These expeditions are interesting in that we see the same type of magic and a number of similar customs, as in the Kula, associated with ordinary trading expeditions. I am not certain about the nature of partnership obtaining in these trading relations, except that Kavataria and Kayleula have their own districts each with whom they trade.
As said already, the main objects for which they make these distant trips are sago, betel-nut, pig; also the various feathers, especially those of the cassowary and the red parrot; rattan-cane belts; plaited fibre belts; obsidian; fine sand for polishing axe blades; red ochre; pumice stone; and other products of the jungle and of the volcanic mountains. For that, they exported to the Koya, to mention the most valuable first, armshells, the valuable axe blades, boars’ tusks and imitations; and, of lesser value, wooden dishes, combs, lime pots, armlets, baskets, wayugo creeper, mussel shells and lime spatulæ of ebony. Spondylus shell necklaces were not exported to the Koya.
IV
Another important activity of the two districts of Kavataria and Kayleula is their production of armshells. As Sinaketa and Vakuta are the only two places in the Trobriands where spondylus discs are made, so Kavataria and Kayleula are the only localities where the natives fished for the large Conus millepunctatus shell, and made out of it the ornaments so highly valued yet so seldom used. The main reason for the exclusive monopoly, held by these two places in the manufacture of mwali, is the inertia of custom and usage which traditionally assigns to them this sort of fishing and manufacture. For the shells are scattered all over the Lagoon, nor is the fishing and diving for them more difficult than any of the pursuits practised by all the Lagoon villages. Only the communities mentioned, however, carry it on, and they only are in possession of a system of elaborate magic, at least as complex as that of the kaloma.
The actual manufacturing of the armshells presents also no difficulties. The ornament is made out of a belt of the shell cut out nearest to its base. With a stone, the natives knock out the circular base along the rim, and they also knock a circle at some distance from the base and parallel to it, by which the broad band of shell is severed, from which the ornament is to be made. It has then to be polished, and this is done on the outside by rubbing off the soft calcareous surface on a flat sandstone. The interior is polished off with a long, cylindrical stone.8
It was the custom in Kavataria that when a man found a fine Conus shell, he would give it to his wife’s brother as a youlo present, who in turn would send the finder a return present of food, such as specially fine yams, bananas, betel-nut, and also a pig if it were an especially fine shell. He then would work out the shell for himself. This arrangement is a pendant to the one described with reference to Sinaketa, where a man would fish as well as work out a necklace for one of his wife’s kinsmen.
An even more interesting custom obtains in Kayleula. A pair of shells would be fished and broken in one of the villages of that island, or in one of its small sister islands, Kuyawa and Manuwata. In this unfinished state, as a band of coarse shell, called as such makavayna, it is then brought to the Amphletts, and there given as a Kula gift. The Gumasila man, who receives the shells, will then polish them up, and in that state again kula them to Dobu. The Dobuan who receives them then bores holes in the side, where one rim overlaps the other (clearly to be seen on Plate XVI) and attaches there the ornaments of black, wild banana seeds, and spondylus discs. Thus, only after it has travelled some one hundred miles and passed through two stages of the Kula, has the mwali received its proper shape and final outfit.