felt com-
68
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
passion for Durmugam; for Tjimari, much less frequently, and then
mainly because he too typified the vital will of the blacks to make
something of the ruined life around them.
about that order of preference.I will say this for Durmugam, that he
learned through them many things much better seen or shown than
told. Durmugam was naively vain of his skill with spear and gun, and
by indulging him I learned not only much about aboriginal ecology
but also about motives which powerfully drive the blacks to para-
sitism.The life of a hunting and foraging nomad is very hard even
in a good environment. Time and again the hunters fail, and the
search for vegetable food can be just as patchy. A few such failures
in sequence and life in the camps can be very miserable. The small,
—
secondary foodstuffs the roots, honey, grubs, ants, and the like, of
which far too much has been made in the hterature are relished —
69
W. E. H. Stanner
tidbits, but not staples. Tiie aborigines rarely starve but they go
short more often than might be supposed when the substantial fauna
—kangaroos, wallaby, goannas, birds, fish — are too elusive. The
blacks have grasped eagerly at any possibility of a regular and de-
pendable food supply for a lesser effort than is involved in nomadic
hunting and foraging. There is a sound calculus of cost and gain
in preferring a belly regularly if only partly filled for an output of
work which can be steadily scaled down. Hence the two most
common characteristics of aboriginal adaptation to settlement by Eu-
ropeans: a persistent and positive effort to make themselves de-
pendent, and a squeeze-play to obtain a constant or increasing supply
of food for a dwindling physical effort. I appreciated the good sense
of the adaptation only after had gone hungry from fruitless hunting
I
with rifle, gun, and spears in one of the best environments in Aus-
tralia.
he learned that my scent was too strong, my white skin too visible,
and that I made too much noise to let us both get within throwing
distance, he gave up any attempt to show me his prowess. Several
times he came back with a kill when, rubbed with mud to deaden his
scent, he went on alone carrying only his spear and womerah. More
often we hunted with firearms, I with a Winchester .32, he with my
Browning repeater gun, the mechanism of which fascinated him.
70
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
He could not use the rifle well, the fine sights evidently being beyond
him, but he was an excellent set-piece shot with the gun.
On the hunt, we walked in file, he in the lead. He never went
behind me with a weapon of any kind, though had not asked him I
cult and irritating) but if I flagged would turn back and offer to
carry things for me. He would break off projecting twigs which
might injure me, or hold obstructing branches to one side, or point
silently with gun or spear at obscure impediments. When we halted
he would often pluck an armful of leaves or grass for me to lie on,
and would scuff a place clear with his feet. It was always he who
drew the water and fetched the wood. If wildfowl had to be re-
trieved he would strip and plunge without ado into waters frequented
by man-eating crocodiles. True, such services were a convention of
black man and white together in the bush, and many other natives
performed them for me just as well, but his merit was that he made
them seem a courtesy.
Over this period my knowledge of him and confidence in him
deepened to the point at which I knew I could safely ask him to
tell me about the murders. He did so with what seemed full candour,
71
W. E. H. Stanner
had there been, he would have denied them. If his record of blood is
were so starkly simple that one often felt the year might almost as
well have been 1832. The world depression had hit hard. The farmers
thought themselves lucky to get sixpence a pound for their crops.
They kept going, rarely seeing money, on credit from the distant
Darwin stores, and eked out a life on bread, tea, and the simplest
condiments which would make tolerable the bush-foods supplied by
natives. Wallaby stew was the staple dish. Most of them went hatless,
bootless, and shirtless. One or two had decrepit tractors, but the
others used horse-drawn ploughs to keep perhaps twenty acres in
production. The sandy soil, the opulent weed growth, pests, a parch-
ing winter, and a deluge of summer rain were in conspiracy to offer
good crops only when there was a glut elsewhere, and bad crops
with a frequency guaranteed to keep them in debt.
Each farm had its attached group of aboriginal workers and hang-
ers-on, who were paid nothing but were given a meagre daily ration
of the foods which the farmers themselves ate, together with a small
allowance of tobacco. Once a year, if the farmers were not destitute,
the work-teams were given a handout of the daily commodities and
a few articles of clothing. Pitiably small as this real income was, it
72
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
attracted far more natives than could be employed. Each one at work
had others battening on him as adhesively as he on his employer.
All of these men were hard on their natives, some brutally so,
but perhaps not much more so than they were on themselves. They
supposed that their lives would be insupportable if they lost the
physical dominance, and this may very well have been so. They and
the aborigines were mutually dependent, desperately so, and no love
was lost on either side. The settlers also feuded among themselves,
in most cases over the supposed enticement of their more dependable
labourers of whom, at this time, there were very few. Unskilled la-
bourers were plentiful enough, within the limits set by the total
numbers (the population was about 300) and by the tribal jealousies
which I shall mention later, but most of the aborigines were feckless
and likely to wander away at whim, usually when most needed for
agricultural tasks that could not wait. Dependable men and women
able to do unsupervised work were few indeed, and the loss of one
from a farm was a serious blow. No agreement about poaching could
be depended on, and some of the sophisticated blacks played one
employer against another.
The aboriginal women, single or married, were eager for associ-
ations with Europeans and Chinese. While ready enough for casual
affairs, they tried by any and all means to make semipermanent or
73
W. E. H. Stanner
with the utmost surprise that I began to piece together the story of
how, over half a century, enterprise after enterprise had failed. A
sugar plantation, a Jesuit mission, a copper smelter, a Government
experimental farm, and a planned settlement of "blockers" or small
farmers, to say nothing of one essay after another by individual
fortune hunters, all attracted by absurd optimisms, had failed mis-
erably.
I should have known all this before going, but all my interest had
been in the Kimberlies. Radcliffe-Brown, my teacher, had asked me
to go to Turkey Creek but when he left Sydney for Chicago late in
1931 a chance meeting with Gerhardt Laves, the linguist, persuaded
me to change the plan. Laves told me of half a dozen unstudied
tribes, and of scores of myalls, i.e., wholly uncivihzed natives, who
spoke no English, on the Daly River. Turkey Creek faded from sight;
I had to see the unspotted savage; I had to be there when the dry
season opened; there was not even time to comb the general literature
and I knew the anthropological literature; that was enough. It was
not enough, when I arrived in Port Darwin, to allow me to assess
the innocent misinformation which some of the authorities gave me.
Yes, they said, it was would have to look to my
truly myall country; I
skin and possessions; there had been murders and robberies; it was
on the fringe of the last unknown part of the North. Nothing I was
told was actually incorrect. The trouble was that in capital and
province the sense of history was shallow; there was no grasp what-
74
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
had drawn in people from tribes on the outer marches, the Moiil
and Fitzmaurice Rivers, the Wingate and Macadam Ranges. Whole
—
tribes like Durmugam's Nangiomeri —
had migrated, and large
tracts had thus been emptied decades before the authorities or set-
tlers were aware of it. Some of the small tribes of the Daly (Kamor,
Yunggor) had ceased to exist. Those members who had not died
from new diseases (such as measles, influenza, tuberculosis, and
syphilis), or from bullets, or from debauchery by grog and opium,
or in the jealous battles for possession of which Durmugam had been
a childish witness, had been dispersed by migration or else absorbed
into larger tribes on which they had claims by contiguity, kinship,
friendship, or affinity. The Marimanindji, Marinunggo, and Madn-
gella were among the tribes which went this way. The dwindling in
total numbers, so far as they were visible on the Daly, had been
concealed by the inward drift. The Marithiel, Maringar, Mariga,
and Maritjavin were already on the river when I arrived, except
for a few parties still out in the blue. There were then no more
tribes to come, except the Murinbata of Port Keats, and all that held
them away was the opening of The Sacred Heart Mission by Father
Docherty in 1935. The authorities, in all good faith, could well
imagine that the hinterland was still densely populated, for the Daly
River seemed to keep on breeding myalls continuously.
75
W. E. H. Stanner
ing. About the turn of the century the Nangiomeri had been made
restless by tales of the wonders to be seen at the new goldmine at
Fletcher's Gully, which lay about half way to The Crossing. In this
region of many small tribes, the Nangiomeri were blocked from the
Daly River, so they went instead to Fletcher's Gully. Once there, they
and the western Wagaman, who accompanied them, never returned
to their own country. Durmugam's father died at the mine; how, he
does not know. The mine failed and his mother and mother's brother
took him on to the Daly; what new circumstances made this possible,
so soon after the earlier impasse, he cannot say. He remembers only
two things clearly of his earliest days on the Daly, where his mother
died at the copper mine —
endless, bloody fights between the river
and the back-country tribes, and numbers of drink-sodden aborig-
ines lying out in the rain. The few police records which have sur-
vived make both memories seem credible enough. Between 1898 and
1911 the police inquired into seventy-three sudden deaths, sixty-
two of them Chinese, two aboriginal. Among the genial causes were
murder, suicide, accident, alcoholism, lightning, snakebite, fever, and
syphilis. But any anthropologist would find indirect genealogical
76
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
story, it was as though his mind and heart had suddenly unified.
His expression was rapt, his mood earnest, and he seemed filled
—
High Culture ovoid, circular, and linear piles of man-arranged
stones, deep earth-excavations, and some other signs, to say noth-
ing of fragmentary memories of rites evidently last celebrated before
the turn of the century. There had been nothing of equivalent force
to destroy the High Culture of the Victoria River tribes at this stage
and, at the time when Durmugam encountered it, there had been a
vivification by the spread of the cult of Kunabibi.
In the 1920's a widespread conviction had grown up on the
Daly River that their own culture-hero, Angamunggi, the All-
Father, a local variant of the almost universal Rainbow Serpent,
had deserted them. Before I had heard a word of Kunabibi I had
been told that Angamunggi had "gone away." Many evidences were
cited that he no longer "looked after" the people: the infertility of
the women (they were in fact riddled by gonorrhea), the spread
of sickness, and the dwindling of game were among them. The
cult of Kunabibi, the All-Mother, thus came at a beautifully appro-
priate time.The cult assumed the local form of a cult of Karwadi,
by which name the bullroarer, the symbol of the All-Mother, had
been known in the days of ihe All-Father. Karwadi became the
provenance of the mixed but connected elements which I term the
new High Culture. It was this that the young Nangiomeri brought
—
back from the Victoria a secret wisdom, a power, and a dream
shared by no one else on the Daly River. It is clear that these young
men were fired, and also felt under some kind of command. Dur-
mugam was one of a group of three who seem to have set about
remodelling their lives and their culture. He was not the leader;
it would be more accurate to say that he was the secular force of
78
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
secular plight of the aborigines was also at its worst, for the bottom
had fallen out of the white economy on which they were dependent.
There was much disenchantment with Europeanism and constant
friction with the farmers. I should think that no scrap of European
prestige remained. I found an unshaken belief that aboriginal ways
were right, even on the level of the Low Culture. But the aborigines
were in chains: they could not bear to be without the narcotic
tobacco and the stimulating tea; any woman could be bought for
a fingernail of one or a spoonful of the other. Their still complex
economy also demanded the hardware and softgoods obtainable
from Europeans alone. And an increasing difficulty in getting bush
food bound them to parasitism on a settlement where the farmers
themselves often had barely enough to eat.
In these circumstances the cultivation of a great secret and its
expressive rite was, for the aboriginal men at least, a compensatory
outlet. What the women thought did not matter. The secret was
guarded as closely as possible, and the euphemism "Sunday busi-
ness" or "big Sunday" came into use to explain to Europeans the
nature of the affair which often took men away for a month at a
79
W. E. H. Stanner
time there has been a tendency in other tribes to believe that offences
against Karwadi underlay all the killings. It is an ex post facto
rationalization: an attempt to adduce a moral justification based on
canonized values.
One Lamutji, a Marithiel, had been given a bullroarer by Dur-
mugam as a symbol of admission to membership in the secret
circle. Lamutji had promised a substantial payment, a necessary
condition of possession, and a condition that the donor had to en-
force if, at the very least, his own safety were not to be in danger.
When, after five years, Lamutji had paid nothing in spite of many
reminders, Durmugam decided to kill him at the first opportunity.
He ambushed the bilker in a jungle near the river and transfixed
him from behind with a shovel-spear. Lamutji recognized Durmugam
before dying and was told why he had been killed. Durmugam then
pierced the body with sharp stakes and pinned it in the mud below
tide level. Onleft a few traces of Lamutji, obliterated
the bank, he
his own and cleverly simulated the marks of a crocodile
tracks,
to give the impression that this had been Lamutji's fate. The body
was never found. Durmugam came under instant suspicion, but he
kept silent or denied all knowledge, and the police evidently felt
unable to act. On the facts as Durmugam told them, this was the
only murder connected with the cult.
He killed Waluk, a Marimanindji who was as powerful and
formidable a man as Durmugam himself, in talion for the death
of a brother who had sickened and died after a visit by Waluk.
80
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
His third and fourth victims were also Marimanindji, an old man
named Barij and his son Muri. A classificatory brother of Muri
had killed an old man in a camp fracas at which Durmugam was
present. The murderer, Mutij, fled and was later arrested by a party
of natives under the control of police-trackers, then the conven-
tional police method of apprehending criminals. Durmugam was a
member of the party. Mutij was sent to gaol for seven years. The
Nangiomeri then held a divination to find who had been Mutij's
secret prompter. The spirit of the dead man is alleged to have
named Barij and Muri as guilty of prime agency. In fact, Barij had
done nothing in the fracas and Muri had only run to the aid of his
threatened brother, which is a brother's duty. Durmugam and ac-
complices lured the two men to a quiet place after a kangaroo-hunt,
lulled them into a false security, and killed them. Durmugam was
arrested but an error of procedure led to his release from custody
after five months. He believes he served a gaol sentence expiating
the offence. I was wept over this affair, and he once
told that he
said to me had been egged on by others— a standard self-
that he
exculpation of the aborigines. This was the nearest I ever heard him
come to an expression of regret.
The word "murder" is pejorative and begs a question at issue
in these events. Were any of the killings lawful homicide in ab-
original customary law?
All the river tribes believed in mystical agency and in the mystical
discovery of it. All practised and acted on the outcome of divina-
tions. Durmugam acted within an established custom and under
82
•^ <
the talk was of warlockry and poison. The death of any man or
male child (females did not count) was thought to be evidence of
the human use of dark powers, and a divination usually followed,
with a plot of talion. No one dared to walk about alone. To do so
invited speculation about evil motive, or risked the assassin's spear.
An unescorted woman was usually raped. Men, even within eyeshot
of their camps, carried a womerah; it suggested pacific intention
but gave them a means of returning a spear. If they went any
distance they carried a spear as well. The camps were fenced in
with wire-netting or scraps of roof-iron. No one slept close enough
be within reach of a warlock's arm.
to the fence to
These fears and tensions were almost exclusively between the two
intertribal coalitions. Durmugam had an unconquerable hatred of
the Marithiel and Maringar. So too did Melbyerk, the most intelli-
gent and detached aborigine I have known. Neither Nangiomeri nor
83
W. E. H. Stanner
and they would then intermingle, but cautiously, and fights were
always likely to occur. When I saw Durmugam in 1958, there was no
longer much talk of warlocks and poison but his hatred had, if
anything, grown. The Nangiomeri epithets could not express his
sentiments. He spoke in English about those "bloody f g bastards
of Moiils," even falling into the vulgar European error of lumping
both tribes together as "Moiils" whereas a generation before they
had been lumped together as "Brinkens."
European law on the river had been feeble, fitful, and some-
times a brutal thing. The police administration sometimes used the
station as a penalty-post for men without futures in the force. In
general, there was no dependable resort at law for aborigines suffer-
ing by felony, misdemeanour, or tort. Many of the police-trackers
had served gaol sentences for felonies. The blacks, for the most
part, had to look to their own justice.
Thus, in 1932, there was no effective European law interposed
between the murk of fear, suspicion, and hatred that lay between
the warring coalitions. The white farmers kept a minimum of disci-
phne and in some sense the farms were sanctuaries too. At night,
natives would often come out of the darkness and ask to sleep
nearby, leaving when daylight came. It was unnecessary to ask for
an explanation. Marabut, my main Marithiel informant, was too
frightened to leave if kept inadvertently after sundown. Belweni,
the Wagaman, was thrown into consternation by a footprint he
could not recognize. Melbyerk, when on the southern or "Brinken"
bank, would try to defecate at night so as to be within the glow of
my campfire. A group of saltwater blacks who came to one initia-
tion sat sleepless, under my own eyes, throughout a whole night.
There were, of course, men of greater courage. Durmugam would
willingly walk for me the sixty miles to Stapleton or Adelaide River
carrying mail in a cleft stick (these were still days of unsophistica-
tion) and would do so alone.
84
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
jawline clean, and his chin fairly well-formed. Sometimes his eyes
left one a little uncertain what to think: they were heavy lidded,
perhaps a trifle protuberant, and could wear a hooded and brooding
look. This impression may have been only an effect of the aboriginal
iris or of the eye diseases from which he was a constant sufferer.
I always thought that the smile which had earned him his European
name, and was never very far away, was a good index of his most
constant temper.
His mind was inclined to be slow and heavy-working. He needed
ample time to weigh any question put to him. If pushed he showed
perplexity rather than irritation. One felt that his mind worked well
only on familiar and unhurried lines, but there was more to it than
mental slowness. He had a prudent, judicious quality too. I often
waited for minutes in silence while he thought over something. At
such times a variety of expressions would show naively in his face;
he would come several times to the brink of speech only to pause;
finally, almost always with a half-smile, he would speak. The quality
of his observations usually made up for their slowness. I never
proved that he misled me, and found him correct on innumerable
occasions. He had a feeling for the truth, whereas Tjimari had none.
Durmugam would be very open if he made mistakes and offer the
correction candidly. This probity of mind made him invaluable on
matters of theoretical significance. Unlike many aborigines he had
great mental stamina. He was also gifted, exceptionally so, in making
simple visual demonstrations of things. Eventually, I turned one of
his demonstrations (in which sticks were used as counters and
stick-movements as signs of marriage, parentage, residence, and
descent) into a model for teaching the theory of the subsection
system, much as the aborigines teach it.
was then about 57, white-haired, with faihng eyesight, but still erect
and still a striking figure of a man. But many things had changed
greatly: the farmers were, if not prosperous, no longer poor; the
blacks were on wages and very money-conscious; all had European
clothes and in their camps, some now reasonably well built, one
could find gramophones, torches, kitchenware, even bicycles; some
85
W. E. H. Stanner
High Culture had not prospered; many of the young men openly
derided the secret life; the coalitions now mattered only to those
with long memories.
Dumiugam was much more difficult to talk to, though still cour-
teous. Many troubles were coming upon him, and he brooded on
them so much that I found it hard to keep his mind on other
matters. The young men were starting to make overtures to his
wives, but he could never catch them. I tried to persuade him, if
he did, not to use undue violence, since I had no wish to see him
hang or languish in gaol. He promised to be cautious and made
himself a bamboo stick He was filled with
loaded with heavy wire.
angry contempt for the young men of the day. "They can throw a
spear," he said, "but can they make one? Can they find their own
food in the bush?" He told me of a conversation with one youth
who was deriding the bullroarer. Durmugam told him that it might
cost him his life. The youth said, with a shrug: "If I live, I live;
as his troubles had grown. I noted too, for the first time, an element
of desperation and pessimism for the future. At the same time, there
were signs of antipathy in him towards Europeanism and a deepen-
ing attachment to the old aboriginal ways. He said several times,
almost angrily, "the blackfellows have their own laws." Between
talks own troubles, we went over most of my original
about his
notes. They emerged almost unaltered, but I found him able to
make more powerful abstractions than twenty years before. He no
longer came so freely to me, though I had camped on the same
spot; he had to sit, brooding, in his own camp, watching for the
next attempt to take his women.
The last time I saw him, in 1958, only a few months before
writing this, he told me that great shame had come upon him and
86
—
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
The police, he said, would do nothing; they had told him no one
had broken the Europeans' law; and, if he hurt or killed anyone,
they would send him to Fanny Bay (the gaol), or hang him. He
said repeatedly: "My belly is like a fire. My brain never stops. It
87
W. E. H. Stanner
injustices were compounding, and that an issue had arisen for the
administration of the new policy of "assimilation."
The policy of assimilation meant to offer the aborigines a
is
"positive" future —
absorption and eventual integration within the
European community. Does it involve a loss of natural justice for
the living aborigines? No one answers. Cases like Durmugam's are
irritating distractions from loftier things. The policy assumes that
the aborigines want, or will want, to be assimilated; that white
Australians will accept them on fair terms; that discrimination will
die or can be controlled; that, in spite of the revealed nature of the
aborigines and their culture, they can be shaped to have a new and
"Austrahan" nature. The chauvinism is quite unconscious. The idea
that the aborigines might reject a banausic life occurs to no one.
The unconscious, unfocused, but intense racialism of Australians is
88
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
now of Australian life. For this reason hundreds of natives have gone
through, and will go through, the torment of powerlessness which
Durmugam suffered.
Australia has nothing like the system of local administration which
exists inNew Guinea, where officials with both executive and judicial
powers live in and control given districts. Even if there were, no code
of law or regulations exists which is based on aboriginal problems in
their own right. It is very doubtful if a European court would recognize
an aboriginal marriage as a fact of law. The same is so of most of the
other things of life which, to a blackfellow, make life worth the
living. For example, the totally inalienable link between a man and
his clan-estate, a man's right to hunting tracts, his right to claim
material wealth from the husband of his sister or daughter — all these,
and a dozen others, are a world away from European minds. The
occasional welfare officers whom the aborigines see are not magistrates,
and in any case have no code to guide them. The local scene thus
tends to be anarchic. If grievance leads to crime then police and
magistrates act as might be expected. They may allow a vague sense
— it cannot be other than vague — of the aborigines' special problems
to mitigate their decisions, but their canons are essentially European.
The whole system actually rests on a pretence, rather, on a set of
89
W. E. H. Stanner
seen him striding downriver and, suspecting bad trouble, had vainly
tried to intercept him, but he had eluded me. When I told him
later that I had searched for him with the idea of holding him back
he grinned and said, "I knew what you were going to do." He was
feeling very good about the day. "Those bloody Moiils," he said,
"they are not men. All they think about is humbugging women."
He described where he had hit them, and what poor things they
were for not fighting back. He said he would make them pay him
^6 each.
After I left the river his wife and daughter were suddenly returned
to him, and he was also told that the young men had been banished
to Snake Bay. Then, out of the blue, the trouble started again.
The youths reappeared in the locality, having tricked the officials
not seem to be on his side. I then interceded on his behalf with the
authorities.
Among Mulluk Mulluk, the consanguines of Durmugam's
the
faithless wife, there was a strong feeling of shame. Other Nangiomeri
were his defenders too, and the girl's co-wives gave her a thrashing
when she returned for (as they told me) bringing shame on an
90
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
old man. In other tribes, there were mixed feehngs, perhaps mainly
cynicalamusement, but several polygynists were thoughtful and
some of the young bloods delighted. They seemed to be drawing
the inference that the Government did not mind how they got women.
The emotion of shame is perhaps the most powerful in aboriginal
life. But it is not only a restraint; it can be a goad as well. Like
most of the emotions of negative valuation, it is stronger than
those which are positive. Durmugam may have wept over Barij and
Muti, he may have wanted to kill Waluk and Lamutji he was also —
ashamed not to. As he himself put it, he was "made" to kill the
first two, and "had" to kill the second two. He responded, at least
back, and out of the reach of his arm. Those "bastards of Moiils"
send malicious messages that they will come for his women when-
ever they feel like doing so. He is not a man to live with expungible
shame and, at our last meeting, I had the strong feeling that if
his rightswere not acknowledged and restored he would either turn
his face to the wall and die, or there would be another affair of
blood. I do not necessarily mean that Durmugam would himself
go out and kill someone, but that several people would die several, —
because there is a scale of shame. A single killing will not expunge
a great humihation. The victims could be almost anyone the youths, —
the woman, a man like Waduwiri, or even people without apparent
connection though, in native eyes, guilty of agency.
A little later, at Port Keats, I picked up a few threads which
made me thoughtful. A woman
had been abducted from the Victoria
River by a Murinbata man, and the secret sponsor of the affair
was supposed to be Waduwiri, one of Durmugam's main enemies.
Tjimari, the intriguer, was trying by subtle means to frighten the
Murinbata into returning the woman on the ground that her abduc-
tion had angered the Victoria River aborigines who would other-
wise now be bringing bullroarers to Port Keats. He was spreading
the story that the woman had slighted Karwadi in short, was pre- —
paring the ground for her mass rape or, possibly, death. Some quiet
visits were made to Durmugam by a brother and a classificatory
father of the abductor, with a purpose I could not learn. The first
91
W. E. H. Stanner
and sanction for two sides. I could not discern Tjimari's deeper in-
tent, nor Durmugam's.
Tlie tension increased when, in spite of the isolation of Port Keats,
we heard that Waduwiri had ensnared and killed a certain Split-Lip
Mick, a truly villainous man who had completed a gaol sentence for
the murder of Tiger Dapan some years ago. Waduwiri had welcomed
Split-Lip on his return to the Daly River and had camped with him
in apparent amity for some months. A day came when Waduwiri deftly
divided a hunting party in two so that he and Split-Lip were left
alone. It was then the work of a moment to distract Split-Lip's atten-
tion and pierce him through with a shovel-spear. The wounded man
showed a ferocious will to live. He shouted for help, ran into the
timber, managed somehow to pull the spear through and out of his
body, and only then collapsed. Waduwiri stood over him long enough
to say, "You forgot about Dapan; well, it is Dapan who is now killing
you." Then he too ran, to escape the other party now racing through
the timber. He was arrested later but for reasons I am unable to explain
was soon out of custody. Split-Lip clung to life for about eight days.
It was now clear that serious trouble was brewing. A number of
hatreds were at an intense pitch. How would they align themselves
and who would rally to the lines? I spent much time trying to predict
what would happen, but there were too many unknowns. Then Al-
ligator Ngundul, Durmugam's mother's sister's son, died at Port
Keats for no apparent reason. One of his sons came angrily to me,
held out an arm, struck it with his other hand as though to cut the arm
in two, and thus showed by how much his father's life had been cut
short. He swore then and there to find The Flesh of the Road, the
Murinbata name for the warlock. Soon afterwards he set out for the
Victoria River with a lock of his father's hair to put the matter to a
divination. My guess was that Durmugam's shame, the grief of his
new loss, the release of Waduwiri, and the divination going on in
secret hundreds of miles away were moving inevitably together.
Waduwiri prudently kept away from the Daly River and began to
put out feelers as to his reception at Port Keats if he were to come.
But I did not see any place as now really safe for him. And there the
matter rested when I wrote this article.
was positive, and his conduct hopeful and constructive, until his
great troubles set in, but even then he held on tenaciously, trying
to find a solution. Where many aborigines were bewildered or even
crushed by the complexity, weight and mysteriousness of European-
ism, or sought sullenly to isolate themselves from it, or became
beggars or sycophants, Durmugam tried to come to working terms
with it while staying his own man. I never heard him speak harshly
of a European, or heard of his being in conflict with one. If spoken
to angrily or contemptuously, he would walk away, showing no out-
ward sign of feeling.
He remains for me the most characterful aborigine I have known,
but I could not confidently put him in any more specific category.
I saw no neurotic or psychotic quality in him. His passions were
by nature strong, and he was a man of determined will. He lacked
the luminous intelligence of Melbyerk, but had a far stronger senti-
ment for aboriginal ways. I am sure he was deeply moved to live
by the rules of his tradition as he understood it. He wanted to live
a blackfellow's life, having the rights of a man, and following up
The Dreaming. He venerated his culture; when he grew older, he
even found it intellectually interesting. "It comes round again," he
would say of the system of sub-sections, "it comes round!" The sym-
metry and precision of this organizational form fascinated him. His
desire to see the aboriginal norms of life realized, and his restraint
in the ordinary circumstances of life, were perhaps the two most
abiding impressions he left on me. His life-objects, his scale of values,
the terms he would accept for their attainment, and the costs he
would sustain, all made sense in relation to those qualities.
Aborigines like Durmugam can never be "assimilated." They will
retreat from this latterday solicitude as they did from the ignorant
neglect of former times. The only thing he liked about Europeanism
was its goods. I do not believe he ever formed a deep attachment
to any European, myself included. He knew that I was making use
of him, and, as a due for good service, he made use of me, always
civilly, never unscrupulously or importunately, as with Tjimari. He
was told, poor man, that I had great influence; he knew I had com-
manded a small force during the war, and he developed this fact
was the "boss" of all the soldiers he saw; Tjimari
into the idea that I
told was a lawyer who "stood up for the blackfellows." So
him I
tivism appeared in his later years, and even that was, so to speak,
positive —
a rejection of the mere activism which captivated the young
men and women after the trauma of the war (a regiment of troops
was stationed at The Crossing, and many aborigines were swept into
a labour corps), and the first true impact of a monetary economy
in a condition of inflation. The secularization was far-reaching and
corrosive, psychically and socially. The young man's remark, "If I
live I live, if I die I die," had seemed to Durmugam monstrous. To
him, how a man lived and what he lived for were of first importance.
But he himself had in part succumbed. He now spent much time
playing poker for money (there were five aces in one of his packs
of cards); and, for the first time in his life, he accepted money from
me. His material wants were more complex and at a higher level.
He still went bootless, but wore a hat and well-kept shirt and
trousers.
Aboriginal culture leaves a child virtually untrammeled for five
94
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
or sixth year, when little boys may be seen throwing stones at their
mothers, or abusing them, while the women laugh. At initiation new
psychic paths are made by isolation, terror, fatigue, pain, mystery,
music, drama, grave instruction —
means impHcitly prescient and in
overt use a memorable spectacle. One inward path is ruptured, an-
other substituted, and life thereafter is one continuous redintegration.
There are quite probably neural as well as psychic and social reasons
why, after initiation, an aboriginal youth responds but poorly to
other possible worlds opened to him. Neural, since there has been
a cortical integration of intense quality; psychic, since his responses
have been deeply conditioned to limited stimuli; social, since only
a limited range of objects of action have positive valence for him.
Durmugam was initiated, as he says, "in the bush," at a time
(about 1913) when a relatively large number of aborigines could
be assembled and the full panoply of ceremonial forms could be
followed. He emerged a blackfellow for He did not simply reach
life.
manhood: he was given it, was made a man by men who stood for
and taught him to stand for a tradition in part only revealed. Later,
as I have narrated, he learned the full tradition, not of his own, but
of neighbourly tribes. The conditioning was not only thus completed,
but vivified, by the new presence of Kunabibi, and by the repetition
and intensification of stimuli consistent with those of the trauma of
initiation.
I came to believe, in the end, that the "hot belly" and the calm
face of this man were consistent. The initiations teach boys to be
men: to know pain and ignore it; to feel fear and master it; to want,
but to bear the necessary costs; to grasp that outside society they are
nothing (in the isolation of initiation they are called "wild dogs")
and, inside it, the masters; that through them The Dreaming is "fol-
lowed up"; that the tradition is "the road." The vital impulses are
not crushed, but steered; the social conscience forecloses these fields
95
W. E. H. Stanner
will die for, and if a man is what he loves, I have said enough to enable
others to fonn a judgment of this aborigine. For him, as I under-
stood him, the hills stood, the rivers ran, the sky hung there time-
lessly, men went on being what they had to be because The All-
Father did thus and so in the beginning, and a livingman could do
that and should do this until he died. Vexing, rather inexplicable
things came from outside the tradition. He utilized what he could,
endured what he had to, and for the rest did his best to follow up
The Dreaming.
All this was written while the old man was still alive. He died in
Port Darwin Hospital in August, 1959, of an inoperable cancer of
the stomach. Before then he had developed leprosy of one foot and
had shown He was cared for through a suc-
signs of a failing heart.
cession of illnesses at the new Mission of the Sacred Heart on the
Daly River and made several trips to Darwin for medical attention.
A European of sensibility who knew him over his last years re-
marked on his dignity, patience, courtesy to Europeans and readiness
to meet any request for help. A nun asked Durmugam if he would
like to teach the young aboriginal boys the wood-working in which
he excelled, and he responded with delight. He showed the enchanted
children how, with no tool but the stub of an old knife, to coax a
flawless, complex shape out of wood so tough that it soon dulled axe
and saw. The things he best knew how to make were spears, and he
carved a great many hooked spears with perfect craftsmanship. All
the work showed the love of form, balance, and symmetry which
characterized him. In this setting he seemed anything but a man of
blood. There was a gentleness about him with children which I had
noted even when he was young.
The last illness developed rapidly and though for some time un-
willing he consented at last to go to Darwin again. An operation
showed that nothing could be done for him. He was not told of his
condition and the doctors did what they could to keep him alive and
in good spirits. Some of his distant kin told me that when they saw
him in hospital he spoke of his sickness as but a little thing. Evi-
dently he did not expect that he would die so soon. At the last he
was given Catholic baptism and burial at Rapid Creek not far from
where the Jesuits had founded the mission which they transferred to
the Daly River a decade before he was born. An unusually large
97
W. E. H. Stanner
had force Durmugam went long distances to take part in the funerary
rites which were once a spectacle of the region. The last time he did
second rite were complete. The body, dried and shrunken by long
exposure, had been broken into pieces, burned to a mixture of ash and
charcoal, and then ground to powder. All that was left was a small
container of paper-bark and a few handfuls of fine substance. The
parcel had been taken from its place under the pillow of Belweni's
mother and was now at Malboiyin. It was to help in the due interment
of these remains that Durmugam went with many others -kith, kin, —
friends, and enemies —
to Malboiyin, Belweni's ancestral clan-estate.
In the last rite the small parcel of dust was put in a hole within a
cleared circle. Valuable things were laid on top as symbolic gifts.
The grass around the clearing was then fired. The gift-givers soon with-
drew the goods, and two clustered formations of clans ran forward
through the smoke and smoulder. Each was daubed with pipeclay and
came brandishing spears. The formations alternately encircled the
grave, by this time covered with earth, and moved in line by measured
and rhythmic steps so as to form an anticlockwise spiral with a point
slowly nearing the grave. All the movements were in time to a chant
in part melancholy and in part somehow triumphant. Each spiral
halted as its leader's feet were on the grave. All the men in the forma-
tion then turned and rushed upon the centre. There, crowded together,
each man stamped his right foot repeatedly, thrust his spear-point
towards the grave, and added his voice to a chorus of chanted cries
simulating the calls of wild things, the river currents, and the breaking
surf.
98
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
Each formation vied with the other to vivify the rite. In the back-
ground were waihng women and, at a distance, a sohtary singer
wandering up and down as he sang in seeming detachment from all
else. No one knew the meaning of the song. The singer had learned
With the sun the two formations performed the spiral rite once
more. Then there was nothing more to do. The spirit of Belweni was
now quit of material form and of worldly ties and things of the past.
Until now it had had to watch over its own bones and haunt the
locality of its bier. The rite had freed it to go somewhere no one can —
—
be sure where to find a new mode of entry to the visible world. No
doubt all this too would have been done for Durmugam had things
worked out differently.
According to aboriginal belief at any time now each of his pule
(friends), of whom I had the honour to be one, will suddenly miss
some valuable thing and hunt for it in vain. It will never be found
again. This will be the work of Durmugam's spirit making a sign from
another plane of life. The belief is tenuous and hard to put into words.
The sign is somehow also the mark of a secondary death. The ideas
of absolute extinction and of an indestructible soul or spirit may both
be found in the belief system. Now one, now the other seems stressed.
The same sort of thing is true of the social organization and the
associational life generally. It is as though the nature of things were
a complementary duality, with human character as the integral.
Every now and then, when one is recording the genealogies of the
aborigines, a name is mentioned which brings a great show of anima-
tion and admiration. Men hold up their hands as if measuring the
size of a huge tree. They say: kadu pangoi, kadu nala, kadu midak!
("A tall man, large and fierce"). Quite often such men are known or
reputed to have been warlocks, or ghostseers, or wise men, the three
classes of spiritists. Durmugam was none of these. Possibly he was
thus more free psychologically to come to terms with Europeanism.
But by the same token, being no manipulator— and this suspicion
always hangs around the three classes —
he may have had a simpler
and more passionate absorption in his own culture.
How much of the treachery, hatred, and bloodshed in which he was
99
W. E. H. Stanner
involved was due to the decay of a tradition, and how much was of
its very nature, it is not possible to say. A case might be made for
either or both. His times were so thoroughly out of joint that ideal
and real could only drift farther apart. But the force and integrity he
showed could readily be seen by anyone not blinded by the veils of
race, culture, and interest.
100
Maling at Age 7 (right) and
as a Young Lady of 1 1 (below).
4
Maling,
A Hanunoo Girl
from
the Philippines
Harold C. Conklin
Just before dawn, one day in late September, 1953, 7-year-old
Maling tiptoed to the edge of my sleeping mat to wake me with a
short but sad announcement: "namatay yi kanmi 'dri' " (our younger
brother is dead). Still an infant, Gawid had succumbed to an un-
known malady during the night. On his death, the Mt. Yagaw
Hanunoo family with whom I had been residing in the small hamlet
of Parina for almost a year immediately arranged for his burial and
began the observance of a five day religious restriction on agricultural
work, bathing, and travel. To understand how Maling interpreted
this turn of events as she waited for me to get up and help with
the preparations, it is necessary to know the part she had played
in the activities connected with Gawid's birth eighteen days earlier.
102
—
103
I
Harold C. Conklin
uncle had been a breech baby and still had the name Su'i (legs first)
to prove it.
104
Moling, A Hanunoo Girl from the Philippines
It was a boy, and Maling had the pleasure of announcing the fact
to three of her cousins who had gathered outside on the veranda.
In a matter of seconds the word reached the rest of the hamlet and
attention shifted abruptly from the untouched neonate in front of
Sukub to Sukub herself. From previous questioning, I knew that
no one would move the baby until the afterbirth was expelled, no
matter how long this might take.
During the first hour, Sukub was given all of the comforting treat-
arrived from the settlement across the Silsig valley with additional
rice gruel and a new supply of pitch. As the delay extended into the
second hour, Sukub became noticeably weaker and even lyang, who
—
had become extraordinarily quiet saying she no longer wanted to
play outside — began to reflect the urgency of this situation for the
entire family.
During the next few minutes, Panday, Hanap, and Ampan con-
ferred hastily on the most effective steps to be taken to help free
the afterbirth. Maling had witnessed several such discussions under
105
Harold C. Conklin
similar circumstances during the last few years, but this was differ-
ent. Previously, she had listened to older relatives talk about events
which did not concern her directly. Now, however, she found herself
involved in almost every activity mentioned.
She had been with her father, for example, when he had planted
sweet potato vines three weeks past, and was the only other person
present who knew exactly which area in the family clearing he had
"seeded." Furthermore, in regard to this particular incident, it was
agreed unanimously that Panday should not have planted any new
crops so near the end of his wife's pregnancy and that the vines
would have to be uprooted. Knowing that Panday could not leave
Sukub at this time, Maling offered to take Hanap to the sweet potato
patch where both of them could perform this mechanical act of
sympathetic magic in hopes of easing the passage of the placenta.
The two girls left almost immediately, stopping on the veranda
just long enough to pick up two empty bamboo water tubes to be
filled on their way back from the field. I decided to go with them,
containers.
Once Maling took us straight to the vines Panday
in the field,
had planted, and the girls began pulling them up. As soon as this
task was done Hanap hastened back to Parina to inform the others.
Maling and I paused at the stream to talk briefly with one of
her young cousins who had stopped there to prepare a betel chew.
106
Moling, A Hanunoo Girl from the Philippines
Before he went on his way Maling asked him to cut some coconuts
for us from a nearby tree which belonged to her family. He appeared
happy to do this, and while he was detaching nuts from the crown
of the nearest palm she emphasized how useful it is to have a young
man in the family who can climb such trees. By the time she had
filled her water tube from a stream-side spring, her cousin had
one. Hanap says parts of seven different plants are needed; she prob-
ably knows what the others are."
In the course of many similar conversations, Maling had demon-
strated an astonishing maturity of interests and experience, richly
illustrating the way in which a Hanunoo child, without formal instruc-
tion, acquires an increasingly detailed acquaintance —
direct or vicari-
ous —with all sectors of the local adult world. Geographically, this
is a small universe, limited often to an area within ten kilometers of
one's birthplace. (Maling had only once been farther than a half-
107
Harold C. Conklin
hour's walk from Parina.) But this small orbit comprehends a com-
paratively vast realm of knowledge in all provinces of which any
member of the society is expected to be at home. In this setting,
Maling's parents never thought it particularly precocious that on
some occasions she should be as interested in contraceptives as in
learning to spin cotton or take care of her younger sister. Neverthe-
less, Iwas constantly impressed with her independent thinking and
utter frankness which seemed to recognize no boundaries, except of
degree, between child and adult knowledge. Her status as a child
neither prevented her from occasionally accepting some of the re-
sponsibilities of her elders nor blocked her intuitive analysis of their
adult roles.
As we approached the edge of our settlement, Maling suggested
we pick an armload of the soft, leafy heads of the aromatic 'alibun
shrub, explaining that not only could we use some of them to wipe
the mud from our feet, but that her mother would appreciate having
a few in the room because of their fragrance.
After hanging her filled miniature water cylinder on the veranda
rack, Maling lifted the screen matting and quietly entered the room
where her father, sisters, and aunt were watching Sukub and talking
in very low tones. Maling sat quietly looking around the tiny room.
Sukub and Panday had both undone their hair knots, and someone,
probably Panday, had hung half a dozen untied lashings, unwound
arrow bindings, and the like, over a low crossbeam. While we had
been gone, many efforts had been made to recall and remedy any
recent act by Maling's parents that might be the root of the trouble.
Hanap leaned over to tell Maling that at Panday's behest. Aunt
Agum had gone to a nearby banana grove to pull up the first and last
of thirty banana sets which Sukub had planted in August. This had
seemed to please Sukub, but the afterbirth still had not appeared.
Ampan remained attentively at Sukub's side while Panday looked
once more through and Maling joined in the search
his betel bag,
for nooses, slip knots, balls of wound
yarn, pegs, and other bound,
joined, or fastened objects that might have been overlooked. The
muffled voices from the adjoining houses and the occasional gusts
of wind up from the Silsig valley only served to underscore the
gravity of the quiet but intensive search inside. Maling broke the
long silence by inquiring if anyone had undone the leash of the new
wooden turtle that Panday had carved for lyang. No one had, and it
108
Mating, A Hanunoo Girl from the Philippines
was agreed that perhaps this was the knot which was causing the
delay.
MaHng went into action swiftly, but calmly. By gentle questioning
she learned from lyang that she and her cousins had been playing
with the toy turtle earlier in the day. Since their own house had
already been thoroughly searched, Maling decided to check in the
adjoining house where her cousins were still romping about. Her
hunch was right; the toy was returned, and the leash carefully un-
tied, completely unknotted, and thrown over the beam along with
the other lines and cords. All eyes again turned to Sukub. After a
few more minutes of anxious waiting, and much to everyone's relief,
she indicated that the final contractions had begun.
With the expulsion of the afterbirth, the tension relaxed and things
moved quickly. Hanap sponged her mother's forehead and adjusted
blankets while Maling made her a fresh betel quid. Although Panday
could cut the baby's navel cord, it was decided to have Yuktung act
as the child's gupas (cord cutter) so that the boy would grow up,
not only to be like his father, but also to be a good hunter and
trapper like his uncle.
Panday cut the tip of an old arrow shaft into a long tapering blade
and quickly fashioned one of Maling's empty water-carrying tubes
into a small bucket-like vessel to hold the umbilicus and placenta.
Maling joined me in the background and, knowing that this was
the first time I had observed such a ritual, eagerly explained to me
all that she knew about the procedure.
"See," she said, can't use an iron blade to cut the cord. Even
"we
an arrow shaft is dangerous if the poisoned tip has not first been
removed because then the child would grow up to be easily angered.
He might even fight his parents, and seriously injure them."
Finally, nine hours after Gawid's birth, and after both the bamboo
container and reed knife were prepared, Panday placed the baby
on its back and proceeded to tie the umbilicus close to the infant's
belly with a piece of homespun yarn. Yuktung, who had been called
in from his house, then took Panday's place and with a sawing mo-
tion, severed the cord just above the cotton binding with very de-
liberate short strokes. In rapid succession, he then touched the moist
blade tip to the baby's lips,, waved the shaft in a zigzag pattern over
its head, and uttered a barely audible magical formula to insure
rapid healing. As he stuck the shaft in the roof thatch, Maling
109
Harold C. Conklin
"and left the baby all alone with Hanap. We were awfully worried
that something might happen, but nothing did. He is six days old,
and he doesn't have a name yet. Our grandparents are coming up
here in a day or two and I suppose we will decide on a name then."
"What do you think would be a good name for your brother?"
I queried.
"There are a lot of names that are good for boys, but some we
don't like because they sound too much like those used by the low-
land Christians. Others we can't use because they belonged to rela-
tives who have been dead only a few years. I think the best name
would be the one Father has suggested, Gawid. My great-great-
grandfather's name was Gawid. See that peak beyond Alyun? I've
never been there, but they say that's where old Gawid once shot
two deer with the same arrow. When my brother gets Grandfather
Andung to prepare some hunting medicine for him, he should be a
good hunter too.
"You know, we used to have a brother, who was several years
younger than Hanap, but he died of a sudden illness two rice harvests
ago. It was really too bad. He was just learning how to trap and
shoot. If he had lived we would now have fish and game to eat
with our rice or bananas almost every day. And there are so many
things he could have helped Father do. He could have operated the
bellows while Father worked at the forge, and he could have built
this granary. As it is now, Father will have to forge two bolo blades
to repay my uncle for this job. And look there, the cogon thatch
seems a bit thin over in that corner, and the lashing here on the
floor is poorly knotted. It just isn't the same as having one's own son
for a helper.
"With Mother it is different. Hanap already can do most house-
hold chores including cooking, and she is pretty good at spinning
112
Moling, A Hanunoo Girl from the Philippines
that the rats and grubs had not done nearly so much damage as local
farmers would have led one to think. In a few months there would
be plenty of community-wide feast.
rice for a large
Recalling that the last feast her family had sponsored was for the
disinterrment of her deceased brother's bones, Maling proposed that
this year they should hold a post-harvest rite to celebrate Gawid's
birth. On the way back, she composed, in the form of a familiar
children's chant, a number of extemporaneous verses addressed to
Gawid, informing him of the preparations which would soon be
undertaken in his honor, how much rice his different kinsmen would
contribute, how many people would participate, and how many pigs
would be slaughtered:
'Anung 'arVari'an Oh little brother
kang di waydi sabihan Imust say again
duru ti 'gdulud 'aban That more than fifty
balaw Idmang kalim'an will attend,
hay pdsung duru hanggan And that our feast will
kay bdbuy 'imaw diman! never end!
In a few words set to a very simple melody she expressed the spirit
with which the whole family looked forward to the harvest season.
During the third week after his birth, however, Gawid caught a
slighthead cold which was evidently accompanied by complications
other than those observed by his parents. Two days later, on the
seventeenth night of his short life, he died quite unexpectedly
while the rest of the family was asleep.
Maling had seen death before. She knew only too well what would
happen that morning when she woke me with the sad news. Her
father would cut a digging stick and sufficient bamboo poles for
the grave mats, while her mother would wash the baby and wrap it
in cotton and beads. Hanap would help her mother tie
cloth
the corpse and carry it out through a hole in the wall on the eastern
side of the room in which he died, while Maling herself would
assemble some of the usual grave goods, including a small cooking
pot, some rice, water, and vegetables in separate shell dishes, and
a small betel basket with all essential ingredients — nuts, leaves, lime,
and tobacco. lyang would cry. Many rituals would be performed at
the grave and the family would not be able to leave the settlement,
even to visit their ripening grain fields for five days, lest all types of
misfortune descend upon the already grief-stricken household.
113
Harold C. Conklin
However, there were no tears. While this was a very sad moment
for a 7-year-old, Maling was well prepared to accept such events
realistically. Her voice reflected sincere disappointment, but, with
characteristic optimism, she added that perhaps her mother's next
baby would also be a son. As we went to join the other members of
her family, she said succinctly, "mahal mdna ti magkabaldkih" (it
would be nice to have the same number of both boy and girl chil-
dren) . .
This, then, was Maling as I knew her in 1953. Four years later,
became the focus of the whole family's attention. After the first few
months, and except for nursing and bathing, Tabul became Maling's
main responsibility.
The constant care of two small children in a Hanunoo hamlet is
by no means an uneventful or easy task. There are goats, pigs,
chickens, cows, dogs, monkeys, and occasionally millipedes, lizards,
snakes, and insects for them to watch, play with, or be harmed by.
Flat areas being nonexistent on the eastern slopes of Mt. Yagaw, the
houseyard itself is usually a steep incline down which a child may
slide, tumble, or slip; and the fact that the raised verandas are fre-
quently unrailed does not lessen the danger of falling. When one
notes further that favorite playthings, even for a 2-year-old, include
such weapons as keen-edged meat knives and fire-hardened bamboo
pokers, it is rather remarkable that Maling showed practically no out-
ward signs of fatigue, impatience, or discontent with her lot. On the
other hand, she seemed quite indifferent to the fact that her mother
was again pregnant. And once I heard her say that when she got
married she really wouldn't care if she didn't have any children at
all!
Though her former enthusiasm for baby boys had waned, at least
temporarily, her interest in older ones was rapidly taking its place.
Soon she would become a full-fledged, marriageable young maiden, a
status which is the acme of female social existence among the Hanunoo.
With this change would come many new privileges and opportu-
nities. Maling, as Hanap before her, would hand over what child
care duties remained to her younger sister lyang, set up living quar-
ters in an adjacent but separate pile dwelling, and, for several — per-
haps five or six — years, lead a relatively independent life dominated
by the direct but intricate local patterns of courtship ending in preg-
nancy, or marriage, or both.
Maling was well along in preparing herself for the new role she
would be playing. In addition to dressing in a more meticulous man-
ner, she had begun to oil her hair regularly, to trim her eyebrows,
and to bind her wrists and ankles with fine red beads. Hanap had
given her several decorative tortoise shell combs and a round mirror
small enough to be carried in her pocket belt. Whenever her father
went to Alyun, she would ask him to dig fresh vetiver roots for her
to use as a sachet to keep with her sleeping blanket and extra clothes.
Many of these practices she had started years before, but refinements
115
Harold C. Conklin
very helpful if she could record new lyrics solicited from her close
relatives in some semipermanent form. Hence, about the time I ar-
rived, she was attempting to learn the Hanunoo syllabary.
Inasmuch as Maling's newly acquired reticence in talking openly
with men outside the immediate family did not extend to me, I was
able to observe and discuss with her at great length the details of
these various preparations. The manner in which she learned to read
and write, for example, afforded an intimate picture of how she
managed to acquire this bit of useful but specialized knowledge with-
out any formalized course or tutor.
From previous visits to the Hanunoo, I knew that their Indic-
derived syllabary of forty-eight characters functioned primarily as a
116
Moling, A Hanunoo Girl from the Philippines
of which are scratched into the hard but perishable outer surface of
bamboo with a sharp steel knife. But what of the actual process of
learning how to use this script which is never arranged in an "alpha-
betic" order or formally taught?
One morning had shaped toy animals from a half cylinder
after she
of green banana sheathing for Tabul and Bilug, Maling grasped the
tip of her small knife blade between her thumb and forefinger and
began pushing it across one of the flooring slats with her other hand
so that a series of lightly engraved marks were produced. In reply
to my asking her what she was doing, Maling said, "Nothing, just
scribbling," and left quickly to stop Tabul from twisting the tail
off Bilug's "carabao." She had seemed a bit embarrassed by my
question, so I did not press the matter at that time. But later, when
I had a chance to examine her "scribbling," I found half a dozen
Assuming that she had now learned to use some of the characters
adequately, I gave her a simple "dictation test" covering the whole
range of syllable types. After every word I paused while Maling in-
117
Harold C. Conklin
her future husband will undoubtedly help her set up a new house-
hold in Parina or in whatever nearby hamlet her parents are living at
the time. He will probably be a distant cousin from one of the other
Hanunoo regions near Mt. Yagaw. Several young men of this descrip-
tion have already begun to visit Parina rather frequently. Ostensi-
bly these visits are for medicines or bolo handles, but no one in
Parina is deceived.
118
A Day in Parina
18 July 1953
0600 I am awakened by the excited shouting of six Parina children
who have found a neighbor's goat giving birth to the last of three
offspring right in the middle of the fire pit of my plant-drying
shed. I on my only garment (a pair of shorts), and
get up, put
join the noisy young Parinans. I am impressed with the fact that
even two 4-year-old girls seem to understand completely and
articulately the physiological event we are witnessing. And I learn
much about the process from them.
0630 There is a strong east wind blowing up from the Silsig valley
and because we will probably have a few hours of sunlight before
the daily monsoon showers commence, I hang out my type-
writer, tape recorder, and some clothes on a siydpo' fiber line as
a precautionary measure against mold and rust. After rolling up
my sleeping mat I am joined by Uming and other members of Badu's
household as we eat a breakfast of boiled rice, camote greens,
jambo fruits, fresh corn, and rock salt. Food, as always, is served
in basket trays and coconut shell dishes set on the bamboo-slat
floor.
0700 The dishes cleared away, the floor swept, and most of the
kids off jambo gathering, I start to write up detailed notes on last
night's curing rite —checking with Badu', who is just outside
rekindling the drying fire, on matters of sequence and ritual sig-
nificance.
0730 Pinungu, the old man of Arasa'as and the best archer on
Mt. Yagaw, arrives with a gift of 5 fresh eggs and a handful of
medicinal jungle plants which he thought we might have missed
(we had). Ayakan and two other Parina elders come into my
This account of a day's activities in Parina, Mindoro, was written by Dr. Conklin
in the field as part of a report to the Social Science
Research Council from which he
then held a fellowship. In an accompanying note, he writes: "No day is really 'typi-
cal,' but the . . . sketch gives at least an inkling of what the social framework in which
I am living at present is like, of the diversity of activities and field conditions
encountered, and of some of my techniques for observation, participation, and docu-
mentation."
119
Harold C. Conklin
as the old boy relates the whole affair blow by blow. I appear to
be attending to some other business at my bamboo desk, but ac-
tually I am recording on 4" x 6" slips as much of the sociological
information uncovered in their conversation as possible.
0800 Three boys come in from Barayung wanting to know what
they can do to earn some nylon parachute cord (a now almost
universally recognized stronger material for their 3 -stringed gitgit-
violins than the traditionally plucked and twisted strands of their
own hair). I am sending them to gather firewood and now hope
to get back to the notes on last night's seance.
