and decorated wooden dishes of various sizes, depths and finish, made out of either hard or soft wood; from Bwaytelu, Wabutuma and Buduwaylaka, armlets of plaited fern fibre, and wooden combs; from Buduwaylaka, Yalaka, and Kadukwaykela, lime pots of different qualities and sizes. From the villages of Tilataula, the district North-east of Kuboma, the polished axe blades used to be acquired in olden days.
I shall not enter into the technicalities of this exchange, nor shall I give here the approximate list of prices which obtain. We shall have to follow the traded goods further on to Dobu, and there we shall see how they change hands again, and under what conditions. This will allow us to compare the prices and thus to gauge the nature of the transaction as a whole. It will be better therefore to defer all details till then.
IV
Here, however, its seems necessary to make another digression from the straight narrative of the Kula, and give an outline of the various forms of trade and exchange as we find them in the Trobriands. Indeed, the main theme of this volume is the Kula, a form of exchange, and I would be untrue to my chief principle of method, were I to give the description of one form of exchange torn out of its most intimate context; that is, were I to give an account of the Kula without giving at least a general outline of the forms of Kiriwinian payments and gifts and barter.
In Chapter II, speaking of some features of Trobriand tribal life, I was led to criticise the current views of primitive economic man. They depict him as a being indolent, independent, happy-go-lucky, yet at the same time governed exclusively by strictly rational and utilitarian motives, and logical and consistent in his behaviour.
In this chapter again, in Division II, I pointed out another fallacy implied in this conception, a fallacy which declares that a savage is capable only of very simple, unorganised and unsystematic forms of labour.
Another error more or less explicitly expressed in all writings on primitive economics, is that the natives possess only rudimentary forms of trade and exchange; that these forms play no essential part in the tribal life, are carried on only spasmodically and at rare intervals, and as necessity dictates.
Whether we have to deal with the wide-spread fallacy of the primitive Golden Age, characterised mainly by the absence of any distinction between mine and thine; or whether we take the more sophisticated view, which postulates stages of individual search for food, and of isolated household catering; or if we consider for the moment the numerous theories which see nothing in primitive economics but simple pursuits for the maintenance of existence—in none of these can we find reflected even a hint of the real state of affairs as found in the Trobriands; namely, that the whole tribal life is permeated by a constant give and take; that every ceremony, every legal and customary act is done to the accompaniment of material gift and counter gift; that wealth, given and taken, is one of the main instruments of social organisation, of the power of the chief, of the bonds of kinship, and of relationship in law.2
These views on primitive trade, prevalent though erroneous, appear no doubt