ResearchOnline@JCU This file is part of the following reference: Moore, Clive (1981) Kanaka Maratta: a history of Melanesian Mackay. PhD thesis, James Cook University. Access to this file is available from: http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/24019 If you believe that this work constitutes a copyright infringement, please contact [email protected] and quote http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/24019 CHAPTER ONE 1 - 59 1. Physical description of the island and its people 2 2. Social Organisation 12 3. Bina and Rakwane 28 4. The Eight Isles and beyond 4 3 5. Conclusion 48 1. Physical description of the island and its people The Solomon group of islands forms a double chain southeast of the Bismarck archipelago off Papua New Guinea. Malaita, an elongated collection of mountains and hills rising from a submerged Melanesian ' " "/ land mass, extends 190 kilometers in length but measures only forty at the widest point.1 Mala, Ngwala, Mwala or Mara appear to be the main dialectal variations of Malaita's original name, which trans- lates "island as land". The "ita" ending may be a mistake, added through a misunderstanding by early Spanish explorers, or the whole word "Malaita" may be a corruption of "Marahiria", meaning "the big island", a word used by a dialect group on the west coast where the 2 Spanish landed. In the nineteenth century Malaita was commonly known as Maratta by both the Suropeans and the Melanesian labourers who left there for the colonies. The Solomons are part of the Pacific "Ring of Fire"; there are several active volcanoes on other islands in the group, but Malaita 3 is free of them. The island has a spine consisting of a rugged massif, flanked by hilly plateaux and narrow coastal terraces inter- spersed with valleys and swamps. In the mountains, deep valleys have been eroded between narrow razor-back ridges rising commonly to 1,000 meters and in places almost t01,300metres. Thousands of rain-fed streams and rivers drain the interior mountains, some-navigable by small craft and canoes for a kilometer or so up from their tidal reaches. Around the indented coast are extensive reef-lagoon complexes, 1. Malaita: Latitude 8'17 to 9'43; Longitude 160'33 to 161'35. Strictly speaking there are two islands: Malaita proper and Small Malaita (or Mararnasike) separated by a narrow channel, but for all practical purposes they are treated by Malaitans and Europeans alike as one island. 2. W.G. Ivens, The Island Builders of the Pacific: hm &d why the people of Mala construct their artificial islands, the mtiquity and doubtful origin of the practice, with a descript- ion of the social organization, magic and religion of their inhabitants (London, 1930) , 17-2 1; C . Jack-Hinton, The S'earch for the Islbzds of Solomon: 1567-1838 (London, 1969) 46-7, 59; letter to the author from Dr D. de Coppet, 13 August 1980. 3. There may be thermal springs in some parts of the island and quite severe earthquakes occur periodically. H.M. Ross, Baegu: social and ecoZogicaZ organization in Malaita, Solomon Islands (Urbanna, Illin., 1973), 37. mangroves, and numerous small natural islands, the largest of which, Dai and Manoba, are contiguous with the north coast .4 The lithology is dominated by limestone sediments and weathered to leached clayey soils. The hills provide humus-rich dark-coloured clays and leached loams, while the coastal terraces are often formed of weathered lime- stone, loams, clays and peats. Typical of a high tropical island, there are several distinct zones of vegetation: in the mountains, patches of moss forest and primary rain forest; on the lower slopes, dense secondary bush forest where hardwood forest has been cleared for gardening; and on.the coast, sandy beaches, with mangroves and swamps around river mouths, pandanus, Barringtonia and vines predom- 5 ina ting . The climate is wet, hot, humid, and remarkably equable. Because Malaita is near the equator it receives uniformly high solar radiat- ion, and is affected by the intertropical convergence zone or doldrums. The climate is typically maritime, with diurnal temperature variations exceeding seasonal changes. Government figures recorded at Auki show a mean monthly temperature range from 25.2'C in January ta 27' C in 6 December. Nocturnal inland temperatures often drop to the mid-tens. Relative humidity is high throughout the year, averaging seventy to eighty-five percent at midday. Rainfall is heavy, though lighter on the coast than in the central mountains. 3,750 millimeters a year ' is the common fall on the western coastal plain, while the average fall on the east coast is in excess of 7,500 millimeters. Prevailing Trade winds mark the seasons. The southeast Trades blow from April through to September. Cctober to December sees variable winds inter- spersed with calms, followed by the northeast Moonsoons into the 4. J.R.F. Hansel1 and J.R.D. Wall, !The British Solomon Islands: land resouxces study No. 28. Malaita and UZma, 1'. 