0830-1200 While writing in my house for three and a half hours
and checking on points of detail with two eye-witnesses (at last
night's ritual) who are now helping Badu' press and dry the new
herbs "Nungu" brought in, the following events transpired each —
in its own way an interruption, but each also furnishing me with
additional useful documentation of Hanunoo culture patterns:
1. Abala, my sister-in-law by adoption, brings in a staggering
chat and chew betel with me saying that from now on she and her
family will be able to eat corn —
even from other fields without —
fear of losing their own crop by spirit poisoning.
2. Two boys who have been out setting traps bring me a bunch
of ripe bananas of a type I have not yet tasted. I give them each
a double length of nylon cord and tell them to make replicas of
their monkey and civet traps in our "yard" so that I may photo-
graph them.
3. Lin'ay, Ayakan's shy, unmarried daughter, enters my house
with a handful of bleached, sweet-scented leaves which constitute
a rare but highly valued native form of hair perfume. Lin'ay, who
is also quite a singer, tells me and
several stories about this plant
I copy down two 'ambdhan chants from her which metaphorically
T20
A Day in Parina
want.
1230 Visitors and I eat a lunch of fresh corn, dried fish, more
jambo fruits, salt, eggs, and limes. Parina folk retire to their own
house units for their midday meal or "brunch." Some of them have
not eaten since before dawn when they left for their fields. Others
ate only a left-over boiled banana or two.
1300 Rain keeps up. Women in next house are spinning thread,
old men are carving knife handles and sharpening machetes.
Young men are sleeping, two of them in my house. One girl is
swinging back and forth in the corner hammock lullabying her
121
Harold C. Conklin
younger sister to sleep. I resume writing and for two iiours con-
tinue almost uninterrupted. I stop once to watch Lig'um's wife
122
A Day in Parina
collected. Three men will help change all the papers, drying blot-
ters,and presses at least once during the evening. Tigulang's collec-
tion will be completely dried, packed, and checked for shipment to
Manila and Cambridge within three days unless we are interrupted
by typhoon winds. Pitch candles have been lit and stuck in three-
legged split stick holders in each house at Parina. Pinungu and
a few other visitors decide to accept my invitation to stay at my
place for the night. Tigulang, however, says he must return and
quickly makes a long torch of old split bamboo strips to guide
him through the Hipi' forest.
1900 I fill out the daily work, agricultural, sickness, and food
charts with the help of representatives of each household at Parina,
and take up where I left off with my notes on last night's doings.
Several girls from Ayakan's house are now spinning cotton thread
on the floor of my house in the reflected light of the drying fire.
The older men and those just in from the fields are chewing betel
and discussing the prospects of a good rice harvest. The melodic
individual calls of four or five Parina women inform us that the
water carriers and swidden watchers monkeys, birds, and
(for
wild pigs) from Badyang Cooking fires are kindled
are returning.
and women prepare the evening meal while young folks practice
•
chanting and playing musical instruments. Two are strumming
bamboo zithers, two are playing a jew's-harp duet, and one
boy is practicing on a large but nevertheless all-human-hair-strung
guitar.
2000 We meal of boiled preripe plantains, rice,
eat the evening
several kinds of green vegetables cooked with brown beans in
coconut cream, and some roast pork brought over from Tarubong
by Bado's sister-in-law. As usual, the evening meal lasts much
longer than those taken earlier in the day. Much merrymaking,
banter, and jesting among visitors and residents of both sexes is
123
Harold C. Conklin
young men take off with blankets, perfumes, and musical instru-
ments for other communities where they will spend the night
serenading eligible maidens. I return to my writing which I finish
in about an hour. Several youngsters are using my colored pencils
to up the pages of a blank notebook with geometric designs
fill
needle to replace one which just fell through the slat flooring. I
mention her name in giving it to her, forgetting to call her by the
proper kin designation. Quick as a flash, 7-year-old Maling
looks up and asks, "Ampud, hayga nimu 'iningarnan kanmu
bayaw?" (Ampud [HCC], why did you call your sister-in-law by
her name?) I am somewhat embarrassed and most of the spectators
are amused to see such a tiny tot take me to task for failing to
comply with Hanunoo name taboos.
2200 Giwnay comes into my house, picks up one of the dance
gongs, and gets one of her daughters to help her beat out a fast,
metallic rhythm. Soon ah of the other women and some of the
young boys and children stop their various projects and join in
the communal gong playing: four players to each set of two gongs.
We have three sets in Parina and ah are being used at this moment.
Older men strum guitars and git git -VioWns, others play jew's-harps.
Lig'um stops changing presses and leads two younger boys in 15
minutes of vigorous dancing. This spontaneous gong session seems
to be going very well, so I take a few 35mm Kodachrome shots
using an indoor flash, unpack the Magnemite tape recorder, and
proceed to fill two 15-minute tapes with the im^pelling rhythm of
gongs, strings, and the loud clack-clackity-clack of six calloused
feet as they crash down, in unison, on the resounding bamboo
floor. A new beat called dimilut is presently replacing the older
binalinsay and several of the unmarried teen-agers here who have
learned this rhythm in the southland near Binli are teaching Giw-
nay and the other leading gong players in Parina. I spend a half
hour or so getting notes on the history of these various rhythms and
their secular and semi-ritual significance. While doing this I play
back the two tapes for the performers to hear.
2300 Gongs are put away and most of the Parina folk retire to
their respective homes. The last presses are changed. I give my
visitors sleeping mats (they have their own homespun blankets)
124
A Day in Parina
and they spread them out on the floor amidst mortars, fish-traps,
bags of rice, corn, sesame, and salt. Badu' sits in the doorway
watching the fire burn down to a bed of embers low enough to
be safely left unguarded till morning. My visitors continue to chat
while I make plans for tomorrow and write up miscellaneous
notes on the evening's activities. If the weather tomorrow turns
out to be like it has been today we can expect an evening feast
of fried daldaluh (a species of fat-bodied white ants the mating
forms of which fly about in great swarms during clear, but damp,
summer evenings). I can overhear the conversation in the next
house. They are making plans for taking a really big catch and they
are now debating as to where the most daldaluh will be found, at
Badyang or Tinapi'.
2345 I spread out my mat, check the fire, say good night to Badu',
and retire. But first "Nungu," Balyan, and I discuss indirect manners
of speech in Hanunoo and end up having a riddle contest in which,
of course, Balyan and I come out losers.
125
5
A Ne^v Guinea
""Opening Man
James B. Watson
1 he Agarabi discovery of the world beyond their small domain
in the Highlands of New Guinea is unbelievably recent. The life of
one young man, Bantao, whom I knew in 1954, more than spans
it.^ Bantao was then about 26. He was perhaps 3 years old when
his village saw the first white men ever reported in the Eastern
Highlands. He was 5 in 1933 when Assistant District Officer Ian
Mack was killed in an attack upon Bantao's village and nine village
men lost their lives. Two years later the Seventh Day Adventists es-
tablished their mission at Kainantu, a half day's walk away. In 1943,
when bombs were dropped over the district and a Japanese patrol
briefly occupied a part of the area of the Agarabi people, Bantao was
about 15. In his own account of his life, these intrusions of the out-
side world are the outstanding time markers. Far more than datable
events, however, it has been the penetration of unheard-of ideas and
customs into their world that has shaped Bantao and his fellow
tribesmen. The sudden events of a mere score of years have thus
fundamentally altered the destiny that only a few years before could
safely have been predicted for Bantao at birth.
Life then was also eventful for the Agarabi. Violence and treachery
1 The field work during which the material that forms the basis of this account
was collected was made possible by a grant of the Ford Foundation. The debt is
gratefully acknowledged. The field trip and residence of a year and a half in the
Eastern Highlands of New Guinea were shared by my wife, Virginia, and small
daughter, Anne. Both helped me learn much of what I know about the Agarabi.
Alan A. Roberts, Director of the Department of District Services and Native Affairs,
Port Moresby, and Harry A. West, then A.D.O., Kainantu (now D.C.), and William
Brown, A.D.O., together with other people in the Territory, contributed not only to
our personal comfort any scholarly success we may have had. A
in the field but to
special debt for the present paper is owed to Bantao himself. He alone could
of course
make it possible. We knew him well for some nine months, from the very beginning
of 'our stay with the Agarabi when he helped us build our house. No particular plans
were made in the field for a biographical sketch of Bantao but since certain things
came up incidentally and I asked about them, he was always concerned to keep
track of what was already "in the book." In most things Bantao did the best he could
for us and I hope the present sketch will come somewhere near the same measure.
Drs. K. E. Read and Melford E. Spiro, my colleagues, have been good enough to
read the paper and have made valuable suggestions.
128
—
ties for the men and hence, in their view, for the community. To
strengthen the family and lineage required food, friends, and females
from outside groups. Food was necessary for ceremonies and for
gifts on less formal occasions where friendships and obligations were
move safely about the country and denied them a source of tractable
native labor. Others, such as the missionaries and the local govern-
ment officers, were committed to work toward even more fundamental
changes. Inexorably the white man has assumed control in carrying
out his various requirements. Native initiative has dwindled away
over a period of twenty years replete with both unprecedented pos-
129
—
James B. Watson
In many ways Bantao is Hke any Agarabi of his village, his gen-
eration, his sex. In leaving the village for brief periods to try first
this activity and then that in the emergent new scheme of things, his
experiences parallel those of other young Agarabi men. He, too,
wanted to know the new world and the "station," the tiny European
community at Kainantu. The cycle is typical: trying something out,
"running away" in the face of a threat or staying to learn, and return-
ing after a while to the village again to "sit down nothing." In other
ways Bantao is unique. He seems to have sought more than most of his
not also more conscientious, than the average of his group. Like most
Agarabi men I know, he is distinctly sensitive, even vulnerable, to
the opinions of others. On the whole he is gentle, easily disarmed, and
ingenuous, a poor hand at dissembling. His readiness to trust the
European, his artlessness and sanguine expectations in his relations
130
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
My mother was about to kill me in the birth house by the water when
Ooti came there and took me. She was Tabike's own elder sister. Tabike
131
James B. Watson
wanted to kill me because she had too many children already. Ooti asked
her why she wanted to kill me and Tabike told her. [Bantao is himself only
the second of an eventual six children. Whatever the real motive of his
mother, it could scarcely have been that she had too many children at the
time of Bantao's birth.]
Ooti had one child who had recently died. Tabike did not want to give
me away and she already had her foot on my neck to shut off my wind.
They don't throw children in the water to them but shut off their wind
kill
with the foot. I don't know why Tabike did not want to give me to Ooti,
but Ooti won out. She got me when I was only one day old. Ooti still had
milk from her dead child. He was about 8 or 10 when he died. They used
to give milk longer in those days. Only when you were a pumara [in-
itiated] would you leave your mother's breasts. So Ooti could feed me.
Tabike was not cross when Ooti took me. "That's all right: you can
take care of him." Ooti cleaned out my p s and s —
t. [Disposing of the —
excreta of an infant is considered a symbol of closeness and it is also a
form of indebtedness between child and parents.]
Later I grew bigger and Tabike decided she had had a good child
and wanted me back. All the time she kept taking me away to Koyafa.
Ooti lived at Kokirapa and often when she would come back from the gar-
—
den to get me, I wouldn't be there sometimes not for two or three nights.
She would go to look at my relatives' and other places, but I wasn't there
either. Three times this happened and each time Ooti would fetch me and
slap me on the ears all the way home. I cried. She beat me with a stick and
kicked me, but I liked Ooti. I didn't like Tabike. I liked Pe^e - [Ooti's
husband], too, but I didn't help my own father with his garden, his house,
or any of his work. Just the same, I did not steal food from my [own]
father.
Finally Ooti threatened to fight Tabike if she pulled me away again.
She did and Ooti took a fighting stick to her. She bruised and cut her about
the head. Tabike did not take a fighting stick but only defended herself
with a digging stick. Ooti struck me first of all and I ran into the pitpit
[reeds] to hide.Then the two women fought. I didn't see the fight. I thought
I was Ooti's child and only when Tabike was dying [much later] I learned
from Ooti that Tabike was my own mother. Tabike never mentioned it
and I thought she was just a woman who liked me.
The two women finished their fight and settled their dispute. They agreed
to cook food on the stones. Tabike gave five pigs to Ooti and Ooti gave four
pigs to Tabike. Ooti didn't give as many pigs because raising a child
was hard work — cleaning out my s — t and all that. The pigs were ex-
132
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
changed all the same day; it was the time for eating pigs. Yes, I ate pig
given me by Ooti but I couldn't eat pig from Tabike any more because
Ooti tabooed me from going to Tabike's house now that the pigs had
been exchanged.
When my number-two mother [Ooti] would kill pigs, I didn't use to
hang around. I would go off somewhere and they would all be thinking
—
about me very sorry I wasn't there. When I came back, they would ask
me why I didn't stay around and eat with the rest. They would save me
some after the others had all eaten. No, I didn't want to eat together with
the rest. Those men were all intent upon eating pig. They might speak
harshly to me so I didn't go near them. Time for eating food I could go
—
near but not eating pig, that's all. I waited until they had all eaten and
then I would come and eat a little piece that was left. Yes, I felt sorry for
myself. I thought they weren't taking very good care of me.
"Food" usually means garden crops, above all, sweet potatoes. One
does not eat the pigs raised by his own family or lineage and given
in feast to people of another lineage. It is characteristic of Bantao
to phrase this experience in terms of neglect and self-pity. The oc-
casion was certainly not one from which the children of the family
were excluded. To be sure, food, security, and love are implicitly
equated by the Agarabi, but it is impossible to know the extent to
which Bantao's perception of his foster parents' neglect corresponds
to the actual facts.
Immediately following this portrayal of neglect and self-pity,
Bantao commented: "That is just the way I am. If you go away and
ask me to watch your house while you are gone, I will do it. [That is,
I think of others first, not my own interest or welfare.] I don't steal
things either. If money is found in the road, I go and show it to every-
one and try to find the When some men find a thing, it is lost
owner.
for good. That's the reason that I am always getting into trouble
and being put into the calaboose." And in answer to a query, "Yes,
I mean I get in trouble because I am like this."
him and she appears to have had no more children who would have
displaced him. Until able to walk Bantao would have been carried
about in his mother's net bag — same that she used for bringing
the
food from the garden — whenever she had to leave the house or
the hamlet. It is not likely that he would have had harsh physical
disciphne, but as soon as he could understand, he may have been
frightened by threats of ghosts to induce compliance with parental
instructions.
While we cannot be sure, of course, of Bantao's treatment, chil-
dren of foster parents are generally loved at least as much as the
foster parents' own children. One istempted to guess that some part
of his childhood was atypical in view of his later feeling that he
was not well cared for. The squabble between Ooti and Tabike
was presumably the culmination of a long-standing dispute which
may therefore have had a bearing on his treatment during infancy;
but it is not obvious how his rearing may have been affected. It is
quite typical at any rate for adoptive parents to conceal from a child
his true parentage.
According to his story, Bantao believes that both his own and
his fostermother struggled for possession of him but there is no
hint of such an interest on the part of either his own father or
Pe^e, his foster father. Whether simply because of his early death
or not, neither Pe^e nor his own father, who is still alive, seems to
have played very strongly the role of father Uwayoro, his
to him.
own father, lived in different hamlets at various times and appears
to have had little interest in his children. When Bantao's own mother
died, Bantao says Uwayoro was not sorry for the children nor did
he mourn his dead wife. Uwayoro's brother, who ordinarily would
have taken over the role of the male parent when needed, did not
like either Bantao or Bantao's elder brother. Both Uwayoro and the
uncle are rather indifferent to him today, although acknowledging
the relationship; and while Bantao would apparently like to be a
son and tries to act like one up to a point, their lack of encouragement,
together with the enigmatic stain of the past, prevents the relation-
ship from bringing him much strength. It is his elder brother, of
whom Bantao speaks as having "looked out for me" after the death
of Pe^e, who comes closest to being a father to him.
Unquestionably Bantao's feelings toward his parents and foster
parents were largely shaped later in life than during childhood, es-
pecially in the case of the father or not-father— —
whose relationship
134
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
Once Bantao had teeth to chew food and legs to run on, he
roamed the village environs in a group with his age-mates. He
would spend the day with small bands of youngsters wandering the
paths among the gardens, climbing the fences in search of mischief
or excitement, spying upon adults, asking for or stealing food to
cook by themselves over fires that they built in the kunai grass or
in the pitpit. Once in a while these gangs would steal a small pig
and eat it, although Bantao said he never did this himself. This was
a period in his life that he enjoyed recalling.
Life then as now was full of boyish possibilities, and Bantao smil-
ingly described shooting insects and lizards with tiny arrows of stiff
grass shot from small, bamboo bows, or driving and snaring little
birds in the heavy cobwebs made in the tops of trees by the bampoki
spider — which could also be eaten. Sometimes the boys would shoot
each other with their grass arrows, painful to the bare skin —even
for the youngsters humans were the most important of all targets for
this inseparable weapon of manhood. And there were games, es-
' •Jk^
'.^M»>
he annoyed them with his staring or got in their way. Because of his
size, it would be unlikely that Bantao was always the underdog in
such horse-play. If he was nobody's child, as he partly suggested, he
may have been the object of adult aggression, but he made no
mention of this.
During the daytime, except in cold or rainy weather, a hamlet
might be practically deserted, with the adult men and women gone
off to their gardens, or to the bush to hunt or fetch betel nut. Except
for some ancient, too decrepit ever again to leave the sun in the
dooryard, the troop of boys might have the place to themselves.
More often than not it was just their noisy games they played, but
if someone thought there might be adventure or a piece of pig within
136
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
inside her house, they were likely to discover it and set up a clamor.
When their elders were about, Bantao agreed, the boys did not
greatly curtail their boisterous play, but they might receive a kick,
a slap, or a smart blow with a stick if they came bumping into the
midst of a men's group engaged in smoking and talk especially—
if a visitor were present. Sometimes it would be a mere token, with
confidence in their joint defiance that they did not dare individually.
When not running with a gang, the child's lot, between the toddler
stage and initiation, was to run errands, fetch food, water, or fire-
wood, and to bring objects such as a lime gourd or some leaf
tobacco when suddenly desired. These duties were erratic and obedi-
ence was as erratically enforced. Younger boys were more likely
than older ones to respond without urging and anyone was more
likely to respond to the request of a senior man with prestige. With
one's own parents, consistent non-compliance was likely to result in
a slap on the ears, as Bantao reported of Ooti, followed by tears and
a brief sulk. The ears were a prime target of parental blows because
it is the boy's thinking, implicitly associated with his hearing, which
was considered at fault. "You slap his ears and then he can hear/
think right," Bantao explained.
The older boy was proud to be taken to the bush with his father
to hunt small marsupials. Although not very important economically,
game had many ceremonial uses and hunting was the quintessence
of masculine activity. Bantao always enjoyed describing his hunting
exploits and the dog he trained. In the bush, rather than in the
kunai, reside nearly all the few supernaturals that threaten the
Agarabi. Knowledge of these and especially of hunting ritual and
magic became a point of pride with a man, while apprenticeship
set off a youth from mere children. It is not clear that Bantao's
apprenticeship was very extensive. He was quite defensive when
contradicted by other informants after he had declared to me that
there was no rule about returning the bones of game to the place
where it was taken. "He doesn't have it right," one said within ear-
shot, and Bantao reddened as he floundered fecklessly for excuse.
He later tried to make amends by giving me unusually elaborate
details of a prehunt ritual.
137
—
James B. Watson
preadolescent boys and girls, although younger ones might also par-
ticipate. The capturing of rats and small field marsupials by hand
and stick took place in the kunai in the full of the moon. Although
the immediate purpose was sport and meat, stylized sex-play often
followed for the older youths. The ultimate symbolism of the rat
hunt was connected with the moon and its association with the first
menses of a girl and hence her eventual nubility. The occasions were
marked by good-natured cries in the clear night air as someone saw
a rat dart out of its nest and excitedly called to another to grab it.
Gradually the moonlit figures moved farther away and the cries grew
fainter as they tired of the sport and the older youths gravitated
toward the girls' club house. Bantao recalled such nights with ob-
vious relish.
Until very recently — well after Bantao had left boyhood behind
the range within which the boys' or separate girls' groups could
safely roam was It scarcely went beyond the garden
quite restricted.
fences, but even there the ambushing of men, women, or children
with their mothers was all too well known. Women and small chil-
dren were almost always accompanied, herd-like, by armed men,
even to go only as far as the gardens but certainly if they had to
go beyond. Heedless indeed was the man who left his bow and
arrow beyond arm's reach during the fighting time of year. People
rarely went very far on journeys, in marked contrast to the open
coming and going on the main roads of the last few years. The little
used footpaths were then "like rat trails," according to Bantao.
Even on the paths within the hamlet or district precincts there
was danger other than armed ambush. As a small child, too young
to know all his kin, Bantao was cautioned against taking gifts of food
from strangers. A sorcerer posing as an "uncle" might give him a
poisoned banana in feigned affection, he was told. Taking the life
of a child or woman was a simple matter, but for a strong man
in his prime semen might be the only lethal exuvial substance a
sorcerer could employ. For a child faeces is more than sufficient, and
so Bantao began a lifelong indoctrination about excretory functions.
The prudent man, the one who lives long, is careful where he defe-
cates and where and with whom he copulates. Ultimately his only
safety lies in using the streams or in rinsing away the faeces or semen
afterwards. Even so, Bantao believes that a sorcerer may lurk in the
reeds by a stream and obtain his requirements by means of a long
138
—
139
)
James B. Watson
gifts of shell, a few knives, an axe or two, and some cloth. The
ornamental were practically as new and mysterious to the
shells
people as the steel, and all these objects, too, were immediately
treated with pig's blood to neutralize the strong and harmful power
that must adhere to them. The large cowrie shells, Bantao admitted
with smiling embarrassment, were thought by some to be the hard-
ened fruit or nut of an unknown tree; the cloth was at first
considered "ghost skin"; the knife blades were explained as the rock-
hard leaves of a bush which evidently grew in the distant land
whence the ghosts had come. (I did not embarrass him further by
asking him what he now considered these objects to be.
After a brief circuit of the area, their every move anxiously re-
ported, the missionaries went back, leaving behind an incredulous
and awe-struck native population to wonder what it all meant. Some-
— —
what later "a year" as Bantao remembers it three native evan-
gelists from Finschhafen returned and built a thatched house to serve
140
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
Another way was shortly discovered for obtaining the new things
of which the kampan appeared to have an endless supply: theft or
open seizure. Bantao relished telling how the men put several kampan
to flight and took their goods. One of their victims, according to
him, told them that soon a kiap would come, a man who was a
fighter and who would put a stop to all this.
Bantao's life still lay almost wholly before him and if to the elders
the strangers had come without warning or explanation, for Bantao's
generation the newcomers were but one among a great many other
things that had yet to be learned and understood. Of course there
was a difference: the young could be oriented authoritatively by
parents and elders to some of the experiences which lay ahead; but
the other events which punctuated Bantao's youth left the elders
as perplexed as if they were children themselves — indeed, more so,
for they had no parental authorities other than the white man to
explain things to them or by example to help them accept their
inherent rightness. Moreover, for the coming generation of Agarabi,
parental authority was increasingly shaken in some of the spheres
in which it had previously been most developed and most secure,
above all in fighting. Nor was there in Agarabi society a central
leadership to deal with the exigencies of contact. This was a critical
time for a young boy to be starting life, especially a boy who seems,
at least in retrospect, to have suffered a keen sense of deprivation,
lesson, it was apparent that the kiap about whom they had been warned
was indeed quite a different sort of man from either the missionary
or the kampan, whom they had already seen. Many of the Asupuya
were taken as captives to Kainantu by the kiap. There they were kept
by police armed with rifles and bayonets. This punishment was some-
thing called "calaboose," they presently learned, and it was to become
an important institution in Agarabi life.
Bantao's people could no more understand the kiap's "law" at
— —
once if they had yet heard it explained than the Asupuya could
understand that a prisoner did not run away from the calaboose,
even if given the opportunity. Like practically everyone else, Bantao
knows intimately the details of this hard apprenticeship. His village
will not soon forget one day in particular in 1933, when two Asupuya
141
James B. Watson
yentu and Kasiyentu lineages and their allies lay athwart the path.
Bantao's kinsmen, Abiyentu men, out hunting wild pig, spotted
them and immediately gave pursuit. It was several miles before they
caught Anongke. Some of them held him while others shot him to
death with arrows. Afibayo, who was a stronger runner, lasted long
enough to get hold of a bow and arrows, thrust into his trembling
hands in full flight by a kinsman of his mother's, who was doubtless
as startled to see an unarmed fighter as the poor man was desperate
for some means of defense. The gasping Afibayo at last sought
refuge in a stand of pitpit. There, after his arrows were spent, the
found him, knocked him down with their heavy, black wooden
killers
and standing over him, shot him again and again. He called
shields,
the name of his father and his male kinsmen as he lay in agony,
and he screamed hoarsely at his tormentors that he was too strong
for their arrows to make him die quickly. Then he expired. "He
was an ayafabanta, this man," said Bantao matter-of-factly.
just like
The Abiyentu people could only think that they had been un-
believably lucky in killing two enemies so easily. A few weeks
later, however, their hamlet was surrounded one night, the palisade
cut and breached with bayonets. The women started screaming and
running about. Rifles roared out and men were killed inside the
men's house or as they tried to flee through the escape door in the
rear. Nearly all who were not immediately killed or seriously wounded
ran into the nearby pitpit to escape and presently the police boys
began to carry out the dead or wounded that lay inside the house.
One man, Ijuke, in his fright had climbed the center pole to hide
up next to the roof instead of trying to flee. A police boy heard
a rustle in the thatch and looked up, whereupon Ijuke dropped
down the pole, grabbed his bow and some arrows, and stood, his
young son clinging in panic to his knees. As the police boy came
on, he let fly an arrow which took the man in the shoulder. The
startled constable dropped his rifle and scrambled back out the
passage yelling that there was still a man alive inside. Bantao tells
the story in great detail, he has heard it so many times.
For some reason which will never be known, the young Australian
142
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
A.D.O. leading the patrol bent down and started inside the door.
Firing his revolver blindly several times as he crouched along the
posts lining the entryway, he called out some command in pidgin.
keento. The police surrounding the men's house on all sides were
summoned by the cry of their fallen leader, and all ran and clustered
in the doorway to see what had happened. The terror-stricken
Ijuke, who had used his last arrow, seized the chance to run out
the escape door to the pitpit and safety, tossing his son into the
arms of another man in his flight. The young kiap, who had just
come to this new country, died of his wounds in Salamaua, after
being flown from Kainantu in a small plane. The Abiyentu did not
even know his name, a rare thing indeed as they knew the names of
most of their victims. But Bantao's people lost ten men ah told before
the affair was over. So many casualties in a single engagement was
unheard of in this region and their loss was a stunning blow to the
fighting force of so small a community.
Some time later peace ceremonies were conducted with the kiap
who succeeded Ian Mack. This man made a speech, as they recafl
it, in which it was said that now the fighting should stop; Australia
had lost men and their people had lost men. In view of the disaster
which had befallen them, the people were almost pathetically re-
lieved to be able to consider the score even. If they did not yet
understand all about the "law," they appreciated fully now that
there could be no opposing it. It was a great comfort to them when
Bantao's (own) father was subsequently named a luluai (govern-
ment appointed village official), their first and one of the first in
the area. He was given the brass badge which identified him and —
through him his kinsmen —
as being on the side of the kiap; but
far more important, it signified that the kiap was henceforth on
their side.
To both the miners and the government officers, these people
doubtless seemed the same "wild pigs," filthy and truculent,
still
143
—
James B. Watson
ing. "Wild pigs" or not, in their own hearts the people knew that they
had now become completely "cold." If dales can be assigned to such
matters, 1933 was certainly a turning point in the lives of Bantao
and the Agarabi men to follow.
144
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
present.
The penalties are high for being discovered in adultery, Bantao
and all others agreed, but the potential for fornication is obviously
higher. Success with women
complexly hnked with success in
is
general, which has always meant prowess in all the male activities,
such as fighting, oratory, dancing, dreaming, and masculine ostenta-
tion. Theoretically a man is irresistible to women, although it is
recognized that more this is true for the successful man than for
the unsuccessful one. Henceto a young man success with the op-
posite sex measure of his claim to manhood.
is a
Older, married women are likely to introduce a youth to sexual
intercourse. Bantao's first invitation was one of this sort although
146
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
148
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
149
James B. Watson
enemy seemed able to meet him on equal terms, that is, with rifles.
The Highland peoples shortly learned, in fact, that there was some-
thing even more terrifying than rifles —
bombs! The Kainantu station
was bombed and strafed and a woman from Anona, another Agarabi
district, was killed by bomb fragments in a way these people had
never seen. Other bombs fell about the area and swift, snarling
planes that spat bullets would sweep suddenly in over the mountain
tops without warning. Because of the anxieties of the war years,
both more acute and more sustained than any before or since, the
period is called in retrospect "the bad time" and Bantao almost in-
150
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
it. When police boys could not be spared, native evangelists of the
two local missions were strategically stationed in the villages to keep
peace and to insure comphance with the kiap's orders. Like the
constables for whom they were substituting, the mission boys were
for a time issued military rifles and bayonets which earned them
nearly as much admiration as the police.
During the later stages of the war a Seventh Day Adventist evan-
gelist came to live in their village and Bantao, along with an age-
mate, Kurunke, attached themselves to the man as errand boys,
cooks, and fetchers of wood and water. Their later affiliation with
the Adventist mission doubtless stemmed from influences at this
time; and the power of the evangelist and his rifle may have had as
much to do with it as some of the Christian teachings. The resident
police or mission boy generally exercised a large measure of author-
ity and it was not difficult for a youth like Bantao to regard him as
151
James B. Watson
finally took refuge in his claim that he was too young at the time
of the first or wartime phase of the cult to have a firm idea about
the ghost prophesy. Nevertheless, it appears that as a youth of 15
or 16 he was involved in at least one of the attempts to achieve
the prophesy.He was taken on as a "cook boy" in a group who
brieflymade such an attempt. A man of his village, Danonke, was
persuaded by the promise of Ojabayo, who came from another
village, to show them or give them some of the "ancestors' car-
tridges." Danonke agreed to contribute to the necessary provisions
and brought his wife and one or two others along, Bantao among
them. Together they built a large house in the style of a men's
house, while Ojabayo, who had promised the ghostly ammunition,
dressed himself in a facsimile of police boy's clothing and acted as
"boss."
All of the group, men, women, and children, lived and slept in
the "men's house" they had built, waiting to see their ancestors and
the cartridges and other things they would bring. During the day
they would "exercise" with their wooden "rifles." Several of them
frequently underwent the shivering of possession and listened for
ghostly messages. Apparently they did no ordinary work, such as
gardening, their needs being supplied by others. To them itseemed
possible that the "Japan," who had penetrated the area, might some-
how be involved with the prophesy, perhaps in trying to help their
ancestors come. Although many "messages" were received during
the months they lived there, the cartridges did not materialize. Ban-
tao himself had no seizure, "only the big men and women." Once,
however, he saw the surface of the stream nearby splash up and
some "messages" written on paper flew into the air and fell at his
feet. No one could read them. Ojabayo counseled patience and as-
152
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
The few coastal natives in the area kept the locals in considerable
awe of themselves and one told them that he had a white woman for
a wife. He had to leave her in Australia, he alleged, lest every
153
James B. Watson
On the whole Bantao liked the work. He reported with great satis-
faction that the master in charge commended him upon their per-
formance: "The men of your village work strong." After having
worked "ten moons," they were paid off in knives, tomahawks,
calico, and similar goods. Bantao commented that they were now
beginning to wear calico as laplaps instead of simply as a substitute
for the short bark cloak of their fathers. The master in charge asked
them if work longer but they said that now
they did not wish to
they wanted to take it easy. They would go back to their village
and after a while try another station. "That is the way with everyone:
they don't want to stay a long time at one job. Besides, some of us
were thinking about being washed [baptized], some at the Lutheran,
some at the Seven Day." An age-mate who enjoyed pointing out
weaknesses or inconsistencies in Bantao said that actually he "ran
away" from the work at Aiyura without finishing his time. He said
the reason was that "the Kainantu men were making sorcery there."
Shortly after the cessation of local hostilities, Bantao and some
of the other younger men and youths of his village went as cargo
carriers with the policeon a patrol to Yawna. That Agarabi district
was to be punished for its supposed collaboration with a Japanese
detachment during their brief incursion into the area. Two Australian
soldiers had been killed in a surprise attack on an outpost near the
district and the wartime O.I.C. took it for granted that Yawna
people had tipped off the Japanese. Treachery and retaliation are
warp and woof of the Agarabi way of doing things, but the extent
and ease of this revenge had no native precedent. "The police really
broomed that place! But I wasn't sorry for them. They were our
enemies," Bantao said. Enemies or not, the demonstration showed
that opposition to the gaman would continue to be costly despite
the recent brief lapse in its power, and those who escaped the fate
were as deeply impressed as the Yawna.
During the altercation two police boys to whom Bantao had at-
tached himself raped a captured woman. "You don't belong to the
gaman," she cried to Bantao. "Why do you help them take me?"
154
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
still!" —
Bantao did not himself rape her a foolish thing indeed for
an Agarabi, to give semen into enemy hands! But he apparently
helped the police boys seize the woman and take her inside a house.
"It's all right. It's not the same as shooting people," he commented
mildly.
After the war the people of the area had other lessons in the
power Some also had their first real opportunity
of the government.
to see themselves as the European had earlier seen them this time —
from the same side of the rifle sights. The chance came when Bantao
and some of his age group joined one of the early postwar civilian
kiaps to "work bush." They went down into newly opened Fore
country as cargo boys for the line of police who were to establish the
government's authority. Practically never before had they seen people
"newer" than themselves, whole districts still dressed in bark with
no cloth or laplaps, still smeared with pig grease, with long braided
hair, and without even a halting use of pidgin. Perhaps they noted
the wide stare of fright or bewilderment in the eyes of these people
— the "wild look" the Europeans saw. If so, they may have realized
that the look mirrored their own expression a scant twelve years or
so earlier. Bantao and his kinsmen learned to belittle the Fore as
"bush kanaka" and to appreciate the aptness of the name "wild
pigs" when these elusive and terrified people deserted their villages
and, like game, sought concealment in inaccessible places. In rela-
tion to the new kanakas, the Agarabi obviously had savvy, just as
to a lesser degree Bantao and the younger men had it in comparison
with their own They could patronize the Fore and condescend
elders.
to them as the kiap and his police had always done to the Agarabi.
It was on this patrol with the kiap that Bantao and a companion
for their lives. Two police boys appeared at this point and belabored
the captives about the head and shoulders with their own bows.
Bantao's heroic role in this episode seems at least in part pure fantasy.
Later, or perhaps on another occasion, Bantao found an attrac-
tive young Fore woman hiding in the pitpit. "She was surely a good
155
James B. Watson
woman." She had an infant which he held when he turned her over
to four pohce boys to be raped. It would be unfair to censure Bantao
Sometime after the war, Bantao was married for the first time.
He must have been from 16 to 18 years old, although in indicating
his age at the time, he selected for comparison a much younger
village lad, a youth who had only just been initiated and was beginning
to "kiss" for the first time.
I was still just a new pumara like Bese and I decided to work a garden.
I was hungry and I did not like to ask my mother and father for food. I
wasn't thinking at all of getting married.
I worked quite a piece of ground, dug all the trenches and built the
fences myself, near my [own] father's garden. My elder brother came to
help me. My father had told me that if I just did nothing, a woman would
not to me
come —
only if I planted a garden. [He had just said that mar-
riage was no part of his motives.] A girl of our village, married into Punano
[another district], came to the garden. She asked, "Do you work here?"
I said, "Yes, why do you ask?" She said she was just asking. She was already
married to the Punano man. She said she would Uke to stay [i.e., marry
Bantao]. I said I planned to marry an unmarried girl. She said that now
that she had come, I could not marry an unmarried girl. I laughed. I gave
her some sweet potatoes from the garden and sent her away to cook them
since the matter had not been straightened. [Although Bantao does not
say so, he very likely had intercourse with the woman. The behavior he de-
scribes for her is as bold as that he ascribes to himself is passive. When
there is possible trouble over adultery, of course, it is conventional to blame
the partner, but this incidentwas already several years in the past, and
there was but sHght reason on that account, therefore, to ascribe all initia-
tive to the woman.]
She was staying with Pelino [in our village] and Pelino asked her
156
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
where the sweet potatoes she had came from. She said from Bantao. Pelino
said, "Uh! You already have a man!" She said she did not like Punano
[district] and wanted to marry me. I had been kissing with her before
she was married. Our tultul [a village officer] liked her, too, and forced
her to kiss with him. He tried to win her from me and we came close to
fighting, but I prevailed. [This presumably refers to the time before she
married so that Bantao's subsequent adultery and marriage with her prob-
ably have no bearing on his claim to having bested the tultul. His relation-
ship with this tultul, in my observation, was typically anything but the
way Bantao describes it here. The two men were on friendly terms, but
Bantao was generally subordinate and once backed down without a mur-
mur on an issue where justice was strongly in his own favor.]
The luluai from Punano, together with her husband, came and inquired
—
about the woman why she had not returned. They gave their consent
[to the proposed separation and marriage to Bantao] but the husband put
could finally go where he was. He looked at my legs and he was sorry for
me and agreed to the marriage. So we were married.
157
James B. Watson
follow me. [My elder brother] could look out for [my wife] while I was
gone.
Wetwo went on the road, he carrying me on his back. When we got as
far as the Seven Day Mission, he decided to come back. He did not want
to be away from his children, his parents, and kinsmen. It was still the
time when the Kainantu people were our enemies so we went in the moon-
light. We came back about midnight. In the morning, my brother got up
and said [to the village], "You people have put something bad on my
brother's body. Now take it away!"
Since Bantao had earlier said that the sorcerer was the injured
exhusband of his wife, who lived in another district, we might wonder
about his brother's haranguing their own village. To be sure, it is
158
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
a carpenter. ) He worked "one and a half moons" and got one pound
thirteen shillings when the "doctor" said the job was done. With the
money he bought his knife and one or two other things.
While I was working for the haws sick, I would sometimes stay at
Kainantu, sometimes come back to the village at night. This was the cus-
tom of many in our village. There was a [barracks] for the cargo boys
but I did not want to be given the blanket, cup, and the rest [which
legally must be suppHed to a resident native laborer by his employer]. If
I were given these things and they got lost, they would take it out of my pay.
I did not know much about the way the white man thinks, but I wasn't
afraid of him. There was a tambu [taboo] on the road to the [old] house
sick but I didn't know about it. I was hungry and I was walking on that
road one day and was calaboosed for breaking the tambu. It was in the
daytime and when the pohce boy took me, my heart was pounding. The
number-three kiap, who had seen my swollen legs before, called to me. He
asked me why I had broken the tambu. They told me after that not to go
on any road unless there were a lot of men walking there if I didn't want to
get into more trouble. They had put up a stick to mark the tambu but I
159
James B. Watson
Three moons after I came back from working at Aiyura I put my name
160
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
in the book for the Seven Day, to be washed. Some of the leading [Lu-
theran spokesmen in the village tried to get me to go to the [Lutherans]
^]
but I didn't want to. My [own] father leans toward the [Lutherans] but
he was formerly planning to stay in the middle. Lately he has been thinking
of his heart [soul]. When he dies he wants his "soul" [breath, shadow] to
go to heaven. A [Lutheran's] soul can go to heaven; they don't stay in
the ground any length of time. [Hence the father is favoring the Lutherans
more The Seven Day custom is different. When you die, your
strongly.]
soul stays in the ground. Only when the Day of Judgment comes, the ones
who are washed can go to heaven. The cutworm is the same: he stays in
the ground until his wings come out and then he flies up to heaven. First a
Seven Day man rots in the ground and then he goes to heaven.
Two years after I put my name
was washed. Master G.
in the book, I
[the missionary] was very urgent and he persuaded me. I was a kind of
"opening man" [i.e., to open up his village and promote further con-
versions] and I helped the teacher boys. For two years I went all the time
on Sundays to the Seven Day mission along with [a number of age-
mates]. We would hear the [doctrine] and have our names taken. No,
they didn't give us any reward for coming, but we went in rain or in sun.
[Such fidehty would be a bit exaggerated for most Agarabi, if not for
Bantao.]
The people living near the station were familiar with the missions,
of course, and with certain aspects of their apocalyptic message.
The Seventh Day Adventists' headquarters at Kainantu was one of
the very few regular prewar sources of trade goods, and hence
attracted the natives. In addition, the S.D.A. carried their millennial
gospel into the villages through native evangelists and the white
missionary himself. Prior to the government infirmary, the missionary
had provided treatment for the dreaded yaws and had had spectacu-
lar success. In Bantao's village, however, the Adventist mission had
made few conversions, whereas the Lutherans had a number of
converts and still other nominal adherents. The "Seven Day" doc-
trine is a singularly severe one from the point of view of most
Melanesian or Papuan cultures, because, among other things, it
forbids eating pork, chewing betel, smoking tobacco, dancing, or
wearing costumes. In short, it prohibits many of the distinctive enjoy-
ments of native life. Hence, becoming a "Seven Day" convert was not
easy and while a few men older than Bantao had briefly attended
161
James B. Watson
Bantao felt that Master G. wanted an "opening man" from the village
and that he was therefore selected. He was apparently given a strong
lead and a good deal of encouragement, as his own account im-
plied, and such support was something he had always wanted from
his own parents and from others but which he had not received in
very full measure. Now support came from an extremely powerful
source indeed, a white man. He characteristically responded in pos-
itive terms to the encouragement of the missionary, thereby certainly
163
James B. Watson
came. At the end of the meeting, when Kurunke had spoken, Ban-
tao would puria (pray) for all:
I closed my eyes and called the name of Jesus and God. "There is sin
and trouble among us. There is evil. When you return to thts country,
you can fetch us." ^ In the afternoons, after the dotu, we would "kick"
(play village soccer).
[Lutherans] think: "The Seven Day master forbids pig, tobacco,
The
and we like these things. Very well. A dotu speaks the truth or it lies.
betel,
You and I cannot know. Later we will see which is strong and which is
false. If we are wrong, we will stay here behind [on Earth] when we die
and the Seven Days will go to heaven. If the Seven Days are wrong, they
can stay behind."
So the people are divided. Some follow one, some the other dotu. Even
brothers may be different.
have heard Bantao pray and he does not strike me as eloquent. It was my
4 I
experience once when sick for several days to have his former co-worker, Kurunke,
come to my bedside and pray for my recovery and spiritual welfare. My command
of Agarabi is limited but the length to which pious sentiments, doctrinal formulae,
and the sacred history of the church fathers were woven into the theme of my im-
provement was impressive. The session lasted a half hour or more and the prayers ap-
proached in style the purest Gongorism.
164
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
165
James B. Watson
away with him to his own village, refusing to give him back. At
this the former wife or her husband — it is not clear —went to the
kiap about the matter and "courted" Bantao. Bantao was directed by
the kiap to return the boy and was put into the calaboose as punish-
ment for the trouble he had caused.
It was while in the calaboose for this offense, so far as I can
determine, that he had sexual intercourse with a fellow prisoner, a
Tairora woman. This is something which is said to have occurred
among the calaboose prisoners from time to time, and much more
frequently between the police and the female prisoners. For most of
the people of the area such behavior would not so much be "wrong"
as simply a violation of the kiap's law and hence bad only if it were
discovered and led to undesirable consequences. It is hard to tell if
Bantao himself considered that the act was wrong or whether it was
just his scrupulous acceptance of his Seven Day commitment, as
far as he understood it
In any case, shortly after he had finished his "time" in the cala-
boose, he was attending a ceremony at the mission in which it was
customary for the converts to cleanse themselves of their sins. In so
doing, Bantao, when it came his turn, stated to the missionary that
while in the calaboose he had enjoyed carnal pleasures with a woman
not his wife. In all probability he was thinking at the time only of
the need to confess the act as a sin in the mission's definition and was
not mindful of the kiap's law. The missionary, however, sent off a
note at once to the kiap telling him of the occurrence and the gov-
ernment man had no choice under the circumstances but to send
Bantao back to the calaboose for an additional term.
This was a serious blow to Bantao. To be sure there is no strong
moral stigma attached to a term in the calaboose. It is not considered
a desirable experience, nevertheless, as one is thrown uneasily among
enemies and strangers and is denied normal association with his own
kin. There is a tinge of failure, too, since with sufficient adeptness
and savvy in the white man's world one should not find himself
constantly in the calaboose. One term on the heels of the other was
certainly an ignominy for a man who had gone so far as to become
a Seven Day convert in order to be good. For Bantao himself, natu-
rally, the worst part of it was what he could only regard as a personal
betrayal by the missionary for whom he had made such sacrifices. He
was undone through his very adherence to the rules of the mission.
166
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
but where there were several Lutherans.) One night, after Bantao was
out of the calaboose, she was eating a bit of pork that someone had
given her. "I cut it up and cooked it and put it on a plate. Bantao's
mouth began to water," she related, "and it kept on watering.
Then Bakom who was there took a piece of meat, handed it to
Bantao, and told him to eat it. Bantao looked at Bakom, took it
and ate it, and he thereby gave up the Seven Days. Later on he took
to smoking and chewing betel again. So Kurunke is the only one
who was baptised that time, the only one from this district who is
still left."
in his standards for adherence to the rules and he also believes that
some of the earlier converts, including Bantao, have proven to be
morally unworthy. Unquestionably Bantao has seriously deviated
from the rule, and hence he has found little support from Adventists
who might have healed his hurt.
167
James B. Watson
stopped threatening me. It was Niriaso who told her husband that
I had invited her to have intercourse. I don't know why she may —
like me. I told him and told him that I have been tending to my work
helping the story master [anthropologist] and that I was being good
so that I couldn't have done what he accused me of. I don't know yet
what the kiap is going to do about it. I will have to ask [the station
168
—
his plight.
The Bantao and Tese^me had
villagers generally recognized that
their differences.Even before the affair she had made no secret of her
dissatisfaction with him and her desire to return to her own district
and marry someone there. She criticised him behind his back and
sometimes quite openly. (She made a special point of her preference
for "black" skin, whereas Bantao's skin is obviously "red.") Their
failure to have a child did not help matters between them, and now,
in view of her restlessness and her probable part in the recent affair,
and in any case her partial responsibility for her husband's being in
169
James B. Watson
prison, it was assumed that Bantao would play the man and send
her away. Bantao, who was released from the calaboose earlier than
the other two, evinced instead an almost desperate concern that
Tese^me not leave him when she was eventually freed. For his village
critics thiswas simply one more sign of a basic flaw in his character.
Bantao was obviously concerned about their criticism, but he argued
that it was hard work for a man to find a wife and that he could count
on no help this time from his family. Several times he had hopes of
finding another woman, he said, but in each case something fell
through. To make matters worse, Tese^me, when she returned, did
not immediately come back to live in Bantao's house and it gradually
came to light that while at Kainantu she had developed a strong
which the man himself reciprocated.
attraction for the police bugler,
NowBantao was indeed in a quandary: how to keep Tese^me
and what he conceived as his self-respect if it meant an appeal to
the kiap against one of his own men. He talked about his problem
incessantly but he could think of nothing positive to do. After a
period of weeks matters were finally taken out of Bantao's hands for
the bugler himself went to the kiap to ask permission for the woman
to be separated from her husband in order that she might marry him.
Calling Bantao and Tese^me to the station, the kiap spoke to them
separately and ended by denying the bugler and strongly reprimand-
ing Tese^me. Once again Bantao might feel that his faith in the white
man had been redeemed.
The kiap could not fundamentally change Tese^me, however, nor
restore to Bantao the respect of the community. For a while he be-
came quite aimless in his actions and distraught in manner, some-
times going off on long journeys to the Kamano to visit trading
partners or on some slight pretext. He had derived considerable satis-
faction and support from his association with us variously as com-
panion, guide, cook, factotum, interpreter, and informant and we
enjoyed the relationship as well; but time it became
at just about this
clear to him that we were up stakes to move
in the process of pulling
to another village fifteen miles away. We would gladly have taken
Bantao with us but he was not willing to go because these were
enemy people and he feared sorcery. He argued that he should stay
behind in order to look out for our house. Of course, it would not have
solved anything for him if he had come. It would only have post-
poned the problem.
170
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
The next time I heard of Bantao, he was even more worried about
holding on to Tese^me. Her brother and Bantao's sister were ap-
parently on the verge of divorce. This prospect pleased Tese^me con-
siderably and she flaunted the threat of leaving Bantao. News later
reached us that Bantao had found another woman to marry, perhaps
the clearest break yet with the dotu since his initial estrangement
from the mission. The last I have heard at the time of writing is a
tape-recorded message that Pastor S. A. Stocken of the Adventist
Mission was good enough to send me in response to some questions.
In it Bantao speaks affectionately and nostalgically of our times to-
gether and my daughter Anne, of whom he was very fond. Now he
is panning a bit of gold in the streams about the region. He has
never done this before though it was almost his first acquaintance with
white man's enterprise as a small boy, some twenty-five years ago.
Pastor Stocken imphes that Bantao lacks any sense of purpose, is
ill at ease with himself: "He is a very unhappy man."
extremely insecure and who has strong feelings of inadequacy and im-
potency. He seems to be demonstrating a colossal reaction formation
against his sex and against his culture. He envies women; he envies white
men; nonetheless, he abandoned by women and has apparently
also feels
been deprived so that he vaguely wants something from women and from
white men. He would like to be dependent; he would like to be taken care
of and not have to fight and steal as he apparendy feels he must as a de-
prived man in his culture. Therefore, he would like to deny himself both
sexually and racially. He would like to be a woman and white.
Bantao's defenses appear to be primarily those of repression, suppres-
sion, denial, withdrawal, and rationalization. He does not like to be
pushed; he would like to be let alone. He frequently demonstrates a kind
of passive-aggressive behavior in his telling of the stories. He retreats into
description; he does not tell a story; he is quite concretistic and merely
superfically complies.
One might speculate from the foregoing that this man felt that he was
abandoned by his mother, that she tore away from him or he was torn
away from her. He yearns for his previous passive-dependent relationship
in which his oral needs, his needs for closeness and affection and depend-
ence were satisfied. He seems to regard male company as essentially
hostile. That is, he envies women who are left to "just hve." Men are
equated with "beasts." Men kill each other and control each other's
thoughts. He does not seem to derive satisfaction from any power which
172
A New Guinea "Opening Man"
173
Mrs. and "Queen
Parkinson
Emma" (standing)and Mrs.
Parkinson as She appeared
about 1929 (below).
6
Weaver of
the Border
Margaret Mead
iVlany anthropological accounts begin —and go on — as if the an-
thropologist had arrived in a space ship right in the middle of a
completely isolated tribe where, without any help from an inter-
preter,he learned the culture of people who had preserved it
untouched for thousands of years. To study such an "untouched" peo-
ple becomes the ideal of the anthropological student, and when he
goes out to Africa or the South Seas, the dream persists so that the
monograph comes out uncontaminated by the days or weeks or even
months spent in the world between where a mysterious process
in
called "culture contact" has a life of its own. The government
officials and recruiters, traders and prospectors, missionaries and
medical officers, planters, schooner owners, and clerks, who form the
population of this world between, who mediate the anthropologist's
first contacts in an area, who feed and transport him, find him serv-
ants, remit or exact customs duties, give him medical care and medi-
cal supplies, pass along to him dozens of stereotypes of the peoples
with whom he will presently be working — all these individuals fade
out of the picture, appearing at best as a set of unidentified names
in the acknowledgements, often to the deep embarrassment of those
who have given aid and succor to members of a profession who con-
tinually "let white prestige down" and "pick the brains of people
who were here before they were born."
This happens when the anthropologist works in remote regions
where the only Europeans, Americans, Chinese, or Japanese, or oc-
casionally Africans as in British Guiana, or Indians as in Trinidad,
are there as part of the new culture contact conditions, to trade,
govern, exploit, or convert the native peoples who are the anthropolo-
gist's and concern. When instead the anthropologist
particular interest
is looking not for an "untouched" people but for the last fragments
as they walk the streets of such towns or sit on a bench outside one
of the stores that cater to Indian trade —assume for the benefit of the
passers-by their "culture contact faces" of strict unresponsiveness and
immobility, learned long before the coming of the white man when
war captives were tortured by their Indian enemies and sang as they
were burned to death. Again the anthropological report, lovingly
and laboriously constructed from the fragmented memories of the
old, is written in the setting of the past — great herds of buffalo thunder
through the Indians' memories of what their grandparents told them,
deer can be sought freely in the forest, buffalo police keep order in
the camp. Anthropologist and Indian together inhabit a vanished
world, irreplaceable and extraordinarily precious, not to be seen on
earth again.
It is I have chosen to write of my
because of such omission that
most gifted informant from the world between, Mrs. Phebe Clotilda
Coe Parkinson, whose mother was a member of a chiefly family in
Western Samoa and whose father was the nephew of an American
bishop. She was one of eighteen children in a family that first helped
to stylize "contact" relationships in Samoa and then, taking their con-
tact style with them, emigrated to New Guinea and built there
in German times before World War I —
a second contact culture, in
which the Samoans and the part Samoans, no longer the members
of the less civiHzed "aboriginal group," were now in a superordinate
position, a people with a style of life already far removed from the
aboriginal peoples of New Britain where they first landed. Bigger and
stronger and better fed, able to speak German and English, Chris-
tian and literate, they were profoundly impressed with the little cere-
—
monies and rituals of civilization in the South Seas the great clothes
presses sent out from Germany; the white table cloths and flowers on
the table; the strict codes of behavior which recognized rank among
the Europeans, rank among the Samoans and part Samoans, and the
rapidly developing functions of "boss boy," "boats' crew," "police
boy" and the like among the aboriginal peoples. Into the emergent
lingua franca, then called pidgin English, now called Neo-Melanesian,
they brought Samoan words, malolo (to rest), tainam (mosquito
net), and words which the early missionaries Samoa had adapted
to
from the Latin, like patu, for duck. The German governing group
did not wish the natives of New Britain (then called Neue Pomme-
rania, now part of the Trust Territory of New Guinea) to learn
177
Margaret Mead
places."
When my husband and I arrived in Rabaul in the autumn of
wrote her biography and shared the proceeds with her. I suspect
perhaps that Judge PhilHps thought I needed a rest, and that in
Mrs. Parkinson's capable hands would be fed and coddled back
I
and cared for many scores of other children, standing serene, proud,
friendly, but just a little wary and distant on that verandah, where the
spears and clubs and model canoes and carved bowls of the peoples
of the islands among whom Judge Phillips had sat in judgment
hung on the walls.
