Table Of ContentMagicians of
Manumanua
Living Myth in Kalauna
MICHAEL W. YOUNG.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles. London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Led.
London, England
‘Copyright © 1985 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
‘Young. Michael W., 1987-
Manumanua : living myth in Kalauna
Bibliography: p. 303
Includes index.
1, Kalauna (Papua New Guinea people) 2. Kalauna
(Papua New Guinea people)—Folklore. 5. Mythology,
Melanesian— Papua New Guinea —Goodenough Island,
4. Goodenough Inland (Papua New Guinea) Social life
and customs. 5, Government, Primitive Papua New
Guinea—Goodenough Island, 1. Title.
DU74A0.42.68 1983 $06'.0899912 42.2985,
ISBN 0-520-08072-1
Princed in the United States of America
123456789
‘To my father and mother
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue a
1_Of Myths and Men a
The House of Lulauvile 42
3 Time's Serpent Honoyeta Gt
4_ The Blood of Malaveyoyo oe
5. The Jaw of Tobowa 10
6 The Head of Didials 132
7_The Bones of lyahalina 11
8 _The Belly of Kimaola 206
2 Revelatis 2a
Epilogue 271
‘Appendix 1 277
‘Appendix 11 280
Notes ry
Glosary of Kalauna Terms 301
Bibliography 303
Ind su
SOLOMON sea
QONuemate Is
Watalina
‘awannae swaew
NIDULA or
GOODENOUGH IS.
‘Manva means"*house" or “hore”; hence,
Figurative, “clan” and "silage." Tis
seduplicated form, manumanaa, cx be
lose as staying at home" or "remain-
in the village.” Siting sil was a ritual
activiy performed by Kalauna magicians
“phen they conducted the ceremony
called manumanua, This ceremony was
ity. Tn is rele
sense manumanua refers to any rite ar
Iyth concerned with cea
Jing cornmunal prosperity.
Acknowledgments
Since its inception in 1976 chis book has been written three times,
cach time by a slightly different person, Its metamorphoses no
longer surprise me so I must be accountable for the result. To the
extent that it is a collaborative ethnographic enterprise, however,
the people of Kalauna must share some of the responsibility for
refusing to stand still. But I owe them a profaund apology for being.
unable, finally, to write the kind of bible they wanted: anchropolo-
gists make mediocre historians, diffident moralists, and hopeless
Prophets. Between the Kalauna people's innocent expectations and
many readers’ thoughtful advice, I have, alas, found myself unable
to please everyone.
Tam more grateful than I can say to the following persons: Adi
yaleyale Iyahalina, Kawanaba Kaweya, and Manawadi Enowei, my
riends and tireless assistants, who in 1966-68, 1975 and 1977, edu-
cated me in the ways of Kalauna and provided s0 many of the stories
that appear in this book; Maribelle de Vera, who recorded and.
transcribed many of the myths and other texts [ came to use; Mimi
Kahn, who first encouraged me to pursue the unlikely project of col-
lating myths and life histories: Larry Cromwell, who read the first
version with exacting critical attention: Anthony Forge, Alfred Gell,
Elizabeth Brouwer, Andrew Strathem, Rodney Needham, Jennie
Scott, Judith Wilson, John Fallon, Bill Epstein, Martha Macintyre,
Jimmy Weiner, Buck Schieffelin, Michael Jackson, and Donald
Tuzin, all of whom read various drafts in part or whole and gave
freely of their criticisms, advice and encouragement: not least, sev-
eral anonymous publishers’ readers, who punctured my pretensions
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
and made me try harder, To Debbora Battaglia I owe special thanks
for intraducing me to the University of California Press, just when |
had begun to suspect that the only place for che manuscript was the
obscurity of a bottom drawer. To The Australian National Univer
sity I owe a long-standing debt of gratitude for fieldwork funding,
and also to Ann Buller, Ita Pead, and Ria van der Zandt for their
indispensable typing services over the years
Prologue
On my firsc exploratory visit to Kalauna, on a brooding day late in
August of 1966, I was conducted around the village by several self-
appointed guides, two of whom proved to be sons of Iyahalina. They
showed me the sights of the village: the monolithic black rock at its
center which (through the misunderstanding of an early resident
magistrate) now gave itsname to the village, the turnbling sources af
water, the divisions between the hamlets, the stone sitting platforms
of mute antiquity, the imposing house of the councillor, the Tow af
pig mandibles strung outside the house of the village constable.
‘There was not a great deal to see; little more than in any of the other
twenty or so Nidula villages Thad visited during previous weeks. But
something about Kalauna excited me,
Its dwelling sites of hard-packed earth, its untidy crops of boul
ders, miniature ravines, and haphazard clumps of forest trees
through which one could giimpse the mountain wall looming imme-
diately west and the dark Solomon Sea miles to the cast—all evoked
in me a tremulous sense of che exotic, recalling those moments of an
English suburban childhood when 1 visited the Welsh mountains
and wondered at the existence of a Nature that was not put to orna-
mental and domestic use with fences and concrete. Kalauna seemed
an unlikely place for anyone to dwell. Moving from hamlet to ham-
Tee, sometimes even fram house to house, was like those childhood
‘games in which we invented obstacles to our passage: stretches of
water for jumping across, rocks for clambering over, bushes for
wriggling through. Here were people whose lives coped in actuality
with what as 2 boy T had to imagine: a jungle of physical impedi-
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