Oral traditions
Magical practices and religious beliefs, as well as the contours of the social and physical environment, are communicated through exemplary stories. Before the introduction of writing, oral traditions were an important mechanism for transmitting cultural knowledge across generations. Even today, they have been supplemented rather than replaced by written texts.
Oral traditions are well documented for several of the Polynesian outliers: Tikopia (Firth 1961); Rennell and Bellona (Elbert and Monberg 1965; Kuschel 1975, 1989); Anuta (Feinberg 1998); Vaeakau-Taumako (Hovdhaugen et al. 2002); Takū (Moyle 2003); and West Futuna (Keller and Kuautonga 2007). For others (e.g., Ontong Java, Nukumanu, Sikaiana) one finds only scattered comments in the published literature.
Insofar as we are concerned with religion, tales relating to the spiritual world—stories commonly termed “myths”—are of particular interest. Since Malinowski’s (1948) work on the psychology of myth in Melanesia’s Trobriand Islands, anthropologists have recognized such tales as social charters. In other words, they are not simply more or less corrupted descriptions of historical events (although they can be this as well [see Barber and Barber 2004]). More importantly, they illustrate moral and immoral behavior, and explain and justify the current social order by reference to extra-mundane precedents in a symbolically-constructed past. Their use of rich and fantastic imagery not only makes them memorable; it inspires hearers’ interest and contemplation as they navigate the paradoxes of social life (Lohmann 2008).
In the Polynesian outliers, at least two types of tale are usually recognized and distinguished linguistically. The first of these includes putatively-historical narratives that go back, in some cases, well over a dozen generations, but which focus on activities of human beings. The second includes fantastic stories that feature the activities of spirits, gods, and demigods, and which often take place at least partially in the heavens rather than on earth. On Anuta and Tikopia, historical narratives are termed araarapanga (Anutan) or araarafanga (Tikopian).10 Araara is ‘to chat’; panga or fanga is a substantive or nominalizing suffix. In Anutan the more fantastic tales are termed tangikakai (tangi is ‘to cry’ or ‘cry out’; kai or kakai is a ‘tale’). Tikopia call such stories kai; tangi kai are the short songs or chants often incorporated into such tales. On Taumako and Vaeakau, fantastic tales from long ago are lalakai or lalakhai; recent stories are talanga (a word meaning ‘speech’ or ‘language’ in some other Polynesian languages). Unsurprisingly, particular tales may not fit neatly into either of these categories. For example, stories of human culture heroes interacting with spiritual beings may well have elements of both. And in some cases, a third category may be added to the first two. Thus, Anutans recognize taratupua, literally ‘spirit stories’ or ‘spirit tales’, that typically involve both humans and gods, take place both in the heavens and on earth, and are regarded as more important than tangikakai as foundations of contemporary cosmology and social organization.
While most of the Polynesian outliers recognize both (or all three) of these genres, different communities assign them different emphases. Anutans are acutely interested in their historical origins, take araarapanga quite seriously, and tend to dismiss tangikakai as bed-time stories for children. Tikopians are also particularly interested in putatively-historical narratives, and the Bellonese keep careful track of inter-family disputes, homicides, and acts of vengeance. Elsewhere among the outliers, the emphasis tends to be on actions of ancient spiritual beings, and often such tales are taken to be literally true. The Taumako, for example, tell of events well outside the experience of any living human being. These involve interactions with giants, ogres, spirits, and prehistoric aircraft. In most cases, vestiges of the depicted events remain in the form of stones scattered around the island and on the reef. Taumako islanders view these as proof of their tales’ truth and accuracy.11
Most stories found on the outliers are specific to the tellers’ communities. However, there are some with widespread Polynesian cognates. For instance, tales of a trickster demigod or culture hero called by some variant of the name Maui or Mautikitiki, who pulled up the islands with his magical fish-hook, are found throughout the Polynesian Triangle. Such tales are also common in the outliers, where the hero is named Motikitiki (Anuta), Metikitiki (Tikopia), Majihjiki (West Futuna), Makahikihiki (Vaeakau-Taumako), or Mautikitiki (Rennell and Bellona). Another widespread series of tales involves a character named Lata or Rata, who is a major figure in canoe building and voyaging. Lata stories are found on Taumako, Vaeakau, Tikopia, and Anuta as well as all of the major Polynesian archipelagoes, from Tonga and Samoa to Aotearoa and Hawai‘i.