Rapport was a matter of seconds, for I still spoke polished Samoan
and this was a language she hardly ever heard nowadays. Could I
go down with her to Sumsum and stay with her for several weeks
while she told me the story of her life, which was also the story of the
first attempts to bring New Britain "under control." (We do not speak
of colonizing in New Guinea. That word has been reserved for places
where the land is good enough to support thousands of Europeans
and the natives can be displaced or destroyed.) It was all arranged
in a few minutes. I went back to the ship and disentangled my own
possessions, my husband went on to a short field trip to Papua to get
needed photographs and extra materials, and I stayed in Rabaul.
Papers were drawn up by Judge Phillips, and duly sworn and wit-
nessed, giving me the right to use her account and the materials
she gave me and promising her half of any proceeds that might
come of the publication.^
These details may seem tedious and far removed from the romantic
autobiographies in which the most minute details of sex and sorcery,
vision and ecstasy of identified members of savage tribes are still
1 When it became clear that I would not be able to write a book as quickly as I
hoped, I sent her what purported to be half of a publisher's advance so she could
use it before she died.
179
Margaret Mead
savages using it. I bet they'd never sue you for libel." Nor would
they, perhaps, although the savages of just a decade ago, now in-
itiate activitieswhich shake the chancelleries of the world. But per-
haps because my first field work was among the Samoans who had
attained high literacy in their own language and a sophisticated ap-
proach to their culture contact problems, I have always felt that the
identity of the most savage informant must be given appropriate pro-
tection; either he or she must know that I was taking down what
they said for publication or making photographs of them and
their children to be used, or an absolute cloak of anonymity must
be provided for them. When I published the sort of thing which might
embarrass them or bring them into jeopardy in any way, I disguised
their identity — in Samoa, their names, and among the American
Indian group I studied, even the identity of the tribe.
In the in-between world where Mrs. Parkinson was still a reigning
power, even though she had never regained the full status she had had
under the Germans, these matters were of an infinite touchiness, as
considerations of the amount of Samoan or New
Guinea "blood,"
of legal marriage, of Christian become coun-
identity could all
ters in games of power which were often rough and cruel. (One of
180
Weaver of the Border
—
Admiralty Island experience and my experience going and coming
— of Rabaul and Lorengau, of the government officials, traders, mis-
sionaries, recruiters.
Because of her precise memory and her lively interest in human
beings, it was possible to chart from her memories just how the civili-
181
Margaret Mead
over the world on board warships. Each experience had come sep-
arately, as if washed up on the shores of her island, to be taken, ex-
of steamships back and forth from Rabaul, the older brother who had
been for a year the governor of Guam, after being banished from
New Britain for running the German flag up on an outhouse and
who died much later in the Philippines. We followed their children
and their children's children; some were in Sumatra, some in Ger-
many, others lived on sheep farms in New Zealand, or were in busi-
ness in Sydney. Emma had died in Monte Carlo.
Early days in Apia had to be explored; how she, alone of all her
brothers and sisters, except for the epileptichad become like her
sister,
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Weaver of the Border
and collecting and writing for museums; Phebe bore twelve children,
managed her own plantation and much of her sister's, supervised the
twenty-course dinners her sister used to give to the German .naval
officers, and became to the Germans of the period a kind of ideal
of the emerging life in the South Seas. After her husband's lingering
death, as the "Widow Parkinson," she became the trusted friend of
the German governor, Dr. Hahl. Later, there were troubles between
the part-Samoan group and some of the Germans, insults and counter-
insults; the second generation proved less sturdy than the first. By
cruiting trip to Buka in the Solomons, she was on a desolate shore with
her little cutter rolling out at sea and a dreadful sea running. She
was too tired and ill to walk to the nearest village, so she and her
companion swam out to sea, diving under the breakers, and reached
the cutter. "I could not drown. I can float for miles and never
go down. A shark might eat me or I might get cramps now I am
old, but I could never drown." She still remembered her hus-
183
—
Margaret Mead
all just as God made them, both men and women were very glad—
to see us and I used to come back laden with presents of sugar cane
and taros. Later that was very helpful to my husband; when we
had trouble with the natives or he wanted to find a special native
he would ask, 'Now where does he belong? Where is this village?'
and I would tell him."
So, in 1935, she wrote me: "Look, la'u pele [my dear] could
you some museums over there if they are interested in Trepine
find out
skulls and what they are willing to pay they have only one in
. . .
but as I am here and knew the old natives who were trepined, I will
be able to get one or two if I take the trouble ..."
The missionaries of course had come but there was still no Euro-
pean settlement. Afterwards there were just a few European families."
In Samoa he had built himself a small ship and begun trading with
the Samoans; and he had three sets of children, the last of whom
remained in Samoa and inherited his lands:
184
Weaver of the Border
say, "What! Do you think I take all this trouble to bring up my children
and then let them marry Samoans and become Samoans again?"
The Samoans are very proud and they look down on the half castes too.
I remember there was a man whose name was Edward S He .
was a very well-educated man and he married a pure Samoan woman, just
a bush Samoan, she had not been educated in Apia or anything. And later
he came to Apia and built a big house and he brought his wife with him.
She used to sit there cross-legged, in the middle of his fine mat. She be-
longed to the Tui Aana family and they gave the children, there was a boy
and girl, they gave them the names of the Tui Aana family. Afterwards he
died and also there was no tamatane [children of the male line] for the Tui
Aana family but only these tamafafine [children of the female line]. But the
family would have nothing to do with them. They said, "What? Give our
high Samoan name to someone who has European blood, and is not a
pure Samoan!" Even if someone had high Tongan blood they would look
down on them. Oh, yes, I know today some of them marry Fijians and
even Solomon Islanders, but these are street girls, fit for nothing but that.
We children used to learn to do our washing in the river. My father's and
his wife's clothes were sent out, but we girls did our own. Afterwards at the
convent we used to wash with the sisters standing over us and giving us
oh, such a little soap, for they were very saving. And we had to rub and rub
on the stones.
My had a lovely house. It was all cut out and planned in San
father
Francisco. The
floors were all beautiful narrow boards and all painted
white. The walls were all papered in those days. The parlor walls had white
paper with a httle gold pattern on it. My older brothers used to mix the
185
Margaret Mead
flour and boiling water and put on the paper. It was very interesting. Every
room had different paper on it. And in the parlor the whole of one side
was a mirror and two sides were bookcases full of books and with glass
doors. But I do not remember my father ever reading any of the books.
When the British Consul's children had birthday parties, my father used
to go to those shelves and give us each a book to carry as a gift. That is the
only use that I remember his making of the books. Our stepmother did
nothing but we girls used to keep the house clean and neat. One took one
room and one another and we changed around. We were very proud of our
home. It burned down in the war when the war ships shelled the town;
all that part of Apia burnt.
I was very unhappy as a child. You see, before I was born my father
took another wife, that is he did not marry her but he went with her and
my mother found out about it and left him, although she was already great
with child. She went back to the mission where she had worked as a
child and that is why I was born under the Ifififi tree. Then my father
married this other woman after he had begged and begged my mother to
come back but she would not. She was very proud and so Mr. Pritchard,
the first British Consul who had married my father and mother, divorced
them. And then later, I remember we were down by the river and my
mother was washing in the river, I must have been very small for I remem-
ber I was lying on her lap. And my brother came and lifted me up and
took me off to the schooner and took me from Falealili to Apia. I remember
we got there very early in the morning and they carried me up to my father's
house. So I was brought up with that other family and I always think of
them as my true sisters. But their mother was very unkind to me. She
would not make me any new dresses but when she made them new dresses
she put some of their old dresses on me. But I would not have noticed it my-
self if people outside had not spoken about it. My father would not let me
see my mother and I remember she used to come into the little farm back of
our house and hide and send one of the girls to get me. Then she used to
hug me to her heart and cry and I used to cry for my mother. I do not know
where she lived but it must have been close by for once when our house
caught fire and-was all in flames my mother appeared and carried me out of
the fire so she must have been watching over me near by. After that other
woman died my father married again. He tried to get my mother to come
back but she would not. When my father used to take some of the chil-
dren to San Francisco to school, she used to come and look after the house
while he and his wife and the children went to San Francisco and then
when they came back she would go away again. [Phebe had been left
home to care for her epileptic half sister, whom she took with her to the
convent school, and into her mother's church.]
186
Weaver of the Border
Then when I was married, I lived three miles away from the sea and my
mother came to live with me and she stayed with me until my first baby was
born. I heard her in the next room talking with all the old women about
girls who had and how some of them were selfish and
their first babies
thought only of themselves and would say: "Oh, take the thing out, I don't
care how, so that this pain stops now." And I made up my mind that I
would not be like that. Then after we came up here, my sister. Queen
Emma they called her, Mrs. Kolbe was her name, sent for my mother. She
built her a real European house and she had her boys and all her Samoan
things and she was very happy there. She used to weave fans and sew
up strings of the red parrot feathers to send back to Samoa. Every day
she had her bottle of beer and then in the night a litde brandy. About
three o'clock in the night. She could not sleep much
and so she at night
would have that. Her medicine she called it. Three times she went back to
Samoa to visit. After she died we made her house into a rest house for
the Naval officers who were our friends to come and rest when they were
on leave or feeling a little sick.
world. There were her father's proud priestly relatives who had
cast him out and who called his children "blacks." There were the
young clerks who walked home with them in the evening and went
away at eight o'clock. Most of all there was the Convent, where her
mother had lived as a girl, where she had been born under the Ifififi
tree —
so quickly that the nuns had been frightened, for one moment
Joana passed them pregnant, and a minute later she had come to
the house to get a cake of soap to wash the newborn infant.
When she was a little girl she wanted to be a nun: "The sisters
wanted me to learn French, but Father said, 'No. No exceptions.
What one child has so must another.' I used to go out and sit in the
long avenue of breadfruit trees where the sisters had their playtime,
and listen to the French. I used to fall asleep listening to the beautiful
language."
But there was still another side to Phebe's world, the life of the
Samoans whose "blood" she shared and whose language she spoke.
This graceful, happy life appealed to her much more than the strict
regimen of her father's house.
heart's names. Afterwards when was engaged I hurt my foot and it had to
I
be dressed every day. My husband came every day and dressed it and my
father saw the tattooing. Oh, he was wild. He said, "If you were not sick
with that foot you would have a horsewhipping."
Once I had a real glimpse of Samoan life. My father's third wife was
a very young and gay taupoii. Her brother was a big chief in Manono and
on the excuse that her brother was sick she got my father's permission to
go home. He sent me with her, for I was always her favorite as she knew the
others were cheeky and the Samoans called them ngutuaitu [ghost nose].
But when we got there she put me with the taupoii and she went and stayed
with her sweetheart's parents. So for two weeks I slept with the aua-
luma [unmarried girls] and the old women made us iila [necklaces]
188
Weaver of the Border
and every night all the boys came. I wore a lavalava and flowers in my hair
and was very happy.
In the old days when the German officers came we used to go and sit
by the river with bare feet and flowers in our hair and talk to them. Father
didn't know anything about that.
My left hand is the head of a black fish. Come and fight me.
My right hand is the head of a red fish, Come and fight me.
In the occasional difficulties with the mixed population, she was
always tempted to resort to force, as at the time the wife of a Chinese
had a quarrel with her half sister. It was the slender 13-year-old
little Phebe who girded a tiny lavalava beneath her prim long dress
and fought the woman who had insulted her brother and slapped her
sister, this within the Chinaman's house because he feared that if the
fight were fought outside the others would intervene for the little
Phebe whom they all loved. So while the Chinaman danced about
holding ofl[ the crowd, she beat up the fat wife and knocked her
down the steps from the bar into the bedroom, rolled her under the
bed for the finish, all the time anxious lest her father or some of
her father's gossipy old cronies should pass by and hear of it.
Once, too, she saw the fa'amase'au ceremony, the taking of the
tokens of virginity of a taupou. (This had always worried me, be-
cause according to the account which both my Samoan informants and
the earlier missionary texts on Samoa had given, if the girl proved
not to be a virgin when came to take
her husband's talking chief
wrapped in white tapa, she would
the tokens of virginity with his fingers
be beaten to death. This punishment seemed too severe for the Samoan
ethos. Mrs. Parkinson had the answer for which I had been seeking.)
"If the girl is not a virgin she will tell her old women, and they
will secretly bring the blood of a fowl or a pig and smear it on the
i'e sina [a fine mat] which was spread on the ground. Then the
i'e sina is brought out to all the people and all the old women
relatives of the woman's side rub the blood on their faces and dance
189
Margaret Mead
and sing and the husband waves it in the air like a flag, and then
goes in, behind a siapo [bark-cloth curtain] to his wife."
She also saw the mourning feast of a taupou. The woman's side
brought many fine mats and the man's side yards and yards of
calico. These were all spread about the house while the fine mats
were piled up on top of the corpse. Then while the food for the
funeral feast was being cooked, all the polas (plaited blinds) were
lowered, and the young girls and boys and some old people were
all shut up naked in there where they cut their hair and painted
themselves with sama (turmeric) and smeared black lama (charcoal)
all over themselves as a sign of mourning.
When I was a little girl I used to think what it would be like if I should
marry one of the young manaias [titled youths of the chief's household] who
were my sweethearts. But then I had a dream, a dream which I have always
remembered, of a high cliff which had white streaks on it where the ground
had been torn away and on the side of the cliff was a beautiful castle and I
lived there and walked through those halls. When I would think what it
would be like to marry a Samoan then I would remember my dream and
think if I married a Samoan I would never live in my castle. Then too I
knew how the Samoans left their wives and took new ones and if my hus-
band should stop loving me he would throw me away and I would be no
better than a street woman. So I decided to stay on and learn European
ways and marry as my father wished. And years later when I came to New
Ireland I saw that cliff just as it v/as in my dream, going up high from the
sea, with the white scars there on the side and I pointed it out to my sister
and said, "There, I dreamed of that cliff when I was a little girl."
When my [Emma, then married to Parrel, a New Zealander of
sister
so she gave them all up and only whipped me. When she came up here
I was very lonely without her and it was only because I loved her so that
190
Weaver of the Border
Catholic and I always told the Mother Superior and the sisters everything
and they said, "Don't have anything to do with that man, he is no good."
So once there was a dance and this wretch was there and my husband also.
I did not hke my husband particularly but I stayed with him just to get rid
of this wretch. Then the next day he went home and wrote to my father
and asked to marry me. So my father said, "Well, Phebe, he is a good
parti for you. He is a good man. He does not drink." I said, "Oh, father,
I do not want to get married yet." I was just 15 and just home from the
married first." But he said, "It is not Carrie's name here in the letter;
it is your name." I was very much afraid of my father, he was always
very strict with me. I was the last of the other family and he was too
cross with me. The other girls used to love my father, but I did not love
him, I feared him. When he was tired and we had to lomilomi [massage]
him, the other girls used to lomilomi with love in their hands but my hands
got tired and there was no love in them. But when he said I must marry my
husband I knew I must marry him. And all the sisters said, "Yes, this is a
good man. True he is not a Catholic, but it is better to marry a good Protes-
tant than a bad Catholic!" We were engaged for six months and all that
time I did not look my husband in the face. I did not know whether his
eyes were blue or black. He had no teeth, they were all knocked out once
when he fell over a fence in Africa.
And all Samoan manaias used to say, "Oh, our little Phebe will soon
the
be chewing food for this old man who has no teeth." And my mother and
all the high chiefs of my mother's side came and remonstrated with my
father and said, "See, you have had your own way with all the other chil-
dren. Let us have this one little tamafafine. She shall come and live in the
chief's house and be an ornament to his rank and do no hard work and marry
whom she chooses. Do not make her marry this old man." But my father
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Margaret Mead
would put on my worst dress and make my hair all untidy so that he would
be disgusted with me. Afterwards he told me they were all laughing at me.
Once when he took me out driving I said, "Richard, I do not want to marry
you. I do not care for you." He said, "Does your father know this?" I said,
"Yes." He said, "All right, we will go and talk with him about it." Then I
said, "Oh, no, don't. I was just fooling." Then we were married by the
British consul and afterwards there was a great party and the ships in the
harbor, the Lackawana and the Bismarck made a great platform, I don't
know where they got the wood.
She was just 16 when she was married. After the wedding she
jumped into bed with all her wedding clothes on, and turned her
back on her husband. Early in the morning, she got up and walked
to mass.
After the baby started all her feeling for her husband changed.
Where before when he flirted with the other girls
she had been glad
in an attempt to make her jealous,
now she was furious with jealousy.
Even after she was pregnant she used to walk about with him on
his secret surveying trips in search of guano. Coming home from
Myfather had a big family and he lived very plain. Just boiled beef and
taro, no butter and no bread. Then when I was married my husband said,
"I want you to go into the kitchen and superintend the cooking," and I
said, 'T did not marry you to be a cook!" But he said, "No, but you must
learn so that you can train the others to cook." Still I was not interested.
Until once we had been out at a party with a group of German officers and
it was so late that Mrs. Decker, she was the nearest neighbor we had and
she was an Irish orphan who had been trained by the Williams family so
that she was a wonderful cook, said, "You had bettercome home with us."
She cooked us all a wonderful dinner and then when we came home my
husband "Look how she can cook. Now I am ashamed to ask officers
said,
here for all you would give them would be beer and a little bread and
that
radish." Then I was jealous and I started to learn to cook. On Sundays we
used to go out to the warships, to morning champagne on one ship and to
luncheon on another, and whenever there was a new dish, my husband
would taste it and look at me and then I would understand and I would
go home and try it. That is the way I learned to cook.
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Weaver of the Border
I never learned to cook from a cook book, but later I learned all the
medicine and care of the sick which I knew from an old cook book.
For five years after we came up here we had no doctor. My husband was
very particular about his food, especially about the soup. Everything
must come very hot to the table. First I had to see to his food, then to all
the children, and then I could get something to eat myself. He was not
strong, for about ten years he was all right and then he could no longer
work. So I took all the plantation off his hands and he went about re-
cruiting on my sister's ships and went about on the warships and so he
could write his books and do the work that he liked. It was not malaria
but something internal. But I was sorry for him and I remembered how
patient and gentle he had been with me when I first married him and so
I tried to make everything as easy for him as possible. My sister used to
complain. Her house was very near to ours but sometimes I did not go
over there for months. She used to come over and scold and say, "Phebe,
Richard keeps you just hke an old hen with her eggs. Why do you let
him make a slave of you?" But I said, "Emma, he does not make me, I
like it. I have enough to do here with my children." My sister said that
the reason I was so strong was because I had so many children and with
each child all the bad and impure things were drained out of my blood.
My sister was a great reader and she read politics and could talk politics
with anyone and she read medicine too. And she used to talk to me.
Oh, she was very clever, was my sister. She used to give great parties
and drink a great deal of champagne but it was only so she could forget
her business. Otherwise she could not go to sleep at night but would lie
awake figuring and figuring. One thing she was soriy about was that my
husband did not teach me bookkeeping. I used to keep a day book for
the plantation but that was all. When my husband died she started a
ledger for me but I did not keep it up.
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put our heads together and said we would always play fair with the
natives, always give them all that they deserved, always keep our
words, both our threats and our promises. And they know that that
is so, and so we never have any trouble getting laborers. Now [1929]
the government regulation is that they must build long houses on the
plantation with board or cement floors. The boys don't like that.
They steal away on Sundays and build their own little huts where
two or three can lie around, have a fire, and enjoy a little bit of fish
or some other kaikai [food] that they have found. In the big house
they are ashamed. I quite understand. If you are to succeed with
the natives you must study their comfort a little."
Before the group from Samoa came, "One Father had landed at
Rabaul but the natives burnt him out." Then a second group tried
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Weaver of the Border
to Start a mission at Kokopo, and were again burnt out but their
lives were spared because they had come to love Miti, as Mrs. Park-
inson was called. Later a third mission group came and Queen Emma
sold them the land at Vunapope so that her sister might have her
religion near her. Every Sunday she went by canoe to mass and
brought the altar linen back to wash.
She used to buy the little native children who were captured in
war and destined for slavery for life and send them to the sisters to
rear. She held markets with the natives from all around and learned to
know their names and collect their gossip. Thus she discovered who
had slaves and bought them for ten fathoms of tambu (shell money)
— the price of a large pig —
and sent them to the mission.
The first German government station was in the Duke of York
Islands, at Kewura. The German flag was hoisted but there was no
government for a long time. Richard Parkinson was the station
master. Later the "government" moved to New Britain and started
a station at Kokopo. The Parkinsons warned thefii to be careful
not to let any of the "station boys" interfere with the maries (native
women) when they came down to the beach to market. Before in
earlier days the Parkinsons had had trouble with their laborers flirting
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enclosure and have the native stand up at the other. He would hold up
his hand and say, "Here is the bullet" and the native couldn't see. Then
he would put it in and the powder and the paper and the cap and shoot
it off, and the native would find just a litde blood-red spot on his chest.
done that to rid the country of white people altogether. So Richard said,
"Yes, I will help you now and we'll end this."
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Weaver of the Border
tambu. Phebe pleaded with the natives, offering to put her tambu on
the pile with theirs, but first they were stubborn and more were
shelled. Then finally at night there came little whispers, "Miti?"
"Yes, who's that?" "Me with the tambu." "All right, you go and
wait until morning." They waited all night long and then she made
them tie the tambu and carry it into the district office. Then
in rolls
the station master told her it was all finished and to assure the natives
that the affair was over. This she did. But later, at the instigation of
the Raluana missionaries, the government wrote asking her to collect
further fines. This is her answer:
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Margaret Mead
plantation." Then I knew that they had been stealing. I took some tapa
and some tin cans and pictures and all kinds of rubbish and I took them
out and strung them up on the edge of the plantation and I told the
natives, "This is taboo which I have brought from Samoa." There was a
road there and they were all so frightened they never even walked on the
road any more.
Then when I went down to Kolai all the natives were stealing the
fallen coconuts. There were plenty on the trees and none on the ground.
So I had two old skulls in my boxes which I had not sent away with some
collection that I made. I took painted cloth and put it in their eye sockets
and took some hair from an old tuuiga [Samoan headdress] and glued
it to their heads and tied streamers of tapa on them and I had the boys
fasten them up on sticks. Then I told the natives that they were the
skulls of my mother's brothers, Talimai and Ma'aona, which I had brought
from Samoa to guard my coconuts and that I had told them just to let
my own boys gather the nuts and bring them in but that if anyone stole,
one they would kill them. Oh, they were frightened, especially by the
tapa, because there was nothing European about it.
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finally to adhere to the strange beautiful hard path which was the
heritage of her white blood. Her sisters turned up their noses at
the Samoans. They were educated away from Samoa, and they
lost touch with their people. They forgot the tolerance, the high
courtesy, the breeding of the finely strung chiefs. They forgot the
devices for making life simple and beautiful in the tropics. They
put on European clothes and adopted European manners, clinging
hard to the trappings of that to which they wished so earnestly to
belong. Robbed of pride in their mother's race, they had to seek
feverishly for money and place, for some status in the world to which
they only half belonged. But Phebe, proud of her Samoan blood,
loving devotedly the little mother who used to come and
disinherited
kiss her secretly in the bushes, had no holes in her pride to patch
up with foreign tatters. All that she did in mastering the details of
European housekeeping, in learning to keep a garden from which,
years later, the harrassed German housewives in Rabaul could borrow
to please the palates of their exacting husbands, she did not to be
European but "to make Richard happy" for "he was a sick man and
I did not like to worry him." She learned German to please him,
and so that she could talk to the young officers who came to the
house, sitting up at night after the babies were in bed. Queen Emma
read omnivorously, that nothing might escape her, that she might
be able to meet her guests on their own ground. Phebe read less, but
all that she read sheremembered and related to the life she knew.
Emma remonstrated with her: "If you would urge Richard to make
money and to use all his brains and his education to make money for
you and the children it would be better than this way. Here you work
like a nigger while he runs around making a name for himself. He
is just a selfish man." But she said, "Ah, Emma, let him be. He is a
and Phebe had to take over the management of her sister's plantations.
She had done much of it before because Richard had never learned to
speak pidgin. It was Phebe who talked with the natives, who
stuffed the birds to be sent to Germany, who medicated the natives,
who labeled the specimens. "Richard did all the brain work."
Richard was a man burning with a desire to establish himself;
he wanted to set a good table, he wanted his collars starched more
stiffly than those of any dignitary in the little outpost. Phebe had
wanted roses in return for the rare plants they sent away. She could
never gather enough flowers for her garden. But he refused. They
should go as free gifts of science from Richard Parkinson. Every-
where he had debtors, people to whom he had sent beetles, snakes,
fish, butterflies, land shells, curios, photographs. When 'he went
abroad in 1893 he wrote her letters filled with names, the names
of those at whose tables he had sat, who had received him as a great
scientist, a man who had made real contributions. The Sultan of
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at least. If possible let us have some boys this week in order that
Dr. Hahl may send them to New Guinea in the Manila. Yours
sincerely, J. A. Steubel."
All her strength which had been channeled for twenty-five years
into motherhood and wifehood was now freed. The vigor of the
little girlwho had fought all comers in Apia, who had swum reefs
and advanced unafraid among hostile natives, who had shared the
secrets of the Dukduks and crocheted for them emblems of different
colors and never betrayed their secrets to their women, now came
into its own. But it was the memories of the European half of her
life, such as the observances at Christmas, that were her symbols of
In Samoa we did not have a Christmas tree, we had Santa Claus and
my father used to tell us hang up our stockings on the side of the
all to
chairs. Afterwards, my father went away and my sister filled them, and we
peeked and saw them and it was never so nice after that. But in my
husband's home we had a Christmas tree. He planted a whole row of
avocado trees and he gave one pear to each boy. He was how do you —
say, sentimental? — and so he gave each boy a pear and he took the
spade and dug the ground and then Otto must plant one and Max one,
and then he said, "When you grow up you can say I planted this tree
when I was a child." Each Christmas we cut the young top of one of
these trees for our Christmas tree. We had a stand which held up the
tree and when you "keyed" it, it made music. After it was all trimmed
and all the candles there, and the presents piled up, I would stay with
the children and Richard would go and light the candles and then throw
open the doors. Then we would all join hands and dance around the
tree and sing "Stille Nachf and "Oh Tannenbaum." Oh, it was lovely.
Just our own family. Other people would ask us to go out on Christmas
Eve but Richard said no, just our own family. He was always like that,
he liked to keep the children at home. In the evening we played games
with them, Halma and Uddo, so that they always liked home best. So
it was with the cemetery. When he was so ill he had us carry him over
in his chair, and he planned out the cemetery where he and I should lie
and all the children. He said, "If any of your sisters or your sisters' children
want to rest here, put them there on each side but in the center just our own
family."
When my mother was very old she knew that she would die soon and
she wanted to go back to Samoa to die. My and my brother gave
sister
their consent but when she asked me, I said, "Oh, Mother, I have taken
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Margaret Mead
care of you all these years,would like to take care of your grave,
and I
too. If you go there you may die and be buried at sea, or in Samoa. Who
will look after your grave as I would?" She cried then, and she stayed.
When she was dying, for seven months I slept down with her at night,
then up to see about my husband's meals, then down again to her. At the
New Year they were dancing and having a big party at my sister's and
my mother was dying then. I thought of a play I had seen in Sydney where
the mother was watching beside a dying child's bed and the father was
away carousing, and I was very sad. The next day my sister came and
wept and said, "Oh, I should have been here before." Once I had to go up
to the house to see about my husband. When I came back my sister said,
"Thank God you have come. Twice Mother tried to die but she looked for
you and stayed." Then Mother looked at me and then she died.
After my husband died we always had a Christmas tree just for me
and my baby boy. Dr. Hahl always urged us to come up to the govern-
ment house on Christmas Eve and I said, "No, we will stay at home as my
husband wished." When my change of life came I went right off my head.
I think it was because I had so much trouble then with the death of my
husband and of my little son. I used to get up in the night and go out and
lie in the graveyard. I would not know what I was doing, but in the morning
when it was quite light they would find me there. When they had a Christ-
mas tree here at Sumsum I was too sad and I cried. Silly! So I said, "I will
not come any more just to be sad and make you sad," and at Kiep [her
last plantation] I said, "Paul, we won't have any Christmas tree."
friends with the officers of the ship which sent it to Chicago for me."
All through the long years when she had been Richard's wife
and the mother of his children, and the assistant in all his collecting
schemes, and Emma's assistant manager, she had taken a ceaseless
interest in the natives, with whose help they had built the island
v^ay of life.
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Weaver of the Border
I had taken with me a native boy who had his hair dyed, to carry the
baby. There was a woman there. Oh, she was crazy about that boy and she
got out games and sat down on the floor and played games with him.
She was quite childish, the old lady. Then there was a railroad about
thirty miles it ran out of Cooktown. My sister took me on it so that I
could get a little idea of a railroad. At the end of it was a town with whole
families living in tents. On the train was a Chinaman with a European
wife all loaded down with jewels and she looked so unhappy and turned
her face away from him as if she were ashamed to be seen with him.
And in Cooktown I saw two half-caste Chinese girls who were language
teachers in the schools. They wore simple black dresses with white collars
and cuffs and they were very well educated. We saw them when we
went to visit the school.
In Sydney I went to a dressmaker and she said, "Oh, are you staying
with ?" "Yes." "Well, a little while ago she had two island ladies
staying with her, two princesses." I said, "Well, they aren't from my is-
lands, there are no princesses there." She said, "What island do you
come from?" I said, "New Britain." "Yes," she said, "that is where they
come from; they are the nieces of Queen Emma." "Oh," I said, very much
disgusted, "they are just my niece and my nephew's wife — they are no
princesses. My sister is no queen. That is just the name which the people
give her in the islands because she is good to them all." I was ashamed.
We were invited to a garden party of the Admiral but I refused to go.
The commander of the little war vessel which took us down said, "You
are a fool not to go, and if you won't go at least let the children go." But
I said, "No, we do not belong there and I haven't the money for the
clothes. It is not our place, and if we went and the people at home read
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Margaret Mead
about it they would all say, 'Look at those people trying to push them-
"
selves in down south where they don't belong.'
All the tourists on a big steamer that was in were fascinated by that
boy's hair and they cut off The poor boy came to me frightened
little pieces.
and said, "Oh, Missus, I will die now. What do they do this for, I have
done them no harm, why do they want to kill me?" So I explained to
him that it was just a curiosity.
After all the years that I had supported and been the foundation of
the Catholic Mission I had a dreadful fight with the Bishop and I didn't
Long before when we started the
enter the church for six years. planta-
tion we had Buka boys who would marry local maries or New Ireland
girls and the mothers would die and leave babies which the fathers
could not look after and I kept them and brought them up. I was getting
quite a lot of them and so I went to the Bishop and asked about sending
them to the mission. We arranged that they should go to the school and
if any wished to become catechists or marry catechists or stay in the
convent to help the sisters they could do so, but if not they should come
back to me. And sometimes the boys ran away but I always sent them
back to the fathers because I did not think it was right for the discipline
of the school. Then there were two girls who used to come home for the
holidays and they wanted to marry two of our boys. I had been sending
the boys for a year to the father to receive instruction and they were al-
most ready to be baptized. So the girls told the sisters and the sisters asked
me, and I said, "Let the girls come home for a visit and see if they really
like the boys." So they sat on the porch and chewed betel nut and talked
and they all liked to marry one another. So I sent them back to the con-
vent and I asked the father to baptize the boys now as they were going
to marry the girls. He was very cross and he said, "Does the Bishop
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Weaver of the Border
know that?" I said, "His Lordship has gone south, but the father in
charge knows." He was cross then and would not baptize the boys. When
the Bishop came back he got round the girls and made them write me
letters saying they did not want to be married. So I went to see him and I
told him he had just gotten round the girls and told them what to say.
And he said, "We know best. We don't want the girls to marry these
boys." But I said, "Father, how about our old agreement?" "Oh," he said,
"that is all gone now. The government has come and the government up-
holds the law that the church is the guardian of all orphans. We made
our agreement long ago when the country was young and there was yet
no government and it was hard to get children for the school." I argued
with him and he said, "Oh, my child, you are not the Mrs. Parkinson of
former days. You answer your father in God back. I am your father and
you must not back to me." I said, "I know, Monsignor, but I am a
talk
widow now, do not have my husband to fight for me and I must speak
I
up, I must fight for my children and for my native children." So he said,
"Well, I am very sorry." And I said, "Is that your last word, Monsignor?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Good day, Monsignor," and I walked out. He fol-
lowed me out and said, "My you must not be angry," but I said,
child,
"Good day," and drove away — was wild!
oh, I
I went to Rabaul and I had them look up all the books, the German laws
and the Austrahan, and there was no such law. Then I could not forgive
the fathers. They wanted me to go to court over it and said I would surely
win the case, but I would not for the sisters were taking my side and I did
not want to drag them in. So for six years I never went near the church
and neither did my children. I used to go sometimes to the sisters' chapel,
but never where I would see the fathers. The sisters begged me but I said,
"When I can forgive them and go to church and think only of our Lord I
will go, but now if I went I would only think of how angry I am."
Later she went to Buka, saw a priest there, and went to confession.
She was advised to come back and make her peace at Vunapope,
and she went back on the day of the new bishop's consecration and
was wept over by all the sisters who were supposed to be entertaining
the Rabaul ladies. She explained, "It's just crying over the lost
sheep that has come back. I do not think there is only one religion,
but I do not believe it is right to change. One should stick to one
thing, that is my idea of a good woman."
As her precise German husband met her demand for form and
orderliness, her religion met her demands for fundamentals, high
prices, deep feeling; her life in New Guinea met her need for activity,
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Margaret Mead
and her husband's desire for scientific eminence fed her restless
curiosity. It was an essential trait of her character never to forget any-
thing, always to seek to relate everything that she saw, and always to
want to know how everything was done. "We went to the Admiralty
Islands and I saw those spears of obsidian. They told me they did not
carve them or cut them out and I was very curious to know how they
could make them. So then they took me and showed me how they
knocked them off, just as they are on the spears, with one blow of a
stone. Very interesting!" Or, "My husband used to buy skeletons and
they used to bring them down perfect, even to the little finger bones
and toe bones. I was curious to see how they did it and so I made
an expedition up into the bush to see. They bind the knees and set
them up on a platform and let them rot away in the forest until the
skeleton is all whitened. And, oh, the blow flies were terrible."
She was the first to give the Bainings an axe, and "Oh, they were
happy. Before, it had taken them two years to cut down a tree with
their axes of stone." Among the South Coast Arawes she found that
the custom of doing the babies' heads up in bark for six weeks led
to dreadful sores, that the babies' eyes protruded and their faces
were pale and bloated. She took the German doctors down there.
Among the Blanche Bay natives the brother and sister taboo was so
strict that if a brother passed near a place where a sister was working
and a third person saw him pass, they were both killed. Sometimes
a powerful chief would delay the killing, if they were relatives of his,
and send word secretly to the Parkinsons, and Richard would go up
and save them.
July 6, 1929, I tried to sum it all up: "The Germans saw in her
a symbol of the peaceful conquest of the strange South Seas, of the
gradual combination of island qualities with the Teutonic virtues.
They loved her for her ease, her humor, her swift friendliness and
tolerance — these recalled to them allthat was most appealing about
Samoa. They respected and cherished her housewifeliness, her humil-
ity, her deference and recognition of authority, of order, of rank.
In these things she was a true Hausfrau. Her very genuine usefulness
to the administration aside from the purely personal contribution
made by her home and her hospitality were remembered, doubly
remembered. In cherishing and helping her in her widowhood they
were serving at once the romance of her origin and the piety of her
convictions."
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Weaver of the Border
The war undid her cruelly, most cruelly because she could feel
no part in it. She did not know which side Richard would have taken
had he lived. Since he was half English, half German, and bi-lingual,
with friends in both countries, it was impossible for her to imagine
what his would have been. Emma was dead, and her
allegiance
clear decisiveness was denied her. And so it was without emotion,
with only curiosity, that she saw the war approaching New Guinea.
Her first feeling was symbolic of all that the war was to do to her.
The new governor was a comparative stranger. Her relations with
the government had been strained since one of her daughters had
publicly struck a German officer with a whip for insulting her younger
sister. "All the Navy and all the people who had never been in the
Army took our part, but all the Army was wild that the Imperial
uniform should be so insulted, and by a woman." When the order
came for all the German families to prepare to take refuge at Toma
in case of attack her name was not among them. The governor ex-
plained that he did not think she would be in any danger. She was
too experienced to be in danger from the natives; she was after all
not a German but a Samoan, the invaders would not harm her. And so
the first note of exclusion was struck. Technically she was a German
subject, but she shared neither their fears nor was she given their
narrow solicitude for their own. Patiently she sought to adjust her-
self to the situation.
Here was a war at her doors and something of her old curiosity
flared up. She made her way into Kokopo to see what a true
European war was like. She found a ring of sentries who demanded
a pass; this was new and interesting. Within the barriers she en-
countered a young officer whom she had known as a clerk and who
asked her about Louisa (her eldest daughter who was married to a
New Zealander). A sense of great familiarity descended upon her.
Here was just another set of officers, on another group of warships, to
be entertained and fed, given coffee or whiskey, pineapples or guavas,
beds or dry shirts. She saw the group of idle casual soldiers chatting,
smoking, sitting about on the grass. Her heart misgave her again. This
was not discipline. She wasn't sure that this was a real army after all.
As she gave tea and whiskey to the young officers who passed her home
and danced with her daughters through the years of the military
occupation, she came to wonder more and more. There was a casual-
ness here, a lack of form which distressed her. She tried to treat them
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Margaret Mead
as shehad treated the Germans. She gave them vegetables and fruit,
she made them welcome at her table, she gave of her knowledge of
the natives.
Through the years of the military occupation she partly succeeded
in deluding herself into thinking that the old life would be repeated
in new guise; that she would be again the adored hostess, the wise
guide, the gentle heroine of a formal governing class. But when the
military government departed her slender hopes were shattered. The
strange assortment of clerks, engineers, and the like, who came,
without tradition or air of authority, without precedent, without
form, to govern a country full of kanakas and a few half-caste and
tion in this new world in which she seemed to have no place. There
were still her children and her children's plantations to be looked
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Weaver of the Border
after. There was still work that she could do, natives who would give
her their children gladly; there were little grandchildren with fair
hair and German names, little grandchildren with fair hair and Eng-
lish names for whom she could labor. The fundamental things
which she had trusted throughout her life were there; the cellar
of the house was not burnt in the great flames which had con-
sumed her ideal world. She went back to these simple things; happy
to take a swift dip in a river that she must cross, happy to settle
some puzzling native dispute, happy to increase the yield of the
plantation that worked for her absent children: "I often think of that
other grandmother in Germany and how she has no other grand-
children and how she must long to have them now. I have had
them so long and I felt selfish." And she said, "My mother used to
tell me that she had heard her grandmother and her mother say that
when you grow old, your sight gets a little dimmer, your hearing a
little poorer. She used to laugh and say, 'I guess it is the second child-
when one began to get old, one might mind. But if one knows what
to expect, then it is all right."
The years dealt no more kindly with her. One by one the plantations
she had helped to found passed out of the family; she herself eked out
a precarious living, sometimes doing a little recruiting, sometimes
living with her favorite grandson. In 1934, because of the effects of
the depression, a promised job failed to materialize; she and a grand-
son were left stranded in Buka Passage. Describing her situation,
she wrote in a letter, ". . . the mission's financial affairs are very
bad, they are cutting down everything to save expenses, no money
coming in as copra is very low down, well the long and the short of
it. I packed up all the old rubbish left over from my old home
besides plants, poultry, and living animals, dogs and so on. ... for
the home now you should see us amongst our goods and chattels
without a home or a penny. This hut belongs to an acquaintance of
—
mine and he kindly told us to put up in it. the sooner we
. . .
are back to Rabaul the better we will be. There at least I have a
little home [this I saw in 1938 when I saw her for the last time,
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Margaret Mead
baking bread between two empty kerosene tins." The letter ended:
"Trusting you and your good man are enjoying good iiealtli and
much luck in this New Year let me hear from you la'u pele [my dear]
tele le aloja [with much love] Yours very sincerely Phebe Parkinson,
who ele galo le uo moni tofa soi fua [never forgets the true friend,
good bye and life to you]."
She died soon after the war ended.
A true child of the South Seas, never denying her inheritance,
she took with eager and so skillful hands all that civilization brought
to her feetand made a way of life of it. And the World War which
wrecked the fabric of European civilization found its echo in Kuradui,
when she left it empty-handed. The superstructure of her life, her
world of the imagination, crumbled and fell. She remains, the best
excuse for European invasion of the graceful Polynesian world, for
she showed what a Polynesian can do with European values when
they are grafted on to a firm belief and pride in Polynesian blood.
210
7
The Form and
Substance of Status:
A Javanese- American
Relationship
Cora Du Bois
1 his is certainly not the life ben Usmus, the Javanese
story of Ali
"boy" who was, months on Alor, to set my
in the course of six
domestic standards and to become a friend. It is rather a somewhat
halting recapitulation of a relationship for which my egalitarian
American background had not prepared me. There had been servants
in my home but they were either women who were quasimembers
of the family or men who worked primarily on the grounds and were
companionable but casual figures in my childhood world. The strange-
ness for me in my relationship with Ali lay in its closeness and
mutual loyalty without intimacy. In a biographical sense, we never
knew about each other although our relationship was subtle, dis-
ciplined, and devoted. To my dishonor, as I review that relationship
after twenty years, I gave less than I received and I understood
less than Ali about what was happening humanly during a period
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The Form and Substance of Status
aggressive man like Hadi to have things his own way. And that he
had a way, there was no mistaking.
Next a Javanese couple presented themselves. They were out-
wardly as meek and subservient as Hadi was not. They were also
quite obviously intimidated by the thought of the dangers and
hardships of life among the savages of Alor —
a spot that seemed
more frighteningly remote to them than to me who at least had read
the little that was written of the island, knew the semimonthly
ship schedule through which it kept in touch with the outer world,
and cherished that somewhat misleading sense of familiarity provided
by the symbols of cartography. The husband of the couple whose name
I do not even recall deferred perhaps too patently to his wife who,
in turn, was too patently reluctant to go far from their familiar
kampong on the outskirts of Djakarta.
With Ali, in that first interview on the verandah, it was immediately
a different matter. For a Javanese, he was not prepossessing. Although
his body was slender, small, and well muscled and his skin an almost
golden yellow, his eyes were rather too full, his nose too broad and
his jaw too prognathous for beauty by Javanese standards. There
was a sturdy peasant aura about his appearance that disguised the
sensitivity of perception and feeling he subsequently evinced. In
manner he was assured without being aggressive. At first sight I
trusted, rather than liked him.
His letters of reference were only moderately numerous but gave
the impression of being genuinely appreciative. Djongos always ac-
quired such letters from their employers, usually written in Dutch,
or even English, French, and German. Their content was often un-
known to their bearers. Custom dictated that they be complimentary
but one learned to read between the lines a great deal about the
writers and even more about the applicants. All's letters seemed
genuine in their approval. His last letter was from an employer who
had found Ali industrious and faithful during a long research trip
213
Cora Du Bois
long that last trip of All's had been, or what kind of man he had
last served. In any event, the absence had been long enough for Ali
to find on his return that his wife had a son he had not fathered.
This I learned only later.
214
The Form and Substance of Status
confess this fantasy not because it was accurate, but because I held it.
immediately inquired of the first mate about "my luggage" and "my
djongos" (I am afraid just in that order) It was only when Ali himself,
.
trim in his long white ducks, his stiff collared mess-jacket, and his
neatly folded turban, knocked on the door that separated the first
class from deck passengers, that we met and exchanged cordial, if
2T5
Cora Du Bois
216
The Form and Substance of Status
arrangement was not one of them. I doubt that it was part of either of
the two heritages he strove to command —
the Javanese and the Dutch.
But these minor questions were still As we set out
in the future.
for Alor, I feel sure that both of us were to some degree apprehensive.
Although Ali had had the experience of at least one trip into "outer
savagery," he was after all an urban born-and-bred Djakartan. For
me, this was my first trip to the Orient and I was hampered by what
was perhaps an excessive seriousness about the task that lay ahead.
During the first days on the Valentijne I saw Ali only rarely.
Occasionally he was to be seen in his informal dress lounging on
the forward deck —
barefoot, bare torso, and wearing a pair of knee
length blue shorts with a draw string at the waist and the black
fezlike cap affected by Indonesian Moslems. But several times Ali
asked to see me. Then he always presented himself, eyes downcast,
and dressed in impeccable white ducks and his turban. The first
time he complained of a headache and wanted obat (medicine).
After making sure he had no fever, I provided aspirin. The next day
in studying Malay but it was soon clear that Ali had neither heart
nor aptitude for the task. I am sure that he was not unintelligent
and that Malay, rather than one of the other languages of Java,
was his mother tongue. He was certainly willing to be of service, but
perhaps the reversal of roles in which the servant becomes the
teacher of his mistress may have disturbed his nice sense of propriety.
Then came the last distraught evening on the Valentijne when
we reached Alor's only port. The emotions and confusion of the
occasion are not relevant tothis account of All's and my relationship,
since Ali had no part of it except possibly, I suspect, as a curious
and observant spectator from the bow deck. I know that I worried
about his disembarking and, as I moved up the rough, unpaved
street from the small concrete landing stage through a velvety black
night to the house of the controleur, it occurred to me for the first
217
Cora Du Bois
time that I had made no provisions for Ali's housing during the two or
three weeks I expected to be the guest of the local administrator.
As we stumbled along, blinded by even the dim light of a hurricane
lamp, I was aware that Ali was at my heels, and I managed to
irritate my host, for the first of many times, by my insistent inquiries
about Ali's living arrangements. It all seemed so simple to my host
—my djongos would find a place in the line of cubicles behind the
main bungalow where the servants lived next to the kitchen, bath,
and storeroom. In any event Ali disappeared that dark confusing
night, out of the arc of light provided by that yellow kerosene flame,
carrying under his arm the rolled mat that was his bed and, over
his shoulder, the cotton sack that held all his personal belongings.
In contrast to Ali's detailed knowledge of all I possessed, I never
saw what was in that small sack, but I am sure it contained little more
than a pair of sneakers, perhaps two pairs of blue shorts, a couple of
singlets, his fez, a large can of carnation scented talcum powder,
highly perfumed soap, a mirror, and a largish lump of aromatic
resin.
The anticipated week or two in Kalabahi finally stretched out
into a month. The radjah and the controleur suggested several nearby
villages easily accessible by good horse trails to main settlement
the
with its small Chinese shops {tokos), its eight "Europeans," and the
semimonthly calls of the Dutch KPM ships. For reasons, good or bad,
I finally decided on Atimelang, high in the mountains, a long seven
hours on steep trails from the coast, and well out of reach of such
Islamic and Christian influences as emanated from the port settlement.
Again, these matters are not relevant to the interdependencies that
developed between Ali and me during that first month in the still
218
The Form and Substance of Status
net snugly tucked under the mattress, and all mosquitoes carefully
brushed out of that high, square cage into which one crawled at
night. must have been during the first day or
It two that Ali
began his morning routine of appropriating all the clothes I had
worn the day before, whisking them off to be washed, and returning
them ironed in the afternoon. It was perhaps a day or two later that
he asked me for my sewing kit to replace a button on one of my
blouses. From then on Ali was in charge of the sewing materials al-
though he never removed them from my room. By the end of certainly
the first week he had in his charge all the keys to my wooden chests
and I have no doubt that he took careful inventory of what were to
be our material resources once we settled in Atimelang. I don't quite
know how all this happened, so unobtrusive was his gradual as-
sumption of responsibility.
There were other lessons for me to learn during our stay in Kala-
bahi. Ah and my hosts were teaching me the formalities of social dis-
tance. One never visited the kitchen or servants' quarters without
advance notice. Master and servant existed in worlds of different
concerns, functions, and responsibilities. They could approach each
other only by observing the protocol and conventions devised to
relate strangers. Close as Ali's and my living quarters were to be in
subsequent months, we remained essentially strangers isolated to-
gether in a strange society. I entered Ali's room or his kitchen only
rarely and after giving him full explanation for the intrusion and
explaining the innocence of my intent —an innocence pleaded in
terms of either his comfort or my incomprehensible standards of
sanitation.
Although I was learning the formalities of distance, I was, of course,
depending increasingly on Ali. Did he think my sketches for the
house to be built in Atimelang were appropriate? Were his room
and the adjacent kitchen large enough? What kind of arrangement
would he want for cooking? What final supplies should be acquired
in the local Chinese shops? On this last score Ali's ideas were
particularlynumerous and practical.
I never knew what Ali thought of my financial resources, although
strong box that I brought with me from the Java Bank the heavy —
gray linen sacks of silver rupees and the sausage-like strings of
pierced one- and five-cent pieces for small cash. I knew that my
219
Cora Du Bois
garlic for himself, semihulled local rice for the village staff, but no
onions or garlic; bars of crude kitchen soap to be dried and cut into
squares for the mountain people, fragrant toilet soaps for himself;
bags of coarse, impure local salt for trade purposes in Atimelang,
boxes of refined salt for our use; bundles of those Indonesian scented
cigarettes for him to smoke, coils of coarse tobacco leaf for the
others. (For my had brought from Java sealed tins of those
use, I
small, strong, and delicious Dieng cigarettes 500 to a tin.) In—
sum, all the gradations of consumption symbols associated with status
were carefully observed.
Morning after morning Ali would suggest what he felt we
needed, how much money he wanted, and in his informal clothes
would disappear into the intricacies of the daily open market and
the street of Chinese shops. Later I would find on the table of my
bedroom a meticulous accounting of his purchases. Sometimes there
was change from the rupees I had extracted from the strong box
that morning. Sometimes it was I who was in Ali's debt. The impor-
tant change in our relationship was that we had moved into a
partnership in these domestic matters —
but a partnership in which
our difference in status was never forgotten although we were somehow
allied against "those others."
That this partnership had undertones more significant than the
management of our joint domestic comforts I was to realize during
our third week in Kalabahi. I had joined my hosts and the military
doctor for tea on the verandah one afternoon. Leaning back in a
wicker chair I felt a slight prick on my shoulder that I attributed
to nothing more than a sliver of wood until it was repeated. I turned
to discover that a wasp had stung me. In not more than ten minutes
large welts broke out on my arms and face, I felt feverish, and my
heart raced alarmingly. I mentioned my difficulties and went inside
to lieon my bed. There set in a frightening series of spasms, a strong
and irregular heart action, shortness of breath, all accompanied by a
good deal of physical pain. The doctor, somewhat detraque after
too many years in the bush without wife or home leave, nodded
gloomily, said he was without adrenalin and left. My hosts seemed
220
The Form and Substance of Status
equally unconcerned. When the symptoms had not abated after two
hours, I felt that there were certain letters I would not want to fall
under the all too prying eyes of my host in the event matters took a
more serious turn. Feeling dizzy and faint I swung my legs over the
side of the bed, intending to destroy them, when I realized for the
first time that a small kerosene lamp was burning in the room and
that Ali was squatting and watchfully on the floor near the
noiselessly
head of my bed. I gave him the letters to burn in the event that my
heart should not start racing again after one of its stifling pauses.
At this point severe abdominal cramps set in and I wavered down
the central corridor of the house to the toilet in the string of cubicles
out back. Ali, without a word and without offering physical
support, picked up the kerosene lamp and followed. He waited and
returned with me to the bedroom. Soon after this I fell into an ex-
hausted sleep. When I woke in the morning, I found the mosquito net
had been carefully tucked in around me. Ali and the lamp were gone.
The letters I had entrusted to him were on my table. Neither of us
referred to this episode at the time. After all —
there was really nothing
that could be said.
When the matter came up again it was three weeks later and we
had moved up to the mountain community of Atimelang, a day's
journey from medical help. I was stung again by a similar wasp.
Before any symptoms appeared, I called Ali, told him what had
happened, said I was going to lie down and would he look in on
me from time to time. If necessary he was to send Thomas (our local
interpreter) to the coast for the doctor. After an hour, with not a
single one of the anticipated symptoms putting in an appearance,
more than a little sheepishly I went back to work on the vocabulary
slips that covered my table. Unasked, Ali brought me a glass of juice
from the excellent local oranges that he seemed always able to keep
in plentiful supply. There was no trace of amusement on his face.
But then, Ali practically never smiled and he laughed only on those
rare occasions when he broke into a bit of horseplay with Johanis or
Nitaniel, two Atimelang youths who soon became attached to our
household. If Ali had any sense of humor, it was a small gentle
humor, gay rather than sardonic.
As I write, I notice how I have drifted into the use of the phrase
"our household." This it indubitably was, but some explanation is
221
Alorese Men Quarreling over Debts at a Dance.
and our relationship. It had been agreed in Djakarta that Ali would
establish me in whatever field quarters were to be built, and would
train local people to take over his various tasks when he left at the
end of six months. The first part of this agreement Ali executed
beyond my fondest hopes. The second part he never achieved.
The Atimelangers finally completed the establishment they were
building for us. During an all night dance, it had been named
(as all important houses must) in honor of "mj village," Hamerika.
A "two-pig" and "one-goat" feast followed the next day. The goat
was out of deference to All's real horror, as a Moslem, of eating
pork and, I should add, a horror even more intense than mine at the
local casualness in killing, butchering, and cooking pigs. That morn-
ing, as we saw our first pig slaughtered in Atimelang, was one of
the few times I saw All's face the bluish-gray that yellow-brown skins
turn when their owners pale. The radjah's Kapitan, who was also
a Moslem, had come to the mountains for the housewarming. He
and Ali were not only friendly, in a rather distant fashion, but they
222
The Form and Substance of Status
were also the two gentlemen, the two tuans, who stood behind me
on this occasion. A goat was the minimum tribute I could offer them.
Ali had suggested this as soon as he began to grasp the nature of the
ceremony to be given in honor of Hamerika. Whereas I was responsible
for negotiating the purchase of the two pigs and embroiled myself
in noisy, village-wide altercations in the process. All's and the Kapitan's
goat arrived well in advance, was slaughtered, and turned into
succulent sates (skewered and broiled with a barbecue sauce) all
without fanfare. Finally the village headman smeared chicken blood
and rice on the house posts and we were free to move into Hamerika
after twenty-four hours of unremitting brouhaha.
The window openings woven bamboo walls, with swinging
in the
shutters to close them, were so out of plumb as to defeat their double
purpose of privacy and protection against rain. The storeroom needed
a staple and lock. The outhouse had still to be completed. The bamboo
aquaduct from the spring on the hillside back of the house was not
yet begun. The site of an old pigsty needed fencing if pigs and
chickens were to be kept from the vegetable garden we planned.
Borers in the green bamboo of the house walls spread an endless
film of sawdust over everything. Thatch lice, maddening in the way
they crawled over one's flesh, dropped by the thousands, invisible
unless swept each morning on the concrete
into dusty piles floor.
