Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s?1930s

578 Pages·2017·11.912 MB·English

by  Clive Moore

MAKING MALA
MALAITA IN SOLOMON ISLANDS,
1870s–1930s

MAKING MALA
MALAITA IN SOLOMON ISLANDS,
1870s–1930s
CLIVE MOORE
PACIFIC SERIES
Published by ANU Press
The Australian National University
Acton ACT 2601, Australia
Email: [email protected]
This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator: Moore, Clive, 1951- author.
Title: Making Mala : Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s-1930s /
Clive Moore.
ISBN: 9781760460976 (paperback) 9781760460983 (ebook)
Subjects: Malaita Province (Solomon Islands)--History.
Malaita Province (Solomon Islands)--Social life and customs.
Malaita Province (Solomon Islands)--Civilization.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying
or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Front cover image: The chief’s brother
at Bulalaha, southwest Malaita. Photograph by John Beattie, 1906.
This edition © 2017 ANU Press
Contents
List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
A Note on Spelling Malaitan Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv
Introduction: Malaitan Tropes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1 . Malaita in Recent Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2 . Trade and Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3 . Malaitan Christians Overseas, 1880s–1910s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
4 . The Melanesian Mission, 1877–1909 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5 . Abu`ofa and the Exodus from Queensland, 1894–1908 . . . . . . . 231
6 . From QKM to SSEM, 1904–09 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
7 . Qaibala: Establishing `Aoke Station, 1909–14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
8 . Labour, the Malayta Company and Catholicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
9 . Koburu: William Bell, 1915–27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
10 . Making Mala into Malaita, 1927–42 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
Conclusion: Tropes, Kastom and the Modern Solomon Islands . . . . .449
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521

