Pentecost

Pentecost

ETHNONYMS: Bunlap, Pornowol, Sa, South Ragans

Orientation

Identification. Th e Sa, who are the focus of this summary, live on the southern part of Pentecost Island in northern Vanuatu. Pentecost was so called by the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who sighted it on WhitSunday in 1768. "Sa" means "what" in the language spoken by the people, who themselves call the language "Lokit," which means "the inside of us all." The Sa have previously been called the Pornowol tribe, and the region has been known as South Raga as well as South Pentecost.

Location. Pentecost is an island 60 kilometers long by 12 kilometers wide, located at 15°30′ to 16° S and 168o30′ E. The landmass is predominantly basaltic, with a few limestone ridges formed by the uplifting of coral reefs. The eastern coast is precipitous, fringed by extensive coral reefs, and windward, with few safe anchorages. The western coast is flat and leeward, with coral reefs, extensive sandy beaches, and good anchorages. The central part of the island is mountainous and covered with dense primary rain forest. Many rivers and streams flow from the mountains to the coast, especially on the western side, and they are the primary sources of fresh water. Temperatures range between 22° and 30° C, and about 400 centimeters of rain falls in an average year. It is typically cooler and drier May-October and hotter and wetter November-April when tropical cyclones occur. Southern Pentecost experiences occasional falls of volcanic ash from Benbow Crater on nearby Ambrym Island.

Demography. In 1979 the population of Pentecost was 9,361, about 1,700 of whom were Sa speakers. Most Sa are resident locally, although young men in particular are involved in circular labor migration to the towns of Santo and Port Vila as well as plantations elsewhere. A few Sa have become permanent migrants to towns or other rural centers to work for churches, the government, or private companies or to pursue higher education.

Linguistic Affiliation. Sa is classified in the North and Central Vanuatu Group of Austronesian languages. Although it had no script prior to colonization, it has now been written down through the work of mission linguists and local cultural workers. Most speakers of Sa are also fluent in Bislama, the lingua franca of Vanuatu, and increasingly younger Sa attain verbal and written fluency in English or French, taught in church and state schools.

History and Cultural Relations

The first contacts between ni-Vanuatu and Europeans took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but there was initial reluctance to trade with European navigators. From the early nineteenth century, Europeans sought whales, sandalwood, and bêche-de-mer in the islands with more success. In 1839 the London Missionary Society, and later the Presbyterians, set up missions in the southern islands and were followed by Anglicans, Marists, and, in the twentieth century, Seventh-Day Adventists and the Church of Christ. From 1857 thousands of men and some women were recruited as laborers to work on plantations in New Caledonia, Queensland, Fiji, and islands in Vanuatu. In 1906 the rivalry between British and French influences was resolved by the creation of the Condominium of the New Hebrides. Indigenous cash cropping of copra started in the late 1920s, and during World War II the island of Santo was a major staging base for American forces. Beginning in the late 1960s anticolonial and nationalist sentiments crystallized, and in 1980 Vanuatu achieved political independence.

Settlements

The pattern of settlement in South Pentecost includes both nucleated villages and dispersed homestead patterns. In the traditionalist or kastom villages, such as Bunlap in the Southeast, the predominant pattern is nucleated, with houses strung out down a ridge and communal men's houses and dancing grounds at the highest elevation. In traditionalist Villages the preferred materials and house designs are Indigenous: earth floors, bamboo-pole walls, and sago-palm thatch roofs on a rectangular frame. Each of these dwellings typically contains a single room, but within this room a transverse log divides the cooking fires of women and children at the front from men at the back. The men's houses are of the same materials and design, but they are much larger and have a series of fires for men of different rank. These traditional structures are complemented by more novel sleeping houses that are raised on stilts, with woven bamboo floors and walls and thatch roofs. This is the usual style of houses in Christian settlements; today, however, they are sometimes made of concrete and corrugated iron with several rooms. Most villages are connected by paths, although between coastal settlements, especially in the west, people may travel by sea in outrigger canoes, dinghies with outboard motors, or occasionally motorized launches. On the level western coast there is a vehicular road stretching from Lonoror to Wanur.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. The Sa speakers subsisted precolonially by swidden horticulture, fishing, and forest foraging. The main crops are still taro and yams, although these are complemented by sweet potatoes, manioc, arrowroot, sago, and breadfruit. Some leafy green vegetables, sugarcane, squashes, melons, and tomatoes are grown. They fish extensively in the coastal waters off the fringing reefs and in freshwater streams for fish, lobsters, shrimps, crabs, eels, and octopuses. They have extensive groves of fruit and nut trees and they also forage for wild greens, ferns, algae, and mushrooms in the forest, where they hunt birds, flying foxes, snakes, and stick insects. They herd pigs, which are consumed on ritual occasions only. Kava is cultivated; only men may drink kava in the traditionalist villages, where it tends to be reserved for hospitality and ritual occasions. In some Anglican and Catholic communities women may drink kava, but they do not do so as routinely as men; in Church of Christ Villages its use is totally proscribed. Traditionalist and Christian communities diverge greatly in their links to the cash Economy. The latter have converted far more land to copra, cacao, and coffee and are more dependent on introduced foods such as rice, tinned fish, meat, biscuits, and tea. Some cattle are being raised commercially, but most are killed for local feast consumption.

