The Mafulu Part 8

Government, Property, and Inheritance

Government and Justice.

There is, as might be expected, no organised system of government among the Mafulu, nor is there any official administration of justice.

As regards government, the chiefs in informal consultation with the sub-chiefs and prominent personages deal with important questions affecting the community or clan or village as a whole, such as the holding of big feasts and important ceremonies, the migrations or splitting-up or amalgamation of villages, and warlike operations; but events of this character are not frequent. And as to justice, neither the chiefs nor any other persons have any official duties of settling personal disputes or trying or punishing wrongdoers. The active functions of the chiefs, in fact, appear to be largely ceremonial.

Concerning the question of justice, it would seem, indeed, that a judicial system is hardly requisite. Personal disputes between members of a village or clan, or even of a community, on such possible subjects as inheritance, boundary, ownership of property, trespa.s.s and the like, and wrongful acts within the village or the community, are exceedingly rare, except as regards adultery and wounding and killing cases arising from acts of adultery, which are more common.

There are certain things which from immemorial custom are regarded as being wrong, and appropriate punishments for which are generally recognised, especially stealing, wounding, killing and adultery; but the punishment for these is administered by the injured parties and their friends, favoured and supported by public opinion, and often, where the offender belongs to another clan, actively helped by the whole clan of the injured parties.

The penalty for stealing is the return or replacement of the article stolen; but stealing within the community, and perhaps even more so within the clan or village, is regarded as such a disgraceful offence, more so, I believe, than either killing or adultery, that its mere discovery involves a distressing punishment to the offender. As regards wounding and killing, the recognised rule is blood for blood, and a life for a life. The recognised code for adultery will be stated in the chapter on matrimonial matters.

Any retribution for a serious offence committed by someone outside the clan of the person injured is often directed, not only against the offender himself, but against his whole clan.

There is a method of discovering the whereabouts of a stolen article, and the ident.i.ty of the thief, through the medium of a man who is believed to have special powers of ascertaining them. This man takes one of the large broad single-sh.e.l.l arm ornaments, which he places on its edge on the ground, and one of the pig-bone implements already described, which he places standing on its point upon the convex surface of the sh.e.l.l. To make the implement stand in this way he puts on the point, and makes to adhere to the sh.e.l.l a small piece of wild bees' wax, this being done, I was told, surrept.i.tiously, though I cannot say to what extent the people are deceived by the dodge, or are aware of it. The implement stands on the sh.e.l.l for a few seconds, after which it falls down. Previously to doing this he has told his client of certain possible directions in which the implement may fall, and intimated that, whichever that may be, it will be the direction in which the lost article must be sought. He has also given certain alternative names of possible culprits, one of such names being a.s.sociated with each of the alternative directions of falling. The fall of the implement thus indicates the quarter in which the lost article may be found and the name of the thief. Father Clauser saw this performance enacted in connection with a pig which had been stolen from a chief; the falling bone successfully pointed to the direction in which the pig was afterwards found, and there was no doubt that the alleged thief was in fact the true culprit. Presumably the operator makes private enquiries before trying his experiment, and knows how to control the fall of the implement.

Property and Inheritance.

The property of a Mafulu native may be cla.s.sified as being (1) his movable belongings, such as clothing, ornaments, implements and pigs; (2) his house in the village; (3) his bush land; (4) his gardens.

The movable belongings are, of course, his own absolute property.

The village house is also his own; but this does not include the site of that house, which continues to be the property of the village. Every grown-up male inhabitant of the village has the right to build for himself one house in that village; he is not ent.i.tled to have more than one there, but he may have a house in each of two or more villages, and a chief or very important man is allowed two or three houses in the same village. On a house being pulled down and not rebuilt, or being abandoned and left to decay, the site reverts to the village, and another person may build a house upon it. [65] Houses are never sold, but the ordinary life of a house is only a few years.

