chief of that village, a man of rank equal to the highest chief (his kinsman, in fact) but of smaller power. Ibena is a skilled builder as well as a fair carver, and there is no class of magic in which he does not profess to be versed. The canoe was built, under his guidance; he carved the boards himself, he also performed the magic, and he was, of course, the toliwaga.
In Omarakana, the canoe had to be slightly altered in construction; it had to be re-lashed and re-painted. To do this To’uluwa, the chief, had summoned a master builder and carver from the island of Kitava, the same one who a couple of years before, had built this canoe. Also a new sail had to be made for the Omarakana boat, as the old one was too small. The ceremony of tasasoria (launching and regatta) ought by rights to have been held on the beach of Kasana’i, but as its sister village, Omarakana, is so much more important, it took place on Kaulukuba, the sea-shore of the latter.
As the date approached, the whole district was alive with preparations, since the coastal villages had to put their canoes in order, while in the inland communities, new festive dresses and food had to be made ready. The food was not to be eaten, but to be offered to the chief for his sagali (ceremonial distribution). Only in Omarakana, the women had to cook for a big festive repast to be eaten on return from the tasasoria. In the Trobriands it is always a sign that a festive event is pending when all the women go in the evening to the bush to collect plenty of firewood. Next morning, this will be used for the kumkumuli, the baking of food in the ground, which is one of the forms of cooking used on festive occasions. On the evening of the tasasoria ceremony, people in Omarakana and Kasana’i were also busy with the numerous other preparations, running to the shore and back, filling baskets with yams for the sagali, getting ready their festive dress and decorations for the morrow. Festive dress means, for a woman, a new grass skirt, resplendent in fresh red, white and purple, and for the man a newly bleached, snow-white pubic leaf, made of the stalk of areca palm leaf.
Early in the morning of the appointed day, the food was packed into baskets of plaited leaf, the personal apparel on top of it, all covered as usual with folded mats and conveyed to the beach. The women carried on their heads the large baskets, shaped like big inverted bells, the men shouldered a stick with two bag-shaped baskets at each end. Other men had to carry the oars, paddles, rigging and sail, as these paraphernalia are always kept in the village. From one of the villages, one of the large, prismatic receptacles for food made of sticks was carried by several men right over the raybwag (coral ridge) to be offered to the chief of Omarakana as a share in the sagali. The whole village was astir, and on its outskirts, through the surrounding groves, parties from inland could be seen making their way rapidly to the shore. I left the village with a party of notables at about eight o’clock in the morning. After leaving the grove of fruit and palm trees which grows especially densely around the village of Omarakana, we entered between the two walls of green, the usual monotonous Trobriand road, which passes through the low scrub. Soon, emerging on a garden space,