Industrial Arts. Apart from indigenous architecture, a range of tools, weapons, and ritual artifacts are produced. The precolonial tool kit included wooden and stone axes, adzes, shell scrapers, digging sticks, clubs, bows and arrows, and fishing spears, but these items mainly have been supplanted by modern steel implements purchased from local or urban stores. The old digging stick persists, however, and in traditionalist villages people still use bamboo vessels for cooking and carrying water and carved wooden food platters lined with banana leaves for eating. But even there cans, plastic buckets, kettles, pots, and pans are becoming more common. Outrigger canoes are still fashioned by hollowing out tree trunks and lashing them with lianas. Slit gongs, spears, clubs, and shelters are still produced for ceremonial purposes. An ensemble of ceremonial masks and headdresses made in the past are today rarely made for use but more often for purchase by museums, art collectors, or tourists. In addition to these wooden crafts made by men, women soften and weave pandanus and bark to fashion clothing and mats for sleeping and exchange at birth, marriage, circumcision, and death. In traditionalist villages women wear fiber skirts made of pandanus or banana spathes and men wear woven pandanus penis wrappers and bark belts. Elsewhere, women's attire is typically a Mother Hubbard (a loose dress) of skirt and blouse, while men typically wear shirts and shorts or trousers or, more rarely, wraparound skirts.

Trade. In precolonial times Pentecost was part of an intensive regional trade system with the neighboring islands of Ambrym, Malekula, and Ambae. Items traded included yams, pigs, mats, ochers for body painting and sculpture, and ritual forms such as dances and chants. Modern trade is focused on the purchase of imported commodities at small local stores with money derived from cash cropping or wage labor. There are no local markets such as those in the towns of Port Vila and Santo.

Division of Labor. The sexual division of labor is pronounced. Men exclusively hunt and fish from canoes, while women engage only in reef and river fishing. Men carve wooden artifacts; women weave pandanus and palm leaves. Men construct house frames; women make thatch battens for roofs. Women look after small pigs and sows, while men nurture highly valued tusked boars. Agricultural work is shared, although men do more of the fencing and clearing and women more of the weeding and harvesting; however, regarding yams, men alone can plant the seed yams and women alone can mound the topsoil. Household maintenance and child care are fairly evenly divided between the sexes. There are also divisions of ritual labor, with part-time practitioners that include male priests (who initiate agricultural cycles), medical diviners, midwives, sorcerers, and, in the past, Warriors and war diviners.

Land Tenure. Primary rights derive from agnatic relationship with a founding ancestor who claimed prior occupation, although secondary rights are granted to agnatic descendants of later arrivals, who were given land by the original occupants. Land, like fruit and nut trees, is inherited patrilineally and shared between sons and daughters. Rights are held in perpetuity by male agnatic descendants and for their lifetimes by females. Women cannot pass on natal land to their Children. Land rights may also pass matrilaterally if payments in pigs and mats are not made at death by the agnates to the matrilateral kin of the deceased. Temporary rights of usufruct may be granted to affines or those without locally available land. Retaining ownership of land depends on continual use and thus continual residence. Control over the distribution of land is ultimately vested in the senior male of a descent category called buluhim.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The major kin category is buluhim, which is best translated as "house" rather than "clan." These houses are geographically dispersed, but there are also localized patrilineages. The major emphasis in Descent is patrilineal, but there are crucial debts to matrilateral kin that cycle over generations.