The man's bush land is his own property, and his ownership includes all trees and growth which may be upon it, and which no other man may cut down, but it does not include game, this being the common property of the community; and any member of the community is ent.i.tled to pa.s.s over the land, hunt on it, and fish in streams pa.s.sing through it, as he pleases. The whole of the bush land of the community belongs in separate portions to different owners, one man sometimes owning two or more of such portions; and it is most remarkable that, though there are apparently no artificial boundary marks between the various portions, these boundaries are, somehow or other, known and respected, and disputes with reference to them are practically unknown. How the original allocations and allotments of land have been made does not appear to be known to the people themselves.

The man's garden plot or plots are also his own, having been cleared by him or some predecessor of his out of his or that predecessor's own bush land; and he may build in his gardens as many houses as he pleases. His ownership of his garden plot is more exclusive than is that of his bush land, as other people are not ent.i.tled to pa.s.s over it. But on the other hand, if he abandons the garden, and nature again overruns it with growth--a process which takes place with great rapidity--it ceases to be his garden, and reverts to, and becomes absorbed in, the portion of the bush out of which it had been cleared; and if, as it may be, he is not the sole owner of that portion of bush, he loses his exclusive right to the land, which as a garden had been his own sole property.

No man can sell or exchange either his bush land or his garden plots, and changes in their ownership therefore only arise through death and inheritance. This statement, however, is, I think, subject to the qualification that an owner of bush-land will sometimes allow his son or other male descendant to clear and make for himself a garden in it; but I am not sure as to the point.

On a man's death his widow, if any, does not inherit any portion of his property, either movable or immovable, but three things are allowed to her. She is generally allowed one pig, which will be required by her at a later date for the ceremony of the removal of her mourning; and she shares with her husband's children, or, if there be none, she has the sole right to, the then current season's crops and fruit resulting from the planting effected by her late husband and herself, though this is a right which, after her return home to her own people, she would not continue to exercise; and she is allowed to continue to occupy her husband's house, but this latter privilege terminates at the mourning removal ceremony, when the house will be pulled down, and its site will revert to the village, and she will probably return to her own people in her own village, if she has not done so previously.

Subject to these three allowances, I may dismiss the widow entirely in dealing with the law of inheritance. I may also dismiss the man's female children by saying that, if there be male children, the females do not share at all in the inheritance, and even if there be no male children the female children will only perhaps be allowed, apparently rather as a matter of grace than of right, to share in his movable effects; and that, subject to this, everything goes to the man's male relatives. I may also eliminate the man's pigs, as apparently any pigs he has, other than that retained for his widow, are killed at his funeral.

On the death of an owner everything he possesses goes, except as above mentioned, to his sons. They divide the movable things between them, but the bush and garden land pa.s.s to them jointly, and there is no process by which either of these can be divided and portioned among them. The male children of a deceased son, and the male children of any deceased male child of that deceased son (and so on for subsequent generations), inherit between them in lieu of that son. There does not appear, however, to be any idea in the Mafulu mind of each son of the deceased owner being ent.i.tled to a specific equal fractional share, or of the descendants of a deceased son of that owner being between them only ent.i.tled to one share, _per stirpes_. They apparently do not get beyond the general idea that these people, whoever they may be and to whatever generations they may belong, become the owners of the property.

They take possession of and cultivate the existing gardens as joint property. Any one of them will be allowed to clear some of their portion of bush, and fence it, and plant it as a garden, and it will then become the sole property of that one man, and if he dies it will pa.s.s as his own property to his own heirs; though, as before stated, if he abandons it, and lets it be swallowed up by the bush, it will cease to be his own garden, and will again be included in the family's joint portion of bush land, and on his death his heirs will only come into the joint bush ownership.

