home of the party. To’uluwa himself never receives a gift with his own hands; it is always hung up in his house or platform, and then somebody of his household takes charge of it; but the commoner receives the armshell himself from the hands of the chief. There was much life and movement in the village during this time of concentrated exchange; parties came and went with vaygu’a, others arrived as mere spectators, and the place was always full of a gazing crowd. The soft sounds of the conch shell, so characteristic of all South Sea experiences, gave a special flavour to the festive and ceremonial atmosphere of those days.
Not all the armshells brought from Kitava were thus at once given away. Some of them were kept for the purposes of more distant Kula; or to be given on some future, special occasion when a present had to be handed over in association with some ceremony. In the inland Kula, there is always an outbreak of transactions whenever a big quantity of valuables is imported into the district. And afterwards, sporadic transactions happen now and then. For the minor partners who had received armshells from To’uluwa would not all of them keep them for any length of time, but part of them would be sooner or later passed on in inland transactions. But, however these valuables might spread over the district, they would be always available when an expedition from another Kula community would come and claim them. When the party from Sinaketa came in March, 1918, to Omarakana, all those who owned armshells would either come to the capital or else be visited in their villages by their Sinaketan partners. Of the 154 or so armshells obtained in Kiriwina on that occasion, only thirty came from To’uluwa himself, and fifty from Omarakana altogether, while the rest were given from other villages, in the following proportions:
| Liluta | 14 |
|---|---|
| Osapola | 14 |
| Mtawa | 6 |
| Kurokaywa | 15 |
| Omarakana (To’uluwa) | 30 |
| Omarakana (other men) | 20 |
| Yalumugwa | 14 |
| Kasana’i | 16 |
| Other villages | 25 |
| 154 |
Thus the inner Kula does not affect the flow of the main stream, and, however, the valuables might change hands within the ‘Kula community,’ it matters little for the outside flow.
IV
It will be necessary to give a more detailed account of the actual conditions obtaining in Boyowa with regard to the limits of the various Kula communities in that district. Looking at Map IV, p. 50, we see there the boundaries of Kiriwina, which is the easternmost Kula community in the Northern part of the islands. To the west of it the provinces of Tilataula, Kuboma, and Kulumata form another Kula community, or, it would be more correct to say, some of the men in these districts make the inland Kula with members of neighbouring communities. But these three provinces do not form as a whole a Kula community. In the first place, many villages are quite outside the Kula, that is, not even their headmen belong to the inter-tribal exchange. Remarkably enough, all the big industrial centres, such as Bwoytalu, Luya, Yalaka, Kadukwaykela,