fact, the nearest island, Kitava, differs only very little from the Trobriands. Although the more distant islands, especially Murua, have a slightly different form of totemism, with hardly any idea of rank attached to the sub-clans, and consequently no chieftainship in the Trobriand sense, yet their social organisation is also much the same as in the Western province.10 I know the natives only from having seen them very frequently and in great numbers in the Trobriands, where they come on Kula expeditions. In Murua, however, I spent a short time doing field-work in the village of Dikoyas. In appearance, dress, ornaments and manners, the natives are indistinguishable from the Trobrianders. Their ideas and customs in matters of sex, marriage, and kinship are, with variations in detail only, the same as in Boyowa. In beliefs and mythology, they also belong to the same culture.
To the Trobrianders, the Eastern islands are also the chief home and stronghold of the dreaded mulukwausi (flying witches); the land whence love magic came, originating in the island of Iwa; the distant shores towards which the mythical hero Tudava sailed, performing many feats, till he finally disappeared, no one knows where. The most recent version is that he most likely finished his career in the white man’s country. To the Eastern islands, says native belief, the spirits of the dead, killed by sorcery, go round on a short visit not stopping there, only floating through the air like clouds, before they turn round to the North-West to Tuma.
From these islands, many important products come to Boyowa (the Trobriands), but none half as important as the tough, homogeneous green-stone, from which all their implements were made in the past, and of which the ceremonial axes are made up till now. Some of these places are renowned for their yam gardens, especially Kitava, and it is recognised that the best carving in black ebony comes from there. The most important point of difference between the natives of this district and the Trobrianders, lies in the method of mortuary distributions, to which subject we shall have to return in a later part of the book, as it is closely connected with Kula.