Kinship Terminology. A Crow-type system is employed, which is predicated on two basic rules: the equivalence of agnates of alternate generations and the equivalence of same-sex siblings. For a male, all agnates of his father's father's Generation are thus "brother."

Marriage and Family

Marriage. From the viewpoint of the male, marriage is Ideally with the same "house" from which the father's mother came; marriage between agnates should be avoided. The mothers of spouses should be agnates of adjacent and not alternate generations. Marriages have always been primarily effected through the formal exchange of bride-wealth, but the alternatives of elopement or infant betrothal were more prevalent in the past. Bride-wealth is now predominantly paid in cash, with token payments of pigs and mats, the traditional components. Only Church of Christ converts totally outlaw bride-wealth. Although marriages in both traditionalist and Christian villages are to some extent "arranged," the desires of prospective spouses are also crucial. Most adults are now in monogamous marriages, but a third of all adult men in traditionalist villages have at some time been polygynous. Monogamy is mandatory for Christian converts. On marriage the couple typically (85 percent) live patrilocally, with about 10 percent living neolocally. Because marriages are often contracted within a village, women often remain close to their natal kin. Divorce is rare, constituting only 5 percent of all unions contracted.

Domestic Unit. The domestic unit is typically an elementary family, with a minority being patrilaterally extended and a tiny percentage consisting of a sole parent with children. Where a man is polygynous, his wives usually maintain separate dwellings. Now men sleep and eat more routinely in the domestic dwelling, using the male clubhouse as a refectory and dormitory on rare ritual occasions. Such exclusivist male clubhouses no longer exist in Christian communities, and there husbands and wives eat and sleep together rather than separately.

Inheritance. Inheritance of house sites and household effects is predominantly patrilineal, with a greater share going to the eldest son. Pigs, however, are not inherited but are killed at the deaths of their owners. Land, fishing grounds, and fruit groves are patrilineally inherited. Ritual powers of priests and diviners are typically inherited patrilineally by males, but the spiritual skills of sorcery, weather magic, love magic, and war magic may be purchased, though often by close male kin.

Socialization. Although children are primarily nurtured by their parents, elder siblings, and grandparents, there is much communal socialization and interhousehold visiting. The primary values imparted are those of respect for rank and age, the centrality of hard work, cooperation, and consensus. Most children in Christian villages, and some in traditionalist ones, are currently in school.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Social organization is based on the intersection of the traditional hierarchical principles of rank, seniority, and gender. These principles are being transformed by the impact of the commodity economy, so that class differences are emerging. Such distinctions are most pronounced in urban centers, but they are also apparent in rural regions, although these novel inequalities interpenetrate indigenous patterns of rank.

Political Organization. Precolonial politics were based on achieved rank in an institution called "the graded society." Through the exchange and sacrifice of pigs (including tusked boars), mats, and other valuables, men (and in some places women) assumed titles in a hierarchically ordered series. This arrangement conferred on men more than women sacred powers enhancing their capacity to grow crops, nurture tusked boars, control the weather, and perform rituals Controlling human sexuality, health, and fecundity. But such powers were also considered to be dangerous and potentially destructive. This belief necessitated segregated commensality, whereby men ate separately from women and children, and high-ranking men from those of low rank. High-ranking men exerted greater political influence without having assured authority. In the modern state of Vanuatu, the symbolism of the graded society is still employed in the imagery of the state, and the importance of high rank permeates to the national level through the institution of the National Council of Chiefs, which gives advice on matters of kastom (traditional culture). The chiefs in this council are, however, those created and recognized by the state, rather than necessarily those with locally recognized high rank.

Social Control. Although there are official courts and asssessors that are part of the national legal stucture, disputes—which arise most frequently over land, marriage, and pigs—are in fact usually resolved in informal village courts. These courts are protracted meetings that try to effect consensus. Men rather than women are vocal in such meetings, and those who speak most and exert most influence tend to be older and high-ranking. Decisions at such meetings are thought to be binding on all in the community and may occasion the payment of fines.

