CHAPTER V

THE CEREMONIAL BUILDING OF A WAGA

I

The building of the sea-going canoe (masawa) is inextricably bound up with the general proceedings of the Kula. As we have said before, in all villages where Kula is practised the masawa canoes are built and repaired only in direct connection with it. That is, as soon as a Kula expedition is decided upon, and its date fixed, all the canoes of the village must be overhauled, and those too old for repair must be replaced by new ones. As the overhauling differs only slightly from building in the later, ceremonial stages of the procedure, the account in this chapter covers both.

To the native, the construction of the canoe is the first link in the chain of the Kula performances. From the moment that the tree is felled till the return of the oversea party, there is one continuous flow of events, following in regular succession. Not only that: as we shall see, the technicalities of construction are interrupted and punctuated by magical rites. Some of these refer to the canoe, others belong to the Kula. Thus, canoe-building and the first stage of Kula dovetail into one another. Again, the launching of the canoe, and especially the kabigidoya (the formal presentation visit) are in one respect the final acts of canoe-building, and in another they belong to the Kula. In giving the account of canoe-building, therefore, we start on the long sequence of events which form a Kula expedition. No account of the Kula could be considered complete in which canoe-building had been omitted.

In this chapter, the incidents will be related one after the other as they happen in the normal routine of tribal life, obeying the commands of custom, and the indications of belief, the latter acting more rigidly and strongly even than the former. It will be necessary, in following this consecutive account, to keep in mind the definite, sociological mechanism underlying the activities, and the system of ideas at work in regulating labour and magic. The social organisation has been described in the previous chapter. We shall remember that the owner, the expert or experts, a small group of helpers, and the whole community are the social factors, each of which fulfils a different function in the organisation and performance of work. As to the magical ideas which govern the various rites, they will be analysed later on in the course of this and some of the following chapters, and also in