Taim bilong mani - Pacific Institute

The Australian
National University
Development Studies Centre
Monograph no.12
Taim bilong mani
The evolution of
agriculture in a
Solomon Island
society
John Connell
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Taim bilong mani
The Development Studies Centre has been set up within the
Australian National University to help foster and co-ordinate
development studies within the University and with other
Institutions. The work of the Centre is guided by an
Executive Committee under the chairmanship of the Vice
Chancellor. The Deputy Chairman is the Director of the
Research School of Pacific Studies. The other members of
the Committee are:
Professor H.W. Arndt
Dr W. Kasper
Dr C. Barlow
Professor D.A. Low
Professor J.C. Caldwell
Mr E.C. Chapman
(Chairman)
Dr T.G. McGee
Dr R.K. Darroch
Dr R.C. Manning
Dr C.T. Edwards
Dr R.J. May
Mr E.K. Fisk
Mr I.S. Mitchell
Professor J. Fox
Dr S.S. Richardson
Mr J. L. Goldring
Dr L. T. Ruzicka
Professor D.M. Griffin
Dr R. T. Shand
Mr D.0. Hay
Professor T.H. Silcock
Mr J. Ingram
Dr R.M. Sundrum
Professor B. L.C. Johnson
Professor Wang Gungwu
Dr G.W. Jones
(Dep. Chairman)
Professor R. G. Ward
Development Studies Centre
Monograph no.12
Taim bilong mani
The evolution of
agriculture in a
Solomon Island
society
Series editor R TShond
The Australian National University
Canberra 1978
©
John Connell 1978
This work is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study,
research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be
reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries may be made to
the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-publication entry
Connell, John
Taim bilong mani
(Australian National University, Canberra.
Development Studies Centre. Monograph; no. 12)
ISBN 0 909150 66 4
1. Siuai (Papuan people). 2. Agriculture Bougainville Island. I. Title. (Series).
630'.91935
Printed and manufactured in Australia
by The Australian National University
Summary
This is a detailed analysis of the transition from a
subsistence agricultural system to a quite affluent semi­
commercial agriculture amongst the Siwai of south
Bougainville ( the North Solomons Province of Papua New
Guinea) . The pre-war agricultural economy, based on
swidden cultivation of taro has, along with other facets
of Siwai e conomic life, previously been described in detail
(Oliver, 1 9 55 ) ; part of this is reconsidered here. The
pre-contact agricultural economy was effectively one of
'subsistence affluence'; contact enabled further divers­
ification and later some attempts at copra production and
sale. During the second world war taro blight precipitated
a dramatic change to sweet potato and, following experience
in observing and working on European plantations and
Japanese wartime gardens, Siwais, with the encouragement of
traditional leaders, attempted to grow rice for commercial
sale. For two decades cash crop cultivation was largely
tmsuccessful tmtil cocoa became established; this effectively
superseded other cash crops although cattle provided a
measure of diversification. The money generated from cash
cropping enabled business development, especially trade
stores, to attain a measure of success .
Cargo beliefs were
rarely important . Agriculture in Siwai had become a source
of affluence.
v
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Siwai:
Chapter 2
The people of Siwai
Chapter 3
Traditional agriculture:
and destruction
Chapter 4
Agricultural recovery:
Chapter 5
Siwai Rural Progress Society: the
organization of diversification
111
Chapter 6
Coffee and cocoa:
economy
1 30
Chapter 7
Pigs and cows: animals in the
agricultural economy
1 79
Chapter 8
Business and cargo
198
Chapter 9
Taim biiong rrrzni:
incorporation
the environmental stage
1
23
development
42
the rise of rice
77
towards the cash
the process of
231
Appendices
No . I
Ten year agricultural development plan
Buin sub-district Bougainville,
1956-66 (K . I . Tomlin )
254
No . II
Siwai Rural Progress Society - trading
acco\lllts
258
No . III
Copra and cocoa prices 1 9 4 7 -7 4
259
No . · IV
A note on documentary sources
260
Diagrams
( see p.viii )
Tables
( see p.viii)
265
Bibliography
vii
viii
Page
Diagrams
F ig u re 1
Bougainville
2
Figure 2
Siwai
3
Figure 3
S iwai p opulat ion growth
26
Figure 4
Age components of S iwai populat i on
30
Figure 5
Pre-war garden s equences
63
F igure 6
Rice gardens 1949
95
Figure 7
Rice producers 1 9 6 9 -71
133
Figure 8
Co ffee p roducin g villages 1 9 6 0
137
Figure 9
Co ffee product ion 1 9 6 5
139
Figure 10
Coffee producers 19 71-72
141
Figure 1 1
Cocoa produc in g villages 19 6 1
143
Figure 12
Cocoa producing villages 19 62
144
Figure 1 3
Cocoa production 19 6 2 -6 3
148
Figure 14
Cocoa growers 19 6 3
152
Figure 1 5
Village companies 1 9 6 8
157
Figure 16
Cocoa plant ings 1959-72
166
Figure 1 7
Cocoa price 1 9 5 6-72
167
Figure 1 8
Copra driers 19 72
1 74
Figure 1 9
P i g s 19 5 1
181
Figure 2 0
Cat t le projects 19 70
192
Tables
Table 1
S iwai rain fall
12
Table 2
S iwai mean age at marriage
32
Table 3
Bougainville b irth intervals
33
Tab le 4
Births and age-specific fertility rates
36
Table 5
Death rat es in S iwai
40
Table 6
One copra price 191 3-1940
53
Foreword
My primary debt is to the p eople of Siwai and especially
those in S iroi and Maisua villages with whom I lived for
some seventeen months between November 1974 and April 1 9 7 6 .