In this way the ownership of a garden must often be in several persons, with no well-defined rights _inter se_, and the general ownership of bush land which has never been cleared, or which, having been cleared, has been abandoned and reverted, must often be in a very large number of persons without defined rights. In fact, so far as bush land is concerned, one only has to remember that on the death of an owner it pa.s.ses into joint ownership of children--that on the deaths of these children fresh groups of persons come into the joint ownership--that this may go on indefinitely, generation after generation--that bush, having once got into the ownership of many people, is hardly likely to again fall by descents into a single ownership--that indeed the tendency must be for the number of owners of any one portion of bush steadily to increase--and finally that there is no way by which the extensively divided ownership can be terminated by either part.i.tion or alienation--and one then realises the extraordinary complications of family ownership of bush land which must commonly exist.

As regards both movable effects and gardens and bush land there must be endless occasions for dispute. How are the movable things to be divided among the inheritors, and, in particular, who is to take perhaps one valuable article, which may be worth all the rest put together? How are questions of doubtful claims to heirship to bush and garden land to be determined? How is the joint ownership of the gardens to be dealt with, and how is the work there to be apportioned, and the products of the gardens divided? How are the mutual rights of the bush land to be regulated, and especially what is to happen if each of two or more joint owners desires to clear and allocate to himself as a garden, a specially eligible piece of bush? Such situations in England would bristle with lawsuits, and I tried to find out how these questions were actually dealt with by the Mafulu; but there is no judicial system there, and the only answer I could get was that in these matters, as in the case of inter-community bush boundaries and personal bush boundaries, disputes were practically unknown; though it was pointed out to me, as regards bush land, that the amount of it belonging to any one family was usually so large that crowding out could hardly arise.

If a man dies without male descendants in the male line, then, subject perhaps to some sort of claim of his daughters, if any, to share in his movable effects, his property goes to his nearest male relative or relatives in the male line. This would primarily be his father, if living, but the father could hardly be the inheritor of anything but movable things and perhaps garden land, as the deceased could not be the owner of bush land during the lifetime of his father. Subject as regards movable things and perhaps gardens to this right of the father, the persons to inherit everything would be deceased's brothers and the male descendants in the male line of any such brothers who had died; or in default of these it would be the father's (not the mother's) brothers and their male descendants in the male line, and so on for more distant male relatives, every descent being traced strictly in the male line only, on a principle similar to that above explained.

Male infants, by which term I mean young children, there being of course no infancy in the defined sense in which the term is used in English law, like adults, may become possessed of property by inheritance as regards bush and garden land, and by inheritance or otherwise as regards movable property, but they would hardly be likely to be the owners of houses; and the descent from these infants is the same as that in the case of adults.

No woman can possess any property, other than movable property, and even this is at best confined to the clothes and ornaments which she wears. On the death of a married woman all her effects go to her husband, or, if he be dead, they go to her children or descendants, male and female, equally, If she has no children or descendants, they go to her husband's father, or, failing him, to such other person or persons as would have been ent.i.tled to inherit if her effects had been those of her husband. Her own blood relations do not come in, as she had been bought and paid for by her husband. If the deceased woman were a spinster, then her effects would pa.s.s to her father, or, failing him, to her brothers, or, failing them, to her nearest male relatives on her father's side.

The guardianship of and responsibility for infant children whose father dies falls primarily upon the children's mother, and she, if and when she returned to her own people, would probably take the children away with her, though her sons, who shared in the inheritance from their father, would usually come back again to their own village when they became grown up, and might do so even when comparatively young. If there is no mother of the children, the guardianship and responsibility is taken up by one or more of the relatives of either the deceased father or deceased mother of the children, and it might be that some children would be taken over by some of such relatives, and some by others. There appears, however, to be no regular rule as to all this, the question being largely one of convenience.

Adopted children have in all matters of inheritance the same rights as actual children.