Ali coped with all these matters, evincing skills and ingenuity Ihad
not before suspected. To some he turned his attention before I had
223
Cora Du Bois
224
The Form and Substance of Status
there safe? Was the night in his room among these pagans more
fearsome for him than he thought it was for me? To fathom one's own
mixture of motives is difficult enough; to fathom those of another,
particularly one in every respect so distant culturally and psychologi-
cally, so reticent in communication, would be sheer impertinence.
The other episode in those first weeks that brought the two of us
into a more personal relationship was All's acute attack of nausea.
Late one evening as I worked, with door and windows closed in
what the local people called my kantoor (Dutch for office), I heard
a violent retching at the edge of the house clearing. Taking a
flashfight I went to investigate and saw that Ali was doubled over
with spasms of vomiting. Given our relationship, there was no question
of going immediately and practically to his aid. All I could do was to
waken Thomas and his wife Endirini who slept in a shack across the
trail. Neither of them had shown the slightest aptitude for medical
care. The only one of the Alorese I ever met that did was Johanis
who had volunteered from the beginning to assist me in the "clinic"
I conducted each morning. Although Johanis and Ali were play-
mates (I can find no other word to describe their romping and high
spirits on occasion), Johanis slept in the village of Alurkowati, some
225
Cora Du Bois
of all Ali had been doing, and whether my attention was too exclusively
centered on the Alorese who contributed more directly, if not more
importantly, to getting on with the task at hand. Rather belatedly I
realized how tryingly isolated Ali must have felt in Atimelang and
wondered what inward strengths he marshalled. Whatever made
Ali resilient, I suspect it had to do with pride of performance, though
this is only a literary and valuational escape clause for my ignorance
of his psychological processes.
In any event, I need not have worried. On only two other occasions
did All's need for reassurance and succor lead him to breach the
formality and distance of our relationship. The first was when he was
stung by a scorpion. Ali, in the same wan fashion, but this time
without Thomas as impressario, appeared at my door late one night
and collapsed on the floor. In that area of the world a scorpion sting
is no small matter though certainly not fatal as it may be in Mexico.
though again I never knew the full story. On my return, early one
226
The Form and Substance of Status
any of the newly hatched chicks that had a saddening capacity for
tragic ends, how was the ferral kitten we were both futilely trying
to transform into both pet and rat-catcher but that seemed instead
connected with the regular disappearance of the chicks, how was
the tomato crop, had Johanis kept him faithfully in wood? In sum,
I tried to recall all our familiar domestic problems. Ali's answers were
not any more taciturn than usual, but patently he was worried. Finally
in that brutish Malay which was our only medium of conversation,
and while I puUed off a pair of heavy boots to inspect my blistered
feet, I asked Ali the equivalent of "what eats on you." The story
poured out, "Nonja would hear. He had been 'naughty' " (that is
about as close a translation as I can find for nakal in trade Malay).
The upshot was that as possessor of Hamerika, its keys and its treas-
ures, he had gone to the bottom of a wooden chest, extracted a .32
Smith and Wesson pistol, and gone hunting doves for a feast. This
would seem a simple enough impulse if one were unaware of both
the legal and Freudian contexts of guns during the colonial regime
in Indonesia. I had been met with every courtesy of Dutch officialdom
—
on my arrival in Java with the exception of that wretched Smith and
Wesson. It had been impounded for two weeks with its ammunition.
Every bullet had been counted. I was required to redeclare it
on departure and account for the use of each bullet. Officialdom was
as vigorously opposed to firearms in "native" possession as it was
to the free dissemination of its status language, Dutch. Never have
the good offices of a protective American friend who had insisted
on providing me with that pistol proved more cumbersome. But in
Atimelang I could no more than Ali resist an occasional display of
drama. The "gun with six mouths" (as it was locally known) was
taken out, shot into the air, and cleaned approximately once a month.
227
Cora Du Bois
express in the first moment was concern and relief. Then I hardened
and engaged in the formal and expected scolding that our role re-
lationship demanded. I could think of no more rigorous punishment
than confiscating the key to that wooden chest for two weeks. I believe
Ali found this withdrawal of trust a source of genuine expiation.
The Alorese told me many versions of the episode, as Ali rightly
suspected they would. The ultimate sanction of a primary group
relationship is gossip. But of that subtle, interpersonal, status restor-
ing device — the confiscation of a key —no word was heard.
public
Ali and I reestablished our hierarchical interdependence privately and
in our own way.
It is necessary to include Thomas, his wife Endirini, and Johanis,
all three introduced some paragraphs ago, in this account of All's and
my Thomas bounced, he scowled, he crossed his arms
relationship.
Napoleonically across his chest. He had once spent several months
on Java, and this unparalleled experience for an Alorese gave him
his only claim to status among his fellow villagers. Since that trip,
one of his favorite "parlor tricks," one that always drew a crowd of
guffawing Alorese, was his imitation of Javanese dancing. Even Ali
seemed to enjoy it. But after Thomas' first performance in our presence
with its subtle implications of ridicule, Ali complained to me, with
complete justice, that Thomas was taking no interest in learning the
household routine that Ali considered essential to a properly run
establishment. Since Aliwas not given to unjustified tittle-tattle, I
had called Thomas and reminded him that Ali was to leave in June,
that he, Thomas, had been engaged to learn how to be a djongos
and to take over when Ali left. Thomas was all promises and bright
agreement. He was also bitter in his complaints against his wife,
Endirini, whom he had dressed according to her new status in a
228
The Form and Substance of Status
sarong and blouse, but who lumpishly refused to acquire any of the
other attributes of her higher station in hfe. Endirini never did show
Thomas' yearning for upward social mobility. After all she was so
placidly pregnant in very short order! On the other hand, Thomas
who had no children was so delighted by her pregnancy that he tried
to learn both of their jobs — to cook, wash, iron, mend, and conduct
himself with Javanese restraint. It was too much for him. But that
had little to do with Ali except to irritate him slightly and to irritate
me mightily.
He was first hired to care
Johanis was a horse of a different color.
for my sandalwood pony that he rather resembled physically but of
which he proved to be mortally afraid. He did show real aptitude not
only, as I have said, for first aid but also for ingratiation and for
never producing enough of the faggots Ali needed for cooking. He
and Ali, however, struck it off very well together. When Ali, having
failed to either persuade or command from Johanis enough firewood
(I never learned which device he preferred), would complain to me,
I would offer to find, hopefully, a more reliable wood boy. Ali then
am sure AH must have know all along) that Johanis had been sub-
contracting his wood gathering duties to various female "relatives."
Nothing, however trivial it might appear on the surface, could occur
in Atimelang without embroiling all four neighboring villages and
setting off, like the grass fires of the dry season, days of unpredict-
able recriminations as ominous as the crackling cane that burned on
the hillsides and as obfuscating as the attendant pall of smoke. In
any event, Johanis was dismissed, the knife was rather improbably
found by his sister, and given by me as a gift to her husband. Char-
229
Cora Du Bois
return to his family in June and at some indefinite date would come
back to Atimelang. This I saw would strain a very meager budget.
It was also only temporizing with the inescapable fact that I would
—
have to deal with Atimelangers in their own terms as kith and
kin. Ali had trained me in a singularly congenial mistress-servant
relationship. This no Atimelanger would ever understand. It was clear
that I must now move from that position to a new one where Alorese
staff, faults or virtues, were to retrain me in their own
whatever their
terms. I must become the rich, old mother to a group of aggressive, if
devoted, sons. The complex status relationship of Java had to be
exchanged for the equally complex kinship relationships of Atimelang.
Within the household a new order seemed inevitable. Ali would leave
in June as originally planned. Despite the decision, nothing changed
between Ali and me. We continued until the last morning our aloof
and formal stances. There was nothing to be done except provide
him with a sandalwood pony for his last jaunt down from the hills.
Ali had asked for a pony to ride up into the hills five months earlier
and I had refused, on the advice of the radjah and controleur who
assured me it would "spoil" a whole generation of djongos. It was the
first time Ali had ever requested anything of me that I had refused.
against a sky at dawn and knew that another richly meaningful human
tie was severed. I followed the procession in my mind down the slope
to the coast and I realized how much I had learned — not about Ali,
not about the Alorese, but about myself, about my capacities and
incapacities for human relationships and thus also, to a degree, what
my areas of competence were as an anthropologist and a human being.
I walked back alone to Hamerika seeing again the bamboo, the pine-
231
Cora Du Bois
232
8
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
John T. Hitchcock
JVly first clear memory of Surathad a quality that was typical of
many subsequent impressions. One night Narain Singh, my inter-
preter, co-worker, alter ego, and constant companion during the
twenty months I lived in Khalapur, encountered Surat in the village
where he was drinking with friends. Narain remarked that he had
not seen him at the campsite and invited him to pay us a visit. This
brought an announcement from Surat that he was "lord of the vil-
lage" and would accept the invitation only under specified conditions.
'All formalities' ^ were to be observed and the interview with him
was to be conducted 'in private.' Narain agreed to make the neces-
sary arrangements and a few days later, after informing us to expect
him, Surat paid his first visit to our camp.
I saw him as he started across the field toward the small out-
234
Surat Singh, Head Judge
his questioning the room gradually filled with farmers who stopped
off on the way back to the village from their fields. Surat overlooked
this inevitable breach in the protocol stipulated for his visitand con-
tinued as spokesman for the growing assemblage — a role he was
granted rather than seemed to demand. When the questioning be-
came general, as it did in time, he continued to make his presence
felt by pithy summarizing quips ("Women quarrel for no reason.
They are like the wolf at the brook who killed the goat downstream
for muddying the water.") and occasionally by remarking, "Let us
go on to another topic." Clearly this self-styled "lord of the village"
was a commanding personality, but an engaging one with a very
keen mind.
At the time of this first meeting what struck me most forcibly about
Surat was a sense of contradiction in his personality. Here was a man
who in many ways was like the other village men we were coming
to know. Yet in obvious ways he was very different. My awareness
of both the similarities and differences between Surat and his fellow
villagers deepened as I came to know him better, and along with it,
to compound this impression, came the realization that Surat on one
day could be quite unlike the person he was on another. On one day
he might talk like any number of men in his own high caste: I re-
member his saying once that "lower caste men were born to obey
upper caste men." But it was not long after this that I found him
sharing a meal of boiled rice with an Untouchable, even accepting
food from the Untouchable's hands. Partaking of food with an Un-
touchable, and especially food boiled in water, was a reprehensible
act to most men of his caste, and two or three decades ago it might
have led to his own outcasting.
Surat was the most puzzling, and interesting, of all the men I
knew in Khalapur and I often thought of him after I left the village.
235
John T. Hitchcock
Some fifty miles to the north lie the foothills of the Himalayas, rising
ridge upon ridge snowclad and ahnost unbelievably
until they stand
high. The land between is veined with the broad straight
the rivers
Ganges canal and its angled branches and tributaries. A railroad
and hardsurfaced road connect the two large towns to the northeast
and southwest of Khalapur, and near each of them is the single tall
chimney and patch of white waste that indicate the presence of a sugar
mill. The fields around the villages are a vast patchwork quilt of
site, a welter of cattle compounds, wide and narrow lanes, and mud
236
Surat Singh, Head Judge
moves a cot beneath the tree and sits there smoking his water pipe.
Because of purdah restrictions I was not acquainted with the more
intimate aspects of Surat's family life. I knew even less about his do-
mestic relations than I did about those of other Rajputs because he
was seldom at home except at night. When we met him by prear-
rangement, in search of a modicum was often at our
of privacy, it
place on the village outskirts. When we did meet him in the village,
it was generally not at his own men's house, as he seldom sat there.
Our talk was mostly about the men's world and we seldom asked
for details about his life within the bagad because we felt such
questions would embarrass him as they did other Rajput men. The
237
John T. Hitchcock
few references he did make to his wife made it clear he held her and
her family in high regard.
The need for help with the farm work establishes the first of many
ties thatdraw Surat's family into the village economy. Some of the
land is given to members of other caste groups on a crop sharing
basis. Members of families who own little or no land, such as those
who belong to thenumerous Untouchable caste group of Chamars,
are hired for field work from time to time on a daily or monthly
basis. There are also a number of caste groups in the village whose
members specialize in providing services of various kinds. Surat's
family is served by members of a Brahman family, and by members
of families who belong to the barber, water-carrier, blacksmith-
carpenter, potter, washerman, leather-worker, and sweeper castes.
In return, these families are given traditionally determined amounts
and some also receive
of grain after each of the two yearly harvests,
specialpayments and privileges, such as gifts of food at ceremonies
and the right to cut an occasional bundle of fodder for their buffalo
or cow. They are regarded to some extent as family retainers. Other
needs of Surat's family are met by such village specialists as gold-
smiths, weavers, tailors, and shopkeepers. These specialists are not
238
Surat Singh, Head Judge
number of close male friends. This is the group the family can count
on for support in a court case or for help with quarterstaves if a
resort to force is necessary. The family's other political alliances are
not as completely dependable. These tend to include families with
whom it has close ritual ties and families dependent upon it for
economic and political assistance.
The families of highest rank symbolize their power by erecting
large brick homes, purchasing spirited imported bullocks, decking
their women with expensive clothes and jewelry, and providing guests
with ample hospitality. Rank also is symbolized by providing the
family head, and perhaps one of the sons, with leisure for looking
after family interests in the political and ritual spheres. However, the
quintessential symbol of a family's status is an excellent marriage,
with a generous dowry for a daughter, an alliance with a high rank-
ing family in another village, and lavish feasting and festivity for
friends and relatives.
Surat and his family possessed many of these attributes to an
eminent degree. He had a comparatively large landholding and a
number of sons to work it. He was well acquainted with the official
world outside the village, and also held an important village statutory
office. His lineage of eighty members was among the largest in the
village, and he could count on the support of many of its male
members, a number of them able and educated men. He also had
the support of powerful village friends.
There were ways in which Surat did not fit the usual pattern,
however, and they were one source of the contradictory quality so
characteristic of his life. Most of the twenty-five-odd heads of the
highest ranking families were over 50 years of age. Surat was only
42. They wore long moustaches, a mark of their responsible adult
status and the martial heritage of their caste. Surat favored the small,
close-cropped moustache of the city-educated person. Many of the
powerful elders wore turbans. Surat never wore one. When he covered
his close-shaved grizzled head at all, he wore a topi.
It was a sign of political eminence to be associated with a definite
place and coterie. Other high status family heads were often to be
found at their chaupar, smoking and talking with friends. During the
day, and often during much of the night, Surat was absent from
his own cattle compound.
Although the heads of ranking families seldom did heavy field
239
John T. Hitchcock
growth. Narain noted that Ram and his brother looked much alike,
the whole was loyal to the members of his lineage. However, there
were times when he did not meet their expectations. This was specially
conspicuous on the occasion of a dispute over land between two
segments of his lineage. As a leading member of the kingroup he
was asked to arbitrate. In a "family matter" of this kind he was ex-
pected to try to bring about a compromise as rapidly as possible and
above all to prevent the matter from assuming large proportions, as
would be the case if it were taken to court. But instead of doing this,
he became the legal advisor of one of the contending parties and
prevented any of the informal councils, or panchayats, called to
settle the matter from coming to a decision. At first he hoped to
side into thinking that hishad stronger legal footing than it did. The
bluff was kept up, literally to the court house steps. Only then did
Surat and his side back down and agree to a compromise.
In the important matter of hospitality Surat sometimes was careless.
He had been known to invite a high police official to come for a meal
and then not appear, leaving the task of entertainment to his brother.
With the exception of visits to his four sisters' homes, the recipro-
cities of hospitality among friends and relatives from other villages
so important to most villagers did not hold much interest for Surat.
He treated us differently than many of the other Rajput family heads.
It sometimes was difficult to work in the village because these
men "felt it" if we went too long without responding to their
hearty and insistent invitations to stop for a talk and a drink of hot
milk.
"Come up here! Come up here!" they would call as we passed
their chaupar. "Come on up here and sit down and have a drink of
milk and a smoke."
Even when he was sitting at his own place Surat did not call
to us in this way. We always felt genuinely welcome when we were
with him, but I can one occasion when he offered us food.
recall only
The other was that he never asked us for anything.
side of the coin
It was part of the friendly reciprocity we had established with a num-
241
A Traditional Rajput Council or Panchayat.
the whole course of our close acquaintance with Surat there was
only one time when he asked for anything —through a very indirect
request conveyed by another person, he once asked transportation
for his wife who was returning with much luggage from an extended
visit to her parents.
to act as witnesses against the guilty party in a court case, and the
ultimate penalty is outcasting.
The councilors come together as a body to set policy for their
own and in larger panchayats which include representa-
caste group,
tivesfrom other castes, they make decisions regarded as binding for
the whole village. They are expected to mediate between the village
and the government, as well as to talk with officials visiting Khalapur
and to provide them hospitality. An ideal councilor should be im-
partial in his interpretation and enforcement of village custom. He
should be conciliatory and patient so that discussion may proceed
smoothly toward compromise or unanimous agreement.
A few men in the village are regarded as exemplary in their fulfill-
ment of the expectations and ideals associated with the role of informal
leader, and in some respects Surat could be called a councilor
of the ideal type. He sat on numerous small adjudicatory panchayats
which "bore fruit," and he also took a leading role in larger panchayats
which secured consensus and brought results. But on the whole it
was only a partial fulfillment. He had little interest in ritual, whereas
most prominent men were experts in the protocol of ritual and took
pleasure in advising others or in performing a function such as count-
ing out the dowry payment note by note before the assembled family
and guests. Although Surat enjoyed acting as adjudicator, policy-
maker, or mediator between the village and the government, his
behavior often deviated from that expected of a person who per-
formed these functions of a councilor. In one panchayat, for
example, he tossed sand into the machinery of conciliation by
twitting an elderly political opponent. In the course of the discussion
this high ranking family head remarked that he had never had occas-
sion to use the statutory local village court where Surat presided.
Surat murmured audibly that this was because he was not the type of
man to be found in such a small court. No one could miss the innuendo
— that this man, who actually had had a number of fairly serious
brushes with the police, always committed crimes of such magnitude
that they fell outside the village court's jurisdiction. No large pan-
chayat was completely free of this kind of sparring, but Surat was so
gifted at hitting where it hurt most and could create so many little
243
John T. Hitchcock
1
Surat Singh, Head Judge
—
Rajput martial traditions a heritage stressing inherent capacity
and right to rule, encouraging political ambition and sensitivity to
slight, and accenting the use of force —
were important factors in
Surat's capacity as village lawyer. This calling tended to strengthen
the free-booting tradition of his clan as well as propensities to con-
flict inherent in his caste group. These traditions are important in
understanding Surat's activities as a village lawyer.
During the early nineteenth century the clan to which Surat be-
longed had a reputation for marauding. Such plundering was due
partly to the weakening of the central power at the close of the
preceding century, partly to straightened circumstances, especially
during years when the crops failed or the tax burden was overly
heavy, and partly to repeated frustration of clan desire for political
hegemony. With the strengthening of British power, pillaging was
gradually brought under greater control. But from the British point
of view, as well as from the standpoint of surrounding weaker villages,
the Rajputs of Surat's clan and village often seemed turbulent and
lawless. Surat's great-grandfather, the man who started his lineage on
its prominence, was a part of these more boisterous times.
rise to
During one marauding expedition he had joined, a man from a
looted village was killed and to avoid the police Surat's great-grand-
father had to spend a number of years "underground." The freeboot-
ing tradition, though much weaker than formerly, continues into the
present, especially in the guise of a few contemporary cattle theft
rings that still operate.
In Khalapur Rajput village politics has long been characterized
by the opposition of families. In every generation there emerge a few
relatively weak families that aspire to power. This power-seeking takes
the form of an attempt to establish a strong and politically effective
system of alliances and dependencies — a petty village principality. The
creation of such a village domain is phrased in terms of a regal or
kingly prototype, a model carried by the Great Tradition of Indian
civilization and one to which the Rajputs are especially susceptible.
In Khalapur this prototype has been underscored by clan tradition, as
well as by local exemplars of regal panoply in the nearby seats of
Moghul provincial power and by outstanding petty principalities in
the more recent history of the village.
Historically, there has been a marked ebb and flow in the fortunes
245
John T. Hitchcock
nificantly shaped Surat's own career, and its rather flamboyant history
provides insight into the formation of Surat's attitudes toward village
politics and his role as a village lawyer.
Surat's grandfather, the latter's two brothers, and their three cous-
ins were members of the same joint family. At that time there were
many more Rajputs than now who considered it unseemly for men of
their martial heritage to work in the fields, and especially to plow.
But the men of Surat's grandfather's generation did not fear the stigma
and worked hard on the farm. Surat's great-uncle, Kala, who became
head of the family, was a shrewd and ambitious man. He and a cousin
hired a teacher to come and live with them and teach them how to
246
I
Surat Singh, Head Judge
read and keep accounts. The surplus grain which resulted from the
family's industry was loaned out at 25 percent interest and additional
farm land was acquired when debtors defaulted the family termed —
these operations "attacks." Loans were much in demand in those
days because of the general pattern of Rajput farming. It was the
custom to plant only as much as the family could consume. Since
more of the land was thus free for grazing, families kept larger herds
of cattle than they do today, and milk formed a larger part of the
diet. Vagaries of the weather and need for cash to meet such extra
chicanery.
Surat's father,Rup, had become the head of the family by the
time Surat was born, but it was a much weaker family than it had
been in Kala's heyday. The men of the previous generation had died
2 A district is a subdivision within a state and bears some resemblance to a county.
247
John T. Hitchcock
or were very old, and except for Rup, there were no fully adult males
in the coming generation to take over. Many Rajputs had been em-
bittered by Kala's methods, but prior to his death and the weakening
of his family, they nursed their grievances, not wishing to take steps
to regain their land. However, beginning about the time of Surat's
birth and for many years thereafter, Rup became involved in a spate
of court cases. Surat estimates there were 250 in all. Rup died in
1939, at the age of 72, and Surat recalls that for all but the last
ten years of his life he was harassed by one court case after another.
"There was not a single Rajput family in the village that wasn't in-
volved directly or indirectly against my father," he said. It is against
the rather turbulent background exemplified by the rise and fall of his
own family that the need for Surat, the village lawyer, is to be under-
stood.
Surat's ability to meet this need depended upon his education
and special kinds of knowledge. He had studied until he was 18, at-
tending schools in both nearby towns, and, for about a month, a
European mission school. He was proficient in reading and writing
Urdu, knew some Hindi, and could both read and speak a little Eng-
lish. This linguistic proficiency set him apart from most of his fellow
Bharat knew everything that I know. I would get good marks in history.
But Bharat was even better. He could tell the genealogy of every family
in the village from memory. And he knew the history of every family.
248
Surat Singh, Head Judge
Bharat and my father were very good friends. Bharat used to come
every evening after his meal to sit with my father. They used to eat opium
and smoke the water pipe together. Bharat used to do most of the talk-
ing.He would talk on and on and my father never had to say "yes, yes"
to keep him going. This is a sign of what good friends they were. They
would sit and talk until far into the night.
Surat pursued his activities as village lawyer, chances are they would
say it was for a bottle of the local rum he liked to drink. This was
partially true, as rum and food were among his rewards. It would
be incorrect, though, to think of the food and rum he received as a
form of quid pro quo economic exchange. Surat might very well have
been describing himself when he made the following observation
about the kinds of influence that are most effective:
liquor and meat four or five times without asking for anything and then
does ask for something once, there is much more chance that his work
will be done.
If some official accepts money no one knows what he will do. If he is
249
John T. Hitchcock
Sural was very fond of meat with his rum. During much of the
time I knew him he was provided with both by a Rajput whom he
had helped in a particularly bitter and protracted lawsuit. Rajput
women are more conservative in religious matters than the men. They
abstain from eating meat and refuse to cook it or have it cooked
over the family fire, so Surat's friend had built a small fireplace
against a wall, just beside his chaupar. were invited to eat with We
him and Surat one evening and reached the chaupar just at sundown.
The air was full of dust from the hooves of the returning cattle and
layered with blue smoke from the cowdung fires. His friend waited
until dark to light the fire, then set a brass pot on it, and soon we
could smell the highly spiced goat meat. He disappeared inside his
chaupar for a moment and came back with a bottle. Surat wrapped
it carefully in his shawl and pounded it once hard on the ground
to loosen the cork. He removed the cork the rest of the way with his
teeth and poured some of the rum into a bowl. After we had eaten
we talked for a long time. The moon rose and the village became
quiet.That night Surat was arguing that the world would never be
had the same religion and the same lan-
free of wars until everyone
guage. And Hindi, he held, was the language best suited to be a
world language, for it had all the sounds that anyone could wish
to make.
It is difficult to say whether meat or speculation and friendly
argument were the more important pleasures that accompanied
Surat's drinking. The snatch of argument we heard one day was typi-
cal of the kind of talk he especially enjoyed. He and a number of other
Rajputs were sitting in the shade of an ancient plpal tree just beside
the chaupar of an elderly Rajput who had been stricken with leprosy.
They were arguing about the nature of God. The stricken man, who
had once been very prominent in village affairs, was courtly in ges-
ture and his speech was flavored with gracious Urdu turns of phrase.
He had been arguing for a pantheistic conception and Surat was ob-
jecting that pantheism made it difficult to solve the problem of good
and evil. He addressed a question to the elderly man.
"If people who have been bad in a previous life become animals
250
Surat Singh, Head Judge
in the next, and if God created everything, why did he create animals?"
"You can't think of God apart from nature," insisted the leper.
"God without nature is like a literate man without pen and ink!" He
punctuated his statement by vigorously pushing his open palm down-
ward and outward.
At this juncture a slight middle-aged Rajput named Bishambar
broke in. A former school teacher, he spoke with great intensity in
he said, "Once a man has formed the habit of going about he finds it
hard to stop in old age." Surat was not a man who ordinarily showed
much sympathy for others.
Although Surat approached being a professional in some re-
One of Surat's friends once said that Surat and another village
politicianwere very much alike because they enjoyed getting other
people to and then standing to one side to watch. It often seemed
fight
sight to see."
Using an image reminiscent of boy spinning around in fright
this
Surat many years later described the results of his political maneuver-
ings among a group of Rajputs in a portion of the village which had
been opposing his candidate for a statutory office. Many of these
Rajputs had been former tenants of his family. He regarded them as
somewhat stupid and ineffectual and wondered how it was possible
252
Surat Singh, Head Judge
tually two other rival village factions became involved, and there
was a violent encounter between Parmal and the head of the family
who had acquired the land.
As the suspense and anxiety increased, Parmal in a desperate at-
tempt to weaken his opponent, damaged some government property
and tried to implicate his rival and entangle him with the police.
In discussing this turn of events with a high official Surat, taking the
role of staunch village supporter of law and order, expressed righteous
indignation and said men like Parmal should be driven from the
village.
The case finally was decided in Parmal's favor and he returned
from the hearing, obviously elated, with gifts of liquor, sweets, and
grapes for Surat and others who had supported him. In this series
of maneuvers Surat had not only had the pleasure of exercising his
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John T. Hitchcock
to "get even" that now was the right time. He was assisted at this
point by ambiguities inherent in the Rajput system of political al-
liance.
The mobilized Rajput party consisted of close relatives and friends
of the family, plus a crystallization from the web of alliances defined
by ritual exchange and dependency. It was difficult to know what
"I drink," he once remarked, "so I am not doing what I should do.
But the thing is that when I drink I don't lose track of reality."
Reality meant two things for him: it meant keeping the support
of a large 'army' and being cautious not to place himself in a position
where he was likely to get his head cracked.
254
Surat Singh, Head Judge
Early in life Surat had learned the utility of manpower in the vil-
lage. He remembered how his father attributed many of his difficulties
to lack of it, saying to his sons: "God should not provide money and
property to a family that doesn't have enough men. If there is
wealth in a family and not enough men, it is the same as the death
of a family."
"Power," Surat remarked one day when we were talking together,
"is something you can't see. It doesn't rest in a title like Pradhan or
head judge. The power a man has," he stated with emphasis, "rests
in the support others know he The word Sarpanch
has in the village.
"
has no meaning unless backed by an 'army.'
it is
feud with a high Muslim police official in the nearby town. This
feud reached a climax when he was able to secure the complete legal
exoneration of a villager who had killed a petty official, and of a
close relative accused of instigating the act. The relative was unpopu-
lar and Surat's activities on his behalf lost him some village support.
But he never questioned the wisdom or rightness of what he had
done in this case. It was his duty as a kinsman.
He did question the wisdom of an act which cost him still more
support. He became involved in litigation to help a barber and an
oil-presser, both low caste men, whose land had been forcibly taken
from them by a powerful Rajput. He recalled that "all the older men
who wore big turbans [indicating that they were traditional in out-
look] then started saying, 'Oh, this man has gone crazy. Instead of
"
helping his Rajput brothers, he is helping low caste men these days!'
The Rajput with whom Surat had come into direct conflict in this
case became "the hand" of the high police official. With the latter's
help he provided "all the idlers and thieves with liquor to the tune
of about 300 rupees and made them all line up on a platform" against
Surat. In the face of this pressure he had resigned.
255
John T. Hitchcock
256
Surat Singh, Head Judge
see them. When the young man had left, Surat explained he was
sure the messenger had been sent by relatives of the men he had
reported to the police, and they were waiting out there in the fields,
hoping to catch him alone dangerously far from the village. Apparently
itwas only when anger was at its peak that he had to be so careful.
At other times a rational calculation of consequences on the part of
those who would have liked to have beaten him was a sufficient
deterrent. Unlike most villagers he never carried a quarterstaff, and
he had never been involved in a violent quarrel.
Surat was walking a political tightrope and he sometimes seemed
to sway precariously. Occasionally he would go dangerously far to
obtain rum or to satisfy his need to dominate. He would tell a friend
that an official who was coming to sit at the friend's house wanted a
bottle of liquor. The friend would go to the trouble and expense of
securing it and then find the official did not want it after all but Surat
did. Or after an election in which his candidate had won, he would
go to the section of the village where the defeated candidate lived
and taunt him with the title of the office he had just failed to secure.
Both Surat's sometimes excessive thirst and his desire to dominate
were strengthened if not orginated by his youthful experiences. A
taste for liquor and opium was regarded as characteristic of the
Rajputs, and indulgence in both was viewed as part of their warrior's
dispensation. Surat was first introduced to intoxicants in his early
boyhood by one of his close relatives. It was a habit he took with him
when he left his family to go and live in town and attend school
there.
The desire to dominate had found expression in the lives of his
immediate forbears, men he had been taught to admire. Even more
significant perhaps was hisboyhood perception of a series of hostile
acts against his father and family. This combined with his forced
resignation seems to have played a major role in shaping his some-
times very aggressive stance.
There an episode which serves to round out the picture of Surat
is
was part of his essentially contradictory nature that he would also take
pains to destroy the illusion and to insist how impossible it was to
257
John T. Hitchcock
One night he was returning from the village after spending the
evening drinking and talking with a friend at the brick kiln located
just outside the village. Near the kiln was the mud hut of a member
of the vegetable-grower caste named Saudal. Saudal had also been
entertaining guests, threeyoung Rajputs. As he approached the hut,
Surat encountered a blind man by the name of Budu, who was also a
member of the vegetable-grower caste. Surat asked him where he was
going and he said he was going to the mud hut to see his caste
brother, Saudal. Surat went on his way, but then decided that he, too,
would go to the hut and spend some time chatting with the two
vegetable-growers. When he arrived he found three young Rajputs
and Saudal. But he did not see Budu. This made him wonder what the
old blind man could be doing out late at night, and he sent the
three young Rajputs to look for him. They didn't return and after
talking with Saudal a while, Surat set out again for the village. Just
after he left, They had found
the three Rajputs returned to the hut.
the blind man in the company The young of four other persons.
Rajputs thought Budu's companions might have come out of the
village to have a drink together and searched them to see if they
could find the bottle. Instead they found that all four were carrying
sickles used for cutting crops. It was clear that Budu and the others
were out to do some thieving.
Saudal, thinking that they intended to steal from his garden,
ran out to call Surat back. He called loudly, "Surat! Surat!"
Surat continued the story:
was. They said they were searching for liquor and found the sickles.
Saudal said they had come to spoil his vegetable garden.
My ears stood up and I began to wonder what it was all about. I
abused them and told them to take the chicken position [head down,
with arms passed around behind the legs and grasping the ears]. I took a
stick and gave each of them blow on the behind. They were fairly
a
strong men so I thought I ought to do something to make them tell me
258
Surat Singh, Head Judge
what they were doing out at night like that. I only gave one blow to the
blind man, but I gave two or three good blows to each of the others.
Then I asked them what they were going to do with their sickles.
The blind man said that he was going along with these people to steal
some onions from Bahadapur, a village on the other side of Rampur.
They said to me, "Oh, Nambarddr [the title given to leading Rajputs
who used to be responsible for collecting revenue and maintaining
law and order in the village], we weren't intending to spoil Saudal's
garden."
Then I said to the blind man, "Siisrd [father-in-law, a term of abuse]!
Generally people go to their wife's place with a brand new quilt like you
are wearing. They don't go with it to steal crops. Bahenchod [lover of your
sister, a term of abuse]! Susrd! Wind man and you are going to
You are a
commit a theft. Suppose someone saw you, how would you run away?
Bahenchod! You would be committing two crimes at the same time. You
were going to steal crops, and if you had been caught you would have
given the names of the people with you, and they would have been
involved too!"
In the morning Attar [a young Rajput who had not been present the
night before] heard about this incident. He came to Budu and told him
that I was going to go to the police and report him. He began scaring him
this way.
Then the blind man asked what he should do about it. Attar assured
him he would be able to please me, but he would have to bear the ex-
pense of the liquor. Attar said he would ask me to come to his cattle com-
pound and he told the blind man to come along with the liquor at the
proper time.
By chance I went to a place outside the village for two or three days.
But when I came back Nathu [one of the young Rajputs who had been
present that night in the mud hut] met me and said that I should come
to Attar's cattle compound. He said hehad been looking for me for the
past three or four days.
I said to Nathu, "What But he didn't say anything to
is the matter?"
me. He just said I come to the cattle compound and he would tell
should
me there. I went to the cattle compound.
There I saw Budu and two of the thieves who were present that night,
plus Attar and Nathu. The bottles had been brought to the shelter in the
cattle compound. They were there even before I reached the place. We
went inside and sat down. They took out one of the bottles and poured
some of the liquor. While we were drinking we gossiped and we didn't
discuss that previous night at all.
Then Attar took me aside and told me he had taken five or six botdes
259
John T. Hitchcock
in my name. He said to me, "You just tell this blind man that no case
can be taken into court against him."
Then the next bottle came and it was opened. The blind man and the
two other thieves were also given a little to drink. Two or three other peo-
ple came around. I was there from eight in the morning to one in the
afternoon, and all of the six bottles were finished. The six of them cost 27
rupees.
I hadn't thought of Attar as a man who would do this sort of thing.
He just happened to come forward on this occasion. There are men like
this, and it is very hard to tell beforehand.
In the afternoon Malkhan, the troublemaker and thief, heard that the
blind man had given me liquor worth to see Budu.
27 rupees and he went
He said to him, "All you provided liquor for the head judge,
right,
who lives in another part of the village. But I also have close connections
with the police, because I am always going and coming there. I will tell
them this secret you are trying to hide."
Then the blind man provided him with a bottle. All this came out of
the blind man's pocket.
I had heard the story about what Malkhan had done and when I met
the blind man I said, ''Sala [brother-in-law, an abusive term]! You are
suffering for whatever you did in your previous life by being blind in
both eyes and now you have started stealing. If you had purchased the
onion plants with some of the money you have been spending it would
have been a lot cheaper!"
260
Surat Singh, Head Judge
261
John T. Hitchcock
a body to the officials and telling them I wasn't doing my job properly.
My judgments are sometimes revised. But the people of the village
don't speak against me openly in a panchayat, though they may
privately."
He had more leeway in cases which did not interest the most
influential segments of the community. These were the cases which
accounted for most of his "fees" — a few rupees, a meal or two, or
a bottle. They were also the cases which accounted for the most
frequently heard, if not the most effective, criticism. Aside from talk
of influence, the charge most often levelled was that he had relied
on rigid adherence to the legalism of the town courts in order to
tip the beam toward one
side or the other. It was said, for example,
that instead ofmaking his judgment by taking the character of the
witnesses and his knowledge of the total situation into account, he
would make it on the basis of recorded evidence alone, as a town
judge usually had to do. The result, it was claimed, was a good
"paper" case but an unjust decision.
To avoid arousing concerted opposition from the most influential
families Surat was cautious about cases in which they were directly
or indirectly involved. Such families seldom came to the village court
when they were having difficulty with a weaker man. Nor except in
rare instances would a weaker man go There
to court against them.
were many ranking Rajput families who almost never gave anyone
cause to file a claim against them, and fear and prudence kept a
weaker man from going to court against those who might give
cause.Once when a young Rajput, Dharam, stole another's wheat
and when the latter, who had only a few close kinsmen and a small
farm, approached a prominent Rajput for help in organizing a
panchayat, the elder gave him this advice:
"You don't have a shoe in your hand and aren't in a position to do
anyone any harm. If I were to organize a panchayat, Dharam might
do something else to you. If you take the matter to court, you won't
262
Surat Singh, Head Judge
a fight with quarterstaves. Surat's court was suitable for one round
of a contest of this kind.
Some of the cases were inconsequential but interesting "law jobs"
to which Surat willingly gave audience. For example, a peaceable man
might want to place his opponent in a position where he would have
to listen and so he would take his case to Surat. The men of one
Rajput lineage kept driving their bullock carts across the field of a
neighbor, without bothering to keep to the cart path. Their neighbor,
who had objected once or twice but did not want to press the
matter in the fields, filed complaint in the court. During the course
of the hearing each side brought out a number of things that long had
263
John T. Hitchcock
been rankling: the complainant said his neighbor never allowed him
to take water from his well. ("The well never goes to the man
to ask him to have a drink from it," the owner of the well had
replied.) The defendant said the complainant's father had never paid
for the land he was accused of damaging. ("People don't give land
away," said the complainant, and the two launched into a lengthy
reargument of this ancient case.) The appeal eventually was dropped
The complainant(a Rajput woman aged 60) alleged that the accused
(a Rajput woman
aged 30) gave her a beating with a stick. She was
injured on the head and on the foot. The reason for the dispute was that
both the accused and the complainant went to Allahabad (to attend the
Hindu religious festival, the Kumbh Mela). There was a
great great crowd.
The accused asked the complainant to sleep on the other side of her,
as there were many males on that side. Now the accused says that the
complainant owes her 20 rupees. She also threatens to cut ofl" her nose.
claims. Justice for one group was not justice for another, and as
Surat once put it, his decisions seemed to make him "fifty or sixty
264
Surat Singh, Head Judge
enemies every day." There were the traditional claims of the Rajput
Brotherhood and village custom, of close kinsmen and friends, and of
statutory law. All were not relevent or equally pressing in every
instance. But often enough two or more conflicting interests figured
in a case.
As the holder of formal office Surat might have been expected
to resolve the difficulty by consistently deciding in favor of statutory
law, as he frequently did anyway. But there was among the villagers
little real understanding of duty to an "office," or of the necessity
265
John T. Hitchcock
266
I
Surat Singh, Head Judge
Surat and the village had been vividly embodied in the person of a
lineage uncle of Surat's who had been head judge of an earlier
village court.
This man, whose name was Prithivi, had become head judge in
1921 when he was a young man of about 30, and he held the post
for nine years. For five years of his term he belonged to the large
unpartitioned joint family headed by Surat's father. Since he took
office when Surat was 9 and held it until he was 18, Surat had a
good opportunity to see how he managed it, though there were periods
during these years when Surat was away from the village attending
school. His lineage uncle is remembered as the person who led the
village in establishing a religious school, building a village temple,
and carrying out a number of reforms having a universalist bias,
such as changing the nature of a yearly festival which had involved
harassment of the shopkeeper caste. He also was remembered as an
excellent judge.
A primary feature of Prithivi's leadership was his ability to gain
support among most of the Rajput prominent men. There were many
reasons for this. He had associated himself closely with the Arya
Samaj, a socioreligious reform movement which was very influential
during his time. He became its foremost proponent and was able to
direct and channel the impulses to change it had stimulated. He
himself strove to become an ideal village judge and leader, of the
type believed to have existed in ancient India. He used to say he
regarded the village as a family of which he was the father.
The Rajput prominent men who supported Prithivi were drawn into
the court on important cases as consultants, though officially it con-
sisted of only five members. This fact, plus Prithivi's general attitude
toward his office, helped lift it out of partisan village politics. He
devoted much of his time and judicial skill to forestalling litigation
that might have gone to the town courts and during his term in
office the police almost never came to the village. Within the limits
of customary law he did much to protect the weaker members of the
community against the depradations of the powerful.
The existence of Prithivi helps one understand why Surat again
became head judge, even after being forced to resign under circum-
stances which at best were slightly dubious. There was the close
blood tie and the existence of the dynastic principle in village
political affairs. Surat's career was similar to Prithivi's. Both had
267
John T. Hitchcock
been very young when they took the judgeship, and there was some-
thing similar about the times as well. There was a great flush of hope
associated with Independence. For a time it seemed easy not only to
remake the country but people as well. Surat had shown great promise
on his father's court. Despite what had gone before, he might now,
with his outstanding talents, mediate as successfully between the
village and the ideological currents of the present as his lineage uncle
had done twenty years before.
It is against this background that the sharpness of some of the
be everywhere."
Mungat by such threats. With this
said he wasn't greatly worried
he brushed his hand and went off to the fields.
moustaches with his
Surat's feelings about Prithivi were tinged with ambivalence. He
felt Rup had had to bear the onerous burden of looking after the
268
I
Surat Singh, Head Judge
We might ask finally how Surat regarded the emerging "new order"
in Khalapur, and the accompanying realignments of power. The best
revelation of Surat's own general attitude was that disclosed one day
by a wealthy lineage uncle. This man had been a Nambardar (see
page 259), and there was a touch of the eccentric about him. He was
—
one of the few villagers who carried a watch a large silver one
regulated by a chart showing the hours of sunrise and sunset and
wound with a key worn on a string around his neck. He had a
machine for making soda pop, and a sewing machine on which he
made most of his own clothes. We were discussing the new order as
we sat in the shed of his cattle compound. Without moving from his
cross-legged position on the cot, he described his idea of a representa-
tive of the new order and vigorously acted out the part. He was a
small man, with quick, darting gestures, and was a good mimic.
You can tell who they are! They wear a topi which has to be just
two fingers in width. [He demonstrated.] When they were of no conse-
269
John T. Hitchcock
quence they wore the cap in the middle of their heads; but as soon as
some power they wear the cap on the side
they achieve of the head.
[He showed how it was pushed to one side, at a rakish angle.] They
also wear their dhofi in a very special way, draped so it has a tail behind.
When they walk they swing their hips and the tail goes, "Lub, jub! Lub,
jub!"
When they sit on the new village council they make sweeping gestures,
ordering people hither and thither. If a man has a bullock cart, they cry,
"Tax that bullock cart!" If a man has a buffalo which is giving milk,
they cry, "Tax that buffalo!"
In the old days when I went to Rampur, even though I was wearing
the ordinary clothes I work in, people would salute me. When officials
noticed the people saluting me, they would ask their assistants who that
man was. The assistants would tell the officials and they would offer me a
chair and treat me with respect. When judgments were made they were
made in favor of men like me, because the officials knew we told the
truth. The people who call day night are in the saddle today.
Sural shared these feelings, though not with the same intensity. He
was more detached, slightly amused, and patronizing. There was a
young Rajput who was actively assisting the new Community De-
velopment officials. Surat spoke of him with derogatory humor as
"that 'new life' bdbii.'" He did not object to these officials who were
trying to improve the lot of the villagers, but on the other hand as
he put it, he did not "run up and climb on their shoulders." To him
most of them were petty officials and on one occasion he threatened
to report one to his superior. His attitude was not unlike that of
one of his elderly lineage uncles who when angered by a clerk in
a high official's office, insultingly told the man he could hire persons
like him to work on his farm.
He shared little of the new interest in making farming more pro-
ductive. Although his high status rested in large part on the efforts
of forebears who kept accounts and were devoted to commercial
and financial enterprise, Surat spoke with scorn of those of his
contemporaries who showed the same propensities. In an ironical
echo of the appellation applied to his own great-uncle he spoke of
them as"shopkeeper types."
To a degree of course Surat is part of the new order, since he is
of amusement for him to remember how the same man had refused
to believe accounts of airplanes when they were first being flown.
For the sake of consistency he had even rejected the tale in the
sacred Rdmdyaria of Hanumdn's flight to succor Rdma.
Rajput landowner and family head, councilor, viflage lawyer,
power politician, trouble-maker, head judge and "forward" man it —
is not strange that Surat should seem puzzling and contradictory.
But having made this order in my own impressions of the man I
keenly realize that somehow the Surat I knew has escaped. This
is the final contradiction — the opposition between and all these bits
scraps of memory, impression, and thought, and the sense I still
have of the whole, living person I knew. His distinct and engaging
self has eluded my words, just as he so often delighted me by
271
John T. Hitchcock
follow the host's almost ritual custom of pouring it back and forth
from one brass drinking cup to the other, in order to cool it. Surat
noticed our hesitation. He pointed to the brass tray and cups, and
said in Enghsh, "Self help!"
272
Sulli, His Wives, and His
Grandchildren.
9
A Reformer of
His People
David G. Mandelbaum
1 here is little point in using a pseudonym for Sulli. Anyone who
knows the Kotas, knows Sulli. Among them, he stand forth bold and
clear.
He is known as Sulli the schoolteacher, although it is many years
now since he has taught a Even those Kotas who have scant
class.
regard for him refer to him respectfully by the honorific title of
"Schoolmaster Sulli." His achievement brought honor to all the Kotas;
no Kota before him had reached so high as to become a teacher and
one who was even able to converse with officials in the official lan-
guage, English.
—
The Kotas some 1200 people living in seven villages are a tiny —
group among India's vast millions. They are one of the four indige-
nous peoples of the Nilgiri plateau in the far south of India. Before
the isolation of the plateau was broken over a century ago, the four
peoples lived in separate settlements but in close interdependence.
The Kotas did some cultivation but were mainly artisans and musi-
cians, providing goods and services for the pastoral Todas, the agri-
cultural Badagas,and the jungle-dwelling Kurumbas.
The Kotas famed Todas and
are far less spectacular than are the
are outnumbered fifty-fold by the booming Badaga farmers. But
though they are overshadowed and outnumbered, the Kotas are
far from being abashed. They have a firm sense of their rights as a
people. European travelers and officials wrote of them as an undis-
tinguished, even a shabby, lot; the Todas and Badagas looked
down upon them as eaters of carrion and practitioners of other base
customs. But the Kotas knew well, in earlier years, that without
their help the other Nilgiri peoples could carry on neither their
economies nor their ceremonies. The Kotas were willing to acknowl-
Todas and Badagas.
edge, in formal gesture, the superior status of the
They had clear ideas about the limits of that superiority, and
also
about the obligations which the other peoples owed them. Thus if a
Kota family felt that the Badaga families for whom they provided
tools and music were not giving them a rightful share of the crop at
274
A Reformer of His People
harvest, a Kota council could be called which might decree that those
Badagas were to be boycotted until they paid up properly.
Kota monopolies in crafts and music are now gone. Only vestiges
remain of the old interdependence, but they are still an effervescent
people, quick to defend their rights, and sure that their neighbors
owe them certain obhgations. Although so very few in number,
they continue to speak their own language and maintain their own
culture. It is a society and culture of such vitality and intriguing
complexity as to be of absorbing interest to an anthropologist.
Sulli has been one of the more vigorous among them.. In his
physical appearance he is much like other Kotas, stockier than most,
but muscular rather than fat. He is of medium height for a Kota,
also campaigned against the women's seclusion hut, used for child-
birth and menstruation, and against the Kota men's custom of wear-
ing long hair.
At age 64, Sulli does not feel that his campaigns are over. He
tells of social improvements which he has yet to bring about. He is
still full of plans and zeal for bringing his people forward. This
zeal has not been unopposed. An ardent reformer of persistent ener-
gies does not expect to have smooth saihng and Sulli has fought
through many a verbal and legal battle with other Kotas.
One was the struggle which was precipi-
of the greatest of these
tated when Kota men had worn their hair long and
Sulli cut his hair.
tied up in a chignon for as long as myth and memory ran. When a
Kota boy reached the threshold of manhood he went through a
solemn ceremony in which his hair was ritually tied up. The chignon
had religious connotation, it was a sign of manhood, it was a main
symbol of being a Kota. So when Sulli had his hair cut, and a few
young men followed his example, it seemed to the rest of the Kotas
that he was bent on denying the Kota gods and on cutting himself
off from all that was well and truly Kota. Men from the seven villages
met in solemn conclave, formally cast Sulli out of the community
and forbade any Kota to give him food or fire.
But Sulli had no intention of severing himself from Kota hfe.
He showed no desire to be anything other than a Kota, but he was
possessed by a burning desire to change those Kota ways which, as
he saw them, lowered the Kotas in the eyes of their neighbors. More
than other Kotas of his generation, he had been exposed to contacts
with other people, had become aware of other values, and knew that
his chignon marked him in the Nilgiris as one of a people of polluting
custom and lowly status.
So he remained in the village and fought against his expulsion.
At first even his wife left his house, whisked back to her father's
village. "I have no help and I separately suffer," Sulli recalls. "All the
Stood by him. Some of the younger men took his side. And he had
powerful means with which to fight back. He alone among Kotas
could write his own petition to the government authorities, com-
plaining that the other villagers were violating his civil rights. Only
he could plead his own case in English before the officials and con-
sistently secure orders from them which were favorable to him and
harmful to his opponents.
In his dealings with officials he did not always get his way. During
one of my visits to the Kotas, in 1949, SuUi was absorbed in the
problem of getting a license to own and operate a lorry. At that time
there was a booming market for Nilgiri-grown potatoes and a
great shortage of trucks for their transport. Sulli seized on my coming
at once and asked me to tell the Collector, the chief official of the
Nilgiri district, to grant him the Hcense. "I want to be the first of my
people to own a lorry." There was not only profit to be had from the
lorry permit; there was also the undoubted prestige that owning a
motor vehicle would bring to both Sulli and Kotas.
I pointed out that as a foreign visitor I could hardly intervene
in such matters, but as it happened I did meet the Collector and I
277
David G. Mandelbaum
protection which Sulli needed when they tried to throw him out of
the village. "Every year at the big ceremonies a sub-inspector of
police and ten constables would come to the village and I would
have I had to have them stay with me because I am
to supply them.
only one man among the Kotas and all were against me so I needed
the police for protection."
He could afford to carry on his fight because he was a successful
entrepreneur. Some observers have written that entrepreneurs are
rare in village India. But anthropologists who have seen village
life at close range have often noticed a good deal of entrepreneurial
activity. It is successful entrepreneurs who are rare. The institutions
and opportunities of village economy are not such as to encourage
business success, although they do not extinguish business aspira-
tions. A good many of Sulli's peers have, like him, opened a little
Several of these younger men have studied English and Sulli's son
has had a high school education. But though they know some English
they are much too shy to attempt to speak it before those who speak it
fluently. Shyness has never been one of Sulli's handicaps. He wields
his English freely and forcefully. While he shows little mercy to
278
A Reformer of His People
typed would repair, for the sake of future clarity, some of his direct speech. There
I
are more literal notes from my brief visit in 1958 when I was able to use a minia-
ture tape recorder.
When I began my work with Sulli in April, 1937, he had just spent several months
as a linguistic informant for Dr. M. B. Emeneau, who introduced us. His English
had been improved by that experience. Dr. Emeneau smoothed my understanding of
Sulli's diction and facilitated my study of Kota culture. It is a pleasure to express my
thanks for his companionship and help.
279
David G. Mandelbaum
society? What effect has he really had on his culture? And a reader
may be interested in knowing something of the relationship between
him and the ethnologist.
but not unusual Kota family. He was given a common Kota name,
Tu-J; Sulli is a more unusual name which he later adopted. His
father's old mother was a dominant presence in the household up to
his sixth year. She was generally perched atop the sleeping plank
and from that point of vantage she could see into the one other room
of the house, the kitchen, and out into the village street. There she
sat, sometimes dozing or smoking, often scolding. Her voice ruled
the family, as Sulli remembers. "If her wishes were disobeyed, she
would curse, 'I have worked all my life for you and now you let
[neglect] me.' My father feared her curses and scolding and obeyed
her."
His father's widowed and childless sister was also part of the
family. Frail and saddened, she devoted herself to taking care of the
children and did not go out to gather fuel or work in the fields.
"She was a widow and the only sister of my father. He thought that
if she had to work hard she would be more mournful than ever.
So all she did was nurse the babies."
So it fell toand mother of the household to do the
the wife
harder chores. was she who worked in the family's fields, who
It
chopped wood and gathered dung for fuel, who husked the grain
and cooked the meals. All this was done under a steady barrage of
the grandmother's complaining. No one in the house ever worked
hard enough to please grandmother, and especially not her son's wife.
But Kota women, even younger women, are not expected to be
eternally meek and subservient, as is expected of young wives in the
higher castes of Indian village society, and the children's mother often
gave as good as she got in the verbal exchange. Such quarreling
seems to be taken by Kota children and adults as a kind of unavoid-
able minor nuisance, like the smoke which comes up from the cook-
ing hearth and gathers in a cloud under the chimneyless roof. It
irritates for a while but eventually disappears.
280
A Reformer of His People
She was not constrained to spare words toward her husband either,
but once or twice a week, SulH recalls, her words were of little
avail. His father would come home drunk. "He would kick at the
door and come in falling. Then my mother would put rice and broth
before him and he would eat. 'Hey fool, this rice is no good.' She an-
swers, 'It is prepared as always.' 'Quiet.' And he would beat her.
"She cries. We children wake. Seeing our mother cry, we cry
too. Then my grandmother comes and scolds, 'Who gave you the
money for drink? Why do you come like this? Is this what I have
suffered long years for?' And with that scolding my father becomes
quiet."
The father is thus remembered not as an overwhelming figure,
even when he was drunk. Old grandmother can always control him.
He is a man, subject to the vagaries of mood expectable in a Kota
man and controllable in any mood. He does discipline the children
when they deserve it, but he also protects them when they need pro-
tection against older children or irate villagers. The children are
nourished and tended by the three women of the household. Even
grandmother's scolding has a softer edge when she scolds the chil-
dren. Father's sister provides for their physical needs. Then mother
is always the tender recourse for her children.