It was without doub t one o f the most enjoyable periods o f my
life although, in a difficult political climate where the
b enefits of expatriate research were o ften no t apparent, i t
was n o t always without problems .
I t is naturally impossible
to name all of those who taught me s omething o f their life
but at the risk of ignoring the many who as s isted, s ome of
who se names appear elsewher e in this b ook, it is essential
to mention a few .
It was Anthony Anugu, now Member o f
Parliamen t for South Bougainville and then Pres ident o f S iwa1
Local Government Council, who f irs t welcomed and ass isted a
naive res earcher with only a smattering o f even Melanesian
Pidgin, guided me into my firs t village and subsequently
provided regular intellectual and nutritional sus t enance .
In the villages where I l ived John Stme, Kamuai and S t ephen
Sukina were foremo s t among those who were wil iing to put up
with my s ocial blunders, my inability to even unders tand
more than a little of their own language and the occasional
tedium of sys tematic enquiry .
Without the women, above all
Aie the wife of Sune, who provided me with food, and the men
and children who were always willing to share coconuts, betel
nuts and galips with me, life would have been iunne asurably
poo rer .
It is unfortunately true that many of those who were
the kindes t and mos t helpful to me will never be able to read
this b oo k.
It is, n evertheless, for all o f them .
With in S iwai I received generous assistan ce from all the
ins titut ions then in existence there: the Siwai Co-operat ive
Society (and especially John P inoko S ipisong) , the Siwai
Local Government Council and all the subsequent village
governments .
Both the Catholic and United Church miss ions
gave me valuable data from their files, and at the Tonu
United Church mis s ion Sister P amela Beaumont was a constant
Elsewhere on the island,
and valuable s ource of in format ion .
the executive o f what was initially the Bougainville Dis trict
Government , and above all Mos e s Havini and Leo Bannett, were
always willing to discuss local polit ical events .
Finally,
ix
x
at Bougainville Copper Limited , Cli f f Newman especially was
most help ful in providing ac cess to records , individuals,
t ransport , and cups of coffee .
All of them eased the
irregular problems of research work .
The original impetus for this study came from Mr E . K .
Fisk through his associat ion with the Cotmcil for Pacific
Development S tudies at The Australian Nat ional Univers i ty .
He has been my guide , mentor and critic throughout the
planning , implementation and writing of this research project;
without him it would s imply not have been poss ible . A
d i fferent kind o f debt is due to the Council for Pacific
Development Studies who provided and extended the financial
support for this work , made poss ible by a large and generous
grant from Bougainville Copper Limited , and , through the
Department of Economics , provided a congenial home for me in
the Res earch S choo l o f Pacific S tud ies. Out s ide the Aus tralian
Nat ional University I owe an enormous debt to Pro fessor
Douglas L. Oliver o f the University o f Hawaii , who not only
encouraged me to re-study S iwai but vis ited me there, bringing
useful ideas and criticism , and who has:; read and given valuable
comment s on almost the whole of the pre:sent manuscript .
Finally I am grate ful to Michael and Judy Hanmett , also o f
the University of Hawaii , who throughout my stay in S iwai were
themselves carrying out research in the Eivo-Simeku village
of Atamo in central Bougainville . Their constant enthusiasm
advice , and encouragement were tmfailing supports .
The p resent volume is only one part o f a larger study
of the evolution of contemporary economy and society in S iwai .
In its turn this forms a p art o f a wider-ranging series o f
enquiries int o the p attern o f change through much o f the
island of Bougainville , a large amount of which is now
available and has contributed enormously to knowledge of one
of the mo st interes t ing islands in Melanes i a . The pres ent
research p roject was des igned primarily to examine the
contemporary operat ion of village e conomies in S iwai , and
particularly the relat ionships between food crop and cash
crop production , labour migration and the emergen ce of bisnis.