From the above particulars it will be seen that there is no system of descent in the female line or of mother-right among the Mafulu, and I could not find any trace of such a thing having ever existed with them. As to this I would draw attention to the facts that the mother's relatives do not come in specially, as they do among the Roro and Mekeo people, in connection with the perineal band ceremony; that a boy owes no service to his maternal uncle, as is the case among the Koita; that there is no equivalent of the Koita _Heni_ ceremony; that in no case can a woman be a chief, or chieftainship descend by the female line; that children belong to the clan of their father, and not to that of their mother; and that no duty or responsibility for orphan children devolves specially upon their mother's relations.

CHAPTER VIII

The Big Feast

This is the greatest and most important social function of a Mafulu community of villages. I was unable to get any information as to its real intent and origin, but a clue to this may, I think, be found in the formal cutting down of the grave platform of a chief, the dipping of chiefs' bones in the blood of the slain pigs, and the touching of other chiefs' bones with the bones so dipped, which const.i.tute such important features of the function, and which perhaps point to an idea of in some way finally propitiating or driving away or "laying"

the ghosts of the chiefs whose bones are the subject of the ceremony.

The feast, though only to be solemnised in one village, is organised and given by the whole community of villages. There is no (now) known matter or event with reference to which it is held. It is decided upon and arranged and prepared for long beforehand, say a year or two, and feasts will only be held in one village at intervals of perhaps fifteen or twenty years. The decision to hold a feast is arrived at by the chiefs of the clans of the community which proposes to give it. The village at which the feast is to be held will not necessarily be the largest one of the community, or one in which is a then existing chiefs _emone_. The guests to be invited to it will be the people of some other (only one other) community, and at the outset it will be ascertained more or less informally whether or not they will be willing to accept the invitation.

When the feast has been resolved upon, the preparations for it begin immediately, that is a year or two before the date on which it is to be held. Large quant.i.ties will be required of yam, taro and sugar-cane, and of a special form of banana (not ripening on the trees, and requiring to be cooked); also of the large fruit of the _ine_, a giant species of Panda.n.u.s (see Plate 80--the figure seated on the ground near to the base of the tree gives an idea of the size of the latter and of the fruit head which is hanging from it), which is cultivated in the bush, and the fruit heads of which are oval or nearly round, and have a transverse diameter of about 18 inches; and of another fruit, called by the natives _malage_, which grows wild, chiefly by streams, and is also cultivated, and the fruit of which was described to me as being rather like an apple, almost round, green in colour, and 4 or 5 inches in diameter. [66] And above all things will be wanted an enormous number of village pigs (not wild pigs); and sweet potatoes must be plentiful for the feeding of these pigs. And finally they will need plenty of native tobacco for their guests. In view of these requirements it is obvious that a year or two is by no means an excessive period for the preparations for the feast.

The existing yam and taro gardens, intended for community consumption alone, will be quite insufficient for the purpose, and fresh bush land is at once cleared, and new gardens are made and planted, the products of these new gardens being allocated specially for the feast, and not used for any other purpose. There is also an extensive planting of sugar-cane, probably in old potato gardens. For bananas there will probably be no great need of preparation, as they are grown plentifully, and there is no specific appropriation of these; but the sufficiency of the supply of the tobacco for the visitors, and of the sweet potatoes for the pigs, has to be seen to, also that of the _ine_ Panda.n.u.s trees, the fruit of which has often to be procured from elsewhere, and of the trees. And finally the village pigs must be bred and fattened, for which latter purpose it is a common practice to send young pigs to people in other communities; and these people will be invited to the big feast, and will have pig given to them, though not members of the invited community; but never in any case will any of them have a part of a pig which he himself has fattened. The cultivated vegetable foods and the pigs are not provided on a communistic basis, but are supplied by the individual members of the community, each household of which is expected to do its duty in this respect; and no person who or whose family has not provided at least one pig (some of them provide more than one) will be allowed to take part in the preliminary feast and subsequent dancing, to be mentioned below.