Sulli's elder brother, some four years his senior, was a docile
child (he grew up to be a tractable man) who took care of Sulli as
he was told to do. "He would take me by the hand when we went
out and he would carry me on his hip. If other boys hit me, he would
protect me." Perhaps because his elder brother did so well at tending
him, Sulli's next elder sibling, his only sister, did not have as close
and affectionate relations with him as are customary between a Kota
and her younger brother.
elder sister
In the house of their mother's father, the children always had
a warm and sure welcome. His village was a day's journey away and
they often stayed there for several weeks at a time. He indulged his
grandchildren; he was under no social pressure to discipline them,
he could enjoy them. "If we didn't come to his house for a while he
would send word asking why. Because he was always anxious to
see us."
He was not actually their biological grandfather, but their mother's
father's brother. Her real father had died when she was young, and
her father's brother had taken the widow to wife. He gladly accepted
the daughter as his own and, later, her children as his grandchildren.
281
David G. Mandelbaum
then his next younger brother, younger by little more than a year,
was always trailing him. SuUi recalls that he would go on to school
and his little brother walked behind. He was an unwilling scholar.
"Always my will is against my father's. So if he sends me to school,
I must go and play." When his father found out he would beat him
and shut him up in a dark storage bin. As did other Kota parents,
he would threaten the truant by pretending to call Kurumbas, the
jungle people who were sorcerers.
"Kurumbas, catch this boy!" he would shout as he locked Sulli
in the bin. "At that I was in panic. Whenever I went to a dark place
I was afraid of the Kurumbas and now I thought that one would
surely get me. So I kicked and screamed until my mother came and
let me out. At that my father beat my mother.
"When I would sit with my arms close around mother.
was let out I
Kota, by himself, could not work the worst, the really dangerous,
harm. If one tried, the intended victim could always hire a counter-
vailing Kurumba. In extreme cases, when a man felt victimized by
magic, he or his relatives could thwart the Kurumba agent forever.
They would catch him and knock out his two front teeth so that
he could no longer enunciate his magical spells properly and could
therefore never again harm anyone with magic.
Sulli tells how his father, suitably fortified with drink, did just
that to a Kurumba. But this anecdote is perhaps to be understood,
not as a literal account of what happened, but as a Kota son's
reminiscence of what his father might well have done under the heavy
grief of true personal tragedy.
The tragedy wasthat within the span of a year and a half, when
Sulli was about 7, the three women of the family died. First the
old grandmother went and the father rallied all his resources and
credit to provide her with a suitably grand funeral as a dutiful son
should. Then the mother, in the last months of another pregnancy,
sickened and suddenly died. Soon after, the children's aunt was
gone.
Then a women came through the household. A widower
series of
with five children needed a woman in the house quickly. Kota mar-
riage is simple and easy. One by one wives came and, divorce being
equally simple and easy, soon left. A story Sulli tells about the first
Once she was preparing a meal, wearing only a single cloth tied
under the armpits as Kota women do in the heat and smoke of the
kitchen. She asked Sulli, then perhaps 9, to get some wood for the
cooking fire. He didn't like her ("She always abused and beat us")
and so he She cuffed him and then went out to the
just refused.
woodpile herself. As soon as she was out of the door, he bolted it.
She hammered and scolded but he sat still and refused to let her in.
Skimpily dressed as she was, she had to take refuge in a neighbor's
house. There she was counselled to go back to her father, because if
the boys treated her so now, what could she expect of them when
she grew old? She did go back forthwith.
Then the children prevailed on their father to marry their mother's
sister. They knew her well from visits to their grandfather's house.
Sulli's sister took the proposal to the grandfather and before long
283
David G. Mandelbaum
284
A Reformer of His People
up to it,but he replied, 'O, they were weak and you were the brave
one. I have fed and fattened you so that you may be strong to be a
thief.'
"He beat and beat and Iand cried. I cried for my mother
cried
because if she had been Hving she would have stopped the blows, but
now there was no one to help me."
Though he felt the loss of his mother bitterly, he did not act as
though he were helpless. Throughout his boyhood he resolutely
took on whatever tasks he had a mind to do, even though some
were considerably in advance of his age. It seems as though the spe-
cial care and security which he received during the first six years
of his life had girded him firmly enough so that he had no qualms
about his ability. When he wanted to do some difficult chore he
would tackle it with confidence, if not with skill.
Meanwhile Sulli was going through the motions of attending
school. This was not one of the tasks he was minded to do. His
elder brother had been there briefly before him, but when that boy
was about 8 he was taken off to his grandfather's house. The grand-
father had no sons; he needed a lad to herd his cattle. The father
protested; he wanted his son to have schooling. But the old man
ridiculed him with what was then a standard quip, "Do you want
to make a tahsildar of him?" The thought that a Kota could climb
to such great heights through education as to become an official
desire. "I was the most stupid in the class because I didn't care for
learning. . My father always went to the smithy and to cultivate
. .
286
A Reformer of His People
There was also work for a boy in his own village. At plowing and
at harvest therewould be a cluster of Badagas around every smithy,
waiting for tools to be sharpened, repaired, or made. Then any
likely Kota lad was recruited to work the bellows or hold the hot
iron with pincers while a skilled smith worked the metal. As SuUi
became able to do a man's work gave him a plot
in the fields, his father
of land to work by himself. His elder brother was assigned another,
and the two youngest boys together worked a third field. "If we
worked together, we would laugh and talk and not get much work
done. Separately, my elder brother thinks that because he is older
he show that he can get more work done. I want to beat my
will
brothers, so when my father comes to look at the fields he will favor
me. So I work hard."
The young brothers, tilling their separate fields, may or may not
have entertained the thoughts in 1908 which Sulli mentioned dec-
ades But this incidental mention does reflect a common situation
later.
There were long periods when their father either had no wife or when
the current wife was away in her own parents' house. As Sulli re-
members, his elder brother ". was foolish. Father would beat him
. .
and send him out of the house." The two other brothers were too
young to be able to do the household chores. So Sulli would prepare
the grain, spread it to dry in the sun, set a younger brother to watch it,
go to work in his field, and come back to cook the meal. It is not at
all unlikely, gauging from the facts of later years, that Sulli really
3 David G. Mandelbaum, "The World and the World View of the Kota," in M.
Marriott, ed.. Village India, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1955, pp. 234-235.
287
David G. Mandelbaum
a horn). The best and bravest man in this chase was singled out for
special ceremonial acknowledgment. Young men aspired to show
their prowess and gain public recognition. Boys prepared for these
great events by practicing in the meadows with calves and old cows,
worrying the animals until they made resistance enough to give the
boys practice.
Sulli, too, practiced for the real chase. As a young man he took
part in many such contests and he recalls with great relish those oc-
casions when he shone as a strong brave conqueror of buffaloes.
Like other Kota men, he was hot for the buffalo pursuit well into
manhood and well after the time when he was in his prime for
buffalo chasing. Settled heads of families commonly took a good deal
of rough shaking up during buffalo chases, before they would reluc-
tantly realize that younger men with younger sinews could do better
in the wild sport of the pursuit. Sulli later came to condemn the sacri-
fice of the animals and to abjure the chase with its attendant cruelty
to the beasts, but he retells with sparkling animation his brave ex-
ploitson fierce great buffaloes.
There is another series of exploits, with women, for which Kota
boys practice, in which men take pride, and in which, as Sulli tells,
he excelled. Just as the children play at staging the grand occasions
of Kota life, so do they play frequently at enacting the domestic
scene. Boys and girls pair off, set up a few boughs to make a house,
pretend to cook and eat meals, lie down together as married people
288
A Reformer of His People
289
David G. Mandelbaum
we go there and back, the Kurumbas will get us and the Badagas
will hate us and our fathers will be without sons when the Kurumbas
kill us. Throw that thought out of your head or you will be the most
foolish of the whole village." And when he told his girl and her
friends that he had made up his mind to go to school, they cried
because some Badagas who had gone to that school had become
converted. He assured them that he would not "join the Christians"
and be forever lost to Kotas. He would only study in the school, he
said, and freed from wearying toil in the fields and in the house, he
would be better able at night to enjoy them.
It was rugged work, going back to school. Sulli had forgotten
290
A Reformer of His People
There was precious little other support for the newly deter-
mined scholar. One of his mother's brothers, on hearing the news,
hurried to persuade Sulli to give up this dangerous notion, of reck-
lesslyand gratuitously exposing himself to Kurumba sorcery by
walking alone every day the six miles to the school and back, past
a thicket of bluegum trees in which Kurumbas could easily hide.
Sullibrushed off his pleas. "If I die, I will die. So many others have
died ..." And the uncle's fond concern turned sour. He spat, made
some uncomplimentary remarks about his benighted nephew, and
left.
I would die trying. I never forgot those words ... I didn't play
with my friends any longer and didn't lie with the girls ." . .
Before he had finished the first year at the mission school, he had
to do something about his steady girl. She was now of an age when
suitors were clustering around her and she could hardly avoid mar-
riage to someone else if Sulli delayed any longer. Not that she would
be forced by her parents, but rather that she would very likely be-
—
come pregnant given the usual proclivities of a young Kota woman
— and then she would have to get a father for the child. Many a
man would be only too eager to get an attractive young wife, with
a child on the way to boot.
She came to Sulli and clasped his feet, he tells, in the gesture of
entreaty. "She was 16 and her breasts were so big and she was very
beautiful. But the teacher had told me that the boys who get mar-
ried leave their studies, they don't care for the lessons ... So that
night I thought hard which was best. If I married, I would have a
291
David G. Mandelbaum
few days happy and then all the rest of my life I would have to dig
the earth and sweat. If I worked hard for about four years, then
all the rest of the time I would be a teacher or a government serv-
ant."
He put her off temporarily with an excuse and disposed of her
entreaties permanently with a stratagem. Among her suitors was a
gay youth who sang very well and had a persuasive way with the
girls. Sulli arranged with this lad to stay the night in a house where
the unmarried young men and women of the village often came to
sing and then to sleep. Sulli and his girl were there that night. He
acted coldly toward her. When the lamp was put out and she came to
sleep at his side, he did not cover her with his cloth as usual but
straightway turned his back to her and pretended to fall asleep.
the others and would therefore be more inclined and better able to
make a lasting marriage with her. He told this man that the girl
was now ready to marry and go off with him. So it happened. She later
came back, appealed to Sulli again, but she no longer figured im-
portantly in his life.
He and his elder brother were of the age at which Kota young men
can assert their independence and leave the paternal roof. This is
more common in the lower social echelons of village India than in
the higher, where the father's economic hold and psychological domi-
nance are generally greater than is the case among the Kotas.
After a quarrel with their father, the two brothers moved into
another house where they did their own housekeeping. But that
meant had to do a good deal of the cooking and collecting
that Sulli
of fuel; his brother was not a very dependable housemate. His studies
suffered. When Sulli was dunned for the contribution which each
292
A Reformer of His People
come converted. I will always stay with you and I will light your
funeral pyre.' " Then Sulli took a solemn oath, by stepping over his
father and giving his promise to God, to his mother, to his father,
293
David G. Mandelbaum
that he would not leave the village before his father's death and he
would fulfill all the filial funeral duties.
His father was reconciled by this but was not fully satisfied until
Sulli agreed to quit school and to take a wife. He did both, but
neither for long. Within a few months he had convinced his father
that he meant to stay in the village and his father let him go back
to school. At that, the girl to whom he was quite cordially married
told him that if he insisted on going on with his education, she would
go back to her father's house. They separated amicably, he was
taken back in the mission school, and all was well with Sulli for
a while.
Only this one time did he try to leave the community of Kotas
and the experience made a deep impression. He told me about it
during my brief visit in December, 1958, as he had done at length
in December, 1937. The earlier version was given in much greater
detail and some of the details differed in the two versions, but in
both Sulli made clear that it had been an important event for him.
In his earlier account, he says that he was mainly dissuaded by his
father's sorrow, in the later account he mentions his fear of being
beaten or killed if he became a convert. Whatever the reasons,
thenceforth he felt firmly bound to Kota society.
He completed the three years of the course at the mission school.
By then he felt able to go right up to the office of the Collector of the
District and to ask that high official for a job. He was appointed as a
copying clerk in a township office, writing out copies of official
papers. Although he was only six months at this post, it gave him a
higher education in the ways of officialdom. He learned how to write
an effective petition and how to soothe underlings so that their
superior officer might take note of the petition.
Next he was awarded a government stipend to attend a teacher
training course at Coimbatore, a large town near the foot of the
Nilgiri Hills. There he was for the first time completely out of the
Nilgiri enclave, in an urban world where the local hierarchy of
the Nilgiri peoples was scarcely known. He observed that there too
status gradations of caste were highly important and were based on
certain general criteria of rank —
criteria which a group might manip-
ulate to its own advantage by abandoning demeaning practices
and adopting esteemed customs. He had known this before; it was
brought home to him in Coimbatore.
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David G. Mandelbaum
296
A Reformer of His People
he had received in his family circle, the zest for argument and the
defenses against insult he had acquired from his fellow Kotas, the
willingness to take a solitary stand which he may have absorbed
from his father.
His special career was made possible because his father had in-
sisted on his going through the village school. He set his course
when, repelled by the traditional roles of subservience, he
resolutely
roles. Then he came to a juncture
decided to acquire different social
where he had to choose between leaving Kota society through the
route of conversion or staying with it. When he committed himself
Sulli, in his 60's, has come to a certain peace with his society.
Not all his reforms have been accomplished but there has been
enough change to give him satisfaction. The time is long past when
most Kotas met him with angry faces or with turned backs. The
factions he sundered within his village have gradually come closer
together; differences remain, but are tolerated. The pervasive bite
of factional bitterness has, apart from a few older men, been eased.
His household is a prosperous one, filled with his son's children.
He has only one son, who has grown into a sturdy, steady man,
educated up to the level of college matriculation but not ambitious
to leave the village. The wife who had remained steadfast through
the most trying years had borne several children; all but this one
son died very young. When it became apparent that she would
have no more children, Sulli took a series of younger wives, one
hope of fathering other sons.
after the other, in the
Only one of these younger wives stayed. She came of an unusual
family in another village which had chanced to get a regular income
from land rental. They had been able to give some schooling even
to the daughters and to clothe them in saris, the usual dress of
Indian women, rather than in the traditional plain white shift which
almost all Kota women still wear.
298
A Reformer of His People
The factional split which Sulli started in the village still existed
in 1958, but there has been a gathering rapprochement, especially
among the younger men who had not taken part in the bitter early
struggles. When Sulli and a few others cut their long locks, they
became known as the "karap" men, from their cropped hair. They
made up the reformist faction. Under Sulli's instigation the reformists
took to a new set of Hindu-like gods which had been introduced
into the village"*and they followed Sulli's lead in demanding that
all Kotas abandon the
sacrifice of cows and buffaloes, the providing
of music, the eating of carrion, and the use of the menstrual seclu-
sion hut.
The conservatives, called the "old rule" adherents, were outraged
by these demands which they understood as a disavowal of all that
299
David G. Mandelbaum
was good and truly Kota. Furious arguments raged in the village.
Sulli, as we have was formally outcasted by the assembled
seen,
Kotas. But against the weight of numbers and general sentiment,
Sulli brought to bear his formidable capacity to manipulate the
power of the police, of civil officials, of the courts, in his favor.
When Sulli began to score over his opponents, the conservatives
came to see that he did not mean to undermine all that was tradi-
tional. He remained steadfast in the old worship, fighting vigorously
to participate in the traditional rituals for the old gods when some
tried to bar him from the temples. The reformists, it turned out,
did not want to dispute the continuing primacy of the old tribal
gods; they only wanted to add the new set of gods and to follow
the traditional rites with supplementary worship in a more Hindu
fashion. Perhaps the reformists might have been more sweeping in
their program had not the conservative opposition been so strong.
In the late 1940's the reformists —
mainly financed by Sulli hired —
masons from the plains and had an elegant shrine built for the new
gods in a meadow beyond the village streets. Ten years later most
of the villagers would worship, on due occasion, at this shrine. But
it was not well kept up in 1958. The new shrine looked shabby and
300
A Reformer of His People
great ceremony. What the magistrate did not know was that the
whole sacred purpose of the ceremony, of renewal and refurbish-
ment, would be destroyed if an unhallowed, imitative rite were per-
formed in the sacred precincts before the proper, traditional cere-
mony.
301
David G. Mandelbaum
the "old rule" villagers have precedence in the course of the cere-
mony over those of the other faction, thus symbolizing the general
superiority of the traditionalists in matters religious. Sulli, for his
part, is quite well content to take a formally subordinate part in
the ceremony so long as he has gained this change in Kota ritual
idiom.
The compromise has also meant an end to the time when
priest's
302
A Reformer of His People
prevailed. They view those few Kotas who play at Badaga funerals
as enemies no less than the Badagas who employ them. More impor-
tantly, the Kotas are a constant reminder of what some Badagas
—
would dearly like to forget that not so long ago the Badagas were
an isolated hill people practicing some unworthy customs and more
closely Hnked with a low folk than is seemly for people of respect-
able status. These status-sensitive Badagas also feel that if they are
to maintain a suitable rank for themselves, they must be particularly
rigorous in avoiding polluting people like the Kotas. To the degree
that the Kotas come up in the local status order, some Badagas feel
customers who threw out Kotas and against tea shop owners who
refused to serve them. One such owner had his license revoked and
had to persuade Sulli to withdraw his complaint before the license
could be renewed. (It cost him a good meal for a Kota party and
additional expenses as well.) Kotas are now generally served with-
out question; in the view of most Kotas, this achievement is mainly
Sulli's doing.
303
David G. Mandelbaum
conditions, there was greater scope and more pressing need for
changed status patterns.
Sulli has hurried the pace of these changes among Kotas, but it
is well to note that there are certain values which persist and which
even Sulli has no notion of changing. One such value is the high
importance of group status in a social hierarchy. Even though the
Nilgiri people had been relatively isolated from the mainstream of
Hindu civilization, they maintained a kind of caste system.^ And
though the Kotas were low in this hierarchy, they prized the status
symbols and prerogatives which they did have. Under modern con-
ditions, group rank and the symbols of rank are still of great moment
to them as they are to other Indian villagers.
As we look over the whole of Kota culture, we can see that Sulli
wanted to change only a very small, if strategic, part of it. It is
remarkable how much of the culture remained relatively unchanged
after many decades of exposure to influences from the centers of
Indian and Western civilizations.^ The basic patterns of family rela-
tions remain much the same as they were in Sulli's original family,
the traditional cycle of Kota ceremonies the Kota
is carried on,
language is used by the still Kota community.
strongly distinctive
By the time a new generation has grown up, additional and more
drastic may come about. Some may come about almost
changes
incidentally. There are now a large number of squatters living around
Sulli's village, lowland people who were driven by hunger to the
them. The Kotas did not object to having these people camp in their
fields, dependent on them and subservient to them. Now they number
8 Ibid.
305
David G. Mandelbaum
Plan.
This stream of change, rising from distant sources to impinge on
Kota life, makes some Kotas uneasy. Not Sulli; he likes new elements
from these sources and welcomes those who bring them. In the
same way he welcomed two strangers who came to him years before.
First in 1936 there came a linguist. Dr. M. B. Emeneau, to study
the Kota language, and in 1937 he introduced to Sulli an anthropol-
ogist, myself, who came to study Kota culture and society. Sulli
306
A Reformer of His People
tion. In the main, he has been accurate and has shown a truly re-
markable recollection of detail. Yet allowance must be made for
two of his traits as ethnological respondent.
One is that his recollection tends to be neater and more integrated
than was the historical actuality. His narrative artistry is apt to gloss
over inconsistencies or irregularities and to make one episode follow
another in logical, abstracted sequences that may have more aesthetic
symmetry than historical exactness. Sulli has the kind of integrating,
abstracting mind which one may consider to be more properly the
prerogative of the ethnological theorist than of the ethnologist's
informant.
Secondly, he is like any gifted narrator of events in which he took
part and of which he finds reason to be proud. He tends to figure
much larger in his account than he may have in the event. But when
he gives an impersonal account of, say, ceremonies, these traits do
not prevail.
Sulli, in turn, was influenced by his work with the linguist and
the anthropologist. In the first instance, the association with two
whom he called "our Europeans" added to his prestige. It is not un-
likely that this association gave him the final impetus, in 1937, to
take the decisive step of cutting his hair. It also gave him opportunity,
as mentioned earlier, to polish up his English. Emeneau writes,
"Fortunately, the time I was able to spend on the Kota language
was long enough to permit the Kota's English to improve about as
rapidly as his knowledge of my needs —though not, even at the
end, to an exactness which would have solved for me all the diffi-
^^
culties of his none too easy language."
As this work progressed, SuUi enjoyed doing it. Emeneau com-
ments that ". . . he reveled in the activity of dictating texts
in fact
for five hours a day for weeks on end, accompanying his words
"^-
with dramatic gestures and laughing heartily at amusing passages.
So was it also in his sessions with me. Even during the visit we had
together when he was 64, he was as lively a raconteur, as delightful
in his zest, in his accounts of his intricate deals, in his self-confidence,
as he had been two decades earlier.
On this visit it remained for Thesingh, a Badaga friend of mine
11 M. B. Emeneau, Kota Texts, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of Cali-
fornia Publications in Linguistics, 1944, vol. 2, no. 1, p. v.
12 Ibid., p. 3.
307
David G. Mandelbaum
and of Sulli (his formal antagonism does not preclude being friendly
with individual Badagas) to articulate something of what the three
of us felt at in the Badaga
meeting again. Asked to record something
language on a tape recorder had with me, Thesingh concluded
I
308
10
The Omda
Ian Gunnison
If there are mosquitoes about, you put up a net and you sleep in
peace." I was just coming to see that Hurgas Merida had enemies
who for twenty-seven years had been omda of the Mezaghna lineage,
and who was clearly welcomed wherever I went in his company,
had been born lucky. He was endowed with popularity, a handsome
bearing, and wit and facility in speech. From his father he had in-
herited great wealth in the form of cattle, and the position of omda.
But the honeymoon period of my field work, when everyone I met
valued their good manners to a stranger above the immediate ex-
pression of their inner feelings, was drawing to a close. Hurgas was
a remarkable character, but for reasons other than I had thought.
His camp was no different from the dozens of others of the
Mezaghna, or the hundreds of others of the Humr tribe. ^ A circle
of some fifteen tents, withy-lined and covered with shredded bark
and gaily patterned mats, surrounded the cattle dung and the smoul-
dering fires where the animals slept at night and were milked morn-
ing and evening. Blue-clad women went about their domestic tasks,
occasionally leaving camp to fetch water or firewood, while the
white-smocked men sat discussing the affairs of the day under the
tree just outside the camp circle.
In one place today, the camp shifted to some sixty other sites
in the course of the year. The herds moved along, guided by the
men on horseback with their 12-foot spears, who sought out the
route. The women followed
in slow procession on laden bulls, the
richer wives on beasts decorated with cowry headbands, ostrich-
plumed horns, and a row of bells behind. One's neighbours today
were off into the forests tomorrow, for the leader of each camp
had his own ideas about where the best water and fattening grasses
1 The Baggara (cattle-keeping) Arabs inhabit the area east of Lake Chad as far
as the Nile. The Humr, one of the Baggara tribes, lead a nomadic life within their
tribal area in the southwest of Kordofan Province of the Sudan Republic.
310
The Omda
For food in his travels, his people fed him as they fed all their
guests. In their view it was fitting that he should enjoy clean cloth,
have his hands soft manual work, and sleep in a white
with little
sheet as well as a blanket. It was more fitting for him, perhaps, than
for the other ten omdas of the tribe because he, almost alone, had
been an omda since the adults were young, and his generosity to
guests in his own camp was well known.
Hurgas was the last to tell me of his tribulations. I knew he had
inherited hundreds of head of cattle from his father, Merida, and
that the Nazir of the tribe had appointed him omda when Merida
had become old. His fame as son of Omda Merida was justified by
311
Ian Gunnison
MEZAGHNA
(Hurgas)
In the 1930's, his cup was full. He had wealth, fame, and position.
His name enhanced the prestige of Awlad Ganis, the descendants of
312
The Omda
Awlad Ganis did not always camp together, and I assumed there
were cattle elsewhere. But one evening I counted eighty head of
cattle in camp, and a youth said, "All the cattle of Ganis are in camp
tonight." And so they were; the thirty-seven men of Ganis had eighty
head among them.
Hurgas would philosophise without relating his thoughts to his
own position:
you can be generous. With generosity you get a name. With a name you
get women, and you get a political seat if you like. What more do you
want? But cattle, if you have no sheep, are worthless; with a flock you
can give your guests meat as well as milk. These men with great herds of
cattle are evil men, for no man could have built a herd of a thousand
head and have been generous at the same time. If that man were generous,
he would have a smaller herd. A man to be happy must have wives to
cook for him, and young sons to herd the cattle. Then he is content, he has
milk to drink, and plenty of tea. He may not be a sheikh, but he is a king
all the same. He lies under his tree, his sons herd the cattle, his followers
do the work of camp, his wives cook and brew tea for him, his cattle low
in camp in the evenings as they're milked. When he has guests, he catches
a ram and throws it to the ground and slaughters it. These are the sweets
of life. You've heard what the minstrel has to say?
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Ian Cunnison
Hurgas had wives to cook and sons to herd. He had cattle, fifty
or sixty head. He had a stipend from the government. He had poor
relatives in camp with him, who helped with the cattle, fed off him,
and became his faithful followers. But Hurgas had no sheep, and
his rest beneath the tree was spoiled by the incessant labour of
omdaship. He told me that in the old days omdas themselves col-
lected the poll tax and took a tenth of it. Now they had a nominal
stipend instead. It wasn't quite the same.
Hurgas ruled his camp with all the hardness of Mahdist tradi-
tion; and here, among nomads, the influence of the puritan Mahdi
died hard. The omda's autocracy seemed to go unquestioned, but
when he snapped out orders that were not only hard but harsh, I
was puzzled at the need for this in view of his assured and loved
position. His family would do what they could to make his tenure
of the omdaship last out. And there were the contradictions between
Hurgas' philosophy of the good life and his own practice. There was
one thing certainly which had come to my notice early. A part of
Awlad Ganis, who usually camped together with the omda, had
moved away and pitched a separate circle of tents nearby. This
breach in his own family was the outcome of a marriage dispute.
Hurgas' sister had been sought in marriage by her second cousin,
in the same camp, but the omda had preferred to hand her over
to Hammoda, a wealthy and wise man of middle age from the
Ariya lineage. The breach was hardly a serious one, and I was
assured that the dissatisfied cousin would return to the camp in
the course of time.
Sheybun was Hurgas' fey young brother. He had hardly a cow
to his name and loved the gay life. I asked him, 'T suppose you
Arabs know the genealogies of your cattle as well as those of your
kinsmen?" We wandered among the cattle and he showed me two
cows whose dams were calves from old Merida's herd. But the other
cattle in camp, he said, had all come from the market. Disease had
on two occasions wiped out the herds. Sheybun led me over to his
sister's tent. We sat down near it and as we brewed the dark sweet
tea and drank out of little tumblers he remembered his earlier years.
We Arabs are rich one day and poor the next. You see our cattle now?
A 10-year-old can herd them by himself. When Hurgas was younger, we
had cattle in numbers like the sand. By God, there was no limit to them.
I myself had a hundred, and sheep as well. And our sister had sheep, and
314
The Omda
days we had guests all day long. When they came we gave them calabashes
of milk and curds, and they anointed their feet in liquid butter. Never a
guest without meat. There was always giraffe meat drying in camp, or if
there were no giraffe we vied to be the first to bring a ram for slaughter.
And tea? By the Mahdi, we drank tea all day long. The tree was filled
with guests; there was brilliant conversation, and the whole lineage of
Mezaghna used to come here and talk till they laughed, and they discussed
the affairs of the country. And a stranger travelling through the land
would know of Hurgas and seek out his camp because he knew he would
be hospitably received. And the three lineages of the —
Mezaghna Dar Abu
Timani, Dar Bakheyt, and the Ariya — they all came and sat at our tree.
And as for the women who milled about! "Women are like geese" [he
quoted], "they follow the deep waters;" [and he added for good measure],
"Women are like flies, they buzz about the calabashes of sour milk."
But disease killed off the cattle, and the never-ending guests prevented
us from building up a real herd again. He gets money from the govern-
ment now, yes; but then he has this wife in town she's high-born, —
a relative of the Nazir —
and she takes half of it every month for her
clothes. To keep our cattle it meant that we couldn't replace our sheep
as they were slaughtered. We all had ffocks. Hurgas finished his off on
his guests, then it was the turn of my sheep and my sisters'. Now there
are none.
and the life of moving camp will start again. The Arab welcomes
a shift to a new camp site where the ground is clean, and his cattle
317
Ian Gunnison
Nazir, does whatever he says. But he's an autocrat with his own
family. He treats us like slaves. After Hurgas became omda, he
made it up with Shigeyfa, but he's still wary of him."
I asked if the Ariya spoke with one voice in this matter.
"Nearly all, but there are one or two who don't like Shigeyfa and
stand with us; and there's Isa Ulm, who would also like to be omda,
but he has too many cattle and nobody wants him except those in
"They are of one voice with the Ariya, because the two houses
share descent from one mother."
"I thought Hurgas and Shigeyfa were really friendly. I've seen the
way they feast each other, and the camaraderie in their talk."
"That's just a sign of the hostility between them. Hurgas slaugh-
ters rams for Shigeyfa because he fears him. Then Shigeyfa whom
he hates comes and camps beside him. What do they do? Sit and
glour at each other? What else can Hurgas do but laugh with
Shigeyfa?"
"So it's only Dar Abu Timani that are faithful to Hurgas?"
"Sometimes even brothers fall out."
Five days after having Hurgas and his band returned to
set off,
camp, driving before them 300 black and white Fellata sheep. Shey-
bun said, "Look, the pen is mightier than the spear! In spring they
spent three weeks after giraffe and got nothing. Now they spend
three days after Fellata with a tax register and bring back 300 sheep
to camp!" Hurgas, exhausted after his days of privation in the forest,
rested a while and sent his son to deliver the sheep to the Nazir.
It was now time for the northward migration. For three weeks
the camp moved slowly towards the region where the cattle graze dur-
ing the rains. After the searing heat and the black cracked clay of
the summer lands, the Arabs breath freshness again, the cattle leave
their imprints in sand, and everywhere the greenest of green shoots
carpet the forest. It is a season of quickly built camps and blue smoke
in an atmosphere at last clear of dust. Politics are forgotten in the
long caravan; the Arab revels in abundance of milk and dreams of
full granaries a few months ahead. But in the rains, at the end of
the migration, he is near the market town which is also the seat
of the Nazir's court and the administrative centre of the tribe. The
318
The Omda
season for politics is the rains, when people camp together in the
greatest numbers. It is the season of intrigues, and likewise of peace-
making.
On the road north throughout this fragrant spring, Hurgas gave
rein to fiery talk. He spoke bitterly, as if he knew that someone
would attack him.
This is the age of the government, and that means the age of com-
plaints. If a man has an office, everyone else wants to get it. In the old
days they might get it by the spear, but nowadays they get it by lodging
complaints with the government. And the big man has many complaints
laid against him. You sit and laugh with Arabs, and when your back is
his life defending his omdaship, and he forgets us; he is even hard to
his own children. But he is astute. If he were not politically astute, he
would have lost the omdaship long ago. If you see him sitting with the
Nazir, he is not the same man. He is humble before him, and his speech
is soft and kindly. And the Nazir knows him for his generosity, which is
famed throughout the tribe, and hears nothing of the rigour with which
he rules his camp and his children. I have my quarrel with Hurgas. I
have worked for him, and slaughtered many rams in his name, but he
has offered me neither wealth nor kind words. I do not visit him. But I
would have none other as omda. Some say a man becomes omda for the
renown it brings him. No. A man accepts omdaship for the ascendency
it gives his hneage. To have the omdaship in Awlad Salamy is worth
much. Awlad Salamy are of one voice. Only that Ndalo makes it hard for
us. If Dar Abu Timani were all behind us, it would be well.
I had thought that Dar Abu Timani would be united against the
hostility of the Ariya.
"No, between us Awlad Salamy and the Terakana there has been
319
Ian Cunnison
blood for six years now. Dar Hantor stand with the Terakana. Then
Awlad Mumin have long quarrelled with us over the matter of garden
land, and Beni Helba stand with them. We Awlad Salamy stand
alone."
It was Sheybun who later told me the story of the feud. His nature
allowed him to look objectively tragedy in the lineage, and his
at this
— —
zaghna the Terakana among them but he's also the head of
Awlad Salamy. He has heard through his brother-in-law, Daud, that
there is great hatred of him among the leaders of the Terakana and
he may fear to meet them on that account. But it is we Awlad
Salamy who have to make amends, because we are the guilty ones
in this matter."
Hurgas, then, was beset on all sides. He had most of what he
valued in life. His ambition now was to retain what he held. He
saw the attacks upon his position in the past; he looked towards
the omdas saw how they came and went.
of other lineages and
The office of omdaship was for all lines had
essentially insecure,
equal right to it. To keep his omdaship, he had to fight that poverty
which would render him unable to be generous. He realised the truth
320
The Omda
of the Nazir's words which reached him: that he owed his omdaship
to the cattle of old Merida, long dead. In order to be generous to
his more distant enemies, he was hard and close towards his own
kinsmen, who, he judged, would count blood important above all
a fact which aggravated and brought into the open the tensions in
camp arising from his despotism. Usually he had four wives, and if
one should die, or if he should divorce one, he would soon take
another. Of the three he had at this time, two were with him in
camp. One of these was barren, the daughter of a testy but impor-
tant sheikh of Awlad Salamy. The other had borne seven children
in the course of fifteen years; she was a close cousin, and had two
impoverished brothers in the omda's camp. The prolific wife had
not the fine mats and the abundance of scents that the barren wife,
the favourite, had. The latter used her position to order the children
of the other to do errands, and she denied them food, drink, and
help. And if the men in camp complained about her behaviour, as
they did in this spring migration, it would come to the ears of
Hurgas who would lay about him with the acid of his talk: he was
the omda, the woman was his wife, his household was his own
affair, the camp was his, the lineage was his; others drank his tea,
ate from his gun, drank his milk, married with his cattle; he would
set up his own camp without them and where would they be then?
He silenced the camp and mounted his horse and rode off in a billow
of anger and purpose.
321
Ian Cunnison
before. There were few guests, and little celebration was expected
apart from an evening of tea-drinking and feasting around the
campfire. Hurgas was mellowed. A minstrel had heard of the wedding
and rode up on a donkey with his one-string fiddle. The men sat
around the fire and as the minstrel opened with his songs of love,
the women came silently from the tents and sat at a respectful dis-
tance out of the firelight. Hurgas half closed his eyes and drank in
the surroundings. He was a lover himself.
But then the theme of the minstrel changed, his song became livelier
and firmer, as he sang the praises of the men of Ganis dead and
gone. Hurgas woke up, and as the wont is, took a piastre and
dropped it into the hole in the minstrel's fiddle. Others followed
suit as their own relatives were mentioned. The minstrel brought
his song up to date and praised famous men of today:
The women were stirred, and shrilled at the mention of the brave
exploits of their kinsmen. And then the praise was of Hurgas himself.
He had led the elephant on and the youths had speared it. His
cattle were numbered like the blades of grass. The renown of his
generosity was the fireside talk of distant tribes. His horse was black
as the night. His women had the grace of horses. Hurgas could con-
tain himself no longer. He seized his gun and shot into the air twice,
three, four times. The sound brought people from neighbouring
camps who came along and heard the praises of their Omda Hurgas.
The half-moon had set by the time the people dispersed, Hammoda
went to his bride, and the minstrel lay content with a fiddleful of
coins.
That evening was the calm before the storm. The first attack upon
322
The Omda
Hurgas took place shortly afterwards. The youth who had been
accused of running away from the fight was the son of Fideily,
sheikh of the Terakana, and now he brought a suit against his rival
who, he claimed, was still slandering him and causing the girls to
sing songs of mockery. The court was aware of the circumstance of
vengeance between the two families, and gaoled the Salamy youth.
But then Fideily addressed the court in castigation of Hurgas, and
the words were not lost on the Nazir who presided.
"He is no omda, he is an irresponsible person, he has urged the
Salamy youth to rekindle the fire of vengeance. Six years have passed
since they broke the bond of blood money and not once has Hurgas
tried to come to terms. How can we live like this? We Terakana
want him no longer. If he is not removed from the omdaship, we
shall go and live with another omda. We will no longer be
Mezaghna."
Hurgas was absent from court that day. There was no doubt he
was stubborn in his enmities. More than once his people had been
set to persuade him that he should approach Fideily in humility, for
the Terakana were their kinsmen. But Hurgas would remember this
or that event which prevented his doing so with honour. As for
Boya, his and Hurgas' men were in constant intercourse, only the
two leaders held no converse. Here again it was for Hurgas to make
the first steps since the onus of the breach was upon him. And
while they were divided, they could not together approach the Tera-
kana, But Fideily had never before threatened to break brotherhood
with the Mezaghna completely and move elsewhere. This created a
new situation. If they now left, the stigma would be on Hurgas,
Hardly was this case over, than the Ariya launched their offensive.
They fought in court, and the battle which raged between Hurgas
and Shigeyfa throughout the months of the rains was the talk of
campfire and market place. Fellow tribesmen viewed with distress
this open split between kinsmen. As court case after court case
323
Ian Cunnison
324
The Omda
stayed to watch the progress of the cases and keep his company in
the afternoons, he felt his debt increasing. The more I questioned
him on Shigeyfa's motives, the more he regarded me as showing a
sympathetic interest in his case such as he had had from no one
before. He sought out my
company, hunted with me, spoke of his
father, his eariier wealth, of horses, giraffe, and elephant. Through
all this period he continued to administer the affairs of his own
people, hearing their disputes, and ordering from a distance the
herding of his precious cattle. But he never uttered a word of self-
pity.
But manhness is in the man himself. A man tries his best. If he works
hard and gains wealth, that is God. If he works hard and gains not wealth,
that too is God. To complain of your life is bad, because God shares
things among men. A man goes hunting and kills giraffe. He returns and
says, "God has given us." He goes hunting and kills no giraffe. He returns
and says, "God has not given us." He is no less of a man. But if he gives
up praying, or if he says God has been mean to him, the man who speaks
there is no man; he is a woman.
325
Ian Gunnison
was made, and those whom Hurgas had visited were brought to
court. The judges questioned them closely about the number of sheep
which they held formerly, and the number now remaining within
their thorn fences. Two days of argumentative examination con-
vinced the judges of only one thing: that the Fellata were unable
to count their sheep and were therefore unreliable witnesses in the
charge under consideration. Thus after many weeks, the judges de-
clared Hurgas not guilty, and he was at last able to return to his
cattle.
When Hurgas reached his camp in the sandy scrub of the far
north of the country, where the cattle were driven during the latter
part of the rains, thewelcome those in camp gave him was heartfelt.
The women came in a line to meet him; young men came up to
him and shook his hand with a relieved, "God be praised"; and
Merida's only surviving brother broke into tears as he embraced
him. Hurgas was still omda, and Awlad Ganis retained the office it had
had since Merida took it.
Hurgas said little about the course of the case itself, but it was
clear he regarded it as a great victory. In subsequent days he ex-
pended vast amounts of tea to entertain the many guests who came
to offer their congratulations. It was of little interest to these visitors
whether or not Hurgas had taken sheep. He had defeated the mal-
evolent Shigeyfa and God had favoured him. A victory such as this
attracted to his tree men of the Mezaghna who had long remained
aloof; and inevitably the question of the unity of Dar Abu Timani
was broached. When word finally issued forth from the town that
a new court presidency was to be created, and that the Nazir might
favour someone from the numerous Dar Abu Timani if they should
show a united front, Hurgas reviewed his political fortunes.
His brother-in-law Daud was one of the Terakana, and through-
out the feud he had paid short visits, with his wife, to Hurgas' camp
and had acted as intermediary between Hurgas and Fideily on those
occasions when communication between them had been absolutely
necessary. He also kept both of them informed of the attitudes of
the opposite camps. Now, in the market, Hurgas met Daud, who
assured him that at this time the Terakana might receive his terms
with some chance of favour. Hitherto Hurgas' camp-mates had vainly
urged him to restore the unity of Dar Abu Timani. Now, interested
326
The Omda
after a few years. Hurgas slowly, but finally with conviction, saw
the sense in their insistence, and the possibility of success, and realized
that other benefits might now follow a rapprochement. Having
once resolved to make the attempt, he took immediate action.
His first step was to make peace with Boya. Boya was encamped
for the rains only a few hundred yards from Hurgas, and the youths
and girls of both camps played together daily. Hurgas sent word in
advance that he would come. When the morning arrived, he went,
carefully robed, on horseback with a number of well-wishers in his
train as well as all the men of Ganis. He bade those who could to
go mounted to Boya.
Boya received us in a friendly manner, and over tea, and then a
meal, we had casual talk of this and that. Then one of the well-wishers
who had come with us opened the proceedings, by saying that Hurgas
had come to Boya in order to ask for his brotherhood again, that
Hurgas by this act showed that he wanted it, and that he knew it
was for him to make the first approach. Others, and finally Hurgas
himself, spoke in similar terms. He dwelt on the friendship which
was traditional between their closely related lines, and said it was his
fault that the estrangement had taken place. Would Boya now hear
his words and accept full brotherhood once more? For Boya, whose
continued loyalty to Hurgas in spite of personal differences was
widely applauded, this was an occasion of deep satisfaction. Wealthier
than Hurgas, as clever in speech, as industrious, as brave, and in his
personal relations more human, this son of a former omda felt
keenly the drama of the situation. He opened his speech and guided
it through the ideas of brotherhood, manliness, and generosity to
reach the expected conclusion: the omda had shown all of these
virtues and he was ready to accept the omda's supplication. He then
called on the holy man to declaim the opening chapter of the Koran,
while all stood and opened their hands before God. At once the
327
Ian Cunnison
newly cemented alliance resolved upon action to win back the friend-
ship of the Terakana.
And what a triumph for Hurgas! Hurgas, the proud omda, had
gone to his younger kinsman, and in the presence of other kinsmen
and neutral friends, had laid aside his pride, had said he was guilty
and had erred, had come in supplication. He had acted indeed in
the traditional manner, and for a purpose which he had achieved;
but it must have been difficult indeed for Hurgas to accept even for
a moment a role of humility among his kinsmen.
of the gardens from which the bulrush millet had been taken.
Hurgas had arranged through Daud to meet the Terakana. On the
day set aside for the occasion, the Dar Hantor allies of the Terakana
prepared the shade of a large thicket for the meeting. Hurgas, camped
on a low sandy ridge, was the focus of men of the Awlad Salamy
who came with their white smocks and spears, earnest in demeanour.
Hurgas rode his black horse. His elders gathered around him, each
voicing his loud opinion. The day's parley would not only concern
the Terakana feud; the Mezaghna would be present in numbers and
it was likely that all the outstanding issues among them would be
raised. About one thing however they were unanimous: there would
be no alliance with Shigeyfa's Ariya.
Dar Hantor had worked hard to clear the thicket, and Awlad
Salamy found themselves a place to rest. In other parts of the small
wood were seated Mezaghna in their various groups: Ariya and Dar
Bakheyt together; Awlad Mumin and Beni Helba, Terakana and
Dar Hantor. The latter had slaughtered two bulls to provide meat
for every man of the multitude present, while their women provided
many dishes of grain. was mid-afternoon before Hurgas suggested
It
328
The Omda
took over the discussion and exhortation. Since God created the
Arabs, they had killed their brothers and come to terms again, they
said. The omda had behaved badly, but he had now come to beseech
329
Ian Cunnison
peace; would be best to grant it, and if the omda should do ill, he
it
is when he comes upon the first splashy green wadi after his weeks
of trekking through dusty and burnt bushland. The cattle leap at the
sight and plunge like mad beasts belly-deep in the thick juicy grasses.
Hurgas rode with them. He came out of the year's season of
political manoeuvre with marked success. But the troubles which be-
set him would recur year after year. After the settlement of the
331
¥^r
Muchona (upper
Fellow Ritualists.
right) with
%'^ ^^
11
Muchona
the Hornet,
Interpreter
of Religion
Victor W. Turner
1 first became aware of Muchona on a dusty motor road of packed
red clay towards the end of a Northern Rhodesian dry season. In one
direction the road ran to harsh, colourful Angola, in the other to the
distant copperbelt town of Chingola. Along it passed an occasional
lorry, mail van, or missionary's car, and many tough
black feet, most
of them going east to European mines and towns. But on this day the
road was almost empty in the hot late afternoon. Kasonda, my African
assistant, and I had walked a few miles from our home village to a
cluster of villages where we had collected census material. Now we
were returning, gay with the millet beer and gossip that usually
rounded off our more serious sessions. To make the miles go faster
we played a game popular among Ndembu
children: each of us tried
to be the first budding kapembi shrubs with their frail red
to spot the
presentiment of the rains. Even Ndembu find it hard to distinguish
this species from three others. Kasonda, of course, soon had a higher
total than myself, for like all Ndembu he prided himself on his
knowledge of the mystical and practical properties of the herbs and
trees which flourish in this area.
We were so absorbed in our rivalry that we failed to notice a swart
elderly gnome who was padding perkily beside us. He was evidently
keenly observant, for he joined in our sport and soon took the lead.
Kasonda told me he was a chimbuki, a "doctor," in several kinds of
curative ritual, and "knew many medicines." I pricked up my ears,
for ritual symbolism was my major interest. Each plant used in
ritual stood for some aspect of Ndembu social life or belief. In my
opinion a full interpretation of these symbols would lead me to the
heart of Ndembu wisdom. Consequently I seized the opportunity of
asking the man, whose name was Muchona, the meaning of some
little
334
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
Please bring me quickly to animals." After that he roars, like a lion. Then
he puts his strung bow over the mutuntamu branches, and breaks them
with the strength of the bow-string. He throws the broken twigs on the
ground. They will later be mixed with other medicines for washing his
body and his hunting gear. lust as the mutimtamu
"sits on" the tree of
blood, so must the spirit oncome and and
sitblind it, in order
the animal
that the hunter may kill it easily. He shoots Ntambu to show the spirit
that he has found him out. He now wants Ntambu to help him, and not to
trouble him any longer.
Now I had heard many other Ndembu interpret plant symbols be-
fore, but never so clearly and cogently as this. I was to become
335
Victor W. Turner
336
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
left their brothers' villages to live with him. But poor Muchona had
had split, and Muchona and his mother went with the dissident
group. His mother was then transferred as a debt slave to yet another
group where she was married to one of her owners. It seems that
when he was a young man Muchona bought his freedom, and lived
in the villages of several successive wives. However, he was never
able to achieve a high secular status, nor an established position in
a single village. These vicissitudes were both his curse and the source
of his great ability to compare and generalize. Living as he had done
on the margins of many structured groups and not being a member
of any particular group, his loyalties could not be narrowly partisan,
and his sympathies were broader than those of the majority of his
fellow tribesmen. His experience had been richer and more varied than
that of most Ndembu, though all Ndembu, being hunters and semi-
nomadic cassava cultivators, travel considerable distances during their
lives.
and Kapaku was one of them. It turned out that Muchona and Wind-
son were neighbours, the one inhabiting a big house of sun-dried
"Kimberley" brick, the other his pole-and-daub hut. Thus began an
association that was to last eight months. Eight months of exhilarating,
quickfire talk among the three of us, mainly about Ndembu ritual.
337
Victor W. Turner
Mudyi has white gum [latex]. We say that this is mother's milk. So
mudyi is the tree of motherhood. Its leaves represent children. So when
the women seize mudyi leaves and thrust them into the hut where the
novice's bridegroom is sleeping, this means that she should bear many
live and lovely children in the marriage. But the mudyi is also the
matrilineage. For our ancestress lay under the mudyi tree during her
puberty ritual; and women danced round her daughter, our grandmother,
when she lay in that place of death or suffering. And our mother who
bore us lay there. And the mudyi also means learning. It is like going to
school today, for it stands for the instruction the girl receives in her
seclusion hut.
to him what other Ndembu specialists had said about its symbols
338
Muchona the Hornet, interpreter of Religion
His accounts and glosses were always fuller and internally more
consistent than theirs. He had
evidently pondered long on the mysteries
comparing the explanations given him by
of his profession, critically
those who had instructed him in the various cults in which he was
an adept.
Windson's comments were usually to the point. His father had been
a famous councillor in the court of a former sub-chief, and from
him from the Mission School, Windson had acquired a
as well as
flair Although he was a product of
for elucidating knotty questions.
modern change he had never lost his deep respect for the now
passing traditional order, and its "reverend signors." At the time
I knew him, he was, like other converts to Christianity, beginning
to look askance at the privileged lives of certain of the white mis-
sionaries, and to wonder whether the religion of his loved father
was really such a farrago of deviltries as he had been led to believe.
His major value for me lay in his ability to slow down Muchona's
word-spates into digestible sentences and intelligible texts. For, as I
his knock would now and then be ragged; he would totter into the
hut, his greeting an octave higher than usual, and slump on to a
He would then boast that his real name was "Chief Hornet"
stool.
{Mwanta lyanvu). This was his weak pun on the title of the mighty
Lunda potentate in the Belgian Congo from whose realm the Ndembu
had come some centuries previously. This title, Mwantiyanvwa, was
the most important name the Ndembu knew. lyanvu was Muchona's
"beer-drinking name" {ijina dakunwa walwa), and when he used it he
had come from drinking warm honey-beer, a heady brew bobbing
with bees. "Like a hornet or a bee," he would say, "I stay near the
beer calabashes, talking loudly, and stinging those who annoy me."
Hereupon Windson would fix him with a stern look, relieved by a
339
Victor W. Turner
the attacks of those given to the use of black art against their kin
and neighbours. There is an implicit threat in the very knowledge the
Kaneng'a doctors possess about the ways of witches and sorcerers.
Muchona himself practised a modified form of Kaneng'a, exempt
from most of its terrifying elements. Thus, while most Kaneng'a
340
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
342
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
to mollify the spirit gives the patient the right of entry into a tribal
cult. Affliction may thus well be a blessing in disguise. Thirdly,
Muchona's attachment to his mother appears obliquely in that dead
male relatives on her side plagued him into the acquirement of
expertise in a number of rituals from which women are debarred,
such as hunting cults.
about especially
his past, where the delicate question of his slave
origin was concerned, but I learned much about it indirectly from his
long spoken reveries on rituals in which he had taken part. Now and
then, to be sure, he would suddenly take Windson and myself into
his confidenceabout some matter that was currently troubling him.
But in the main, the pattern of his personality, like that of a poet
in his poems, expressed itself in his accounts and interpretations
of ritual, and in the nuances of gesture, expression, and phrase with
which he embellished them. In a sense, therefore, Muchona's ritual
Here the tree symbolizes the blood of birth or motherhood, and the
aim of the ritual is to placate an ancestress who is causing the patient's
maternal blood to drain away and not to coagulate around the "seed
of life" implanted by her husband. At the esoteric phase of Nkula,
a mukula tree is ceremonially cut down and then carved into figurines
of infants which are medicated with red substances, and put into small
round calabashes, representing wombs. These amulets are then given
to the patients to carry on strings adorned with red feathers until
they bear "live and lovely children."
Muchona was inducted into the Nkula cult when he was about
7 years of age. His mother was principal patient. At her request
343
Victor W. Turner
has her first menstruation she has grown up a little. When she has
her first child she has grown up still more. Both of these occasions
have to do with blood. After a boy is circumcised he sits, with others
who have been cut, on a long log of mukula, the tree of blood.
He has also grown up a little."
Another curious feature of Nkula should be noted here, for it
may well have influenced Muchona's development as a doctor. In
the role of Chaka a man is regarded as a midwife, in Muchona's
case his own mother's, in contradiction to the strict Ndembu norm
that only a woman may deliver another woman in childbirth. Since
many Yaka (plural of Chaka) become Nkula specialists, and since
such specialists are thought to cure reproductive disorders, the im-
344
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
may have found its first channel in this early indoctrination in his
mother's Nkula.
Without being markedly effeminate in his deportment Muchona
always seemed more at ease among women than men. In my mind's
eye I can still see him pleasantly gossiping with Kasonda's sister,
both of them clucking their tongues at the misdeeds of their little
world. This gay, full-blown dame had scant time for her scheming
brother, whom she often scolded for his meanness to her. Muchona,
to his credit, or perhaps through timidity, never to my knowledge
said a word out of place about Kasonda, who himself had no
hesitation in slandering Muchona behind his back. I fancy that
Kasonda's sister more than once, in her imperious way, defended
the tiny doctor against Kasonda's insinuations. Certainly, she called
him in to perform the Kayong'ii ritual for her, a ritual I shall shortly
345
Victor W. Turner
become diviners. They may, however, carry out minor ritual tasks
during subsequent performances of Kayong'u, if they have been cured.
Muchona's mother had been, in this sense, a Kayong'u doctor.
Muchona's initiation into Kayong'u, and the events leading up to
it, stood out in his memory with harsh clarity. He was in his early
30's at the time, and was living with his recently acquired wife,
Masonde, among his step-father's kin on the Angolan border. Ap-
parently it was just about this time that he emancipated himself
from slavery. One pictures him then as a minuscule fellow with a
needle-sharp and pin-bright mind. He must have already developed a
streak of buffoonery to curry the favour of the bigger and better-
born. He must already have been something of an intellectual prodigy
for his society, half derided and half grudgingly admired and —
entirely unable to belong.
He told me had intermittent attacks of
that for a long time he
"being caught by a very heavy sickness in my body; I found it hard
to breathe, it was like being pricked by needles in my chest, and
sometimes my chest felt as though it had been blown up by a
bicycle pump." A diviner was consulted, and he diagnosed that
Muchona was suffering from the sickness of Kayong'u. Furthermore,
not one but three spirits had come out of the grave to catch him,
two full brothers of his mother, and his father. He himself had dreamt
of one of his uncles and of his father while he was ill. Both these
spirits, he said, were urging him to become a diviner, for they had
like Nkula and the hunting cults is a "red" ritual, full of red
symbolism standing for killing, punishment, witchcraft, and in
general, for violent breach in the natural and social orders. Muchona,
in a sudden spasm, leaps on the cock and bites through its neck, sever-
ing the head. Blood spouts out and Muchona "beats the bloody head
on his heart to quieten his mind." Then the big doctor orders a goat to
be beheaded. Its blood pours on the ground and Muchona laps
it up where it puddles. The cock's head is placed on a pole
called muneng'a, newly cut from the same species of tree from which
ancestor shrines of quickset saplings are made, symbolizing ritual
death and contact with spirits. The sun now rises and the doctor takes
a hoe, a cupful of goat's blood, the hearts of the cock and goat, various
"sharp" objects, and leads a procession of the doctors from the
village into the bush. They go to a fork in the path and keep straight
on instead of following either path. They find the principal medicine
tree of the ritual, a kapwipu tree, which stands in this context for
initial misfortune followed by success —a meaning it also possesses
in hunting cults. They pray to the afflicting spirits, then heap up a
mound of earth at the foot of the tree roughly in the shape of
a crocodile, with legs and a tail. Next they conceal the various small
objects, such as a knife, a razor, needles, a bracelet, and a string
of beads under the mound, at the head, tail, and sides. Before
concealing the razor and needle, the big doctor pricks the cock's and
goat's hearts with them. Then they bring the drums and beat out
the Kayong'u rhythm.