List of Illustrations
Figures
Figure Introduction 1: High Commissioner Sir Robert Stanley
at the inauguration of the first Malaita Council in 1952 ...... 19
Figure Introduction 2: Salana Ga`a, the first President of the first
Malaita Council, and some of its members in 1952 .......... 20
Figure Introduction 3: Two of the Malaita Eagles, with weapons .... 26
Figure Introduction 4: Destroying Dodo Creek Agricultural
Station in 2000 ..................................... 26
Figure Introduction 5: Honiara’s Chinatown burning during
the riots in April 2006 ................................ 27
Figure Introduction 6: Ishmael Idumaoma Itea (circa 1904–2005)
at Sango, Fataleka, 1988 ............................... 30
Figure Introduction 7: Noel Fatnowna (1929–91) and Rex Ringi
Angofia in Honiara in 1988 ............................ 30
Figure Introduction 8: Three east Fataleka leaders in the Bubuileli
Council House, 1976 ................................. 31
Figure 1.1: Malaitan plank-built ocean-going canoe from
Langalanga Lagoon .................................. 49
Figure 1.2: Malaitan women and children in dugout canoes near
one of the artificial islands, possibly in Lau Lagoon .......... 50
Figure 1.3: Maasupa Village, Maro`umasike
(Takataka or Deep Bay), east `Are`are, 1970s ............... 52
Figure 1.4: Langalanga women using hand drills to make holes
in the process of making akwala`afi shell wealth in 1933 ...... 57
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MAKINg MALA
Figure 1.5: Langalanga women grinding shells to make akwala`afi
during a 1998 demonstration of shell wealth manufacture
for tourists on Gwaelaga Island ......................... 58
Figure 1.6: Lobotalau rolls up his bata after a mortuary feast for the
death of Na`oni`au at `Ai`eda in east Kwaio in August 1996 ... 58
Figure 1.7: Porpoise hunting at Bita`ama, north Malaita,
early 1960s ......................................... 60
Figure 1.8: Gwali Asi of Sulufou artificial island was an important
bigman in Lau Lagoon early in the twentieth century ........ 61
Figure 1.9: A large hamlet in central Kwaio, inland from Sinalagu,
in `Oloburi Harbour’s watershed. Two men’s houses sit
at the upper reaches .................................. 62
Figure 1.10: A well-built hamlet at `Ai`eda, inland from Sinalagu
in Kwaio, at 853 metres (2,800 feet) above sea level .......... 68
Figure 1.11: `Are`are woman wearing traditional jewellery
and smoking a pipe, 1969 ............................. 69
Figure 1.12: `Are`are woman and child, 1969 .................. 70
Figure 1.13: Bush women at Roas Bay, south Malaita, 1906 ........ 72
Figure 1.14: Sacrificial altar at Ferasubua Island
in Lau Lagoon, 1906 ................................. 77
Figure 2.1: Christie Fatnowna with the model ship made
by Jack Marau ...................................... 84
Figure 2.2: John Renton managed to get this piece of wood with its
message on both sides to the Bobtail Nag in August 1875. . . . . . 95
Figure 2.3: An illustration of the Peri survivors being picked up
by HMS Basilisk off the coast of Queensland in early 1872 ... 104
Figure 2.4: Recruiting at Maanakwai in north Malaita ........... 108
Figure 2.5: Malaita men in the 1920s at the age typical
of labour recruits ................................... 108
Figure 2.6: This photograph from Bundaberg in 1889 is of the
Helena, a 126-ton schooner, which made 40 voyages from
1882–99, and the May, a 237-ton schooner, which made
15 voyages from 1888–94 ............................ 114
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LIST OF ILLuSTRATIONS
Figure 2.7: There are no known photographs of accommodations
below decks. On the early voyages it would have been much
more basic. This sketch is by William Wawn, who was a captain
in the labour trade from 1875 to 1894. It probably depicts
one of his 1880s ships ............................... 117
Figure 2.8: Men from Guadalcanal and Malaita on Foulden
plantation at Mackay, Queensland, in the 1870s ........... 118
Figure 2.9: At Mackay, Hugh Hossack owned one of the larger
‘Kanaka stores’, shops that catered predominantly to Islanders.
They bought their trade boxes and their contents there, and
were allowed to store their possessions there. The photograph
shows how central Islanders were to Hossack’s trade, and his
relationship with them ............................... 122
Figure 2.10: This photograph, of a Malaitan canoe in Fiji,
presumably manufactured and decorated there, is one of the
most remarkable from the overseas plantations. The image,
from a collection by A.M. Brodziack & Co., was probably
taken in the 1880s. The canoe is in Walu Bay, an old local
shipping area and Solomon Islander settlement ............ 137
Figure 2.11: Malaitans at Innisfail in north Queensland early
in the 1900s. The slit-drum and the bows and arrows would
have been made in Queensland ........................ 138
Figure 3.1: Queensland Kanaka Mission baptism by full emersion,
Johnstone River, Geraldton (Innisfail), 1906 .............. 146
Figure 3.2: Students at Mary Robinson’s Anglican Selwyn Mission
when it operated from Marian in the Pioneer Valley west
of Mackay. The photograph dates from the 1890s when
William Wawn visited ............................... 154
Figure 3.3: Many mission photographs are of groups of men,
though women and children also attended services and
classes. This group is at the Selwyn Mission in 1905. . . . . . . . . 156
Figure 3.4: The congregation at St Marys Church at Pioneer,
outside Mackay, in the early 1900s ...................... 157
Figure 3.5: One of the Islanders’ grass-roofed churches in north
Queensland, possibly the one at Cordelia Mount ........... 158
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MAKINg MALA
Figure 3.6: The Churches of Christ Mission Hall in the Isis,
with John Thompson’s house alongside .................. 167
Figure 3.7: Rev. McIntyre with his Sunday school class,
Presbyterian Mission at Walkerston ..................... 168
Figure 3.8: This photograph is thought to be of the Methodist
mission to Islanders in Fiji ............................ 174
Figure 3.9: Kwailiu Fatnowna and his wife Orrani and family
at Mackay in 1906, not long before his death .............. 181
Figure 4.1: St Andrew’s College, Kohimarama, Auckland,
New Zealand. A small number of Malaitan students were
there between 1862 and 1867 ........................... 198
Figure 4.2: The Melanesian Mission school at Uru,
east Malaita, 1906 .................................. 200
Figure 4.3: Clement Marau and Joseph Wate`ae`pule
in about 1890 ..................................... 205
Figure 4.4: The new church built at Fiu, 1904 ................. 212
Figure 4.5: A food storage house at `Adagege Island,
Kwaisulia’s stronghold in Lau Lagoon, 1906 ............... 220
Figure 4.6: Rev. Arthur Hopkins’s mission house at Ngorefou,
Lau Lagoon, 1906 .................................. 222
Figures 4.7–8: Outside and inside the mission palisade
at Ngorefou, 1906 .................................. 222
Figure 4.9: St Barnabas College staff and students,
Norfolk Island, 1906 ................................ 227
Figure 4.10: Interior of the St Barnabas College dining room,
Norfolk Island ..................................... 228
Figure 5.1: Peter Abu`ofa in middle age ...................... 233
Figure 5.2: Men and youths of `Adagege, Kwaisulia’s island,
Lau Lagoon, 1906 .................................. 235
Figure 5.3: The final decision to close the Queensland Kanaka
Mission and reestablish it as the South Sea Evangelical Mission
was made at this religious convention at Katoomba,
New South Wales, in 1904 ............................ 244
x