The bringing in and storing of the _ine_ and _malage_ fruits commence at an early stage. The _ine_ fruits are collected when quite ripe; they split the large fruit heads up into two or more parts, put these into baskets roughly made of cane (at least half a fruit head in each basket), and place these baskets in the _avale_ or ceiling of the _emone_, where the fruits get dried and smoked by the heat and smoke of the fire constantly burning beneath. If, as is sometimes the case, the _emone_ has no _avale_ one is constructed specially for the purpose. The fruits are left there until required; in fact, if taken away from the smoke, they would go bad. Sometimes, instead of putting portions of the fruit heads into baskets, they take out from them the almond-shaped seeds, which are the portions to be eaten, string these together, each seed being tied round and not pierced, and hang them to the roof of the _emone_ above the _avale_. The fruits of the _malage_ are gathered and put into holes or side streams by a river, and there left for from seven to ten months, until the pulp, which is very poisonous, is all rotted away, a terrible smell being emitted during the process; they then take the pips or seeds, the insides of which, after the surrounding sh.e.l.ls have been cracked, are the edible parts, and place these in baskets made out of the almost amplexicaul bases of the leaves of a species of palm tree, and so store them also on the _avale_ of the _emone_. [67]

Large preparations of a structural and repairing nature are also required in the village where the feast is to be held. The _emone_, the true chiefs _emone_, of the village is repaired or pulled down and entirely rebuilt; or, if that village does not possess such an _emone_, one is erected in it. In point of fact the usual practice is, I was informed, to build a new _emone_, the occasion of an intended feast being the usually recognised time for the doing of this. [68]

The houses of the village are put into repair. The people of the other villages of the same community build houses for themselves in the feast village, so that on the occasion of the feast all the members of the community (the hosts) will be living in that village. View platforms, from which the dancing can be watched, are built by all the people of the community. These are built between the houses where possible, or at all events so as to obstruct the view from the houses as little as possible. They are built on upright poles, and are generally between 12 and 20 feet high, each platform having a roof, which will probably be somewhat similar to the roofs of the houses. Sometimes there are two platforms under one roof, but this is not usual. Sometimes the platforms, instead of being on posts, are in trees, being, however, roofed like the others. Two or more houses may join in making one platform for themselves and their friends. All the above works are put in hand at an early stage.

The following are done later, perhaps not till after the sending out of the formal invitation (see below), but they may conveniently be dealt with here. The people erect near to, but outside, the village in which the feast is to be held one or more sheds for the accommodation of the guests, the number of sheds depending upon the requirements of the case. These are merely gable and ridge-shaped roofs, which descend on each side down to the ground, or very close to it, being supported by posts, and there being no flooring. They are called _olor' eme_, which means dancers' houses. Posts about 20 or 25 feet high and 12 inches or nearly so in diameter are erected in various places in the village enclosure, and each of these posts is surrounded with three, four, or five upright bamboo stems, which are bound to the post so as together to make a composite post of which the big one is the strong supporting centre. The leaf branches of these bamboos, starting out from the nodes of the stems, are cut off 3 or 4 inches from their bases, thus leaving small pegs or hooks to which vegetables, etc., can be afterwards hung; and in the case of each post one only of its surrounding bamboos has the top branches and leaves left on. Each household is responsible for the erection of one post. I may here say in advance that upon these post cl.u.s.ters will be hung successively, yams and taro in the upper parts, human skulls and bones lower down, and croton leaves by way of decoration at the bottom. The sugar-cane and banana and _ine_ and _malage_ are dealt with in another way. There is a further erection of thin poles, which will be mentioned in its proper place.

About six months before the antic.i.p.ated date of the big feast there is a preliminary festivity, which is regarded as a sort of intimation that the long-intended feast is shortly to take place. To this festivity people of villages of any neighbouring communities, say within an hour or two's walk, are invited. There is no dancing, but there is a distribution among the guests of a portion of each of the vegetables and fruits which will be consumed at the feast, and a village pig is killed and cut up, and its parts are also distributed among the guests, who then return home.