Now Muchona is led out of the village to the crocodile image
and seated on its "neck" facing forward. The doctors question him
on why he has come to Kayong'u and he gives the stereotyped re-
sponses regarded as appropriate. Next he has to divine where each of
the objects has been concealed. He told me jubilantly that he was com-
pletely successful in this, that he seemed to know just where everything
was hidden. Each time he answered correctly, he said, the women
who had accompanied him to the sacred site trilled their praises
aloud, "making me very happy." Suddenly, two doctors dart off to
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Victor W. Turner
them. The Kayongu then endows its possessor with especial alertness,
with the power of the first light that follows the secretive night,
full of witches and mysteries.
Muchona continued: "It is the power of the Kayongu spirit
that makes a man kill the cock with his teeth. It makes a person a
little mad. When he is shuddering he feels as though he were drunk
or epileptic. He feels as though he were struck suddenly in his liver,
as if by lightning, as if he were being beaten by a hoe-handle, as if
348
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
for the Greek soothsayer was smitten with blindness before he at-
tained insight.
Muchona said of the fork in the path:
When people come to a fork, they must then choose exactly where
they want to go. It is the place of choice. Usually they have foreknowl-
edge of the way to go. Everyone has such knowledge. But the diviner
goes between the paths to a secret place. He knows more than other
He has secret knowledge.
people.
When the doctor pricks the hearts with needle and razor, he is represent-
ing the patient's pain. The
must not feel it again because it has
patient
already been done in the hearts of the cock and goat. But if he becomes a
diviner, he will again feel that pricking inside him while he is divining.—
It is the thing which tells him to look at the tuponya [the symbolic
I have tried to sketch some of the factors that may have been re-
sponsible for making Muchona a "marginal man" in Ndembu
society. His slave origin, his unimpressive appearance, his frail
health, the fact that as a child he trailed after his mother through
several villages, even his mental brilliance, combined to make him in
some measure abnormal. His special abilities could not overcome the
handicaps of his social marginality and psychical maladjustment.
349
Victor W. Turner
350
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
women, was dishked by many men. For example, when his junior
wife's baby died, a child who he admitted to everyone was none of
his, men from a number of villages took pleasure in telling me that
touch with the vendor, not given him the money for the suit. After
351
Victor W. Turner
customs together. Can't you hear the people talking angrily in the
352
—
this, for he was a gentle, earnest, and not unkindly man, but a hint
in the proper quarters that Muchona was not to be bothered again
had a wonderfully sobering effect.
Windson had become uncommonly fond of Muchona in the course
of our discussions. At first, he had tended to display a certain coolness,
bordering on disparagement, towards Muchona's "paganism." But
in a very short time he grew to admire the little man's intellect
and his appreciation of the complexity of existence. Later still, Wind-
son came to take positive pride in the richness and sonority of the
symbolic system Muchona expounded to us. And he would chuckle
affectionately at Muchona's occasional flashes of dry wit.
One of those flashes came after we had spent a long session on a
painful subject, the ihamba. In its material expression, an upper
front incisor tooth of a dead hunter imbeds itself in the body of a
personwho has incurred the hunter's displeasure. The tooth is re-
moved by means of a ritual procedure which includes confession by
the patient and by his village relatives of their mutual grudges, and
the expression of penitence by the living for having forgotten the
hunter-ancestor in their hearts. Only after "the grudge has been
found" will the tooth cease "to bite" its victim and allow itself to be
caught in one or other of a number of cupping horns affixed to the
patient's back by the doctor's principal assistant. After about a couple
of hours, Muchona became very restive on his hardwood stool. Full
of the zest of enquiry had become thoughtless and had forgotten to
I
353
—
Victor W. Turner
been taken while still a boy by Luba slave-raiders many years ago.
Later his mother had learned that her brother had become a famous
hunter and a wealthy man in Lubaland, having purchased his free-
dom there. But she never saw him again. Muchona believed that he
held an undying grudge against his maternal kin, perhaps because
he had not been captured but had been sold into slavery by them
who could tell so long afterwards? Muchona was being afflicted on
account of this grudge. Since no one could now find out what it was,
he felt he could never be cured of the biting, creeping ihamba.
May we not see in this a projection of Muchona's own state? Did he
bear an unconscious grudge against his mother — displaced on to her
unknown brother —
for saddling her son with slavery? Did he not
have the fantasy that even a slave could become great, as his uncle
was reputed to have done? At any rate, in Muchona's phrasing of
ihamba beliefs, he seemed to feel that he was in the grip of some
irremediable affliction, that indeed his sickness was himself. Although
suffering made him a doctor in many curative cults, he never became
an ihamba specialist. One fancies that this one incurable trouble
represented for him the deathless gnawing of his chagrin at being of
slave origin and at not really "belonging" in any snug little village
community.
No man can do justice to another's human total. I have suggested
that in Muchona was a deep well of unconscious bitterness and
there
a desire for revenge against a society that had no secular place for
him compatible with his abilities. But the small man had a big
mind. He was only too sensitively aware of the undertone of derision
and resentment with which many men regarded him. Yet, although
he was paramountly intellectual rather than warm-hearted, he tried
on the whole to speak and act civilly and charitably; and he treated
his patients with compassion. In our long collaboration he achieved
an amazing degree of objectivity about the sacred values of his own
society. Whether his outlook was radically altered by our triune
discussions I was never to know. All I do know is that shortly before
I left his land, probably for ever, he came to see me, and we had
354
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
friend. What
grieved him was that he could no longer communicate
his ideas toanyone who would understand them. The philosophy
don would have to return to a world that could only make a "witch-
doctor" of him. Had not some kind of death occurred?
355
12
My "Boy," Muntu
Ethel M. Albert
Jrind a boy who bakes good bread, and the rest will be easy."
This was the most important advice given me as I left Belgium for
Africa in February, 1956. had reason to remember it more than
I
358
My "Boy," Muntu
and tan sweater were spotlessly clean though ragged. Only later did
I learn that his good clothes would be left at home until after he
had received from me the gift of two tailor-made khaki safari suits, at
four dollars apiece.
In my second-hand Ford pick-up truck, driven by Musazi, a chauf-
feur loaned me by I.R.S.A.C., I travelled about Urundi with Muntu
2 Ruanda and Urundi are administratively unified under the Belgian trusteeship
terms designating human beings; thus, Mututsi and Batutsi, Muhutu and Bahutu,
for the principal ethnic groups of Ruanda and Urundi. Sometimes the alternative
form, W^atutsi, appears in the literature, a reasonable transliteration of the soft
"b" sound in the languages of Ruanda and Urundi.
359
Ethel M. Albert
to choose a research site. There were 10,500 square miles and 2,000,-
000 people to choose from. Thousands of miles of winding moun-
tain roads led from the few urban centers into the most isolated back-
woods. Helpful Belgian administrators directed me to eastern
Urundi, where would find the relatively isolated Bahutu farmers
I
each stop. When I chose the house at Mutumba, he sent for the local
chief — a Mututsi who was about 6 feet 6 inches tall — and instructed
him to have ready for my return within a week the repairs needed in
the house and three new straw-and-reed houses for my staff. Apparently
I had only to tell Muntu what I wanted and leave the rest to him.
With the details of safaris taken care of by Muntu, I was free to look
around at the wonderful country and people. Urundi is a land of
hills, steeply planted with banana trees, beans, peas, maize, and
360
My "Boy," Muntu
copper bracelets and other traditional jewelry are now seen only
rarely. The long spear or staff persists, as necessary to sartorial ele-
gance in Urundi as the walking stick in England.
Muntu had a roving eye. Following it taught me local standards
of feminine beauty: a narrow Hamitic nose, good height, narrow
waist, and full hips. It taught me also to distinguish the sexes, not
always easy for the newcomer. Barundi women are on the average
only slightly shorter than the men, some of the Batutsi women cutting
fine figures at over 6 feet in height. Bahutu women, however, like
Bahutu men, are usually not much above 5 feet tall. Women also
wear robes knotted at the shoulder, sometimes with blouse and long,
full skirt barely visible underneath. Most of the women shave their
heads, and so do most of the men. Often, especially among Bahutu,
the women are as muscular as their husbands. Defined as the stronger
sex, the women carry the heavy burdens and do the farm work. Mas-
culine tasks are herding, building, and walking long distances —some-
times fifty miles in two days —on errands or as porters for Batutsi and
others in positions of authority.
Settling in at Mutumba was managed. The brick house was
swiftly
divided into three very large rooms, a kitchen, and a storeroom, all
freshly whitewashed. There were some tables and chairs; a bedstead
and spring, to which I added a borrowed mattress and pillow; a
few cabinets for my linens; and a screened locker for food, ample to
hold coffee and tea, flour and oil, jars of jam and cans of fruit, vege-
tables, fish, and cheese. From I.R.S.A.C., I had borrowed a water
filter, some kerosene pressure lamps, pots, pans, and dishes. Curtains
went up, hand-hemmed green and yellow cotton that would later
be worn as a robe by Muntu's wife. For an anthropological field site,
it was indecently luxurious.
was boiled to use with breakfast oatmeal. The bright spot in the
menu was each week's batch of fine white bread baked in a make-
shift outdoor oven.
Muntu was fanatical about cleanliness. He explained to all its
urgency in the dirty and disease-ridden back country. The green ce-
ment floors were scrubbed by his assistant every day. His mornings
and afternoons were filled with washing and ironing, expertly done.
Two pails of water steamed on the stove until I could stop work to
—
have my bath. Sunset was at 6:00 p.m. plus or minus five minutes ac-
cording to the season —
and the evening began as Muntu lighted the
kerosene pressure lamps. The table was laid and dinner served. Quiet
descended for a little while on the otherwise noisy and busy house-
hold. Some evenings there were interviews after dinner, but some-
times Muntu called me out to watch the dancers he had invited. A
small fire banana beer from
against the bitter cold, a 20-liter pot of
my storeroom for a dozen men dancing and singing, were entertain-
ment enough until bedtime. Muntu had more than made good his
claims of competence.
The second day at Mutumba, Muntu asked me for sixty francs
($1.20) to purchase a pot of banana beer. The first in an almost end-
less series, the pot of beer represented the solution to the problem
of how to explain to the Barundi my mission in Mutumba. Muntu
had it all figured out, or, clever Mututsi, figured it out on the
spot."For these people," he told me, "you are a mwamikazi, like the
wife of a king or rich Mututsi. You will have to invite them to visit,
and you must offer beer and tobacco, the way any mwamikazi in
Urundi does." Patiently and intelligently, he explained how princes
and aristocrats had in the past placed each of their several wives
on separate estates. Each mwamikazi governed the household, super-
vised the workers, kept food and drink in readiness for visitors.
She listened to the troubles of her husband's serfs and gave charity
to the needy. Above all, she received on her own account formal
requests for gifts from those who wished to become her personal
followers.
—
Although I was an iimuzungu an outsider, a white I could prove —
my good will by being generous with beer and cigarettes, blankets
and lengths of cotton cloth, and clothing for the otherwise naked
children. Wealthy by local standards and belonging to the same "race"
as the powerful administrators of Urundi, I entered the field with the
362.
My "Boy," Muntu
364
My "Boy," Muntu
of my research. We were nearly the same age and early formed the
habit of talking about local events, life in general, his youthful experi-
ences or the way things were in my country.
Occasionally, of course, Muntu gave me cause for complaint. His
mania for cleanliness did not always reach as far as the kitchen.
Worse yet, on his own initiative, he undertook to induct a half-
365
Ethel M. Albert
366
My "Boy," Muntu
the truck —
as he had repeatedly told Stanislas and Muntu he would
—
one day do killing the two passengers he had picked up on the
way.
It was clearly an error —an expensive and dangerous one— to re-
gard my partly Westernized Batutsi staff as my "employees." They
were my "children," my dependents. In spite of myself, I was changing
in actions and attitudes from democratic, egalitarian liberalism
in which impersonal employer-employee relationships make sense
— to the benevolent if burdensome despotism of the mwamikazi.
What Muntu had told me about the protective role of the head of a
household was repeated and elaborated by rich and poor, Mututsi and
Muhutu, male and female. The power of the council of elders to de-
cide the fate of inferiors, it was admitted, was relative to the justness
367
Ethel M. Albert
of the superior person. Musazi was a bad child, for though I had
the duty to be generous, to correct him when he was wrong, to try
to make peace between him and my other "children," he owed it
to me to be docile and obedient. The wickedness of men like Musazi,
it was admitted, was characteristic of Batutsi, who are said never
to forgive an injustice and to live only for the opportunity to harm
those they hate.
The key to the underlying causes of Musazi's unforgiving hostility
came from a detailed discussion of the relationships between su-
periors and inferiors. In each family household and at each princely
court, the superior chooses his umutoni, his favorite. To Musazi, to
Stanislas, and to my Barundi neighbors, Muntu, technically my "boy,"
was my umutoni, my favorite. People who wanted to visit me or to
ask a gift of —
me had first to offer a gift a pot of beer or a basket of
peas — to Muntu. He, in theory, would then recommend the peti-
tioner to my attention.
Almost nobody sought out Musazi with pots of beer, for he had no
influence to open the way for them to obtain a gift from me. Bitter
rivalry in the family and at the courts was the common state of affairs.
The umutoni was hated by the less successful aspirants to the privi-
leged and profitable position. Plotting for his downfall, by calumny
or poison, was standard practice. Musazi must have been bitterly
resentful of Muntu's advantage, good enough reason for Muntu to be
hysterically afraid of him. It cannot have mattered to Musazi, or to
Muntu, or to the neighbors, that to me, Muntu's distributing beer
and cigarettes was part of his job as my "boy," nor can it have mat-
tered that I had not known I had an umutoni.
It is difficult to know how consciouslyMuntu used my ignorance
of his culture to advance his own prestige, how hard he may have
jockeyed for position, not so much with me as with the neighbors.
Doubtless, he made promises of gifts he nervously hoped I would
make. After Musazi's departure, Muntu let his jealousy of Stanislas
show. After having spoken against Musazi, he began to speak against
Stanislas, though not too harshly. It was enough to make me think
he wanted to get rid of everyone on my staff but the laborers. Stanis-
las must have been most uncomfortable, with Muntu watching his
every step to report any slips. One of the duties of the favorite is to
369
Ethel M. Albert
me. I was willing to play the generous patroness. My wealth was his
wealth: the beer and cigarettes, the blankets and cotton cloth, were
given by me, but through his intercession. Property was a sore point
with Muntu. He was extremely sensitive about accusations of theft,
protesting his reputation for honesty more often than seemed neces-
sary. Since he seemed in fact scrupulously honest in almost every-
him over the definition of his generous
thing, I did not split hairs with
self-helpings to my
and sugar. Pilfering was considered virtually
tea
a perquisite of household service, and from the outset he had
been given permission to use my stores for himself whenever he
liked.
The one time in the fifteen months of our association Muntu lost
his temper with me was over an imagined accusation of theft. The
burst of rage came at a point where my own temper was not under
good control. Life in Mutumba was wearing, and I needed a rest.
We were both shouting. I stopped making my part of the noise
when I found my clenched fist within an inch of Muntu's jaw. The
shock of the spectacle of myself at the point of physical violence
370
My "Boy," Muntu
"Do you not also think always of money?" "Of course not!" I coun-
tered. "Then, mademoiselle, it is because, unlike us, you have enough."
Touche!
The subtleties of a combined materialism and sentimentalism were
gradually becoming clear to me. Muntu, not feeling well, started the
long walk to the dispensary. He was soon brought back to the
house, weak and feverish. Aspirin did not prevent his temperature
from rising from 103° to 104° in half an hour. It was a bad moment
for me. I had to assume it was malaria and gave him quinine. For-
tunately, his temperature dropped rapidly after he took the quinine,
and he stopped raving. Despite delirium, he was aware that I had sat
by him until he was sleeping soundly. To me, it seemed natural to take
care of him when he was ill. To him, it was a kindness about which
he spoke to everyone, not only immediately after his recovery but
repeatedly and until I left. I had proved that I was his umuvyeyi,
his benevolent and loving parent.
In our evening talks, Muntu told me a little about his history.
His father had not liked him, because he was not brave. He had
never claimed his inheritance, though now that his father was old,
he was thinking of going to ask for cows and lands. His parents had
been divorced, but, like other boys, he was educated by his father.
He had to learn how to care for cows, how to speak well, and how
to behave toward his betters and his inferiors. His father sometimes
sent him with the cows at night to use other men's pastures. This in-
fringement of grazing rights resulted almost inevitably in night fight-
ing with spears, swords, and knives. Muntu lacked spirit for the
fights. He showed me the scar on his ankle, a souvenir of the spear
his father hurled at him to teach him courage. He ran away to the
Catholic mission where he began to learn many things —how to write,
to wear Western work in the kitchen. One day, he saw one
clothes, to
boy at the school. "Even at the school,
of the fathers slap the face of a
they hit people for nothing." He ran away and found work as a
kitchen helper in a private home. There again, he was oppressed by
violence and repeatedly ran away from it.
Muntu's father figured in another source of unhappiness, his wife
and children. In a country where divorce is frequent, he had been
married to Maria for about twenty years. She was terribly jealous,
though her own record for fidelity was not very good. She asked me
on each return to Astrida whether Muntu had been carrying on with
371
—
Ethel M. Albert
women. I could tell her truthfully that if he had been, I had seen
nothing of it.
he would not have to be with Maria all the time. She, jealous and al-
ways without money, would not leave him but grew thin and unhappy
when he was away. Worst of all, she was not bringing up the children
properly. Muntu wept when he talked about his oldest daughter. At 15,
a stately and beautiful Mututsi girl and fully mature, she was pregnant,
but no man had paid for her. He had done so much for her, spending
all his money and selling his cows to pay for curing her tuberculosis.
372
My "Boy," Muntu
he was back home in Astrida. Except for this little one, Muntu was
a sad old man when he spoke of his children. Yet, usually, he kept
a cheerful face and straight posture. As he himself said, one did not
always have to think about these things, there were many other things
to keep busy with.
The last few weeks of our stay at Mutumba had been difficult. We
were all glad to spend December elsewhere. Stanislas went home to his
wife and children, with a few texts to work on before the Christmas
holiday. Muntu and I returned to Astrida. I left him on enforced va-
industry for the sake of freedom from his drinking sprees, his jeal-
ousies, and his bad temper. But I knew well before I left that I would
for a long time be glad that I had known Muntu.
My freedom from all care about household matters was not to be
dismissed lightly. The physical care Muntu took of me was not to be
underrated. He was unusually scrupulous about the rules of hygiene in
the bush. He did the cooking, the laundry, the ironing. When I was
careless about my appearance, he would scold. "Mademoiselle, your
hair is dirty; go and wash it." If the skirt I was wearing was shabby,
he would tell me that it did not look well, that I should put it aside.
373
Ethel M. Albert
He was a very fatherly man in his good moments, and these were
many.
Perhaps the most striking part of Muntu's service to me as an
anthropologist resulted from his skill in handling people. He reas-
sured the timid, persuaded the recalcitrant, chased away the merely
greedy or curious. He was able to procure for me nearly any variety
of informant and any kind of object for the museum of Urundi at
Kitega. If I wanted to interview an old man who remembered about
if I wanted to talk to several
military organization in the old days,
women wanted information from a curer
about child-rearing, even if I
or the neighborhood witch, Muntu knew how to get them for me.
For the museum, I wanted the old Arab trade beads I had seen on
a shrewd and slightly mad old lady who prized them as amulets
against eye disease. Muntu argued with her. "But look at your eyes!
They are sick. [They were.] Let me give you good medicine [my
boric acid solution] and some money, and you give me the beads."
The beads are now in the museum at Kitega. Bracelets, shell orna-
ments, wooden milk pots, blacksmith's tools, and baskets came the
same way. He was not always scrupulous, but he got me what I
wanted and needed. His methods and motives perhaps would not
stand up under close inspection, nor mine either. But moralizing
seems inconsistent with the hard facts we had to deal with in the
bush.
In Urundi, as a stranger, I learned what it is like to be pressured
by society into appropriate behavior for a social role I did not choose.
From Muntu, I learned what an old-fashioned, feudal personal re-
lationship is like. Despite the strains and difficulties of cross-cultural
374
My "Boy," Muntu
whites he had ever known, had avoided becoming ill in the bush.
He continued to believe that my curry powder and marigolds had
protected me and dysentery. I could offer no better
against malaria
explanation than his good care and my good luck.
One other matter on which Muntu and I did not agree was the
question of my weight. He, following the standards of his country,
liked women be plump. I, typical American, was most unhappy
to
over the ten pounds I had gained on my starchy diet. He was genuinely
upset when I spoke of putting off weight. People would think he had
not taken good care of me, his wife would reproach him for in-
gratitude toward me, my brothers back home would be angry. I
375
A Tiv Elder.
13
The Frightened
Witch
Laura Bohannan
JVlost of the Tiv, whom it has been my fortune to know well, I
have liked and respected. I could not like Shingir, and the respect
when sober, forced from me was greatly diminished
that his abilities
by his behavior when drunk. Nevertheless, of all the 600-odd people
in that particular lineage area, only one man, Anyam, was as able
as Shingir and yet more sober in his habits. Anyam, however, was
not wholly sane.
Furthermore, neither Shingir, nor the community of which he
was the head, is typical, since a general terror of witchcraft is as
rare in Tivland ^
as witches are common. The prevalence of witch-
craft in Shingir's land was provenTiv by the unusual preva-
to the
lence there of serious illness. The virulence of the witchcraft, and the
absence of any powerful men of good will, was proven to them by
the unusually great of deaths in the community. The in-
number
satiability of the witcheswas proven by the frequency of epidemics,
mainly of smallpox, and the hate of the witches for each other by
the fact that not even the most powerful escaped unscathed. Every-
one was suspicious. Almost everyone was under suspicion. Everyone
was afraid. Those who could went away. Those who stayed, drank
too much and fell to quarrelling when they tried to joke. Their fear
was obvious. All Tiv who saw it and who knew anything of the
situation — as neighbors, traders, or visiting relatives —expressed both
astonishment and a certain horror in speaking of it. It was also a
situation that because of its very rarity attracted my interest.
378
The Frightened Witch
you want to see all the old ceremonies, and find a lot of
"If
witches," Tiv from the southern and central lineages advised, "go
down there. They still do all the things our grandfathers did, for
they sit in the bush, away from everything that's happening." Close
friends sometimes added, "They're dirty. They have no respect and
no manners. You won't find anyone to talk to; they run away from
—
Europeans they don't know the mine recruiting stopped years ago.
You wouldn't like it there."
Certainly people did disappear at the approach of a European
and carriers. After a few days walking, I was immediately preju-
diced in Shingir's favor because his was the first homestead that
our arrival did not disrupt. Not only were Shingir's people there,
they gathered around to look and talk. Shingir himself suggested a
longer and when I remarked that I was looking for a spot
visit,
379
Laura Bohannan
structures of mud with tall thatched roofs, some on stilts for grain,
others low and half underground for the storage of yams and other
root crops. Every married woman normally has her own granaries,
located just behind her sleeping hut. These large round sleeping
huts form the next ring, and every married woman with a child is
entitled to one. Here she cooks. Here she and her children sleep.
The innermost circle is formed by the reception
one to each huts,
married man, Here he re-
set just in front of the huts of his wives.
ceives visitors, has ceremonies performed, and here too the whole
family gathers on rainy days.
All these rings are concentric about a large open yard, preferably
containing one or two large shade trees. In this yard men meet on
important occasions, dances are held, story tellers perform on moon-
lit evenings, children play, and women gossip. It is the heart of the
homestead. In this regard, Shingir's homestead was indeed an excep-
tion, for it faced in upon an evil-smelling corral occupied by Shingir's
fifteen head of cattle. The people. of his homestead had little space
for themselves.
But no one did anything about it. None of the men was building a
hut for hisnew wife, nor even repairing a tumble-down reception hut.
Everyone agreed that the homestead must be moved, but no one
could agree where to move it. It lay on the path up from the river,
between two slight hills, a site that compressed the homestead into
a rather narrow oval. It also lay too near the river. During the rains,
the lower part of it, where Shingir's huts lay, was flooded and all of
it became intolerably muddy. Shingir thought it would be quite
enough if the homestead were gradually shifted uphill. He would
startby building at the highest end, the rest would then follow suit
until allwere back in the same position relative to each other. Every-
one else in the homestead wished to move away altogether. Since
I wished to build just uphill from the rest of Shingir's homestead,
380
The Frightened Witch
like cloth which elders wear was decently in place, and if he leaned
firmly on his spear, then I went to greet him. On such occasions he
had come to tell me the news, to ask for medicine, to invite me to a
ceremony, or to discuss with me the ritual of a ceremony he had just
taken me to witness and the background of kinship and personalities
381
Laura Bohannan
both to and for Shingir. I had known several elders who knew more
about fetishes and their ritual, but none who could explain them as
well.
Shingir did not, however, always come in this manner or for these
purposes. As many as four or five days of the seven-day beer-brewing
week, he was more than a little drunk by mid-morning. Then, when
he stumbled slightly, when his toga swung open, when he held his
spear like a yoke across his shoulders, and when the flesh on his
face seemed to hang loose, I knew he would be overly familiar with
man, whose shrewdness often just failed of its mark. He was con-
sistently Shingir's ally, and occasionally, one of his greater embar-
rassments.
It was Shingir who had seen that Ahuma had been named tax
collector. Ahuma's first collection coincided with a series of com-
plaints that tax had been twice collected. A few people said that they
had two sets of receipts to show for it, and turned them over to
Shingir to keep until the District Officer came on tour. These receipts
were accidentally eaten by a goat, and Shingir told the complainants
that, in the absence of proof, it was no use even mentioning the
affair to the District Officer. The victims retired to sulk, while the
countryside laughed at their gullibility.
Ahuma had reason to be grateful to him for the whole affair. Conse-
quently, whenever Ahuma was discovered trying to conceal any-
thing from Shingir, Shingir complained loudly over his friend's in-
gratitude, even while he showed how very much afraid he was that
Ahuma might desert him for Any am. This fear of treachery underlay
Shingir's frequent rages at Ahuma, and his quite astounding willing-
ness to swallow insult and trickery once he could surely attribute both
to Ahuma's purely personal greed. I first saw this aspect of their
relationship in the developments that followed one of the most elabo-
rate series of rituals I had ever watched Shingir perform.
On this occasion the entire lineage in the person of its elders and
homestead heads had been summoned to Ahuma's for the perform-
ance of curative ceremonies for one of his married daughters. Shingir,
as the most influential elder with the command of the necessary
fetishes, performed the ceremony. As part of the ritual, the sacrifi-
cial chickens are eaten by all the elders of the lineage who have con-
383
Laura Bohannan
members who else has committed such an act, and finds that act
evil even when it was done by a clever man who made it seem well
done at the time."
Kusugh looked around to make sure no one was listening. He
never opposed Shingir publicly, though this was not the first time
he had "explained" his actions to me. "You have heard of Ahuma
and the tax money that was destroyed. He was a fool, and still has
no money. How do you think he paid his witness? And what made
Ahuma think of it? Shingir was once keeping some bank notes for
someone; they fell into the fire and were burnt. But it was not very
384
The Frightened Witch
much money, and it was the money of a man without influence, not
the government's."
Whatever Kusugh might have added was cut off by the noisy
approach of the pig, reluctantly dragging at the end of a grass rope
tugged by an excited youngster. It was soon followed by Shingir,
Ahuma, and most of the elders who had been at the beer drink. Only
Anyam was absent.
They paused in my courtyard. "This is the pig," Shingir accused,
"that we should have eaten. It was brought to Ahuma for us, and he
hid it. And where?" Shingir was angry now, and perturbed. "At
Anyam's." It was to Anyam, Shingir's rival and his enemy, that Ahuma
had apparently turned.
Ahuma recognized the issue. "Yes, I hid the pig, but I meant to
send it across the river where you wouldn't find it. Not to Anyam's."
He spoke with a rare sincerity that convinced us all. "Anyam met
my son on the path; he took the pig from him, forcibly, and said he'd
keep it for me. Where do I stand in this land? With you, Shingir?
Or with Anyam? Let the boy tell you himself."
As Ahuma's son told in detail of his meeting with Anyam,
Shingir grew slowly less tense. At the end of the story, he was re-
laxed enough to listen almost sympathetically to Ahuma's claim that
the sow was about to farrow and therefore should not be slaughtered.
"Very well," said Shingir, "we will wait and see. Meanwhile, let
the sow remain in the care of my senior wife, where we may all
watch it. If there is no litter, we will eat the sow. If there is a litter,
we will eat them all."
Ahuma shouted his claim to the litter, thereby conceding the sow,
and a noisy argument followed it to its new quarters. It was uproar
without acrimony. The two men were still allies, united against
Anyam. To maintain that alliance, each would forgive the other much.
Anyam was Shingir's opposite in every respect: a small-boned
man, tall and nervous, a clairvoyant, and in his youth a diviner.
Everyone, my servants included, described his manner and appear-
ance as that of Tiv in the time of their fathers. Anyam wore his
was scarred with the old-fashioned
hair in a short pigtail; his face
raised welts,and he wore earrings that looked like black shoe but-
tons. He was a soft-spoken man, one who rarely drank or jested. He
had command of even more fetishes than Shingir, and was considered
his only rival in witchcraft. People who spoke of Shingir as a witch
385
Laura Bohannan
tunes and behavior reveal the ability, power, talent, and force of
personahty which both are tsav and manifestations of tsav.
Is a person in any way outstanding, if only as a singer, dancer,
his knowledge of their ritual are his agents. In a very narrow sense,
these fetishes are magical forces, emblems of which may be
the
plants, stones, celts, corn cobs, almost anything. They are non-
human forces, established at creation by the Heavens (Aondo), which
also gave the Tiv the means —
ritual knowledge —
and the power
tsav — to manipulated these forces. Neither tsav nor these forces are
good or bad in themselves, though both are dangerous. They are
ability and instrument; the moral quality attaches to their use.
Most of these fetishes, the "small fetishes," affect individuals. The
great fetishes, on the other hand, affect the fertility, prosperity, and
health of entire social groups. While the small fetishes, the minor
magical forces, are maintained in full strength by sacrifices of chick-
ens or goats and the concomitant performance of the appropriate
ritual performed by a single man, the great fetishes demand the
sacrifice of a human life and the performance of ritual by the men
of tsav of the community concerned. Thus the world cannot prosper
without death, and even in their approved role the mbatsav cause
death. Thus, too, when a pleasant, wholly unimportant adult or a
child dies when there are no obvious incidents that might have
furnished motive for the death of that individual, then it is assumed
mon all the people of the land to drink sasswood that the evil may
die.^ Today, with this rather drastic social surgery effectively forbidden
387
Laura Bohannan
by the British government, people can only run away or sit out the
and master. This
witches' feud to the end, until only one remains alive
possibility one of the great cautionary myths of the Tiv, usually
is
because he was reserved and quiet where Shingir was boisterous and
apparently without self-restraint. On the other hand, Shingir could
talk well and freely. Anyam would not converse. He would answer
questions, and occasionally a direct question would set him off, pro-
pounding his views with near fanaticism. He was not a man with
whom one could be at ease.
One day when I had found him alone in his reception hut hafting
a dagger, nothing I could say drew more than a grunt from him.
Nevertheless, since everyone else was drinking beer, I sat on deter-
mined to get at least a rest from my walk before I left. Eventually
Anyam put aside his work and took up his pipe. I lit a cigarette and
had all but finished it, still in silence, before Anyam had finished
shredding tobacco and had tamped it into the pipe. As he scrabbled
through the ashes for a coal, he spoke, "Once you asked me the
names of all my ancestors and of all the children they begot. Where
are they all?"
"You have said," I spoke cautiously, not sure to what Anyam
was leading, "that your father's eldest brother's children left here,
long ago, and are sitting in the bush."
Anyam made no response.
"The rest," I said rather blankly, "are dead."
A glow of hate lit Anyam's eyes and smouldered in his voice.
"Dead. All of them. Even my mother's sons. Killed."
"Shingir?" I ventured.
"Shingir." In Anyam's mouth, the name was an expletive. "Shingir!
Yes, but it was I, I who killed them, so that I might become great in
the land. Like my father. While he lived, we had the greater power,
and Shingir was afraid. Now that he is dead, Shingir is trying to kill
me. Shingir has already killed those who came between him and what
388
The Frightened Witch
389
Laura Bohannan
a man of many quarrels, a noisy man, not one who discusses affairs
slowly and quietly and heals the land. He is spoiling the land; he has
killed my people, and I shall kill him. Help me in this, and you will
do well."
Both Shingir and Anyam were feared as witches. But Anyam was
also feared as one fears those who may suddenly become wholly
mad. It was, I think, this fear that kept followers from him. Certainly,
on the one occasion I saw Anyam publicly open in his enmity to
Shingir, it was Shingir that we all followed.
It was at one of the beer drinks Anyam so rarely attended.
When the second calabash started around, Shingir, mellow with beer,
reminded us all that the well-being of his land and his people was his
heart's only desire. He invariably did so, and everyone in earshot
invariably made the proper response, chorusing, "You speak well,
Shingir."
Before we could turn the conversation, Anyam's voice stopped us
all. "Your land spoiled, Shingir, and your people are dead. Where
is
culties. Many of the elders discussed their farms and their livestock
with Kusugh. But no one ever asked his opinion on those matters
that lay within the province of the elders, and Kusugh never volun-
teered any opinion on such matters. If anything of importance came
up in Shingir's absence, he always followed the absolutely correct pro-
cedure: sooth everyone just enough to keep them from blows until
the matter can be decided by the right person, Shingir.
I was never able to discover what Kusugh thought of Anyam. I
very soon realized, however, that Kusugh both hated and feared
Shingir, though at first I had few "facts" to support this impression:
a single remark by Kusugh's wife, that she had once run away from
Shingir's only to return when she discovered that Kusugh was "afraid
to settle elsewhere," and my own awareness of how much of what I
knew to Shingir's discredit was first learned from Kusugh.
It was Kusugh who had brought my full attention to Shingir's
391
Laura Bohannan
tunes, they were widely sung. After the death of Anyam's father,
when Shingir became powerful in the land, Agum came down with
smallpox and barely survived. From that time, Shingir was not men-
tioned in Agum's singing, "for the next time, Shingir will kill him."
Smallpox is one of the most blatant manifestations of potent witch-
craft. Public opinion concurred with Kusugh's interpretation of
Agum's illness.
It was Kusugh who mentioned in the same breath that Shingir com-
manded the great fetishes which demand life and that too many of
the children borne by the wives in the homestead had died. Uvia,
Shingir's brother's son, was the only survivor of the ten children his
mother had born. Infant mortality in Tivland is high. In Shingir's
homestead it was so high that it attracted the attention of the Tiv.
They considered it unnatural. Kusugh had even implied that Shin-
gir had taken far more lives than he could possibly need unless he
were involved in a flesh debt.
It is believed that witches sometimes share the flesh of their human
to the deaths needed to continue the feasting, any more than there
is ever an end to any of the chains of gift-giving and counterfeasting
392
The Frightened Witch
land undisputed."
Kusugh saw little hope for the land. He himself hoped to sur-
vive by doing as little as possible to attract envy while making him-
self necessary to those whom he feared. Most of the men in Shingir's
homestead were pursuing the same course.
Only among the women was I able to find anyone with a real
affection for Shingir. Some quality in his personality seemed to arouse
in them a peculiar mixture of pity and trust, spiced with a suggestion
of sexual attraction. Even Kusugh's wife did not dislike him. Those
of Shingir's fifteen wives who had been with him for more than ten
years were very fond of him. Although some of the younger ones
seemed to prefer his absence to his presence, they all stuck by him.
393
Laura Bohannan
In his turn, Shingir provided well for them; they had large farms,
good and comparatively many trade utensils. He was in-
clothes,
dulgent with them, demanding rather less than the normal respect a
Tiv wife shows her husband, not noticing if they drank too much, and
not suspicious of their trips to visit relatives.
Shingir's senior wife, Mfaga, fussed over his food and worried
about his health. Long after I had convinced Shingir that I could
not cure his ailments, Mfaga continued to ask me to treat him. "He
is ill. It is not because of his age that he can no longer beget children.
Give me medicine for him, medicine to heal him, not just medicine
for beer headaches." But I had only aspirin to give her.
"You cannot know Shingir," Mfaga once told me. "You have
never seen him when he was not ill and afraid at heart. To know
him, you should have known him long ago,when I bore him our
first child. Then the land was at peace. Anyam's father was alive,
and the land prospered. None then could hoe a farm so well as Shin-
gir,nor dance so well. None was so well liked, and none so admired.
Then, even then, Anyam, whose heart was black with envy of those
who had farms, and livestock, and wives, and children, and friends,
even then Anyam hated Shingir. We four who know him, we were
married to him then, before Anyam's father died." She stared into the
fortunate past.
"And when he died?"
"Then Anyam was free to do evil. He fed the evil within him on
palm of his hand, his mother's sons and his
the lives that lay in the
father's. And began its dying, and we began to know
so the land
fear. Then, when the water came," she was speaking of the great
was too much for him. I also was afraid, but it was not Shingir that
I feared. Anyam! Anyam! Who gave Shingir that wen upon his neck?
Who has made him unable to beget children? Do you know how
fear can rot the heart of a man? And yet, with fear in his heart, he
tries to protect us. There is death in the land, and war at night, but
while Shingir yet lives we will remain. Look. Look out that door.
In this homestead you can hear the voices of children and the
394
The Frightened Witch
laughter of women, smell the smell of cooking food, and hear the
voices of men. But in Anyam's homestead there is nothing to hear;
there is only silence."
service, partly because his wife's illness had begun during that most
unhealthy season at Shingir's, and quite irrationally because Shingir
was dead and I had never really liked him. I still don't like him, even
in retrospect, though I wonder if I haven't wronged him. Aggressive,
loud-mouthed, careless of his person, drunken, bluff in manner, and
—
underhand in dealing yes. But also a man trusted by his wives,
though feared by his relatives. A man without friends, but capable
of holding some followers and convives. Above all, a sick and fright-
ened man who beheved, as every Tiv there believed, that he was
engaged in a deadly duel with a man evil at heart and strong in
witchcraft. I find myself sorry for his land, sorry that it was Anyam
who conquered.
395
14
Champukv^^i of the
Village of
the Tapirs
Charles Wagley
—
l^hampuki was not the first person who came to mind when a
contribution to this volume was considered. I thought of Gregorio
Martin, a dignified and wise old Mayan
Indian of Santiago Chimal-
tenango in Guatemala, who 1937 had taught me the way of
in
life of his people. I thought of Camirang, the dynamic young chief-
tain whom I had known in 1941 in a village of Tenetehara Indians
along the Pindare River in northeastern Brazil. I thought also of
Nhunduca, a gifted and witty storyteller from a small Amazon
community, who in 1948 introduced me to the rich folklore of the
Amazon caboclo or peasant. But then, among all the people I had
known in the various primitive and peasant cultures in which I
have done ethnological research, I chose Champukwi, a man of no
outstanding talent, yet talented all the same a man of not the —
highest prestige in his society, yet admired by all. For the brief
span of about a year he was my most intimate friend.
away on the Araguaia River. Three Tapirape youths had spent a few
months at mission stations and thus spoke a rudimentary form of
Portuguese, using a vocabulary hmited to a few basic nouns and
verbs. At first our main problem was communication, but these
youths were able to help us. Aside from them, the only individuals
we knew by name during the first two weeks were the "captains,"
the oldermen who were the heads of the six large haypile-like houses
arranged in a circular village pattern. These, we later learned, were
each occupied by a matrilocal extended family. But even the per-
sonal names —
such as Oprunxui, Wantanamu, Kamanare, Maria-
pawungo, Okane, and the like —were then hard to remember, let
alone pronounce.
During the weeks in the Village of Tapirs, I began to study
first
399
Charles Wagley
station several years earlier and that he knew a few words of Portu-
guese. He was married and had a daughter about 2 years of age.
His wife, hardly attractive according to my American tastes, appeared
to be somewhat older than he, and was pregnant when we first
met.
Champukwi seemed more patient than other Tapirape with my at-
others also liked to visit. At this hour of the day our house was
often crowded with men, women, children, and even pets —
monkeys,
parrots, and wild pigs — for which the Tapirape along with other
Brazilian tribes have an especial fondness. Such social gatherings
were hardly conducive to the ethnological interview or even to the
systematic recording of vocabulary. So I asked Champukwi if I
might go with him to his garden. There, alternating between helping
him cut brush from his garden site and sitting in the shade, I was
able to conduct a kind of haphazard interview. Often, while he
worked, I formulated questions in my halting Tapirape and I was
able by repetition to understand his answers. Although the Tapirape
villagers began to joke of Champukwi's new garden site as belong-
ing to the two of us, these days were very valuable for my research.
Walking through the forest to and from Champukwi's garden, we
often hunted for jacu, a large forest fowl rather like a chicken. I
attempted to teach Champukwi how to use my .22 rifle, but he had
difficulty understanding the gunsights and missed continually. He
Charles Wagley
man in the tropics. Each late afternoon our house became a gather-
ing place for the Tapirape villagers, who came not only to visit with
me (communication was still difficult) but also with each other, and
to gaze upon the belongings of the tori (non-Indian). My illness
aid in helping me
newly learned words and phrases in
translate
Tapirape and even helped me understand his explanations of Tapi-
rape culture patterns. Champukwi thus consciously became my
teacher, and others came to realize that he was teaching me. During
402
Champukwi of the Village of the Tapirs
the next two months we had daily sessions, some very brief and
others lasting two ormore hours.
In October of 1939, some six months after my arrival, I found it
necessary to leave the Village of the Tapirs to go to Furo de Pedra
for supplies and to collect mail that was held there for me. Valentim
Gomes and I had come up the Tapirape River, a tributary of the
Araguaia, pulled by an outboard motor belonging to an anthropo-
logical colleague who had since returned to the United States. Now
we had to paddle ourselves downstream. We could expect little help
from the sluggish current and since the river was so low, it might be
necessary to haul our canoe through shallows. Malaria had left me
weak and I doubted that I was equal to this strenuous task. Several
Tapirape men, including Champukwi, were anxious to accompany
us, but having Indians with us in Furo de Pedra was not advisable.
First, they were susceptible to the common cold, which among rela-
chapel. He saw pairs of men and women dance face to face in sem-
blance of an intimate embrace. About these and other strange cus-
toms he had many questions. But like the inquisitive anthropologist
who had come to live in his village, his own curiosity sometimes
became obtrusive. He peered into the homes of people and some-
times entered uninvited. And he followed the Brazilian women to
their rather isolated bathing spot in the Araguaia River to discover
if there were any anatomical differences between these women and
those in his village. He even made sexual advances to Brazilian
women, actions which, if he had known, were very dangerous in
view of the jealous zeal with which Brazilian males protect the honor
of their wives and daughters. On the whole, however, Champukwi
became two week
quite a favorite of the local Brazilians during his
visit Furo de Pedra. His Portuguese improved while he visited
to
in their homes, and he collected simple presents, such as fish hooks,
bottles, tin cans, and the like, to take home with him. Even during
this short period away from the village, my work with him con-
405
Charles Wagley
to spend the long rainy months from November until the end of
May in the Village of the Tapirs. Champukwi was there to wel-
come us, and he came each day to help repair and enlarge our house.
We easily fell into our former friendly relationship, now strengthened
by the experience in common of the trip to Furo de Pedra and by
the feeling which many anthropologists have shared with the people
of their communities —
that anyone who returns is an "old friend."
his parents had died, to live in the Village of the Tapirs. He had
lived with his father's younger brother, Kamaira, who was the leader
of a large household. He even confided to me his boyhood name;
Tapirape change their names several times during their lifetimes
and mention of a person's first childhood name, generally that of
a fish, an animal, or simply descriptive of some personal character-
istic, causes laughter among the audience and considerable embar-
406
Champukwi of the Village of the Tapirs
of the adult women of the village into two categories those "I —
know how to talk with" (i.e., to seduce) and those "I do not know
how to talk with." There were many with whom he "could talk."
Unfortunately, by late November of 1939, I knew too much about
Champukwi's affairs either for his comfort or for mine. His wife
sometimes came to my house to ask if I knew where he had gone
(I could generally guess), and once an irate husband even came to
inquire of his whereabouts. His Don Juan activities had evidently
increased. His friendship with me caused him trouble with other
Tapirape who were envious of the presents he received. The story
was circulated that he had stolen a pair of scissors which, in fact,
I had given to him. Moreover, several people caught colds, and he
408
Champukwi of the Village of the Tapirs
not at once offered coffee, he left offended. But the very next day he
might return, gay and joking, yet without his former patience for
teaching or explaining Tapirape culture. Once he returned tired from
a hunting trip, and, irritated by his wife, he beat her with the flat
409
Charles Wagley
When the heavy rains of late December and January set in, we
were all more or less confined to the village as the rivers and streams
rose to flood the savanna. What had been brooks in the tropical
forest became wide streams, diflUcult, and sometimes dangerous, to
ford. It rained many hours each day. The Tapirape women and
children spent most of the time in their dwellings, and the men
and older boys lounged in the men's house. Our house again became
a meeting place. And as this was of course an opportune time for
interviewing, I joined the men in their club or entertained visitors
at home. I began to see more of Champukwi first, in the men's —
house and then as he again became a regular visitor at our house.
Now, he brought his new (and younger) wife with him. He liked to
sit up with us late at night after the other Tapirape visitors had re-
410
Champukwi of the Village of the Tapirs
411
Charles Wagley
412
—
I did not return to visit the Tapirape until 1953, but news of
them came to me at intervals. Valentim Gomes returned to the re-
gion in 1941 as an officer of the BraziHan Indian Service, and his
post was charged with the protection of the Tapirape Indians. In
his first year in this capacity, was in
he wrote me: "I report that I
the village of the Tapirape on the 26th of July [1941]. They were
in good health and there were plenty of garden products such as
manioc, yams, peanuts, and the like. There were plenty of bananas.
But I am sorry to say that after we left them, twenty-nine adults and
a few children have died. Fifteen women and fourteen men died.
Among those who died was Champukwi, the best informant in the
village, and our best friend." Several slow exchanges of letters brought
further details from Valentim. In some manner, perhaps through a
visit from a Brazilian frontiersman, several Tapirape had contracted
414
Champukwi of the Village of the Tapirs
possible, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, individuals
of high and low status, so that his picture of the culture may not
be distorted. The anthropologist might (he seldom has done so)
go so far as to keep a record of his subjective reactions in an attempt
to achieve greater objectivity. Yet he is never the entirely detached
observer he may fancy himself to be —nor am I sure that this should
be so. Anthropological field research is a profoundly human en-
deavor. Faced over a long period by a number of individuals, some
intelligent and some slow, some gay and some dour, some placid
and some irritable, the anthropologist almost inevitably is involved
in a complex set of human relations among another people just as
he is by virtue of his membership in his own society. And each
anthropologist is a distinctive personality and each undoubtedly
handles in his own way his dual role as a sympathetic friend to key
informants and as a scientific observer of a society and culture which
is not his own. To me, Champukwi was, above all, a friend whom
415
^-. X
T^
4 , >
15
Ohnaine^vk,
Eskimo Hunter
Sdmund Carpenter
&£:„_..
1 he RCMP constable's wire was brief: "ohnainewk died January
29, 1954. TOWTOONGIE HAS THE BOAT." In the end, the boat, not
the man, mattered.
Months later, at a trading post, I heard the details of his death. The
whites sat around, familiarly discussing a man they had shunned in
life. His marriages and their failures, his troubles with the traders,
were all described, not from his point of view, but from the point
of view of strangers. His association with the evangelist was sneered
at. There was not one hint that he was strong and brilliant and
complex, and (more exasperating still) not one hint that he was
Eskimo.
Yet he was the reincarnation of a mighty Eskimo. At birth his
identity was never in doubt: Ohnainewk, deceased hunter whose ex-
ploits figured in many tales, was once more among the living.
The first test of his inherited powers came early. Late one spring,
while still a child, he was playing just off shore, jumping from ice-
Stead of flat ground, rushing waves swept the new mother along and
finallydrowned her. In the morning his parents, hoping to save him
from the consequences of the broken taboo, fled with him in their
whale-boat. But before they had cleared the harbor, they were over-
taken by a hunter in a kayak who told them that the woman had
died in her sleep. Then all knew that Ohnainewk enjoyed the protec-
tion of a powerful spirit-helper.
A year passed before the dream recurred. His mother had just
quarreled with an angakok who, in retaliation, tried to kill Ohnai-
newk by psychic means. Again in his dream the placid sea turned
to storm, while above it, swaying over boiling waters, stood the
vengeful angakok. That night, in real life, the angakok publicly con-
fessed and Ohnainewk emerged unharmed.
But the conflict wasn't resolved until several years later when he
and another boy encountered this man in caribou country. They
traveled with many dogs; he had but three and asked to borrow
several. Ohnainewk consented, but arrogantly, at which the older
man burst out, as he threateningly advanced: "There is one here with-
out relatives, but he does not fear you! You have no children. So! You
lose your power to kill!"
Ohnainewk mocked him, but that year he kifled no caribou. One
day, seeing two, he took off his parka and ran forward to fire prone
from close range, but just as he was about to pull the trigger, the
snow squeaked under his elbow, and the caribou jumped. When
he fired, only the primer went off and the ejected cartridge exploded
in his face. The next cartridge did the same. Then he sprang up,
and fired in all directions shouting, "What power prevents me?"
From far to the south came the "thunk" of a bullet striking flesh,
and a puff of smoke appeared.
Delirious, he staggered home where his parents laid him out and
fastening a cord about his head, began the rite of head-raising. He
was to answer "No" if his head were raised with ease, "Yes" if it
were held by an unseen power. When he answered "Yes," a spirit's
voice spoke, saying it was the work of the angakok, but that he was
now dead.
Ohnainewk rose and killed three caribou and never again had
difficulty hunting deer. For that very day, as they all later learned,
the angakok, who had been traveling far to the south, dropped dead
and his family all starved.
419
Edmund Carpenter
last —
two wives betrayed him worse, betrayed him to the inferior
Ookpuktowk, one of them deserting him for Ookpuktowk, the second
arranging it so that when he entered his igloo, he would find
Ookpuktowk on top of her. Why had they scorned him so? This
question troubled him and racked him and would not let him sleep
at night.
An outsider, knowing Ookpuktowk, might have guessed. For
Ookpuktowk was an ardent progressive, cherishing everything West-
ern with extravagant ardor, revelling in being as un-Eskimo as pos-
sible, even getting the trader's daughter with child. By studying
white men with care, he managed to make himself into an eager
assistant who, if he did not succeed in winning Eskimo friends,
succeeded in impressing many with suggestions of power. He lived
at the Trading Post, parading his alien attachments, a man driven
to torment himself by a desire to succeed in the eyes of others, even
though this meant being subservient to the whites.
Ohnainewk could never bring himself to do this. No matter how
much he wanted to fit into this new society, to make friends with
the whites, he could do so only as Ohnainewk, mighty hunter, and
this they would not let him do. He had a better head than any of
them, and a better heart than most. He was friendly but never
servile and he resented their constant rudeness. In silence he quit
a position with the Hudson's Bay Company when he was given only
menial, degrading tasks. He hoped the Anglican Church would
appoint him a lay catechist, but it found no room for his talents.
— —
And when the government nurse a woman ignored his offer to
take penicillin to a distant camp and closed the door in irritation,
leaving him in the dark cold, that was too much: "One will go from
this place to a cleaner land."
The land he chose was a barren peninsula, largely comfortless
and desolate. The endless tundra, stretching from sea to horizon,
had an austere, monotonous charm, a certain cold, clean-edged
beauty. Yet throughout it was hard on man.
Here in this wind-swept land, cut off from the surrounding world
by ice-filled seas and trackless wastes, Ohnainewk's family and those
of his elder sons, forty-two people in all, lived their own lives largely
untouched by outside influences. They not only depended upon game
for all of life's necessities, but they had the hunter's outlook on the
420
Ohnainewk, Eskimo Hunter
world. Their food was meat, much of it eaten raw, and they dressed
in the skins of beasts.
Their camp stood beside a river gorge, overlooking the sea, in a
landscape of infernal grandeur. Years later, after Ohnainewk's death,
I revisited the spot. The peat-stone igloos were now but stumps,
half-strangled with lichens and grass, indistinguishable from ancient
ruins. Ice in their centers made by Ohnainewk
imprisoned ivory tools
and his sons, as well as the stonelamps that had once heated these
tiny homes. To the south, hunters robed in fur passed on sleds with
silent gliding motion over ice-fields that here and there were stained
with blood. It was a scene that had not changed since man first reached
this island.
As I stood over the ruins of the igloo where Ohnainewk had lived,
it seemed incredible that a family could have wintered in so small
a space, yet eight of us had. And there were gay times, especially
when bellies were fuU. He and his sons were true hunters: their
greatest delight was the chase. It was a life of constant adventure.
They realized this and admitted it, and it was this element of the
lottery that attached them to their calling. In the long run they were
always hungry, but a tremendous kill made them full for the day,
giving them a taste of opulence unsoured by satiety.
It was then that stories were told. With subtle gestures and a
dramatist's timing, Ohnainewk took over. He usually began with the
crisis, so to speak, and wove backwards and forwards in time, with
421
Edmund Carpenter
for days, humble in the face of immutable reality. Faced with life
which was, despite themselves, which they had to accept without
question, they hung their heads: ayongnermut, "It cannot be helped."
Ill, they made little effort to recover, but silently withdrew, resigned
to death. When
a new-born child was put aside because of insuffi-
cient food: ayongnermut "It is our destiny." When asked about the
,
future: ahmi, "It cannot be known." When a crack in the ice wid-
ened, separating a hunter from his companions, marooning him on
an ice-cake where, days later, he must freeze: ayongnermukput, "It
will not be otherwise," and an old woman began the chant, "Say
tellme now, was life so good on earth?"
Death was everywhere. Sealing and walrus hunting might fail;
the ice might break up suddenly and go adrift with the sled traveler;
a walrus might drag both kayak and hunter down into the depth.
Therefore they saw life as a thing of little account, a little thing to
give; and if life seemed harder than death, it was a little thing to take.