3. Minis- try of Overseas Development, Land Resources Division (Great Britain, 1974), 4.11. 5. Did., 11-22; Ross, Baegu, 36-40; B.D. Hackmann, 'The Solomon Islands Fractured Arc' in P. Coleman (ed.), The Western Pacific: island arcs, marginal seas, geochemistry (Perth, 1973), 183. 6. M. Cooper,Langa Langa Ethics (PhD. thesis, Yale University, 1970), 30 (quoting government figures for 1965); Ross, Baegu, 34. Ross recorded 27.8 C as the highest daily temperature at his home in east Baegu in 1966. Map One: The Central Solomon Islands early months of the new year. Cyclones occur in the Moonsoon season 7 and can cause major havoc. At the latest census in 1976 Malaita had a population of more 8 than 57,000. Malaita has always been the most populous of the Solomon islands, but as the first official census was not conducted until 1931, when the population was over 40,000, figures for earlier dates are only conjectural. Indeed, in the 1911 Handbook of the British Solomon IsZands Protectorate the official estimate of Malaita's 9 population was "anything between 50,000 and 100,000". Early European residents of the Solomons who were familiar with Malaita, felt certain that all of the islands had suffered depopulation during the nine- teenth century. Recent writers agree that this is probably true, but that early estimates tended to exaggerate both the original popul- 10 ation and the subsequent decline. As a general classification, Malaitan people are Melanesians: brown skinned, of short to medium stature, with frizzy brown hair. This description belies the many variations: the brown skins vary from quite dark to a light honey shade; hair types vary from dark red to dark brown and even blond, and from frizzy to curly and almost straight. This diversity has led some observers to conclude that -- - 7. Cooper, Langa Langa ~thics,30-1; Ross, Baegu, 25-6, 33. 8. Population Census February 1976. Provisional results published in April 1976. Census Office, Statistics Division, Ministry of Finance, British Solomon Islands Protectorate. 9. c .H. Allen, Customary and Tenure in the British SoZomon IsZands Protectorate. Report of the Special Lands Commission, Western Pacific High Commission (Honiara, 1957) , 17; H .I. Hogbin, Experiments in CiviZization: the effects of European culture on-a native comity of the Solomon ~slands ondo don, 1939), 15, 125-132; Handbook of the British SoZomon Islands Protector- ate (Tulagi, 1911). 10. A.I. Hopkins, 'Depopulation in the Solomon ~slands'and C.M. Woodford, 'The Solomon Islands ' in W.H.R. Rivers (ed.) , Essays on the Depopulation of ~elmesia(Cambridge, 1922), 62-6, 69-77; C.M. Woodford, A Naturalist among the flead-hunters: being an account of three visits to the Solomon Islands in the years 2886, 2887, and 1888 (London, 1890), 187-8; Ivens, Island Builders, 43; W. Howells, !The Pacific Islanders (Wellington, 1973), 15; H.C. Brookfield with D. Hart, ~elanesia:a geograph- ical interpretation of an island world (London, 1974), 187-8. there is a Micro-Polynesian admixture amongst some Malaitans (part 11 icularly the lagoon dwellers), but this explanation is only specul- ative. Malaitans are divided by dialect and by geographical location. Different dialects are spoken in several areas on the island and by people living in and around each major lagoon. There is also a broad 12 dichotomy between the wane tolo (bush people) who live inland and the wane asi (coastal people) who lead a maritime existence based on the lagoons. Both have a similar style of social organisation, stressing cognatic descent with simultaneous recognition of agnatic descent plus a preference for patrivirilocal residence, and a relig- ion focused on the propitiation of ancestral spirits, but the wane asi's maritime sytle has led to adaptations of their economy and soc- iety. Thewane asi live in Lau, Langa langa and 'Are 'are lagoons, at the Sa'a district on Maramasike and at Kwai and Ngwangwasila in east Kwara'ae. Many live on artificial islands, an almost unique environment which they have laboriously constructed in the lagoons, trading the resources of the ocean and the lagoons for the agricul- tural products of the wane tolo. Their diverse economic adaptations set them apart from land dwelling Malaitans, who traditionally lived away from the coast, pursued no maritime activities and concentrated on growing taro and other tuber crops in the upland areas. ~liwane asi concentrate on reef, lagoon and deep-sea fishing as their primary form of production, and in certain seasons hunt porpoises, the teeth 13 of which are also used as currency. Eash wane asi group has made a distinctive adaptation to suft their water environment: the Langa langa make bata, a shell-disk currency called tafuli 'ae in its final 11.