After this preliminary festivity dancing begins in the village in which the feast is to be held and in the other villages of the same community, and this dancing goes on, subject to weather, every day until the evening prior to the day upon which the feast takes place. The men dance in the villages, beginning at about sundown, and going on through the evening, and perhaps throughout the night. Only men who or whose families have provided at least one pig for the feast are allowed to join in the dancing. Bachelors join in the dancing, subject to the above condition. The women dance outside their villages, and, as regards them, there is no pig qualification.

About a month before the date on which the feast is proposed to be held, a formal invitation is sent out to the community which is to be invited to it, and who, as above stated, have already been approached informally in the matter. For this purpose a number, perhaps ten, twenty, or thirty, of the men of the community giving the feast start off, taking with them several bunches of croton leaves--one bunch for each village of the invited community. These men, if the invited community be some distance off, only carry the croton leaves as far as some neighbouring community, probably about one day's journey off, where they stay the night, and then return. During their progress, and particularly as they arrive at their destination, they are all singing. Then the men of this neighbouring community carry the croton leaves a stage further; and so on till they reach their ultimate destination. This may involve two or three sets of messengers, but occasionally one or two of the original messengers may go the whole way. These croton leaves are delivered to the chiefs of the several clans of the invited community, and they are tied to the front central posts of the village _emone_, the true _emone_ of the chiefs village, and, as regards other villages, the _emone_ of the sub-chiefs. [69]

The exact date of the feast depends upon the guests, who may come in a month after receiving the croton leaves, or may be later; and the community giving the feast do not know on what date their guests will arrive until news comes that they are actually on their way, though in the meantime messengers will be pa.s.sing backwards and forwards and native wireless telegraphy (shouting from ridge to ridge) will be employed.

As soon as the formal invitation has been sent the people of the community giving the feast begin to bring in the yams from the gardens, which they do day by day, singing as they do so; and these yams are stored away in the houses as they are brought in. When the yams have all been collected, they are brought out and spread in one, two, or three long lines along the centre of the village open s.p.a.ce. The owner of each post knows which are his own yams, and they will go to his post. When the yams are laid out on the ground, the chiefs inspect them, and select the best ones, which are to be given to the chiefs of the community invited to the dance. To these selected yams they tie croton leaves as distinguishing marks. Then each man stands by his own yams, and has a boy standing by his own post; each man picks up his best yams, and whilst holding these they all (only the men with the yams) begin to sing. The moment the song is over, each man rushes with his selected best yam to his post, and hands the yam to the boy, who climbs up the post, and hangs up the yam. After this they hang the rest of the yams, each man running with them to the post, and giving them to the boy, who climbs up and hangs the yam whilst the man runs back for another, the performance being all in apparent disorder and there being no singing. Some of the best-shaped yams are hung to little cross-sticks about 3 or 4 feet long, which the boys then and there attach to those bamboo stems which have their top branches and leaves left upon them, the sticks being attached just below these branches. These selected yams will include those with the croton leaves, which are intended for chiefs. Of the rest the better yams are hung up higher on the posts, and the poorer ones lower down. The lowest of them will probably be 5 or 6 feet from the ground.

After hanging the yams, the next step is to erect in the ground all round the village enclosure and in front of the houses a number of tall young slender straight-stemmed tree poles, with the top branches and leaves only left upon them. These poles are connected with one another by long stems, fixed horizontally to them at a height of 7 or 8 feet from the ground, the stems thus forming a sort of long line or girdle encircling the village enclosure.

The men then go to their gardens and bring in the sugar-canes, singing as they do so, and these they hang to the horizontal stems, but without ceremony. The sugar-canes are all in thick bundles, perhaps 12 or 18 inches thick, and these bundles are hung horizontally end to end immediately under the line of stems, so as also to make a continuous encircling line.