As I listened to Ohnainewk's tales, where tragedy followed trag-
edy, grandson replaced grandfather, I wondered in despair: "And
is life no more than that?" For despite the brooding beauty of his
tales, I did not feel tragic exhilaration so much as the weary sinking
of a river into the sea. Nor was I moved by the nobility of his char-
acters so much as by their animal-like persistence in the face of storm
make room for future generations. Somehow the
until they fell to
more aware he made us of how great a part of us was soil and
animal, the more stifled we became with our kinship with the All.
His resignation, like his fatalism, arrived at a point where the only
grandeur consisted not in striving but surviving.
Then suddenly, would erupt, breaking
violence, laughter, ecstasy
the mood of futility and despair. He had contempt for all outcries,
human and animal; a terrible bloodlust came upon him when a
bear lay fallen, snapping at his feet. Many days we killed nothing;
422
Ohnainewk, Eskimo Hunter
his mother, who wanted to get even with her husband for taking
a young wife. Ohnainewk fell in love with this older woman and
willingly let her husband sleep with his own wife, the young girl to
whom he had been betrothed since birth. After six years he moved
away, taking his own wife, but shortly afterwards she left him for
Ookpuktowk and he in turn acquired Ookpuktowk's wife. There
was little happiness in all this and a great deal of mutual anguish.
The strong conventionalized contempt in which women and their
opinions and preferences were held did not operate to make them an
abashed and inferior sex. When wives were young, they had few
privileges and much work, but as they grew older, they gradually
took over and ruled. I watched Ohnainewk's wife disdainfully toss
—
him a skin to scraped, women's work but he silently began. One
day his eldest son returned from trapping to find his clothes unmended.
His wife defended herself by blaming his mother, who, she said, had
forced her to do the mother's work during his absence. She cried and
carried on and finally made him confront his mother with this accusa-
tion, which happened to be true. But the mother cut him short:
"Your wife is lazy." He stood for a moment, confused, then went back
and struck his wife.
There was a fight one day in camp, a near-fatal one, between one
of Ohnainewk's sons and a hunter from a group that was temporarily
camped nearby. The next morning, Ohnainewk, followed by his angry
son, and the other men in order of seniority, with the women and
children clustered outside their tents, met a similar procession from
the adjoining camp. Ohnainewk apologized for his son, but pointed
out that he had been right in defending himself. The apology was
accepted, the error admitted. However, an older brother of the other
423
Edmund Carpenter
beliefs which held him. Just before he died, he dreamed again of the
placid sea turned to storm. Thick darkness gathered around him and
it seemed to him as if he were doomed. He was ready to sink into
424
Ohnainewk, Eskimo Hunter
you, we would not starve even if we should fall back on bows and
arrows & harpoons not for a long while anyway."
I offered Ohnainewk immortality, the chance to record the history
of his people, but he wasn't interested in the old tales of a dying
people; he aspired to leadership. When was denied him re-
this
nose here, gone, then back again. When weather was bad and hunters
mended gear, Ohnainewk would take his youngest son from its
mother's parka (nude except for a little cap), and play with him
on the furs while the child squealed.
He never forced himself on people or things. When he started to
425
Edmund Carpenter
carve ivory, he would hold the unworked tooth lightly in his hand,
turning it this way and that, and whisper, "Who are you? Who hides
there?" And then: "Ah, Seal!" He rarely set out, at least consciously,
to carve, say, a seal, but picked up the ivory, examined it to find
its hidden form, and, if that wasn't immediately apparent, carved
aimlessly until he saw it, humming or chanting as he worked. Then
he brought it out: Seal, hidden, emerged. It was always there: he
didn't create it; he released it. This was his attitude not only toward
ivory but toward people, especially children. He was a gentle father,
he was a kind husband, he was a loveable friend; he was kind to
everyone in his group —such tremendous kindness.
An
emergency arose once while we were hunting and we put in
at a camp of poor newcomers whose presence he re-
neighboring
sented. I entered the cold igloo and in the pinched, chalk faces of
five children saw starvation. Their parents were dead, there was no
food, and they simply sat there, silently waiting for the oldest boy,
who was hunting alone on the sea ice. I looked at Ohnainewk and
somehow knew he had known all along.
The children were adopted into various families. Into the igloo
where I stayed came a boy of 8, a most unattractive lad with great
dark eyes. His foster mother never spoke kindly to him; the other
children pointedly ignored him. He couldn't control his bowels and
constantly soiled the furs. On this excuse, they forced him to sleep
on the damp snow floor, condemning him to pneumonia and in-
evitable death. Just before the lad died, I saw him standing alone
in the center of the igloo, trembling with cold and fright. My heart
just went out to him. I took a great knife, a spectacular thing some-
one had given to me, and offered it to him. He stood confused, then
slowly, with the most wonderful light in his eyes (he must have
thought he would be spared) reached out for it. But a hand shot
out — —
Ohnainewk's and the knife was taken from me and given
to a favorite son.
It was a hard land. A knife like that went to one who could use it.
426
16
My Crow
Interpreter
Robert H. Lov\rie
In 1910 the American Museum of Natural History sent me on my
second expedition to the Crow Indians in southern Montana. The
mestiço
young half-breed who had helped me on my previous visit was other-
wise engaged, so I cast about for a suitable substitute. In this fashion
I came to meet Jim Carpenter, henceforth my chief interpreter on
the reservation. Then in his early 30's, he had been a pupil of
the Catholic Mission school, and spoke English fluently. Thus he
ranked as an "educated" Crow. Yet outwardly he did not
noticeably differ from the general run of "blanket" Indians. He
wore moccasins and kept coquettish little tin cones dangling from
the pigtails on the sides of his temples. For amusement he would
get drunk, run footraces, and break in broncos. Spiritually, he
then classed himself as a Catholic, though subsequently he was,
after a fashion, affiliated with the Baptist Church. Neither of these
tiesprevented him from zestfully entering into the native dances or
from seeking admission to the great religious order of the sacred
Tobacco. Nor did his contacts with Christianity and the modern
world make him skeptical about the marvelous experiences claimed
by the venerable sages of the tribe. "When you listen to the old men
telHng about their visions," he once said to me, "you've just got to
believe them."
In 1910 automobiles were Of a morning Jim and I
still scarce.
would sally forth on horseback or
buggy to interview the sur-
in a
vivors from buffalo-hunting times whose words Jim was to render
into English. Most of them had witnessed Sun Dances and had lost
at least one finger joint either as a mourning rite or in seeking a
vision. All the men had been on the warpath and belonged to one
or the other of the military clubs; several were said to have scouted
for General Custer. With varying skill the old people of either sex
could recite the adventures of mythical heroes.
Indeed, if a person came at the right season and kept his eyes
open, there were still plenty of things to observe first-hand. Women
were still pounding wild cherries, scraping skins, and painting raw-
hide bags. Here and there on the reservation loomed burial stages,
428
My Crow Interpreter
of the Tobacco order planted their sacred weed. Early in the summer
they adopted novices with a great display of ceremonial, and a
little later they harvested their crop. Although the plant was com-
pletely useless in a practical way (they would not smoke the sacred
variety), it had great value for them, so that I had to pay five dollars
for a plant to be sent East for botanical identification. Because so
much of ancient custom was still alive, Jim's duties went far beyond
descobrir
conveying my informants' memories. He had to ferret out the best
authorities on ceremonial, the outstanding storytellers, the old folks
who knew what clans everybody belonged to and had married into.
If someone had recently played the buffoon at a tribal gathering,
Jim tracked him down and got him to pose for me in his outlandish
clown's costume.
Yet, had I accepted the character given him at the Agency, I should
evitar
have shunned him as a shiftless, besotted, trouble-making brawler. His
unpopularity, in fact, was well grounded. He never minced words
when he felt that employees of the Government were betraying the
interests of its wards; and being no respecter of persons, he was
capable of falling to fisticuffs if a policeman tried to carry out what
429
Robert H. Lowie
occasion, "you've got a fine pronunciation, but you talk Crow with
a foreign accent." Once I was going to surprise him and earn ad-
miration with the translation of a fairy tale from an elementary school
reader, but Jim would not allow one of my Crow sentences to stand as
it was written.
tion, but to insist on the eight hours' daily stint would have proven
fatal. If Jim had been on a spree the night before, there was no use
430
My Crow Interpreter
SO was willing to sell his sacred rock or that his own father-in-law,
for a consideration, might open up and explain the contents of the
sacrosanct bundle that had made him a famous warrior.
True enough, it was not altogether devotion to me personally that
made Jim add hours to our official working day. He was genuinely
interested, intellectually and emotionally. It became a labor of love
and a patriotic duty to help record for future generations how the
ancient Crow had lived and spoken; and in fulfilling this task
Carpenter showed the zeal of a German philologist.
Jim's interest in the Crow language and traditions was not re-
stricted to the times when I was actually present on the reservation.
Over the years we corresponded, he in both English and Crow, about
a variety of topics, often touching upon recondite points of Crow
manners or grammar. The following is excerpted from one of his
letters to me:
of the name going 2n d,...,.^'<C^ This is the Beaver coming. The name
conveys a picture both traveling. I was told the beaver was on one of its
slides when sliding an otter was going up this slide and passed the beaver
a vision name. Bapuxta bi reu da'^kuc. This name to make
It is it clear
would be written Bapuxta bie un^da kuc The otter water where lives or
stays
The picture I get is (where The Otter Lives or Stays in the water)
I will try to find out the particulars of this name. I know this much, it
is a vision name. I will inform you as soon as I can find some one that
knows, tin batsas xiasac. I might be wrong as to the writing this name,
but you will know and correct it. This name was given the present bearer,
also known as Yellow Brow, by daxpit tse ic According to y. B's story
he w^s a brave man in former undertakings with his foes. Everybody
heard but never seen any of his actions with the enemy. Two battles he
had. One about 1 8 miles below where Hardin now stands Also one above
where Billings now is about 4 miles above where the Clarks Fork river
enters the Yellow Stone river.
On these two occasions we might say the Mountain Crow Tribe were
raided or charged by the Souixs.
431
Robert H. Lowie
second he told me he would find out and give me the story as he has done
in the first battle and which I am enclosing herewith.
He did not tell me all the details but made in breif. Should you hke all
the details I will try and get it for you in Crow the best I know how. I
will say you will find many mistakes but I will ask you to correct those
you know. Those you have any doubts about let me know I will then
find out or if I see the mistake will correct and send it back.
Yellow Brow tells me his name should be
Ba^pe kon un batsasxiasac Rock rifs there where my courage was
clearest
Rock there where my courage ability was clearest.
I will write you for more tests for the Crows should you need more.
I arranged with Jack Stuart to go over to the Cheyenne's for me. Excuse
me for my delays. I am doing the best with what money and time I can
use. Wishing you in the best of health
I am
Your Friend
Cece
433
Robert H. Lowie
clicked. Dore's illustrations rose before me. "You don't by any chance
mean Dante's Inferno, do you?" I asked. "Well," said he, "I think
Dante was the man's name."
This proved, however, only a provisional denouement. I found the
434
My Crow Interpreter
cared for the claims of kinship, adopting the white man's individual-
ism. Not so Jim. One day in 1931, while I was working with him,
a remote female relative came to borrow money to spend at a fair in a
Wyoming town. He had no ready cash, but at once asked me to turn
over to her some of his hard-earned wages. "I'll never see that money
again," he remarked after she had gone —one could not hold a kins-
woman responsible for a loan.
That same summer a male cousin and his aged wife came to
visit Jim, ostensibly for a fortnight, but stayed for six weeks. What
is more, they were not content with eating the vegetables on their
host's farm, so without blinking an eyelash he bought beef for them
in town as the nearest substitute for the buffalo meat craved by the
old crone. One had to be hospitable. No wonder callers thronged
just
the Carpenter house, no wonder his married daughters and their
husbands made it their headquarters or left their offspring there for
indefinite periods. But such altruism does not work well without
reciprocity, and Jim was hard put to it to make ends meet. "He's
the only Indian I've ever known to worry," a white old-timer told me.
Jim continued to revere tradition even when he did not accept its
basis. He himself did not worship the sacred rocks of his seniors, yet
he hated to see their sons sell them to shopkeepers in nearby towns.
It outraged his sense of decency. He was willing to donate such
objects to a public institution, that was all right. Though not yet
ready to part with his father-in-law's bundle of sacred arrows, he
intended to bequeath some museum; to do otherwise would
it to
be disrespectful to the old man's memory. Jim went further. In the
old days a menstruating woman had to proclaim her condition when
approaching a lodge where holy objects were kept, so that they could
be removed and escape contamination. But who can trust women in
this unregenerate age? So Jim hung up his prized package unopened —
since the deceased owner had allowed me to inspect it in 1914 on —
the rear porch of his frame house and would lock it up in a special
chamber for the winter. That was how one showed respect. Jim
showed it in many ways that others considered old-fashioned. Crow
etiquette used to demand that a man avoid his wife's mother and
conversation between the two was strictly tabooed; even any word
forming part of her personal name had to be paraphrased. Jim clung
to the rule as it had been transmitted and for that reason never uttered
the Crow word for "marking."
435
Robert H. Lowie
As- the years rolled by, Jim had plenty to worry about. He had a
large family to support, his farm gave constant trouble, he himself
was often ill, and in 1934 he lost his eldest son. The following note
requires no comment:
To me, Jim seemed the ideal interpreter. His English, fluent and
ample, did not quite equal that of a few others; but none of them
matched his feeling for the ancient Crow life, none rivaled his
meticulousness in bringing home to me its values, his perfectionism
when it came to reproducing shades of meaning in the Crow tongue.
Smitten with an incurable heart disease, he wrote me his last letter
from his deathbed:
weak that I couldn't write myself and did not wish to ask anyone else to
do it for me. About as long as I can read or write consecutively is for a few
seconds and then I have to quit and rest.
I do not know whether I shall ever completely recover from this ailment.
A young man is writing this letter for me as no one else has offered to
write for me. I feel that death is steadily approaching.
If you can spare one of your latest publications, I should be glad to
receive one, this also applies to your grammar on the Crow language
even though it is not finished.
Tepee burial (a'wanoo) is not a custom, it is only a rich man's
burial. Only a chief was accorded this rite.
Another question you have wanted an answer [to] for the last seven
436
My Crow Interpreter
or eight years is about [the tale of] Old Man Coyote, the Strawberries
and Girls — word shown above should read
huric koco cakoce ditdik. This
hurikokohocu'ritdik. This word was taken from the Gros Ventre [Hidatsa
tribe] and in the adoption of the story by the Crow the word reached its
present usage.
If I survive my last letter to you, I shall clear up the meaning of
Absaroka [tribal name of the Crow Indians]. I'm so weak that I must
give up any more effort for the time being.
Sincerely
James Carpenter
[signed by himself]
I have had many interpreters among the Crow and elsewhere; but
437
Little Schoolboy and Friends.
17
A Navaho
Politician
Clyde Kluckhohn
H e doesn't come to meetings any more. We shouldn't have as our
tribal delegate a man who lives so far away. Only once in the last thirty
years has he really lived among us. He stays up there at Willow Fence
along with his wife's family and most of his own brothers and sisters."
"You are right. He doesn't come down here often enough. That is why
our cooperative store is losing money now. Those two young boys, Eddie
Mario and John Nez, who run it need advice and direction from an older
man hke our delegate. But he doesn't watch them closely enough."
"Everyone knows he and his mother-in-law are bootleggers. They
work with those Mexicans."
"Yes, and he himself gets drunk. He has had two car wrecks while
drunk."
"He takes too much power to himself. He isn't supposed to preside at
these meetings — that is the job of our chapter president, Jo Miguel. Little
Schoolboy is supposed to represent us at the Council of our tribe. He can
tell us about that, but he shouldn't be the head at these meetings."^
"No, you are wrong, my fellows. Little Schoolboy is the leader of the
people here. He speaks best, and he knows the Enghsh language too.
He works hard for the people. He respects the old ways, while the young
man, Jim Chamiso, whom the missionary wants you to put in is going to
destroy them."
"Exactly," whispered the local missionary to an official of the Bureau
of Indian Affairs, "Bill Begay is the candidate of those men who keep
still
two wives."
1 In the 1920's the Indian Service organized Navaho local groups into "chapters"
who elected a president, vice-president, and secretary. Later, the Navaho Tribal
Council was created, and each group elected a delegate. The existence of both a
"president" and a "delegate" is still confusing to the Navaho who were accustomed
to a single "chief" or "headman" for each band. In most localities, as at Rimrock,
the delegate ordinarily takes over the functions of the headmen of earlier days, but
there are occasional attempts to reserve these for the "president."
I am indebted to many collaborators in field work for the materials upon which
this sketch is based. I owe a particular obligation to Drs. Alexander and Dorothea
Leighton who collected an extended autobiography from the subject. I thank Dr.
Bert Kaplan for interpreting the Rorschach protocols of the subject and his wife.
This chapter has benefited greatly from the criticisms and suggestions of the Drs.
Leighton, and Dr. Kaplan.
440
A Navaho Politician
"Well," the official replied, "it is true John Mucho has two wives, but
you must admit he is smart and progressive. He is a young man and
wide awake even if he does hold to some of the old Customs."
441
Clyde Kluckhohn
of his own situation: of his large family and more remote relatives
who were dependent upon him, of the terrible mud on the roads which
sometimes prevented his getting to meetings, of the overpowering
fatigue he felt when, as now, he had been speaking at length in Navaho
and also translating the talks by himself and others into English for
the benefit of Government officials. He spoke of the conflict of re-
ligions:
I have worked hard for the people. I have been a leader of the people
for seventeen years. First at Pine Valley, then at Willow Fence, and now
here. Most men give out after a httle while, but I have stuck to it.
The vote was ninety to twenty against Bill. Some adults present did
not vote. Others claimed later that they thought they were voting only
to censure Bill for not attending meetings rather than to demand that
he vacate his office. Bill left for his home almost immediately after
the vote, and an observer noted that he looked "like a drawn and
shaking old man." Another observer said Bill looked "like a beaten
puppy." It is further recorded that for two weeks thereafter he ap-
peared "sick, tired, depressed." But then he developed a plan to
defeat Jim Chamiso decisively and got busy. After the vote had been
reported to the Navaho Central Agency at Window Rock, the Agency
ruled it illegal to force a delegate to resign in this manner. However,
it was suggested to Bill that he might wish to resign voluntarily be-
442
A Navaho Politician
that he promptly moved away from Rimrock to the land of his wife's
family on the reservation. Moreover, Bill obtained more than sym-
bolic success. During the same period he manuevered among Navahos
and Government officials in such a fashion that when Jo took over as
tribal delegate Bill received a paying job as bus driver for the Navaho
school in Rimrock and his wife the position of housekeeper at the
school.
I was not a witness of these events of the winter and spring of
1948. I learned about them from letters and from reading the field
They have new delegate here now. These people got all mixed up
a
this spring. It was those relief checks that got them mixed up. They had
quite a lot of money. And every week a whole load of food and clothing.
John Mucho got some. So did Margarita Luciano and Mucho. [These
three individuals all owned considerable livestock.] My wife and I didn't
get any. That's why the store has done better. All those relief checks
went to the cooperative store. That's what I told the people in the meet-
ing —that the store would have done better even if John Nez and Eddie
Mario had stayed there. But these young boys, Jim Chamiso and Charlie
Blackbird, they claimed they were progressive and that's why the store
did better. I think they knew this relief was coming —
they had some
understanding with Albuquerque.
Anyway they had a meeting this spring and elected a new delegate
and chapter But that didn't stand. I told them the delegate was
officers.
Window Rock's business, and Window Rock said a delegate was elected
for four years. Just Jim and Charlie and Walter Blackbird and Marcos
wanted a change. The rest of the people didn't, but they got mixed up.
443
Clyde Kluckhohn
At John Nez and Eddie Mario and some of the other war veterans
first
sided with Jim Chamiso until they found out what he was going to do
to pollen - and the medicine men and all that. Jim made a speech over
at the church. After that the people felt hke someone feels when you
come and hit them on the back of the head [gesturing excitedly], and
they see stars. The people didn't like that at all. Jim Chamiso is a good
man in many ways, but he wants to do away with the medicine men.
We aren't ready for that yet. We don't understand all of the missionary's
religion yet.
So Jim and Charlie Blackbird asked me if I would resign as delegate.
would resign if I could get some kind of steady government
I said, yes, I
job. So they fixed it up with the Government that I get this job I have
now.
Then we had another meeting. And I told the people how it was — that
they had got mixed up and that Jim and Charlie were only working for
some of the people. They had always
just stuck with the missionary. And I
tried towork for all the people. Sometimes traders and government peo-
ple had tried to get me to work for them. But I never followed their track.
I always stayed right in the middle. So I told the people now they
mustn't split. They must stick together, just like we always had been
doing. So they asked me to name a good man since I was going to quit
and take this government job. So I named Jo Miguel, and almost all of
the people voted for him. He used to be with the missionary, but he
isn't any more.
It is going to be down here just like it was on the reservation — for
a while a lot of people will go with the missionary, and then in a couple
of years it will be all over. I spoke with the missionary at that meeting,
and I told him how when he was living in Rimrock I helped him get this
land down here so he could be right in the center of the people. But I
didn't think he was going to try to force the people to take his ways.
He shouldn't do that. I told him after all I had done for him I didn't like
the way he was acting. When I finished he asked me to interpret. I said:
"No, you have your own interpreter." He said: "Well, my interpreter can't
always understand what you say. You use hard words." So then he said he
didn't have anything against me, and that he wanted to be friends. Now
every time I meet him he says that same thing to me.
tional country was in the present states of Arizona, New Mexico, and
Colorado in the area roughly defined by the San Juan River on the
- Corn pollen is very important in Navaho religious symbolism and in the carrying
out of rites.
444
"'^^ '*'^»'*'
't
.^^^»- ^ ' >^
north, the Colorado on the west, the Gila on the south, and the Rio
Grande on the east. Today about half the tribe lives on the Navaho
Reservation, some fifteen million acres mainly in eastern Arizona
and western New Mexico. Additional Navaho, of whom Bill is one,
live on individually owned allotments or lands leased by the tribe
ment. He has seen some of the cities of New Mexico and Arizona and
has worked two or three times as a migrant laborer in Utah, but if one
excludes the years he spent at school in Albuquerque, all except a few
445
Clyde Kluckhohn
months of his life have been spent within a fifty-mile radius of his
birthplace.
He was born in 1892 or 1893 about twenty miles south of Gallup,
New Mexico, the eighth and last of his mother's children. His mother
died when he was 18 months old. His father shortly remarried, and
three more children were born to the second wife. Bill, however, was
not brought up by his father and stepmother but by other relatives.
He was in school from 1901 until 1906, a time when schooling of
even so short duration was a rarity for most Navaho youngsters. The
Navaho name by which he is still known is "Little Schoolboy." In
his late teens he went to work for the trader Rimrock, and his time
at
I will write you a letter today We are getting along alright here at
make Two pipe, these Two pipe wille be Navjo hunting pipe. Whick was
made back in old days.
let us know just as soon as you get this letter please
some excess weight, his body is well proportioned, and his gait and
gestures have the smooth and flowing quality that typifies Navaho
movement.
In part. Bill's success in the field of power and politics must be
attributed to a control of English unusual in a Navaho of his age and
to the recognition by other Navahos that Bill understands whites and
their ways, both skills deemed important in coping with white de-
viousness. Yet others who had these qualifications have not entered
the political game or have failed at it. Bill hkes people, loves to talk
with everyone. He also likes to have people feel dependent upon him.
And — let it be said candidly —he loves to manipulate people. Finally,
his role as "leader of the people" allows him escape from the family
scene, ruled firmly by his wife. —
These dispositions even more than
the prestige and perquisites of office — have kept Bill in the political
arena. He is not only adroit in political behavior but is likewise an
accomplished orator. When I talked with him last during the summer
of 1958, the thing that he said to me with the most feeling was that
he had been invited to journey a considerable distance north to make
a speech during an Enemy Way rite: "These people way up there
said they had heard I could talk better than anyone near there."
As I think of Bill during the many years I have known him inti-
mately, his personality seems to me to embrace at least as many ob-
vious and blatant contradictions as is the case with the rest of us.
He is (as he himself says in English) a "leader of the people." Yet
he was terrified of his under the thumb of his
mother-in-law and is
447
Clyde Kluckhohn
3 His third marriage took place in a Catholic church, but he has never attended
church services.
448
A Navaho Politician
449
Clyde Kluckhohn
Oh, yes, he knows the people and their culture very well. And he can
give you a decent translation if he feels like it. But if you don't check
him closely he'll give you back three sentences after an informant has
talked for half an hour. And he is so undependable. Five times in the last
two weeks he stood me up. He told me to come pick him up at his
450
A Navaho Politician
place at a certain hour.When I got there, he was away and his family
gave me
vague and conflicting stories as to when he would be back. He
talks you out of wages in advance or just begs a loan, and you can't
trust his promises to make it up one way or another.
451
Clyde Kluckhohn
we got there, my sister started to talk about the sing. They want to put
the sing over there by Many Beads, the singer of Blessing Way. The
reason they want to do that I was away in school for. They say they said
put that sing, mean they should have done it for me just after
I I came
back from school. They want the singer, that man, Moustache's father.
They ask me, did I want it? Told them I don't want it. [Bill laughs a little.]
They keep asking me till I say yeah. But I got no moccasins, they got
to make moccasins for me first. First they just start to talk about it.
After I say all right, then there's some people around there, what living
around there. They come there and they put up new hogan. They sent
Joe back over here to this other place. Told the people down there they
was going to have a sing down there.
The Navaho say that Blessing Way is the cornerstone of their whole
ceremonial system. Seldom does a family go for six months without
having Blessing Way sung at least once in their hogan. Most Navaho
rites have the ostensible purpose of curing illness, but Blessing Way,
as English-speaking Navahosgood hope." It places the
say, is "for
Navahos in tune with the Divine People and so ensures health, pros-
perity, and general well-being. It is also considered by the Navaho
to be a prophylatic against danger. The rite is far less complicated
than most Navaho ceremonials. It has the dignity of great simplicity.
There are a few songs one night, a ritual bath in yucca suds with
prayers and songs the next day, and singing all that night. Cornmeal
and pollen are prominently used throughout, and drypaintings of
these materials and pulverized flower blossoms are prepared on buck-
skin spread upon the ground.
own ceremony. Bill learned from his father that the rite
After his
had been conducted because Bill had been exposed to the hazards
of being among whites. At the same time the father, while disclaiming
responsibility for Bill's being sent away to school, showed his own
mixture of feelings by affirming that school is a good thing:
When I bring in the sheep that night, I asked my sister why did they
had a sing for me. She told me ask my father. My father was still there,
and I ask him about it. He says we didn't put you in school; your brother
did, he says. And we all was so glad you got back over here without
anything wrong with you. And Navaho, all the Navaho, they all do same
thing whenever they sent the children to school. They do the same thing.
453
Clyde Kluckhohn
They put up the Blessing. They all have to put up the Blessing sing for
children. He says that's the way we Navaho work it with our children
when our children goes to school. He told me that's about all I can tell
you. There's some good reason for it, but that's too hard for you to
understand. He told me some of the people says that school is very good
for the children, and he thinks it's good too himself.
Perhaps his induction into ceremonies made Bill feel at home with
his people again. Perhaps he felt something inherently good in the
ceremonies. Possibly his father's hint that there was something deeper
which Bill did not understand instigated him to apprentice himself
to a ceremonial practitioner. At any rate, in his autobiography he
relates with evident prides his learning and eventual mastery of the
ritual ways of hunting. He is pleased to discover by himself some
stones that are used in ceremonies. He exults in describing the
minutiae of an unusual rite or in recounting the wisdom and sound
moral exhortations of the old men. His satisfactions in finding good
things in his own culture are plainly evidenced. Equally clear is his
pleasure whenever in his experience a white (or indeed an Indian
from another group) expresses interest in Navaho custom. Negatively,
if it be true that one can understand people better from what they
two families, Bill took rather more initiative in the matter than was
customary. And, on the trader's advice, he refused to agree to work
for his prospective in-laws after the marriage. Both Bill's relatives
and the girl's wanted a Navaho basket ceremony at the marriage, but
Bill held out. He simply took his bride to live with him at the trad-
ing store, and announced that henceforth he was going to work for
whites. Nevertheless he returned to live among his own people. While
Bill, to my knowledge, has always spoken of this particular trader
with warmth, he does in his autobiography repeat at length the
remarks of other Navahos that when he left the trading store he
did not get nearly as much money as he should have received.
There are also other indications of his mixed feelings toward this
man.
The same vacillation has marked our own relationship and I —
think it fair to say that this trader and I have been the whites to whom
Bill has been closest and whom he had most nearly accepted without
reservation. For the most part Bill has shown himself devoted to me
and more than faithful in his obligations. He has given me ritual
information in the summer which should be divulged, if at all, only
in the winter. He has worked without extra pay for more hours in
a day than I was sometimes prepared to work. He has been extremely
discreet with my confidences where a single offhand remark in a re-
laxed or drunken moment could have been exceedingly damaging to
my work and the work of my associates. With great effort and skill
at manuever, and considerable risk to his political fences, he obtained
access for me to the secret rites of Enemy Way —
the one aspect of
Navaho ceremoniahsm from which whites are automatically ex-
cluded. He insisted, once over protest, that I attend and speak at
Navaho political meetings deliberately called at times and places that
were designed to prevent the presence of representatives of the In-
dian Service or other whites. Yet from time to time, in contexts not
involving a failure on my part to respond to his requests or meet
his expectations, he has turned on me. There have been a few out-
bursts of open and seemingly unprovoked anger. There have been
more instances of moody or sulky withdrawal. There was one flagrant
case of his taking advantage of me.
Over the years I had made small loans to Bill. Some other Navahos
have never repaid such loans. Most of them have, however, made
restitution and on occasion in cash after a long lapse of time during
455
Clyde Kluckhohn
which the debt was never mentioned. Bill never paid back a loan in
cash but rather in work or in his wife's rugs, and always during the
interval while the debt existed he would frequently make me aware
that he had it in mind. Ten years ago he came to me with a plea for
an advance that would enable him to buy supplies so that he and
his family could sell pop at a "Squaw Dance" of
hot dogs and
Enemy Way. The sum was enough so that I demurred, but
sizable
his reminders of our friendship and his need and his categorical as-
surances that T would be repaid the very morning the three-day rite
ended won me over. I presented myself promptly at dawn the final
morning because my personal funds happened to be low at the time,
and I needed to get most of the money back. He and his family had
decamped two hours earlier in spite of the fact that just before their
departure customers swarm to such stands. I went immediately to his
place and not finding him there then visited the hogans of relatives
of both Bill and his wife. It was only a week before I had to return
East, and repeated search and inquiry failed to locate Bill. By the
time of my next trip to the Navaho country I had decided that Bill
deserved a bonus if he felt that way about it, and I was curious as to
what tack he would take. But neither he nor any member of his family
has ever, however indirectly, alluded to the incident.
In part, I am sure that this behavior must be understood in the light
of Bill's inability to resist the exploitation of a white, although a
friend.'* But only There were two other immediate instiga-
in part.
tions to his deception. There is no doubt in my mind that the money,
both my loan and what he got from his sales, was urgently needed
to buy clothes and meet other expenses in connection with sending
five members of his family off to school within a few days. Second,
I am sure (without proof) that Bill's wife who has less conscience
but more force than Bill badgered him into this action.
If such an explanation of his deception is correct, his susceptibil-
ity to these two immediate instigations must be related to some
456
.
A Navaho Politician
good.")
3. He is generally skillful in interpersonal relations. Over and
ground of some crucial facts of the history of his early years and of the
conditions he has faced as an adult. But first let us compare them with
some Rorschach findings. In 1946 I administered the Rorschach test
to Bill and his wife. These protocols were interpreted by a clinical
psychologist, Dr. Bert Kaplan, who spent a summer testing subjects
from four Southwestern cultures, including the Navaho. Dr. Kaplan
met Bill Begay more than once. He has not, however, read Bill's
life story or discussed Bill's character with me.
sense deviant from the main framework of the Navaho way of life."
When it comes to those idiosyncratic features which are at least —
in their emphasis — specially characteristic of Bill, my experience like-
wise fully accords with Dr. Kaplan's interpretations when he writes
of ". . . freedom and spontaneity of self expression and a proper ap-
preciation of and sensitivity to the subtleties of the materials with
which he is dealing. This ability is generally associated with strong
ego forces and emotional maturity."
457
Clyde Kluckhohn
Because of his mother's early death, the number of his siblings, and
his father's remarriage. Bill did not receive even the small inheritance
with which many of his fellows of that day started. On his father's
death, which occurred when Bill was already married, his sisters
receivedsome livestock; Bill and his brothers got nothing. Since the
day he came back from school he was on his own economically with
only very minor assitance from relatives. His first two wives had
458
A Navaho Politician
nesses. During a period of more than twenty years there was a new
child almost every two years. Before the cycle of children from his
third wife was complete his daughter and two sons by his first wife
were themselves married but continued to be to a large degree
dependent upon Bill. His third wife was always demanding: of lux-
ury items, of traveling about, of aid to her relatives. In addition.
Bill himself encouraged his own relatives to expect assistance from
him. During most of his life he has been desperately poor, and during
a number of periods he has barely been able to provide his family
with a minimum diet. He has always been in debt, often to half a
dozen trading stores and to even more individuals, Navaho and white,
at one time. His creditors pressed him so hard that he found it
necessary to work out his debts a little here, then there. His
wife's rugs and their few lambs and tiny crop of corn and beans
would be zealously watched by traders and others so that they
could be seized the very minute they were available. He ordinarily
insisted on being paid in cash by anthropologists, for checks meant
going to a trading store to cash them. Sometimes Bill had to avoid for
years entering a particular settlement lest the trader catch him. A few
dollars in cash not infrequently meant the difference between eating
and not eating. In the literal sense Bill and his family lived from
hand to mouth until the last few years when most of his children
had become largely self-supporting or significant contributors to the
family income and when he had a meager but assured income as
delegate to the Tribal Council. He still works hard at what extra jobs
he can get: hauling wood for Zuni Indians or making arduous trips
to a sacred lake to get salt he can sell at a profit to other Indians.
It is, I believe, this fierce and unceasing pressure that is primary
in understanding certain aspects of his character which both Navahos
and whites comment upon unfavorably. Let me sketch two relevant
incidents. About twenty years ago Bill married his second daughter to
a senile man who who had been a scout for the American Army
against Geronimo. The difference in their ages was at least sixty years.
Although traditional Navaho culture sanctioned a sizable or in fact
a large age gap between spouses,^ this was a bit too much, especially
since it seemed clear that the couple did not live together as man and
5 Not only did older men take young wives, but it was also not uncommon for a
widowed or divorced woman to marry a man ten to twenty years her junior.
459
Clyde Kluckhohn
the old man. She prepared and served him his food and kept him
clean —
or fairly clean, by Navaho standards. Bill candidly rationalized
the situation to me as follows: "I know people are talking. But he is
**
a good old man and needs someone to look after him. We need the
—
money my daughter as much as the rest of us what he gets from —
pension and from singing at the Gallup Ceremonial and from telling
his stories. He won't live very long and then my daughter can
marry somebody else. My wife and I will let her take her own pick
next time." As a matter of fact, the daughter accepted the arrange-
ment with good nature most of the time and subsequently did marry
another man of about her own age.
had a "cousin" who in the 1930's and early 1940's owned
Bill
**To Drs. Alexander and Dorothea Leighton, Bill gave approximately the same
account but with some additions and variations. He said the "marriage" was first
suggested by the local trader who wanted to continue to handle the ex-scout's pension
check. He claimed the decision was made by the girl and her stepmother, both of
whom regretted it afterward because the old man drank up most of his income. Bill
admitted to the Leightons that he had been criticized for "giving my daughter to that
old man" and that the- elders were "chewing it over." He added he feared trouble
from Indian Service officials.
460
A Navaho Politician
man commented to me: "I used to think that my cousin was like the
old Navahos. Relatives didn't change toward each other when someone
became rich or poor. He still talks to me the same way. But I can't
depend upon him as I could once. He makes me promises he does
not keep. When I send him word, he does not come."
The insecurity of Bill's early life was more than economic. After
his mother's death he was shifted from one family of relatives to
own marriage he called seven different places
another. Before his
"home." Orphaned Navahos commonly experience one or two such
shifts, but this is an unusual number. His siblings were also scattered
about. In his autobiography Bill recalls forgetting all about his sisters
for a time, though later his relations with at least two of them were
exceptionally close. One sister raised his oldest daughter, and his
second daughter lived with the same sister until Bill's third marriage.
Bill quotes his father himself as remarking, "After your mother's
death I never stayed very longone place." And there is a matter-
at
of-fact yet still pathetic passage in which Bill describes meeting his
father among a group of adults shortly after he had come back from
school: "After I shake hands with these people there, one of them
was my father, but T didn't remember him. My father used to have
a sister there. That sister she is the one that's living there. But my
father is living way back over here with my brother."
Bill's relations to his present wife, Ellen, and her mother attest
461
Clyde Kluckhohn
mother. She says: "My mother was mean to me. My mother did not
want to take care of me." Many Navaho women are shrewish, but
there is universal agreement that Ellen's mother was an extreme case.
After marrying a succession of Navahos, the mother became for some
time the mistress of a white trader, Ellen's father. She called herself,
"Mrs. Smith." Then she had still other Navaho husbands. The last
one was liked and considered good man by Ellen and Bill. They
a
merely noted repeatedly his fear of his wife. The mother made a
prostitute of one of her younger daughters and forced her to do away
with an unwanted baby by exposing it. Ellen and Bill told many
stories of her thieving, bootlegging, and conniving. Nor is this all.
She was generally regarded as a powerful witch, and for this reason,
as well as for her cunning and sharp tongue, she was feared by her
own children and other relatives, by her sons-in-law, and by the
community at large. "She hates everybody, and everybody hates her."
—
When Bill married Ellen, he went to live as the Navaho pattern
—
most often prescribes where his wife and her mother were estab-
lished. Navaho custom prohibits, under penalty of supernaturally
caused blindness, any direct contact between mother-in-law and son-
in-law. Ellen's mother announced her intention of treating Bill as a
true son; therefore, she said, they would not observe the taboo. (It is
significant for the positive polarity of Bill's feelings toward white
behavior that he accepted the proposal.) But the old lady was not
satisfied with the fashion in which Bill did her bidding. She deter-
mined to "run him off the place," as she had Ellen's first husband.
Ellen, however, was loyal to her new husband and claimed the land
was really hers rather than her mother's. The mother-in-law com-
plained to the Indian Service authorities. Bill was jailed, and there
was a long drawn out quarrel, with Navaho elders, the Gallup sher-
iff and police, traders, and the Indian Service people all attempting
to mediate or adjudicate.
Bill and Ellen at last won out, and Bill from
escaped — largely —
his mother-in-law. He continued to be and on a few
terrified of her
occasions to suffer from her machinations. He did not, to be sure,
escape from his wife. She is steadier and less vacillating, or torn, as
regards her purposes. Bill works hard but more episodically. Ellen
loves to buy expensive things, yet she seldom squanders money. Her
expenditures bear a far more consistent relation to her central and
unchanging values: comfort, opportunity, and prestige for her family.
462
A Navaho Politician
enjoys his dependence upon Ellen. Theirs has been, as these things
go, a happy partnership. It has certainly been a firm one; and
Navaho marriage is typically fragile. I have heard Ellen and Bill
argue with heat. I have heard angry words. Even one of Ellen's own
children once said of her: "She is mad all the time, day and night.
I hate her." And Bill added in desperation: "She always gets mad.
That's what's the matter all the time." On those rare occasions when
Bill got angry enough to express aggression toward his wife, he would
actually stand up to her. Once, for example, when he was injured in
an accident, she kept nagging him to go to the hospital, but he held
out in his refusal.
The surprising thing is that never once, either in my own observa-
tion or according to rumor, has there been the slightest intimation
of a dissolution of the marriage. Still more amazing — the exceedingly
active network of Navaho gossip has never accused Bill of infidelity.'
And yet there is a wistfulness in some of Bill's utterances about his
wife. His unending praise of her intelligence, energy, and dependabil-
ity does not completely mask a resentment at his surrender of male
autonomy. There is an apparent compulsive aspect to his activities
in those spheres of behavior where he can, to some degree, assert
his autonomy: rituals and politics. His self-assumed role as "provider
of bounty" I see also as, among other things, a masculine protest.
It may be meaningful that Bill is a specialist in the hunting rituals.
These, along with some of the war rites, are the only ones which
exclude women completely and also demand sizable periods of sexual
"^
The single hint in our files of notes came from a Mormon woman who knew
little about Bill.
463
Clyde Kluckhohn
abstinence before the ritual begins and after it has been concluded.
Women are, of course, patients in the curing ceremonials, and they
attend these exactly as do men. After the menopause, women may
even become chanters. But the hunting rituals are defined as exclu-
I have spoken but little of Bill's sly but seldom unkind sense of
hos, but Bill's case shows characteristic stresses.) The politician and
the schemer are also probably behind this speech. And I have no
doubt that some of his neighbors are complaining that he irresponsi-
bly failed to attend one or more sessions of the Council or that he
neglected to bring up a matter that he had promised to raise. In the
account of his speech I also imagine Bill happy in acting as an alert
man who can operate successfully without the counsel or interven-
tion of his wife, taking pleasure in his skill with words, in his prestige,
in his capacity to move other men to action. Yes, in this final posture
I see my old friend, "Little Schoolboy," with great clarity.
465
Courtesy, Milwaukee Public Museum
'^jBJff*
18
John Mink,
Ojibiva Informant
Joseph B. Casagrande
John Mink lived out his ninety-odd years in the relative obscurity
of Lac Court Oreilles Indian Reservation in northwestern Wisconsin.
When he died in 1943, few outside the pale of the reservation
lands noticed his passing; and few within it mourn, for
were left to
the old man had neither progeny nor close kin. Nowere
editorials
written to memorialize his death, no epitaph was carved on his
gravestone, and he left no monument. Like countless others before
him whose lives were outside the mainstream of history, he slipped
unobtrusively into eternity.
Yet John Mink's death was more than the end of a man. He was
one of the last of a lingering handful who followed a style of life
ancient among the primitive hunting peoples of both the Old World
and the New. As the spiritual leader of a small company of "pagans,"
themselves a minority group within the more acculturated Christian
majority, he more than any other on the reservation strove to pre-
serve the traditions and customs of Ojibwa life. Thus, his death was
not only the end of a life, but marked the passing of a way of life
as well. Many who were close to him must have sensed this dual
loss, but they are unlettered and mute. It is for them,and out of my
own respect for his memory that I wish to give John Mink brief
respite from oblivion and such small taste of immortality as there
may be in print.
firm, and lived alone near the Couderay River in a house he had occu-
pied for more than half a century. Bob Ritzenthaler, my companion
in the field, and I determined to seek him out as soon as we were
settled.
We found his weathered cabin on the southern slope of a small
hill overlooking the river and followed the well-worn path that led
to the door. A hoarsely shouted "Boju!" ^ came in response to our
knock. A moment later another voice greeted us in English and
bid us enter. Somewhat apprehensively, we pushed open the door and,
blinking away the dazzling summer sun, stepped into the single,
barely furnished room. John Mink had another visitor, his good and
trusted friend Prosper Guibord, who on this first meeting acted as
interpreter. In this capacity he was to become an essential third
party to all our future conversations. Prosper had brought the Old
Man meal of venison and wild rice which he had just finished
a
eating. When we
arrived the two men were smoking kinnikinnick, a
native tobacco made of bark scrapings, whose fragrant smoke hung
like cobwebs in the room.
The size of the Old Man's reputation had ill-prepared us for his
physical appearance. His large, almost massive head with its mat of
unkempt grey hair dwarfed his stocky body and enfeebled legs
which he supported with a walking-stick that now lay propped
against the cot on which he sat. His gnarled hand clutched a pipe,
like a root growing around a stone. Squinting at us out of rheumy
eyes, slack mouth held open to reveal a few stumps of teeth, and head
cocked sightly to one side as he listened, one had the impression
that all sensory avenues to his brain had been dulled by his great
age. His clothing —
faded outsize overalls, a worn wool shirt, and
tennis shoes —
lent him a ludicrous yet pathetic air, like that of an
orang-utan, "the old man of the forest," dressed up for an appear-
ance at a carnival. The image couldn't be repressed.
Through the good offices of Prosper, we presented the Old Man
with a package of tobacco and explained the purpose of our call.
Would he, we asked, consent to tell us the story of his own life
and something about the old Ojibwa ways? Tn reply John Mink said
that he was old and his life was drawing to a close but that he had
lived long and remembered much and would tell us what he
could. He added that he would welcome our visits for he was often
1 The customary Ojibwa greeting, borrowed from the French, bonjour.
469
Joseph B. Casagrande
lonely and said that it would make his heart glad to talk of these
things.
Even on brief acquaintance it was apparent that in Prosper Gui-
bord, then in his mid-60's, we had found an Born
ideal interpreter.
of an Indian mother who had married
a French-American lumber-
jack, he was equally fluent in English and Ojibwa, and he owed alle-
giance to both ways of life. We arranged to hire Prosper, who had no
other regular employment, and left with plans made to meet at the
Old Man's house the following morning.
like bear fat, and I remember crying for the breast. When I was able
to eat wild rice and venison and blueberries, I stopped nursing. Later
when my parents saw that I was healthy and hving good my father gave
a feast for my godparents. My mother's father, a speaker of the tribe,
had holes cut in the soles to help me walk. I was small and frisky and every-
one liked me and laughed at me. My first toys were a little toboggan and
a little bow and arrow. I killed squirrels and chipmunks with it and
once I killed a partridge that was drumming. The arrow hit him right
under the wing and he went straight up in the air and came down with
his wings fluttering. My parents gave a big feast when I killed the par-
tridge and the men and their dreams so that I
told about their fasting
would become strong and a good hunter. There was a big feast too when
I killed my first deer with a musket. In those days there was lots of game
and I can remember the great flocks of passenger pigeons so thick they
darkened the sky.
I fasted all the time when I was young. In the early morning I would
paint my face with charcoal and go off into the woods without eating.
The spirits came to me in my dreams as I fasted and gave me the power
to kiU game and to cure people. They taught me songs and charms and
how to suck the disease from sick people and make medicines.
470
John Mink, Ojibwa Informant
but I loved my first wife most and even now I feel sad when I think of her.
I was single for two years before I married again, and it was then that
I began to fisten to the old men and to learn from them about our religion
and medicine. My second wife was from the whooping crane totem and
had been married before and had two girls and a boy. We lived together
about ten years.
He had had four wives, he told us, and many children, all of
whom had died in infancy or early childhood. "Little Girl," his last
wife, died ten years ago, he said, and concluded his story: "That's
allthe wives I have under the ground. They are all buried down there
by the river. That's why I don't want to leave this place." Then he lay
back on his bed and closed his eyes.
Like many another of his advanced age, the Old Man's memory had
a vagrant quality. In telling his life and in other narratives,
story
incidents of his middle and later years were blurred in outline and
471
Joseph B. Casagrande
Prosper had arrived at the cabin well before us and had deloused
the Old Man and his bedding, cut his hair, shaved him, and
attended to his bath. John Mink had submitted to all of these
ministrations without protest, but having suffered himself to
be bathed, barbered, and deloused, and made thereby presentable
to a larger public, he insisted that we take his picture. On another
occasion he rummaged through the large trunk that served
him and closet and decked out in all the regalia that
as both chest
could be mustered, he posed happily for us outside his door.
Such is vanity.
The news that John Mink had become our mentor in Ojibwa
customs spread rapidly throughout the reservation. At first a
few were suspicious of our motives and of our relationship with
the Old Man, but as his proteges we soon gained acceptance by the
pagan group. In his company we were welcomed where before we
had been only grudgingly tolerated. Together we made the cere-
monial round, attending mourning feasts, dances for the sacred
drums, a celebration for a slain bear. On such occasions the Old
Man was often called upon to speak. Supported by his staff, he
would rise to admonish his hearers to follow the old ways, perhaps
telling them mourners and honor the dead bear as was
to feed the
proper lest the hunter kill no meat or the rice fail to ripen. Prophet-
like, he spoke as though for the tribal conscience, exhorting the
As the days passed and his trust in us grew, John Mink's early
reluctance to talk about religion, medicine, and other esoteric sub-
jects diminished so that by summer's end our conversations ranged
quite freely across the whole of Ojibwa culture. Nevertheless, before
broaching sacred themes he always offered tobacco to the super-
naturals and when discussing these touchy matters, he was some-
times uneasy lest he be accused of perfidy by revealing to us secrets
that we were not qualified to know. Several times his mounting anx-
iety brought an abrupt end to a discussion of these subjects, al-
though it was often resumed at a later session.
John Mink was a master of most of the healing arts. He was
physician, surgeon, obstetrician, pharmacologist, psychiatrist, homeo-
474
John Mink, Ojibwa Informant
There were many, both pagan and Christian, who sought his serv-
ices for which he received modest payment in the form of gifts of
food, clothing, money, or tobacco.
His knowledge of blood-letting and authority to practice it had
come through a dream in which a giant horse-fly and mosquito had ap-
peared to him. These benevolent insect powers had taught him how
the veins course through the body, where they should be tapped for
various ailments, and the techniques to use. Before treating a pa-
tient he would seek their guidance in both the diagnosis of the
complaint and its cure, which he effected either by cupping or by
opening a vein with a sharp instrument. In the former method he
used a hollow cow horn that was applied to the punctured skin and
the blood induced to flow by sucking through a small aperture at the
tip of the horn. Others, he said, bled a patient by pricking the skin
477
Joseph B. Casagrande
bandanna. This done, Andrew took his position off to one side, his
478
John Mink, Ojibwa Informant
tobacco.
For the evening's second course of treatments, the Old Man asked
Alice to put the bone tube in his mouth and gave Mary the rattle
to shake. He did this, he said, because two female spirits were helping
him that night. After sucking a couple of times he asked Andrew to
get a larger bone which was secreted under the bed. He swallowed
the tube, alarming us all by momentarily gagging on it, then he
regurgitated it and sucked again near Prosper's navel. On the first
attempt he sucked out several pieces of the same white stuff and
announced that he had now gotten it all.
The Old Man said that Prosper had been sorcerized by a woman,
immediately identified by Prosper as a former mistress with whom he
had lived for two years and subsequently deserted. Prosper said that
he could feel the bone go right through him and that he could also
feel the place in his lower right abdomen from which the disease
had been removed. He thanked the Old Man for saving his life,
adding that he was sure the disease would shortly have killed him, for
the woman had never forgiven him.
In spite of his age, the Old Man's performance had force and high
dramatic quality. Here, magically recreated in this cabin was an ex-
pression of the human mind and spirit to which we all are heir; a
rite that in the same essential form must have been practiced by the
479
Joseph B. Casagrande
For John Mink the line between the natural and the supernatural
was thinly drawn. His world was filled with an infinite array of
spirits and forces that could influence the affairs of men. Nor was man
conceived as a creature apart from the rest of nature. For the Ojibwa,
as for many hunting peoples, animals and men are akin and the
differences between them lay chiefly in outward form. Animals are
motivated as men are motivated, live in societies as men hve, act as
men and
act, their fates are intertwined. Thus, theOld Man told
how when a bear was killed its four paws and head were placed in
position on a rush mat and a feast was given. He described how the
head was decorated with ribbons, beadwork, or a baby's clothes
and food and tobacco put nearby; and how people would come and
talk to the bear endearingly so that its spirit would return to the village
of the bears and persuade other bears to allow themselves to be
killed.
Contact with the spirit world was for the most part made by
means of formal prayers and ceremonies. However, one might have
other more casual encounters with the spirits as well, and the Old
Man told us about a number of such confrontations he had had. These
often had a sort of mystical quality and it was evident from the manner
in which he spoke about them that they had been among the most
memorable experiences of his long life. He told how once while
hunting he saw a strangely spotted deer step out of the forest and
before his eyes walk across the water to disappear into a misty lake.
He had glimpsed the monsters that lurked in some lakes, he said,
and had seen the water break into boiling whirlpools as they thrust
beneath the surface.
The Old Man believed in charms and portents, in sorcery and
transformations, and in the power for both good and evil of those
who had fasted and dreamed. There were those, he said (and he was
one of them), who could make the skins of loons come alive and cry
out in order to foretell the future. He told how Old Man Skunk, now
long dead, used a downy woodpecker skin that would move its head
and make a tapping sound, and how for evil ends he would use the skin
of an owl. And John Mink had often seen the "shaking tent" con-
jurors perform, but although he knew how to construct the con-
juror's hut and possessed the power to summon the spirits to the
magically swaying structure, he had never practiced the art out of
fear of its possible bad consequences.
480
John Mink, Ojibwa Informant
The Old Man claimed that he had never used his power for evil
purposes, but there were many on the reservation who swore that they
had been sorcerized by him and laid all their misfortunes at his
door. Few doubted his powers and most were prepared to lend some
degree of credence to the rumors that circulated about him. Even
his staunchest friends, Prosper among them, regarded him with a
kind of wary ambivalence compounded of both fear and deep respect.
Prosper himself once confided to me that he was careful never to
cross the Old Man lest he do him harm.
assisted the officials.There the dog was killed and its body dragged
back to the lodge. The initiates and Society members, several score
in all, dressed in their most brightly colored clothes and carrying
their medicine pouches in one hand and buckets of food in the
other, lined up at the north entrance. After an opening song they
began to file clockwise slowly around the Lodge. Too feeble to join
in their awkward, halting march, the Old Man was led to his
solitary place inside the Lodge. Thus commenced the long and elabo-
rate ceremony. Among its features were the magical "shooting" of the
participants with migis, the variously colored cowrie shells contained
in the pouches, and the cermonial eating of the dog which, cleaned
and singed, had been boiled in an iron camp kettle. It required a
strong stomach to taste of the coarse meat that was offered to us,
permeated as it was with the smell of burnt hair. Dog was eaten, the
Old Man told us, so that the human beings who ate it would become
as faithful to the supernaturals as a dog is to its master.
The ceremony lasted until sundown of the second day and John
Mink was the last to leave the Lodge. He had participated throughout,
making numerous speeches and being frequently consulted by other
officials about the procedures to be followed. As we drove him
just killed. Not knowing the proper ceremony, nor willing to risk its
omission, he had come to ask the Old Man to smoke a pipe with
him and to say a few words in celebration of the occasion. This he
did, and the man left content in the thought that he had done the
right thing.
As he was wont do when queried about a particular observance,
to
the Old Man recounted a personal experience to illustrate Ojibwa
mortuary customs, punctuating his account with brief asides when
he touched upon points where practice varied. In this instance he
had been called to officiate at the funeral of a woman who had died
that spring. He told in great detail how he had seen to the proper
preparation of the body of the dead woman for burial, taking care
that the cheeks were painted and that her medicine pouch was placed
on her chest as she lay covered with a sheet on a rude catafalque
of planks. He told how he had presented a bowl of food to the corpse
during the wake, telling her to eat so that she would be strong for the
long journey to the village of the dead; and he repeated the speech
he had made for the dead woman when her coffin had been lowered
into the grave.