Conflict. Violent conflict is rare, and domestic violence is almost nonexistent. Only on very rare occasions do people resort to outside agencies of police, prisons, or asylums to Control offenders. This current state of affairs is a major departure from precolonial practice, when warfare was endemic between villages and violent resolutions of conflict were frequent.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. The vast majority of ni-Vanuatu today are Christians affiliated with Protestant and Catholic denominations, although beliefs and practices involve novel reworkings of both Christianity and ancestral religion. In the past, religion centered on the sacred character of ancestors. The Sa speakers thought their ancestors were primordial creator beings responsible for the natural and the social world. There was no easy translation of these beliefs into monotheistic Christianity. The ancestors are thought still to exert a continual influence in the world of the living, and the living are often engaged in attempts to please or placate remote or Recent ancestors. The graded society is predicated on a desire to approach a state of ancestral power. As well as the supernatural powers credited to the dead and the living, other supernatural entities are thought to exist. In south Pentecost, these include the spirits of uncultivated ancestral groves, spirits of the men's houses, dwarf spirits inhabiting the forest and river-beds, and a kind of ogre with a special appetite for young children.

Religious Practitioners. Ancestral religion employed some part-time specialists, including priests of agricultural fertility, weather, and war, as well as sorcerers and diviners. Despite the influence of Christianity, priests and sorcerers are still identified, even in Christian communities. They have been complemented by Christian ritual specialists—priests, ministers, and deacons, who are for the most part also men.

Ceremonies. The major traditional ceremonies are birth, circumcision, marriage, grade taking, and death. Of these circumcision and grade taking are by far the most spectacular and protracted. In addition there is the unique rite of land diving, performed annually at the time of the yam harvest. This has become a major tourist spectacle. In popular representation the athletic aspect of diving from a 100-foot tower is emphasized, but the religous aspect is paramount for the Sa speakers, and there is thought to be a direct link between the success of the dive and the quality of the yam harvest. Young men who so desire do the diving, from platforms at increasing heights with lianas tied to their ankles to arrest their fall. The construction and ritual supervision involves older men. Women are not allowed to observe the tower until they dance underneath it on the day of the diving, although myth credits a woman with being the first to devise the practice.

Arts. The major artistic expressions are woven mats and baskets, body decoration, ephemeral ceremonial structures, and, in the past, masks. Musical instruments include plain slit gongs, reed panpipes, and bamboo flutes. Guitars and ukuleles are also played, and local compositions are much influenced by the string-band music heard on radio and cassettes. Music and dance are central to most ceremonies and are constantly being composed and reinterpreted. There is also a huge corpus of myths that are a source of aesthetic delight and are often accompanied by songs.

Medicine. In the past many illnesses were seen as ancestral vengeance for the breaking of rules of sexual and rank segregation. This sometimes took the form of spirit possession requiring exorcism. Other remedies included curative spells, amulets, and the use of a wide pharmacopoeia of herbs and clays. Medicine was often administered within the Household, but if the treatment was unsuccessful the help of diviners might be sought. People are eclectic in integrating traditional and Western medicine, and they will typically try both. There are local dispensaries and some health centers run by missions or the state, and increasingly women are giving birth there. Chronic or serious illness requires removal to a hospital in Santo or Port Vila.

Death and Afterlife. Death is usually seen as the result of attack by ancestors or sorcerers. Close kin cluster in the house of the dying person and stroke him or her, wailing the mourning chant. The body of the deceased is wrapped in Ritual finery and mats and then buried (previously below the house but now outside the village). At death crucial prestations are made to the mother's brother and other matrilateral kin. Mourning consists of dress and food restrictions, which are progressively relaxed until a feast is held on the hundredth day. On the twentieth day the spirit of the dead person is thought to run down the mountain range in the middle of the island and jump through a black cave into Lonwe, the subterranean village of the dead. There all is heavenly: food comes without work, there are constant beautiful melodies to dance to, and sweet perfumes fill the air.

See also Ambae, Malekula

Bibliography

Jolly, Margaret (1981). "People and Their Products in South Pentecost." In Vanuatu: Politics, Economics, and Ritual in Island Melanesia, edited by Michael Allen, 269-293. Sydney: Academic Press.

Jolly, Margaret (1991). "Soaring Hawks and Grounded Persons: The Politics of Rank and Gender in North Vanuatu." In Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melanesia, edited by Maurice Godelier and Marilyn Strathern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Trease, Howard (1987). The Politics of Land in Vanuatu: From Colony to Independence. Suva, Fiji: University of the South Pacific, Institute of Pacific Studies.

MARGARET JOLLY