the canoe. They sail on a Kula expedition through Iwa, Gawa, through the Straits of Giribwa to Gumasila. Then they put him on a platform, where he takes a meal and goes to sleep. They leave him there and go into a garden which they see on a hill above, in order to gather some food. On coming back, they find him dead. On hearing their wailing, an ogre comes out, marries one of them and adopts the other. As he was very ugly, however, the girls killed him in an obscene manner, and then settled in the island. This obviously mutilated and superficial version does not give us many clues to the native ideas about the Kula.
The other version is much more interesting. Tokosikuna, according to it, is also slightly crippled, lame, very ugly, and with a pitted skin; so ugly indeed that he could not marry. Far North, in the mythical land of Kokopawa, they play a flute so beautifully that the chief of Digumenu, the village of Tokosikuna, hears it. He wishes to obtain the flute. Many men set out, but all fail, and they have to return half way, because it is so far. Tokosikuna goes, and, through a mixture of cunning and daring, he succeeds in getting possession of the flute, and in returning safely to Digumenu. There, through magic which one is led to infer he has acquired on his journey, he changes his appearance, becomes young, smooth-skinned and beautiful. The guya’u (chief) who is away in his garden, hears the flute played in his village, and returning there, he sees Tokosikuna sitting on a high platform, playing the flute and looking beautiful. “Well,” he says, “all my daughters, all my granddaughters, my nieces and my sisters, you all marry Tokosikuna! Your husbands, you leave behind! You marry Tokosikuna, for he has brought the flute from the distant land!” So Tokosikuna married all the women.
The other men did not take it very well, of course. They decided to get rid of Tokosikuna by stratagem. They said: “The chief would like to eat giant clam-shell, let us go and fish it.” “And how shall I catch it?” asks Tokosikuna. “You put your head, where the clam-shell gapes open.” (This of course would mean death, as the clam-shell would close, and, if a really big one, would easily cut off his head). Tokosikuna, however, dived and with his two hands, broke a clam-shell open, a deed of super-human strength. The others were angry, and planned another form of revenge. They arranged a shark-fishing, advising Tokosikuna to catch the fish with his hands. But he simply strangled the big shark, and put it into the canoe. Then, he tears asunder a boar’s mouth, bringing them thus to despair. Finally they decide to get rid of him at sea. They try to kill him first by letting the heavy tree, felled for the waga, fall on him. But he supports it with his outstretched arms, and does no harm to himself. At the time of lashing, his companions wrap some wayaugo (lashing creeper) into a soft pandanus leaf; then they persuade him to use pandanus only for the lashing of his canoe, which he does indeed, deceived by seeing them use what apparently is the same. Then they sail, the other men in good, sea-worthy canoes, he in an entirely unseaworthy one, lashed only with the soft, brittle pandanus leaf.
And here begins the real Kula part of the myth. The expedition arrives at Gawa, where Tokosikuna remains with his canoe on the beach, while the other men go to the village to kula. They collect all the smaller armshells of the soulava type, but the big ones, the bagi, remain in the village, for the local men are unwilling to give them. Then Tokosikuna starts for the village after all the others have returned. After a short while, he arrives from the village, carrying all the bagido’u bagidudu, and bagiriku—that is, all the most valuable types of spondylus necklaces. The same happens in Iwa and Kitava. His companions from the other canoes go first and succeed only in collecting the inferior kinds of valuables. He afterwards enters the village, and easily obtains the high grades of necklace, which had been refused to the others. These become very angry; in Kitava, they inspect the lashings of his canoe, and see that they are rotten. “Oh well, to-morrow, Vakuta! The day after, Gumasila,—he will drown in Pilolu.” In Vakuta the same happens as before, and the wrath of his unsuccessful companions increases.