She would have a long trip to the land of the dead, he said, and
he told her not to look back, but to go right on, making sure to
leave offerings of tobacco and to obey the injunctions of the spirits
she would meet along the way. He told her that on the fourth day she
would come to a river spanned by what appeared to be a log,
but which in reality was a huge snake. Similarly, what appeared
to be a clump of red willows growing alongside the river would
actually be a wigwam. The bridge, he told her, is guarded by two
gaunt dogs and attended by two old women in whose custody the
journey would be completed. His oration ended, the grave was
filled and marked by a wood stake on which the symbol of the
deceased's totem was painted upside down. He added that it made him
mad because he always had to make such speeches since no one else
would learn them or had the gumption to get up and speak.
The Old Man strongly disapproved of the changes, such as the
practice of holding wakes, tossing a handful of earth on the coffin,
or burial in distant places, that had been introduced in the mortuary
customs. In the old days, John Mink said, the dead were buried
close by in graves lined with birchbark and food was regularly
placed at the entrance of the grave-houses erected over them. No
483
Joseph B. Casagrande
longer, he said, are poles put up in front of the graves from which
passers-by might take the gifts of clothing and necklaces hung there
and wear them in honor of the deceased. Nowadays, he said, the
dead are neglected and disowned.
The Old Man often expressed a strong craving for the native
Ojibwa foods and after long denial would eat ravenously of such
delicacies as fresh-killed venison, bear fat, or wild rice. Although
frequently in precarious supply, there was variety in the native larder
and John Mink described the seasonal round of the food quest with
obvious relish. He told in full detail how wild rice, the staple food,
was harvested, threshed, and winnowed, how in early spring the hard
maples were tapped, the sap boiled down, and cakes of maple sugar
made in birchbark or clam shell molds, and how blueberries were
gathered, dried, and stored in bark containers.
He described how in early April when the black suckers were
running up the cold streams and their flesh was white and firm they
were caught by hand or in a variety of simple traps. Gutted and their
heads and tails cut off, they were smoked and stored in bales and the
Old Man recalled roasting them in hot coals and eating them as a kind
of snack when he was a boy. And he told how they used to sit on
logs alongside a weir and the men joke and the women giggle as
they caught the suckers that swam up onto a rack of poles.
Ice-fishing in the winter, however, was a solitary pursuit. A hole
would be cut in the ice over a bar in five to ten feet of water, the
Old Man said, and a blanket draped over the fisherman's head and
shoulders and tightly secured so that no light would be let in.
A weighted decoy in the form of a frog or minnow was bobbed from
a short handle and a spear with tines of native copper held ready.
When a fish approached the fisherman let the spear slide slowly
down into the water until it was about a foot away and then the fish
was deftly jabbed. The fish quickly froze solid, the Old Man said,
and he would carry them home like a bundle of firewood.
For the hunting peoples of the northern latitudes starvation is a
lurking threat that rides the winter blizzards and the biting cold.
Stories of cannibalism were related by the Ojibwa and half-believed,
for here was a theme, like those of classic drama, fascinating in its
horrible possibility. Thus, John Mink told many tales about the
windigo, legendary cannibalistic monsters that stalked the woods in
484
John Mink, Ojibwa Informant
the lean winter months, in whom these fears were joined and given
mythological expression:
One winter morning the people noticed that the kettle hanging over
the fire began to swing back and forth, and they were scared because
they knew a windigo was coming. Everyone trembled with fear and no
one was brave or strong enough to challenge the windigo. Finally they
sent for a wise old woman who lived with her little granddaughter at the
edge of the village, but the old woman was powerless to do any-
said she
thing. The little girl asked what was the matter and they told her that
they were all going to die. Then the little girl asked for two sticks of
peeled sumac as long as her arms and took them off home with her
while all the others huddled together in one place.
That night it turned so bitter cold that the people's bones came near
to cracking open. Early the next morning the little girl told her grand-
mother to melt a kettle of tallow over the fire. Meanwhile it turned
colder and colder until the people looked and there coming over the
hill was a windigo as tall as a white pine tree. Trees cracked open and
That summer we listened to the Old Man tell many tales, including
the epic myths of Wenabojo, the mischievous and comic culture
hero, whom the Ojibwa affectionately called, "nephew." One long
tale of Wenabojo, two days in the telling, embodied the Noah-like
Ojibwa story of flood and re-creation of the earth wherein after loon,
otter, and beaver had failed, muskrat succeeded in diving to the
bottom of the deep and all-enveloping sea and coming up with a pawful
of mud from which Wenabojo, with the help of all the animals
and birds, refashioned the earth. The tale was told with a true story-
teller's art that not even translation or our meager knowledge of the
language could mask. The Old Man gave all the characters their
485
Joseph B. Casagrande
separate voices, enlivened the tale with interjections, songs, and ani-
mal cries, and punctuated it with pauses and dramatic gestures.
Although too young to be himself a participant, the Old Man
related many stories, too, of the war between the Ojibwa and the
Woodland Dakota Sioux. As a boy he had been present at the "Chief
Dances" that were held at both the departure and return of a war
party. At them he had seen impaled on sticks the bloody trophy heads
of the Sioux that had been slain, and he had listened to the returned
warriors who, their faces still painted and wearing only a breech-
clout and an eagle feather in their hair, described their exploits to the
last grisly detail.
By mid-autumn I had spent many days and hours with the Old
Man and we had discussed virtually all aspects of Ojibwa culture.
The intricacies of kinship and social organization, a prime anthro-
pological topic, received particular attention. Using sticks for males
and stones for females, we made diagrams in the sand to represent
the relationships between various kin. The Old Man supplied the
appropriate kinship terms and described the behavior that customarily
obtained between persons in specific relationships. In an account
spiced with numerous anecdotes, he described the horseplay and
broad joking that went on between brothers- and sisters-in-law, and
the warm relationships that held between grandparent and grandchild,
and between a man and his sister's son. He listed the various dodems,
the loosely organized patrilineal groups to which the Ojibwa owed
allegiance — catfish, wolf, lynx, bear, marten, deer, eagle, sturgeon,
bullhead, whooping crane, loon, and the one to which John Mink
belonged, nibanabe, a mermaid-like creature. If a person's totem or
totem animal were insulted, the Old Man said, he would give a feast
to which the offender and his totem-mates would be invited and good-
naturedly forced to drink huge quantities of whiskey and gorge them-
selves with food.
He described the old Ojibwa arts and crafts which only a few still
486
John Mink, Ojibwa Informant
The Old Man was familiar as well with the handicrafts that were the
women's special province. He told how deer hides were fleshed, soaked
in a solution of dried deer brains, then stretched, scraped again,
and after they were dried and white as snow, formed into a closed
cylinder andsmoked over a smudge pot. He described how the women
made rush mats, how they would weave beautiful colored patterns
out of dyed porcupine quills that had been flattened by pulling them
through their clenched teeth, and how they would bite designs into
small squares of birchbark.
"That's how Mink said. "The women were
things used to be," John
proud They looked good in their braids and long
in the old days.
dresses and they worked hard. Now they are lazy and dress in rags.
There was always food in my wigwam then and I had many things.
Now I live alone in a cold and empty house. The men no longer
believe in anything. It is as though they were lost at a fork in the
road and don't know which way to take. There is no one left here to
take my place."
I last saw John Mink when we stopped by his cabin on the grey
November morning we left the reservation. He came to the door
to greet us with the shout, little ponderous jig, and flourish of his
stick that had become a joke between us. We sat with him to smoke a
pipeful of tobacco and talked for a while in the pidgin of Ojibwa,
English, and exaggerated pantomine that we had jointly contrived.
But even had Prosper been with us, there would have no words with
which to say "good-by." When we got up to go the Old Man came
outside with us and watched as we walked away down the path, his
stick raised high in a gesture of farewell. Then, as we faded from his
dim sight, he turned and went slowly back into his house.
487
Joseph B. Casagrande
held firm, and he lived out a full life secure in a tradition he had
mastered and found satisfying. This sense of integrity and a certain
dignity of character are the qualities remember best in John Mink.
I
488
19
A Pueblo G. I.
John Adair
Ooon after arriving at the pueblo, I heard that Marcus Tafoya
would make a good informant. He was a veteran of World War II,
about 30 years of age, and married into a family prominent in the
religious life of his pueblo. His wife belonged to a clan that "owned"
many religious offices, including one of the high-priesthoods of the
village.
With this tip I approached the house of his wife,
about Marcus,
Maud was an imposing one near the center of the village,
Arviso. It
built of morticed stone with the new style gabled roof and front
porch. Venetian blinds at the windows gave the place a look of
prosperity in contrast to the mud-plastered, flat-roofed houses next
door.
A woman about 22 years old, whom I judged to be his wife,
greeted me at the door.
"Come in and have a seat," she said in perfect English.
"Is Marcus here?" I asked as I sat down on an elaborate over-
stuffed chair.
"No, he has gone to the store, but he will be right back. What do
you want?"
Her boldness in meeting strangers set her apart from other Pueblo
women I had met; however, her manner was quite in harmony with
her house —
in both there was a spirit of revolt, yet not so complete
that the new fully replaced the old. On one side of the fireplace
was a radio; resting on the far side of the mantle was a bowl of sacred
corn meal. As my eyes roamed around the room, I spotted other
evidences of Pueblo tradition: a cradleboard; a house-blessing fetish,
in most.
"I have been talking to veterans here in the village, and I understand
he is one," I answered.
She asked me to have some coffee while I waited, and as I drank,
she sat down and we continued to talk.
"Where was I from? What was I doing? How long did I intend
490
A Pueblo G.I.
"I would like to know how the veterans are getting on in the village,
what kinds of jobs they have, and how it seems to be home after
those years away in the service."
"I see you are wearing your sun-tans," he said. "At first I thought
you were a recruiting sergeant here to sign me up for another
hitch."
We both laughed. That led to our obliquely sounding each other
out. In contrast to his wife, Marcus was almost bashful. As she was
preparing supper, we each found out where the other had been in
the service, for how long, and when discharged. Marcus, I learned,
got out eighteen months ago. But as members of the family gathered
for the evening meal, I decided to wait until another time to continue
the interview. was with some misgivings that I asked if I could see
It
him on the next day. Other veterans had said "Yes," but hadn't
shown up.
Marcus was there at the appointed time on the following day.
After further exchange of war experiences, I asked him if he would
be willing to take a test I was giving the veterans. He was too em-
barrassed to say "No," and not ready with an excuse, so he lamely
said "Yes," and we sat down at a table in the back room.
The test was one of the projective type, the well-known Thematic
491
John Adair
"How much do they charge you for that room? For your meals?
Do they give you enough to eat?" she asked.
"They are real stingy," she added. "At our last fiesta they hardly
fed their guests a thing, and look at all the sheep they own."
After a brief pause, she continued, "You should have come here
first. We wouldn't have charged you so much. My sister has a house
with a couple of spare rooms. I am sure she would have been glad
to rent them to you."
I told her I wished I had done so, and then switched back to
Marcus and asked him if I could talk to him again another time.
Before he answered, he glanced up at Maud and I knew by the set
expression on her face that he could not have said "No." When I went
out of the house to my car, Marcus followed. I told him I wanted to
pay him for his time.
"You don't owe me a thing. I flunked that test," he said.
492
A Pueblo G.I.
The house Maud had mentioned would serve our needs if it were
fixed up a bit, and when I approached her sister about the matter she
was pleased at the prospect. We entered as careful a set of business
transactions as any concierge with a promising tenant. These included
an agreement that I would purchase all of our firewood from the
men in her family.
Agood share of the work fixing up the old house fell to Marcus
and assisted him in various ways. But I was of greatest use in
I
come change.
"Just before I went into the service, I decided the hell with it.
I might just as well have some fun before I left. I didn't care what
the people in the village would say after I left. I was going to
be gone for a long time. Maybe I wouldn't even get home again.
"So I got hold of a case of wine and stayed drunk for two weeks.
493
John Adair
Me and some of the other fellows sure had fun with the girls. Shacked-
up just about every night. We sure left plenty of gossip behind us
when we did leave."
Maud and Marcus were not married until after the war. He had
courted her some years earlier but she had married another fellow
and he turned to another girl. However, Maud was still interested in
Marcus, and wrote to him when he was in service camp.
"She got my address from my younger brother," Marcus said. "We
wrote back and forth and those letters got hotter and hotter.
Then one day her husband went to the Post Office and opened one of
those letters. They busted up in 1943."
"Why?" I asked.
"He drank too much and was lazy,"Marcus replied.
After several such talks, I asked Marcus if he would tell me the
story of his life, saying that I could better tell how he felt about the
village and his army life if I knew more about his family, his boy-
hood, his schooling, and the like.
His first reaction was like the time I gave him the test. I could
tell before he replied that he didn't want to do so, yet he didn't want
to turn me down. Finally, he agreed but only after I promised
that we would work at my house and at night.
"If I were to come over here in the daytime, or if people saw us
talking at my house, they would say that you were writing another
piece for that paper on the religion of my people," he said with a
nervous laugh. "Those old people don't know that there aren't any
secrets left. All of that stuff was sold long ago," he added.
T agreed with him but said, "I know, but
let's not add to the
more. It was not long before he was back to his boyhood, living it
experiences in the service. Even his initiation into the tribal dance
cult was told stiffly, and in the second person, as if he were sum-
marizing what he had read in some ethnologist's monograph rather
than telling me about what had happened to him. The excitement he
must have felt, the drama, the brilliantly costumed dancers, these
were all omitted from his flat account:
"Now the dancers get in line in the middle of the plaza. They
take the clothes off you and put on only two blankets with the
canvas covering; this time you are on the back of your guardian
again. They all go through, pass the line of dancers, each hits you
four times now, this time you could feel the pain. Some boys cry for
help. The people laugh."
But as the story of his life progressed, Marcus became more
personally involved and that other person he was talking about
eventuaUy became him.
He told of his life at school, of fights with the other boys on the
playground, and always with special interest he related the summer
adventures at the ranch where his family lived, ten miles or more
from the pueblo.
Every year when the school ends I went home to the family ranch.
The same work each year, nothing new. One day, me and Robert was
going through a pine forest, the rain really poured on us, we had to
stop. We
were riding horseback. Lightning almost struck us, it struck a
pine tree about fifteen feet away. The horses kicked and wheeled. We
smelled that lightning odor so knowing the Indian superstition we hurried
home, on one horse, the other one ran away when I let loose the reins.
My father was out in the corral, and the first thing he asked me was if I
was hurt. He thought the horse threw me off. We told him what happened
and he didn't let us go in the house. He told us to stay outdoors. It was
still We had to stay outside when he went out to the field
raining then.
to look forthem black young beetles, stink-bugs, I think you call them.
When he came back, he told us to strip down our clothes, let the rain
wash us down. Then he told my mother to make tortillas half-done, also
495
John Adair
the meat half cooked. He put the black beetles in between the meat and
between the tortillas. Before we ate he took us down to the small stream,
it was one of those made by the rain. We bathed in there from head to toe
and we went up to the house and we ate those stink-bug sandwiches. Boy
they tasted bitter. Like chili, they were hot. He picked up some of that
stuff, the twigs that come with the flood, made some prayer, and made a
motion around in the air and threw the twigs away. After we ate then he let
us into the house.
That summer there was an same eagle that has his nest
eagle, the
about two miles from our place. My
dad and I were after that eagle,
so one day, we went out to see if its young were ready to fly. There were
two of them, she had her nest on top of the highest steep cliff. It was
about four times as high as the highest pine tree. I made a strong sling
shot, but the pebbles didn't reach. them down. There was
I tried to scare
a way of going up the west side. But when you get on top of the mesa,
you see that tall monument-like cliff is separated from the mesa by a
crevasse that is about 50 feet deep. A long time ago a Navaho tried to get
across that 50-foot crevasse; he only climbed half way and he fell back-
wards. So from that time on no one tried to get across.
My father had a .38 revolver so the next day we took it with us. He
shot about two feet away from that nest, until one of the young ones got
scared and flew down. We watched her till she disappeared among the
pine trees. We followed and searched about an hour before we found
her. She flew when we got near her, then next time she tried to fly she
only jumped ten or fifteen feet at a time. We caught her when she got
tired. We tied her around the legs with string and carried her home. We
made a cage with a post in the middle for her roost. Whenever it rained
hard I used to go out and get prairie dogs by running the water into their
holes and I fed them to the eagle. Or else I go out early in the morning and
late in the evenings after the rabbits. The people use eagle feathers for
their prayer sticks. My father —
was one of the Snake Society he was their
boss, their chief, he used many feathers on the prayer sticks. So we took
care of the eagle well.
School started too soon. When Ido during the summer
have a lot to
496
A Pueblo G.I.
I seemed to have chased around quite a bit. I didn't stay home during
the evenings mostly. I got a quick bite of supper 'cause there were al-
ways some of my friends caUing me out. Mrs. Umberto who I stayed
with that year didn't like me fooling around late at night so I used to
sneak out. Their folks don't want them out late at night so that is why
they whistle at each other to come out. When they want to call each other
they just whistle, or else they have a special place to meet at a certain
time. Nowadays they can visit each other at their homes. That time I went
to talk to my girl she has to make a good excuse go out at night. Some-
to
times girls have funny excuses, such as if there isn't any washing to do
she thinks of things she is going to wash so she can throw the water out.
Like handkerchiefs, or bandannas or dishtowels. Just so she could go out to
throw the water out and meet her boy friend. Else she tell her folks that
she wants to chop some wood. Sometimes if it is all right she will let her
boy friend do the chopping.
Those days we had hard times visiting our girl friends at night. During
cold days in the winter time the boys always have their blankets on,
they are usually dark for the purpose you can't be seen in the night
I suppose. That is still the style among the people. They also put a pretty
bandanna around their head.
trees scattered here and there made the sweep seem more immense.
Far to the south I spotted Marcus following the sheep as they
headed toward the watering tank marked by a windmill against the
sky.
I approached, greeted Marcus, and helped him fix some sandwiches
which we ate sitting under a juniper tree close by the ranch house.
"Gee, I'm glad to see you, John. It's sure lonely out here worse —
than any guard duty I ever had."
497
)
John Adair
"Well," I said, "it seems good to get away from the village and
out to the open country. I guess I'm getting to be like one of your
people. I imagine others are gossiping about me all the time."
"That's a sure sign if you really feel that way," Marcus replied.
"But "Worse than that after hearing all
that's not all," I said. —
those stories about witches that you told us at our house, my wife
has been uneasy. She said she heard someone prowling around in that
empty room next door. In fact, she didn't like to stay home alone
with the children when I came out here." (This I said in complete
honesty.
"My wife is just the same way. She's scared to death of witches.
She won't stay in the house alone when I'm gone. She takes the
children and goes over to stay with relatives. All of us are the same
way. We are constantly watching for those jealous people. Just
the other day, my wife was in the trading post and she heard a woman
boasting about what a good crop of fat lambs her family had this year.
My wife told me it just sent the shivers up her spine to hear her talk
like that, because standing right behind her was one of the biggest
witches in the whole village."
We talked more about the witches as we got up and moved off,
498
A Pueblo G.I.
village was called Little Stockton, and it was about twelve miles to
Bedford. Another thing, the sergeant got each of us Enghsh bicycles.
We used to go out riding on the country roads. It surprised me, all
those country roads were paved, no dirt roads. About those English
workmen, I got a kick out of them. Every morning at ten o'clock,
teatime in those old style jugs. They squatted on the cement and had
tea. There is another one at two o'clock in the afternoon. The workmen
have those black clothes with narrow pants. That seemed funny.
Also those small autos, not streamlined. And they told us that it was
only a wealthy person who could own one."
As Marcus continued his story, he became increasingly absorbed
in the telling of it. I thought back to the first halting beginning of
only a few weeks ago. Now he was the one who urged me on. Each
time we were interrupted by sheep straying off from the flock, he
brought us back with that same, "Let's get on with the story." These
breaks seemed almost painful to him, as if he wanted to remain
there in England for a while longer.
"Then I used to go to Winchester to meet this girl, this 15-year-
old girl. I met her at a carnival in Bedford, all that way she and her
folks came to the fair; they call it a fair, sort of carnival like. I was
standing there watching the merry-go-round. She was pretty dizzy.
I asked her to go on a ride. She said we could take rides only as
long as her mother and grandmother were there. They were about to
go home. She gave me her address, and took mine. She wrote me
first, the first one I guess you would call an introduction letter where —
she lived and so on. The next one told me to meet her at Winchester
Station. I had a two-day pass, and when I got there a lot of people
were waiting. I didn't recognize her until she came over. We got out
of the station and walked through town, a couple of miles. First
I thought we would have something to eat, fish and chips, that was
their main dish, and brussel sprouts. Those hard leaves I didn't —
like that stuff.
"Then we went to a show, a picture about the 8th Air Force.
499
John Adair
She knew I was in the Air Force and I guess she felt pretty proud
of me. When we
got out it was getting dark. I asked her if she could
go She said she was under age, but we went to the outskirts
to a pub.
of town where they let her in one pub. We had ale and light beer,
got her dizzy, made me dizzy too. I drank twice as much as she did.
Then I said, 'I guess I'd better go home.' She suggested that I take
her home on the ten o'clock train to her village five miles away. There
were only three cars attached to that locomotive, took about half an
hour for that five miles. Had the whole car to ourselves. At first I
was very bashful towards her. I didn't get to feel her that time, but
I did later at the station. She suggested I stay at Mrs. Hicks' that
night. She said she could easily put me up. Mrs. Hicks' place was
just likeany farm cottage, grass roof, an old time cottage. Walls
were green with moss. Those old English style furniture, fireplace.
The bed was skreeky. She gave me tea before I went to bed. The
next morning early she brought me breakfast in bed. It sure felt
funny. I felt funny. morning with a hangover and
I felt rotten that
here she brings that breakfast on a big tray. But I enjoyed the
fresh eggs she gave me. That night before she had said, 'What time
are you going to get knocked up?' I said, 'What?' I only knew the
other meaning."
"Did that girl or the other ones you dated in England know that
you were an American Indian?" I asked.
"I used to tell them I was an Indian, but they wouldn't believe
it."
"Why not?"
said I was too light to be an Indian. You know those
"They
Negroes were over there in England. They got there before we did
and they told all those girls that they were Indians."
For some while now we had been herding the sheep back toward
the corral.As Marcus drove them in and secured them for the night, I
satdown and glanced over what I had been writing. This was a curi-
ous experience. Marcus, the Indian, was an eager informant on a way
of life other than his own. Listening to his experiences in England
was another anthropologist fresh home from the field.
like hearing
The remote was vivid and compelling. The immediate had not yet
come back into focus.
Marcus told his story with such relish that I thought he would
never end. He piled incident upon incident; he recounted the most
500
A Pueblo G.I.
minute details of barracks life and gave day by day accounts of each
furlough he took.
He told me of a flight in a plane over Europe after hostilities
ceased:
"We hit Aachen too, it was on the side of a hill, on the edge of
a forest, all cut to pieces, skeletons of buildings, not a soul there,
just long tracks passing. Boy, that place was studded with bomb
craters, trenches along the hills. I wasn't air sick, but I had a hangover
that day and got sleepy; after we passed Aachen I fell asleep. This
friend of mine woke me up. He said we were coming to Cologne.
We went over the Rhine River, real muddy water. I had seen pictures
of that city, this was just like seeing a news reel, all those ruins, on
—
one side that cathedral not a scratch on it, and railroad tracks with
a lot of bomb craters around them. The people were probably burning
a lot of that stuff that was crumbled. The bridge, we could see it
plainly, broken in half. Then to Coblenz with the bridge in the
water. Then from Cologne we went back along the Rhine. There
were some other towns, I forget the names. I was feeling bad and
dozed off for half an hour.
"Then we went over to Frankfurt; this is a big city lots of —
factories. They told us about what the cities manufactured, why they
bombed them. From there we headed where they built
for Miinster
planes, and there was a shell industry there. That's where we turned
around and came back to the Rhine; oh yes, we were along Hitler's
superhighway. We could see the Alps off in the distance it was a —
clear day. Somewhere along there we came to three or four German
air fields. Saw a lot of crashed planes and B-17's broken up,
crashed. All the runways full of bomb craters. We hit, what's the name
of that famous concentration camp? We could see long grey buildings
with an iron fence around, people milling around in there. Then we
went back to Aachen again and flew back; got back around 6:30.
That was a long day's trip."
We talked now as close friends and he told of his life in England
as he might to a barracks mate, not to an anthropologist with a
projective test in hand. He concluded the story of his days in the army
with an account of the trip back to the states and across the country
to the Southwest.
"Next afternoon I took a bus to . It seemed to me like
forget how I felt. T was hiding from those people from my village.
he just came up and greeted me. But when I saw my mother she just
said, 'Son, I am glad to see you after all this time away from home,
but according to the superstition I am not supposed to touch you
until you have had that ceremony for the returned warriors. You
didn't have that one when you went away, but you better have this
one now. Lots of the veterans have returned home and had that.' I
thought that was sort of funny, I never knew about that one before.
So we came to the village and that man came out to the bridge and
said those prayers. After that she was able to greet me."
502
A Pueblo G.I.
That wasn't the last time I saw Marcus. We went over his whole life
story again and I questioned him in detail about all he had told me.
But the easy comradeship of the sheep camp was gone. As we resumed
work at my house, the same tensions built up once more in me, and
I am sure, in him as well.
503
§' y
20
A Seminole
Medicine Maker
William Sturtevant
1 he Florida Seminole are among the most isolated and conservative
of the Indian groups remaining in the United States. The bitter
wars between Indians and whites in Florida, which ended a century
ago, remain vivid in traditions that color Seminole attitudes today.
When hostilities ceased, the remnants of the tribe had gained refuge
at the tip of the Florida peninsula in the Big Cypress Swamp and
the Everglades where they and their increasing descendants were,
until recently, left pretty much alone. When I began my field work
among them they were poorly known to anthropologists. By the time
I was convinced that this was because most other Indians are much
more approachable, had passed the most discouraging phase of
I
my work possible, and the one to whom I owe most of what I know
about the Seminole.
When I first went had already encountered
to Florida in 1950, I
on the tribe, and had heard of him from recent
Josie in the literature
visitors to the Seminole. That summer, without an automobile, I
was isolated on the Dania Reservation near Miami, and Josie Billie
was then living, as he is now, on the Big Cypress Reservation to
the northwest, accessible only by an automobile drive of several
hours. Nevertheless I heard of him often. Indians and local whites
told me repeatedly, "You ought to talk to Josie Billie. He's done
that kind of work before." Finally, one Sunday toward the end of
summer, Josie came to the Indian church at Dania. I went to see
him, and found sitting on the grass near the church, a rather short,
well-dressed, and very dignified elder.
He readily agreed to talk into my wire recorder later that day,
although he showed scant interest in the reasons for my request.
He came, and with ado sat down before the microphone, and
little
506
A Seminole Medicine Maker
in English with a brief story about Christ and the Indians. He then
ended the session with a Christian prayer, first in Mikasuki and then
in English, an observance that seemed rather odd to me, since the
two of us were alone in a little room behind a highway cafe near
the reservation. As he took his leave, I paid him fifty cents. He
hadn't asked for pay and was evidently somewhat surprised at being
offered it, but he accepted the money politely. Josie had assumed
complete control of the interview, and he revealed to me at once
his preferred exterior as a dignified, pious, and knowledgeable au-
thority.
The next summer when I returned to Florida I again worked
he was highly unusual and probably the only reasonably good in-
formant in the Mikasuki band of the tribe. When I returned in
1952 for nine months of ethnographic field work, I spent all the
time he would give me talking to Josie both informally and in
formal interviews. These were by far the most rewarding hours I
spent in Florida.
visit some white friends in Fort Myers, and one of the women
there gave him the name "Josie," which he thinks is a woman's
name.
At the age of about 15, like other Seminole boys, Josie was
given a new, adult name by which he was to be known in Seminole
for the rest of his life. Josie's adult name can be translated "crazy
508
A Seminole Medicine Maker
whites (the Seminole had and have no "chiefs," and Little Billie
held no important ceremonial or political office in the tribe). In 1910
the ethnologist Alanson Skinner met Little Billie in the Everglades,
and probably got from him the scraps of information on Seminole re-
ligion he put on record. In 1917 the acting Seminole agent visited his
camp and described him as "a man 50 years of age, who speaks
English very well for an Indian, and is about the most progressive
and intelligent member of the Big Cypress bands." He was killed in
a drunken fight in October, 1926. According to newspaper reports,
his murderer was condemned and executed by the Seminole tribal
council which met at the busk (an annual ceremony) the next spring.
Josie's uncle. Little Billie's older brother, was also a deviant. This
509
William C. Sturtevant
was Billy Fewell, born about 1846, whom MacCauley called "Key
West Billy" and described as "in every way a peculiar character
among his people, and objectionably favorable to the white
. . .
man and the white man's ways." He is said to have gone by canoe
to the town of Key West where he lived for- a time, an act unheard
of for a Seminole in those days. He once built a two-story frame
house, perhaps the first one of the few which have been built by
Seminole. Josie says he was something of a rake, having had "about
seven wives" at various times, "just like a bulldog," and leaving many
descendants.
While I obtained relatively full information about his forebears
from a variety of sources, I have scant knowledge of Josie's own
family affairs. I did not inquire into this aspect of his life, and Josie
avoided divulging many intimate details of his marital and family
relationships. I do know that about 1916 Josie married a woman
named Louise, a member of the Otter clan. They had five daughters,
and a son who was born in 1927, and Josie now has several grand-
510
A Seminole Medicine Maker
—
He separated from his first wife, I wish I knew when and
children.
—
why and married his present wife, Lucy, of the Bear clan. Divorces
are common among the Seminole, although usually not after so many
children have been born. Josie and Lucy have no children. They
live alone, but Josie's children visit him occasionally, and as far as
I could judge he and Lucy enjoy a stable and affectionate relation-
ship,
When I was very young, I saw doctors come when my brothers and
sisters and mother got sick. Sometimes they were able to cure serious
sicknesses. Then I thought maybe the doctor's business is all right. When
I was about 15 years old I went to a doctor and asked him for instance
—
about coughing what kind of a song do you use for coughing? —
and he
told me. It was just a small song. Another time, I asked him about head-
aches, because at that time I had headaches almost all the time myself.
I asked him what kind of medicine is used, and he gave me the medicine
and the songs, small things. Another time, I asked him, what do you do
when a baby is too young to talk, to tell you what's wrong with him?
He told me if the baby cries and is thin, give him this medicine. I came
back and asked him again, many times, about different songs.
For about two years I talked to him this way. If somebody cuts his
foot with an axe, how are you going to doctor him? —
and he gave me
a song for that, I asked him a lot of times. The doctor said, he wants to
know something, that's all right, and he gave me different songs, different
medicines, and told me about different sicknesses. How to cure fever, he
told me that too. He just gave them to me, taught me without pay or
anything; it didn't cost me anything. There were several doctors I talked
to this way: Tommy Doctor, Old Doctor, there were a lot of doctors
around at that time, that I talked to. Then, when I was about 17 or 18
years old. Old Motlow knew that I wanted to know things. He said, all
right, you fast for a while, maybe by yourself, maybe with two or three
boys with you, and you'll learn. I said all right, and got three boys and
we went out and camped by ourselves, without any women. We built a
little shack and stayed there,
511
William C. Sturtevant
Toward the end of this account Josie refers to the regular old-
fashioned Seminole school in which an ayikcomi (medicine maker)
received his training. During their four-day fast, the instructor, Old
Motlow, came each morning to fix two emetics for the novices,
which they drank to prepare themselves for the teaching that fol-
lowed. (Fasting and emesis are thought to increase a person's moral,
intellectual, and religious strength.) Each day the old medicine
and perhaps for magical "poisoning." The school ended with a four-
day hunt, during which the students talked over and reviewed among
themselves what they had learned.
The next year, Josie returned to Old Motlow for a repetition of
the same course of training. The year after, he went again, this time
with Tommy Doctor as his teacher. During such schools the teacher
inquires about his students' dreams, which he later interprets for
them. Josie once dreamed of rain for two successive nights, and his
teacher told him this was a sign that he understood well what he
was taught. On another occasion, he dreamed of two men walking
together, one of whom threatened to kill the other. His teacher ex-
plained that this was a bad omen, indicating that a relative, perhaps
a brother, might get hurt. Josie believes the prediction was fulfilled
many years later, when one of his brothers was killed in an auto-
mobile accident, and another brother was lost in the woods and
never seen again.
After the last school Josie apprenticed himself to Tommy Doctor.
He watched him at his practice, listened to him arrive at diagnoses
by questioning the patient or his relatives about his physical and
mental symptoms and dreams, learned what kinds of herbs were re-
quired for each case, helped collect them, and watched him make
512
A Seminole Medicine Maker
not numerous. Two or three years later, about 1920, Tommy Doctor
died and Josie took over his practice. In 1921, the botanist John K.
Small met "Josie Billie, the locally celebrated Medicine-man of the
Seminoles," at his home in the Big Cypress Swamp. Small later wrote
that "Josie Billie's materia-medica contains thirty-odd native plants"
—an indication that Josie was willing to discuss the subject, but also
evidence that Small failed to realize the extent of his knowledge of
herbal medicine.
His three years of schooling and four years of apprenticeship
gave Josie more medical training than any other living Seminole.
There were other men in the past who had more training Billie —
Motlow, for instance, attended the school for ten years but among —
those still living no one except Josie has been as many as three
about, but he would neither confirm nor deny my guess.) The teacher
prepared the plant into a medicine by singing a special song and
transferring the power of the song to the medicine by blowing
through a cane tube in the usual way. When Josie drank the potion
513
William C. Sturtevant
514
A Seminole Medicine Maker
occasion— the Hunting Dance in the fall — when the Seminole gather
from their scattered homes, but only at the busk is the medicine
bundle opened and its contents examined by the medicine man.
About the same time Josie evinced an interest in medicine, he
started his career in the hierarchy of ceremonial positions. When
he was small, he and his family had attended busks run by his
mother's brother, Old Charley Osceola, usually at a busk grounds
about two miles east of the present headquarters of the Big Cypress
Reservation. As a youth he worked as a minor official, carrying
water and running errands for the medicine man, at a busk directed
by Old Motlow in the northwestern Everglades. About 1920 he
worked for four successive years as an assistant to the medicine
man Jimmy Doctor, who was in charge of another busk. This cere-
monial position is second only to that of the medicine man himself,
and as a reward for his four years of service Jimmy Doctor gave
him a second adult name. This manner of obtaining additional
names has replaced the old custom of awarding them for war deeds.
Such a name can be compared to an academic degree among our-
selves: it indicated Josie's knowledge, application, and intelligence,
but did not replace "crazy spherical puma" as his ordinary name.
Some time later he substituted for Jimmy Doctor for four years
in running his busk and in looking after his medicine bundle. Charley
Doctor, who became the custodian of this bundle after Jimmy
Doctor died, gave Josie another war name as a reward for having
taken care of the bundle these four years. As it happened, when
Charley Doctor died several years later, Josie was the one who as-
signed this same bundle to its present owner, Frank Charlie.
After his association with Jimmy Doctor Josie began attending
a busk connected with another medicine bundle, held by Billie
Motlow. In 1930, the outsider then most intimately acquainted with
515
William C. Sturtevant
the Seminole reported that the busk council under Billie Motlow
consisted of Josie, his younger brother Ingraham
and Cuffney Billie,
Tiger, all three of whom later became medicine men. Josie was cer-
tainly one of the most important men associated with Billie Motlow's
medicine bundle, and he may have been the "headman" or chair-
man of the political and judicial council which meets on the fourth
day of the busk, an office Josie has filled several times.
Billie Motlow died about 1937, and his bundle, identified with
the Tiger clan, passed to Josie's care. Thereafter for seven years
Josie took care of this bundle and conducted the yearly busk asso-
ciated with it.
At this point in his life, Josie had reached the pinnacle of formal
status among his people. As a medicine man, his behavior affected
the health and well-being of all those associated with his bundle. If
516
A Seminole Medicine Maker
517
William C. Sturtevant
eighty miles of "the Trail." Prior to the opening of the highway nearly
all the Mikasuki camps were located on high spots in the Everglades,
accessible during the rainy season only by water. Today very few
camps remain on these "islands."
About 1943 Josie moved from his camp on the Tamiami Trail
to the Big Cypress Reservation. The change was an important one,
for it involved shifting from one of the most conservative Seminole
groups to one of the most progressive. I have not heard Josie's ex-
planation of the move. Others have said that he was in greater and
greater difficulties on the Trail, due to his drunkenness, his frequent
associations with whites (including ethnologists in 1932-1933 and
1939), and his difficulties of 1928 — all behavior unsuited to a medi-
cine man. One author has said that the Trail Seminole forced him to
move, blaming their difficulties during the late depression and early
war years on his failure to behave as a medicine man should. I have
also heard that he was urged to move by an Indian Bureau employee
who was trying to encourage the Seminole to move to the reserva-
tions, and thought that Josie's influence would lead others to follow
him. The year after he moved he returned to the Trail to supervise
his busk again. At that time, however, he was told to give up the
medicine bundle and not to return. He turned the bundle over to
his brother Ingraham, who already kept another one, and he has
not attended a busk since. In 1945 he became a Christian. The
chronology of these three events —moving, relinquishing the medi-
cine bundle, and conversion — is important for understanding Josie's
motives, and I wish I could be positive that the order I have just
given is the correct one.
The early efforts of Christian missionaries among the Florida
Seminole met with almost no success, despite many attempts by sev-
eral sects. Then
1943 the Muskogee, Wichita, and Seminole Bap-
in
tist Oklahoma, sent to Florida an active,
Association, centered in
fairly young former boxer, a member of the Creek town of Arbika,
and an eloquent preacher in his native Creek. The Reverend Stanley
Smith was successful where so many before him had failed. When
he arrived in Florida the Seminole church had a total of eleven
members, only three of them active. I had the good fortune to en-
counter Mr. Smith during a brief trip I made to south Florida in
January, 1957. He was no longer a missionary, and he was happy
to tell me about his former activities among the Seminole. He said
518
)
that he made his first convert in 1944, but that during 1947, after
transferring his affihation to the Southern Baptists, he baptized 197
Seminoles
—"That wasthe greatest year of my life!" I then asked him
when was baptized. Without hesitation he replied, "1945
Josie BilHe
— January 2nd." The conversion was a difficult one, he said, because
Josie had to give up his "medicine," and in particular the powerful
substance called sapiyd. (Here Smith was influenced by his knowl-
edge of Oklahoma Creek ways; the sapiyd exists among the Sem-
inole, but it plays a lesser role in their belief.
Smith continued: "Josie had administered to the Indians for thirty-
seven years, and he didn't want to give it up. The first time I touched
Josie was on the banks of a sugar mill at Clewiston. It was Christmas,
and I stuck a branch in the ground for a Christmas tree [at a
temporary camp occupied by Seminole workers in the mill]; and I
knelt down by it and prayed. Josie was there, but he was drinking
and he came up to listen with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. I
talked to them some and preached to them." Not long after this
he established a mission on the Big Cypress Reservation, under the
sponsorship of a church in Immokalee. "I held a revival at Big
Cypress that time* and it was then that Josie came up. And when
Josie made the break, thirty-seven other Big Cypress Mikasukis fol-
lowed him. Josie came up and said, 'Brother Smith, I have destroyed
many people.' Maybe he'd executed people for the Indian council,
killed many people. The white preacher who was there with me
asked me what Josie said. [He had spoken to Smith in Creek.] I
told him, and the preacher says to me, 'Don't ask him any more
about that. Tellhim we'll take his word.' So I never did ask him
about what he meant. So I told Josie, 'Jesus saves sinners. We'll mark
that off.' Then Josie smote his chest, and he cried —
tears ran down
his face — and he said to me, 'I want to take Jesus into my life!'
"
Reservation.
work in Fort Myers, then bought razors and scissors and gave each
other haircuts in the white man's manner, which they displayed at
the next busk. There was considerable ridicule and opposition at
first, but since that time nearly every Seminole man has changed to
this style. In 1921, Josie was photographed in the woods dressed
entirely in non-Seminole clothes, including a pair of high laced boots
— certainly a most unusual costume in those days. He now wears
shoes more regularly than most men his age, and occasionally wears
a necktie (I don't think I have seen another Seminole of his genera-
tion doing so). He wears a Seminole patchwork shirt only for special
occasions, particularly for formal affairs involving outsiders, when
such dress becomes a sort of national costume of the Seminole.
Josie has traveled considerably more than most Seminole.. During
the winter of 1929-1930, he led a group of thirty or forty Seminole
who spent the tourist season in an exhibition camp at St. Petersburg.
This was one of the first such trips; they are now a common practice,
both to Florida and occasionally elsewhere. In 1933 Josie
cities
fall since, preaching and doctoring among the Creek and Seminole
there. These activities —
pay his expenses for the trips he will accept
cash for doctoring in Oklahoma, as he will not in Florida and he —
is apparently in some demand as a doctor there.
1952 Josie was one of two Seminole on the Big Cypress Reser-
In
vation who were members of a white church in a nearby town. He
was more favorably inclined toward the Indian Bureau than many
Seminole, and had several times been appointed by the Seminole
Agency to be a trustee of the reservation. He was active as a foreman
and time-keeper of work crews on the reservation and among Sem-
inole working for neighboring farmers. He was wholeheartedly in
favor of schooling for Seminole children — a position diametrically
opposed to that of the Tamiami Trail conservatives and much less
and more every year. The Indians are no longer the only people
in the area, and there is no longer any way for them to escape
they can retreat south no farther, because there is "water all around."
In effect, the white man's laws and customs, schooling for the chil-
dren, and eventual assimilation, are the only realistic ways open to
the Seminole, in his view.
Josie speaks English fairly well, better than anyone else his age
among the Seminole, but not nearly as fluently as many younger men.
He can read and write English only with considerable difficulty, but
I know no other Seminole of his generation who possesses these
skills. He reads and writes Creek with more facility, in the standard
very much a Seminole, and there are areas of belief and behavior in
which he not ready to change. He believes wholeheartedly in
is
523
William C. Sturtevant
medical techniques. He knows of, but does not use, enemas and
aspirins, for example; he never mentioned any patent medicines;
unlike many modern Indian medical practitioners in other tribes,
he does not order herbal remedies from commercial drug houses.
But Josie does not feel that he is competing with physicians or
hospitals. He is more easily available to Indian patients, and his
services are less expensive. In addition, his methods are the tradi-
tional ones and he has a reputation for a rather high frequency of
successful cures. Even the most acculturated Seminole still frequently
call for his services, as they do for those of other older people who
know some Seminole medicine.
In August and September of 1958 there appeared a spate of
Florida newspaper stories and an article in Time magazine on Josie's
abilities as a medicine maker. The Upjohn Co. pharmaceutical house
principal one drunk by the men at the busks, and which is also
used on other occasions to treat certain mental aberrations. The
herbal ingredients are numerous, and somewhat variable; Josie is
reported to have kept them secret in his dealings with the company.
He and the Florida state commissioner for Indian affairs (a former
state director of outdoor advertising) were flown by private plane
to the Upjohn laboratories in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where they
watched pharmacological tests of the brew, referred to by reporters
and the commissioner as a "tranquilizer." According to the news
stories, the preliminary tests with white rats were encouraging. Josie
among the Indians to whom he can refer such cases. Josie has not
even succeeded in interesting any young men in attending a doctor's
school; nor has he ever taught such a school. He wanted very much
to teach his son medicine and to pass on to him the "medicine" that
lives in his body, but the boy did not show any particular interest
and got married (one cannot attend a doctor's school after marriage).
However, the month before I left Florida in 1953, a boy about 17
years old, the son of an arch-conservative among the off-reservation
Mikasuki, came to inquire whether Josie would teach him doctoring.
Josie told the boy to return in a few months, when he would be glad
to teach him —
so perhaps he has found a successor by now.
Apparently Josie sees little conflict between the Christian and the
older Seminole systems of belief. He told me that whereas Christians
go to heaven, good non-Christians go to the pagan afterworld; that
before an important meeting or discussion. Christians pray to
strengthen their powers of persuasion, whereas non-Christians fast
and smoke —each method being effective for the group practicing it.
He claims not to believe in the busk, but when I asked him what the
non-Christians believe would be the consequences of giving it up, the
idea was inconceivable to him and he could give no answer. Accord-
ing to Seminole belief, the living have a double soul. On death the
two souls become one, and it is only during dreams that they divide,
one wandering and the other staying with the body. Josie shares
this belief in a dual soul, but here there is little conflict with Christian
belief; Christianity is silent on the relation of the soul to dreams.
Josie once told me that he is strongly opposed to Indian-white
marriages, and much upset by the several which have occurred in
the last few years. He remarked that such people have "lost their
sense," and went on to say that conservative Seminole are particularly
antagonistic to such marriages, especially to those between an Indian
525
William C. Sturtevant
woman and man (as one might expect from Seminole matri-
a white
lineal descent),on the grounds that the resulting children will have
a double affiliation and are likely to betray the Seminole to the
whites. Evidently Josie agrees with the conservatives' opposition to
intermarriage, although he no longer believes that the whites are
still attempting to subvert and deport the Seminole (as many con-
servatives do).
Josie's popularity is not high today among the Indians. The non-
Christians are very suspicious of his pro-assimilation ideas, his close
relations with whites,and his Christianity, and many of them hate
and even fear him. Nevertheless, even the most conservative Indians
regularly come to him for medical treatment, believing him to be
the most skilled and powerful Seminole doctor. The non-Christians
also treat him as the Christian group's equivalent of a medicine
man, a higher status than the Christians themselves accord him.
When occasional political meetings (not those held at the busks)
are called to discuss all-Seminole matters, the non-Christians urge
him to attend as representative of the Christians — just as all medi-
cine men attend such meetings —but he usually refuses to go.
There is considerable opposition to Josie even among the Chris-
tians. Many people on the reservations say they do not like him be-
cause he meddles too much in the personal affairs of others and
gives unsolicited advice. This behavior is probably a carry-over from
his former role as a medicine man, when he was supposed to "look
after" the people of his group, but he has not reached an equivalently
high position among the Christians, for he is not pastor of a church.
Some Seminole Christians accuse him of "backsliding," but as far as
my observations go this is unjustified. The white church people
among whom he is widely acquainted in general like and admire
him, as a Christian Indian. Like his father before him, he is a
contact-man for the white community.
The strong feelings about him are reflected in the often heard
gossip that Josie killed a man by sorcery about 1942. Josie himself
voluntarily admitted to me that he is suspected of sorcery. He says
the accusation is unjustified, explaining, "That's a little dangerous
for doctor's business —you talk a little too much some people don't
like it. . . . Doctors some of them hampi'ki, some of them want to
know ponfi'ki. Some only want to know ponti-ki. If I no make
'em well for people I got that kind." This can be translated, "Doctor-
526
A Seminole Medicine Maker
Some doctors are bad and want to know sorcery, rather than curing.
If I don't cure people, I am suspected of sorcery."
Josie impressed me as being very egocentric. He constantly turned
conversation to himself, his ownand their importance.
activities
Once, when I was questioning him about the Hunting Dance, in
which he held no important position, he kept trying to revert dis-
cussion to the busk, reiterating that he had been in charge of the
latter for seven years. When I refused to change the subject, he kept
repeating the really rather unimportant fact that he had led the
Snake Dance at the last Hunting Dance he attended. Several times
I heard him explain to other Seminole in a rather pompous manner
that I had come especially to talk to him and learn from him. Yet
he was not interested in me or in my purpose in working with
him, and seemed merely to want a sympathetic ear. I do not remem-
ber that he ever asked me a personal question whereas most of —
my more casual Seminole acquaintances did so readily.
There can be no doubt that Josie is a person of high intelligence,
and dedicated to its exercise. He has a vast amount of knowledge.
For example, I recorded the names of more than 225 different plants
he recognized, and we collected and identified most of these. More-
over he knows much about their growth habits, their flowers and
fruits, preferred habitats, and of course their uses. I am sure I
practice, and has advanced farther in this study than many others,
in spite of his age and lack of any previous formal schooling in
English.
He is confident in his knowledge of his own culture and with the
exception of religion is not particularly interested in supplementary
or conflicting foreign beliefs and facts. He me
few questions
asked
and showed little awareness of Euroamerican specialized knowl-
edge. After all, he has had little or no opportunity to become ac-
quainted with intellectual subjects outside his own culture — younger
men, who have attended schools, frequently do show great interest
in Euroamerican traditional and scientific learning and belief outside
religion. When I introduced Josie to a botanist from the University
of Miami, and accompanied the two of them on a collecting trip,
he showed no particular interest in the botanist's obviously extensive
and detailed acquaintance- with the local plants, which plainly com-
plemented and supplemented his own in many ways. He did not for
a moment relinquish the role of teacher and informant which had
become established by this time in his relations with me. Since that
time I have accompanied botanists on collecting trips with other
eastern Indian herbalists, and have been disturbed by the effects on
the data we were collecting of the informants' interest in and ques-
tions about the botanists' specialized knowledge. This problem did
not arise with Josie; he simply was not interested in my botanist
friend's knowledge of the plants we were discussing and collecting.
There is a tremendous contrast between Josie and every other
adult Seminole whom I tried to interview. When I asked him a ques-
tion, he would often talk unprompted for five or ten minutes in
response; others, if they did not merely say, "I don't know" (the
most frequent response used to discourage questioners), would an-
swer very briefly and volunteer little information. It was practically
impossible to interview them because one could not avoid asking lead-
—
ing questions hence biasing the responses in such circum- —
stances. But on the other hand it was very diflScult to conduct a
formal interview with Josie. Many times I prepared outlines of ques-
tions on a topic —
to be sure to get the same range of data on all
items in a list, for —
example but attempts to follow these consistently
failed. Josie quickly got bored unless given a rather free hand. The
528
A Seminole Medicine Maker
meled style made him a poor linguistic informant, for such work
requires rather tight control over the interview and constant repeti-
tion of questions likely toseem nonsensical to the informant.
Even which were possible, one had
in the sorts of interviewing
to be constantly on the watch. For one thing, Josie had a tendency
to answer before he understood a question. He is slightly deaf, and
if he does not hear clearly or if he merely does not understand ade-
quately, he will guess at the question rather than ask for clarification
or repetition. He know an answer,
hates to admit that he does not
and sometimes avoid a question in such a case by answering
will
another, un-asked question. While these characteristics often pro-
vided information I would not have thought of eliciting, they also
were likely to introduce confusion into my notes.
Many people who are acquainted with the Seminole, including
some amateur ethnologists, do not altogether trust Josie as a source
of information. This is partly because he answers before he under-
stands a question, and partly because of the great difference between
him and all other Seminole, in that he will talk when they will not.
I am certain also that if he thinks one is not serious, or is patronizing,
skeptical, or disrespectful, he is not above misleading his questioner
or playing a joke on him for his own amusement. Others seriously in-
terested in the Seminole also distrust him because he does not object
to commercializing some of the popular interest in the Indians, or at
least has not done so in the past. He once played a major role, for
example, in a fake and widely-advertised "Indian wedding" at one of
the exhibition camps in Miami.
It was very hard to get Josie to keep regular appointments, or
to work for more than three or four hours on days when he would
work. He would often say he was too busy to work with me, or that
something else had come up which demanded his attention. Some-
times this was obviously justified: when someone came for medical
care, his primary obligation was certainly to his practice. But some-
times he would make other arrangements patently contrived to avoid
working with me. He seemed to derive a certain satisfaction in having
me wait around for him, apparently able to do nothing until he
could squeeze me into his busy schedule. When I waited for him,
and worked on my notes or talked only to my younger friends, he
would postpone the chore as long as possible; but when I worked
instead with another older person, he almost invariably quickly re-
529
William C. Sturtevant
turned to work with me. One morning he was a bit brusque, and
told me that he couldn't work except perhaps for two hours in the
evening. Judging from past experience, I did not really expect to see
him again at all that day or for some time thereafter. Later the same
day I worked for a few hours with his old friend and brother-in-law,
Charley Cypress, and that night to my surprise Josie came promptly
at the appointed time. I said nothing about what I had been doing,
but he prefaced one of the first answers to my questions with the
remark, "Maybe Charley Cypress never saw it, but / did." On de-
parting he said that he would work again the next evening —and
he did — and that he perhaps could give me a few whole days the
following week. He did.
In part, this reluctance to work for me seems to have been due
to his ambivalence about revealing the more esoteric aspects of Sem-
inole culture. His tendency to hold back became worse the longer
we worked together and the deeper we penetrated into Seminole
culture. When we were together, his dislike of showing any ignorance
prevented him on all but a very few occasions from flatly refusing
to answer my questions. Hence the simplest way for Josie to avoid
the difficulty was not to see me. Once, after he had sung a few
curing songs for me and promised to record some more, he had two
dreams which he interpreted as a warning not to tell me all his songs
or even all the verses and songs for any one sickness.
About three months later, during my last month in Florida, we
talked for several sessions about the medicine bundles and their
contents, a subject at the core of the native religion and practically
never discussed with outsiders. Josie again became difficult to find
and broke several appointments with me. I then went to Miami for a
week, thinking perhaps he would relent in my absence. (This
was a difficult decision for me to make in view of the amount of last-
minute investigation remaining.) When I returned I offered to increase
his pay from seventy-five cents to a dollar an hour, in the hope that a
raise would provide sufficient inducement. He came to see me later
that morning, and finally asked me why I wanted to know all these
things. This was the first time he had shown any interest in my
motives; I had explained my purposes several times before, but he
had paid little attention. I explained again. He then said that he was
afraid of going against the Bible, and that it was wrong and "just
foolishness" to sing busk dance songs. He had recorded a few such
530
A Seminole Medicine Maker
he was a Christian, and he thought that God would not want him
to do it.
After our conversation, Josie went to the government rancher on
the reservation and asked him for a job, saying that he didn't much
want to work with me. Though the rancher said that I was paying
the same wage that he could give him, and for "easier" work, Josie
replied that he knew it was good pay, but he didn't like the work
and besides he had lots of other things to do, adding that he might
be able to give me a couple of hours in the evenings occasionally.
531
William C. Sturtevant
The rancher gave him a job building houses, and he started in.
Fortunately, this was the time the incident mentioned above involv-
ing Charley Cypress occurred, so that our relationship quickly re-
turned nearly to normal, although I did not dare renew the discussion
of the medicine bundles until the last day I was on the reservation.
At that time he answered my questions, as usual, although he was
obviously uncomfortable about it.
532
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533
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534
Contributors
535
Contributors
536
Contributors
537
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Contributors
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Contributors
540
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