For Tikopia, Firth (1961) describes three main types of story.12 The first is tara tupua ‘speech about ancestors’. These are tales not to be told lightly, and they usually refer to the distant past. The origin story comes into this category. That tale, while varying in detail according to the teller, can be seen to establish the social importance of primogeniture and the ranking of the four clans. It also names the areas over which each chief has primary responsibility and, in a minor key, the position of women vis-à-vis men. The tale tells of the birth of four male children to the Atua Fafine (the premier goddess) and the Atua Lasi (the Great God). The four children were the progenitors of the four clans of Tikopia: Kāfika was responsible for the land and the yam; Tafua, whose progenitor looked away from the island, was concerned with strangers and had primary responsibility for the coconut; Taumako was responsible for the sea and taro; and Fangarere was responsible for breadfruit, but also for cyclone and drought. The story tells that Fangarere was impatient to be born and shot out through his mother’s head before the other three were born in the normal way. Fangarere mocked his brothers for being born in the ‘dirty way’ and claimed his position as the first god, but his mother cursed him for causing her head to ache and said he would be the god of disasters. Thus Kāfika, the first one to be born correctly became the premier god, followed by Tafua, Taumako, and lastly Fangarere. Other deities also occur in the stories, their origins sometimes obscure. Two examples are Tikarau, who was associated with fire and came from somewhere else, and Tuna the concupiscent eel god, whose penis was amputated by the Atua Fafine and turned into the eels of lake and sea.
Other stories come into this category. The twins Tafaki and Karisi, whom Tikopians claim as local personalities—not introduced gods or ancestors—were able to survive by a combination of trickery, sex appeal, and sympathy (Firth 1961:50). As Tahaki and Karihi or similar variations, the twins occur in many other parts of Polynesia and, like Maui, are culture heroes (or sometimes anti-heroes) to whom various customs or landscape features are attributed. There are also important deities of each chiefly line, and the ranking men of each kainanga ‘clan’ tell tales about them which justify some possession or attribute of the clan.
Kai or kakai (cf. Anutan tangikakai, Takū kkai and Vaeakau-Taumako lalakai) are usually dramatic narratives, sometimes of adventures between men and spirits and sometimes simply made-up stories with many repetitive actions and no real dénouement. On Tikopia, kai fakafiakata ‘funny stories’ or kai pariki ‘bad stories’ are lewd tales that must not be told in front of affines. Men often tell these tales when they are whiling away the time at some ceremony.
A further category is araarafanga which Firth glosses as ‘yarns’; men simply talking about something that has happened perhaps as far back as three generations. However, some of these stories, often about voyages to other islands, were still being told to Macdonald two generations later; and on Anuta, some araarapanga go back fifteen generations or more, to the first immigrants to arrive from Uvea and Tonga (Feinberg 1998). In 1980 Tikopian men sometimes yarned about their experiences as wage laborers in other parts of the Solomons, and these tales often had at their core a discussion of the differences between the Tikopians and men of other islands, always told to the advantage of Tikopia.
Three significant collections of stories from Rennell and Bellona provide transcriptions and translations of recorded narratives: Elbert and Monberg’s From the Two Canoes (1965); Kuschel’s Animal Stories from Bellona Island (1975); and a two-volume work by Kuschel entitled Vengeance is their Reply (1979). The Elbert and Monberg collection deals with deities, culture heroes, and ancestors. There are also stories of men and gods and human affairs. Kuschel’s first collection deals with the origin of certain animal behaviors and tales of trickery and enmity as well as ones that show what people can learn from animals. The last involves stories of murder, retaliation, warfare, and blood-feuding, which apparently were major preoccupations in pre-Christian Bellona.
The Bellonese tell a small creation story: a shell rose out of the sea, and the first living creature was a beetle. Later there was arrowroot, on which the sky rested. One of the deities wanted to prop up the sky, but he was too short; so another god took the sacred staff of a priest-chief and propped up the sky. Monberg (1991:23) notes that no gods of ritual significance took part in the creation. There were stories about the sky gods and the quarters of the sky in which they belonged, and about the other gods and culture heroes. However, the Bellonese had no stories about how humans were created. Instead, stories were told that established the origin of groups, their land ownership and religious rights and duties; the superiority of one group over another; social institutions such as marriage; moral values; and ties to supernatural powers (Elbert and Monberg 1965:29).
In addition to spoken tales, songs and dances often memorialize historical events. On Tikopia and Anuta, these include fuatanga ‘laments’ (puatanga on Anuta) and mako ‘dance songs’. Firth and the ethnomusicologist Mervyn McLean have produced a collection of songs from Tikopia which detail the island’s many types of composition (Firth and McLean 1990). This is an important element in tradition-making: songs are the Tikopians’ chief artistic and creative form of expression. One dance involves the men advancing, kneeling, stretching out an arm and then making a chopping movement with the other hand. Macdonald was told it depicted an incident that had occurred nearly a hundred years previously, when a white man came to the island with a gun. He demonstrated its power by shooting a bird. The Tikopians rightly surmised that this weapon also could do some harm to humans. Therefore, noting that the man pulled the trigger with his finger, they chopped off his digits. This event is recalled in the chopping movement of the dance. Similar points can be made about the role of music and dance on other Polynesian outliers (see, Moyle 2007; Keller and Kuautonga 2007; Johnstone and Feinberg 2006; and several contributions to Kaeppler and Love 1998). Outlier music is discussed in detail in Moyle’s contribution to this volume.