The S iwai area was chosen because it had already been stud ied
in considerable detail in 1 9 38-39 by Douglas Oliver in his
book A Solomon Island Society which would enable the p resent
study to be both comparative and comp lementary .
This orient­
at ion was chosen partly because o f a p art icular belief in
the necessi ty o f long-term comparisons in rural areas as a
basis for development studies and p artly becaus e of the almost
complete absence o f such long-term s tudies in a Melanes ian
xi
Inevitably this emphasis resulted in the research
context.
having a more sub st an t ial social component than was originally
This book is, in a sense, no more than an intro­
intended.
duct ion and prologue to contemporary S iwai life; it t races
the his toric changes in the agricultural system, in so far
as this is possib le, and attempts to chart the important
trans ition from a purely subsistence s ituat ion, without even
peripheral participation in the cash economy, to one where
the production o f cash crops is almost universal. It ends
around 1972 when the trans-is land road finally linked the
eas t and wes t co asts of Bougainville. More detailed data on
the organ ization of the contemporary S iwai economy are in
the process o f being analysed to form the logical sequel to
the present account. The derivat ion of the title reflects
the nature of some o f these changes; in the course o f f ield­
work I asked an elderly man what was the dif ference between
living in S iwai now and living in Siwai nearly four decades
earlier, when Douglas Oliver had b een there. His reply was
short and succinct:
Nau em
Taim biZong bipo em taim biZong pasin.
i taim biZong mani.
(In those days it was a
time of customs . Now i t's the time o f money . )
S iwai words, especially place-names, are spelt in a manner
derived from a combination o f the S iwai pronunciations that
I was familiar with, the orthography devised for use in
Bible translat ion and vernacular literacy and the pre-war
usage of Douglas Oliver . Inevitably they will satisfy none
of thes e.
Oliver originally used the spelling Siuai, after
the pronunciation of people in the Rataiku area of northeast
Siwai .
Few people have s ubsequently used this spelling and
Oliver himself no longer uses it .
I have therefore used
Siwai throughout .
Words in the Siwai language, Motuna, are
iden t ified by a capital S and words in Melanes ian Pidgin
are identi f ied by NM.
Almo st all of this manus cript was written in Canberra
and various drafts were carefully scrutinized by E. K . Fisk
and Douglas Oliver; I am indeb t ed to them for rescuing me
from numerous fantasies and fallacies. I am also indebted
to G. E. Harrison and Dr G.W. Jones who commented on parts
of Chapters 2 and 3 . Neither they nor any of those
acknowledged here w ill agree with everything I have written ;
I hope all will at l east enjoy a part of it.
xii
Currency
Up to 1 9 7 5 , Papua New Guinea used the
Aus tralian currency .
Until February 1 9 6 6 , this
was the A£ , divided into 20 shillings . From that
date onwards , Aus tralia converted into dollars ·and
cents , at the rate of A£1 . 0
A$ 2 . 0 (A$ 1 . 0
10
shil lings ) .
=
=
In April 19 75 , Papua New Guinea s tarted to
issue its own currency , than at par with the
Aus tralian dollar , renaming the unit the kina ,
divided into 100 toea .
Chapter 1
S iwai:
the environmental stage
Our own S iuai forests are good - the source o f all
desirable things: o f food and game and building
materials .
Only madmen would choos e to live
elsewhere!
(Siwai man , cited by Oliver, 1955:104)
Bougainville is the easternmost island in Papua New
Guinea but geographically and, in many respects, culturally it
is the northernmos t part of the Solomon Islands, a distinction
reco gnized in it s status from late 19 76 as the North
Solomons P�ovince o f Papua New Guinea . The island is
t rop ical, hot and humid and dominated by a cent ral spine of
mollll t ains, the Emperor and Crown Prince ranges, that has
The largest
lon g hindered commlllli cat ion across the island .
mollll t ains, Balbi (which rises to 2835 metre s ) , Bagana and
Takuan, are all volcanoes ; the first two steadily pour out
smoke and ashes over the adjoinin g mo\lll t ain flanks whilst
all three have pro vided extens ive areas of volcanic s oil,
ideal for agriculture o f almos t any kind . Despite the
earthquakes that are locally associated with the volcanoes
and the floods that s ometimes follow heavy rainfall it is
usually a pleasant en vironment that provides a diversity o f
natural resources for the s teadily growing population .
Before the war it was more difficult to be precise about
a S iwai area ; Oliver (1955:8) notes how ' Siwai ' was initially
a s ingle point on the s outh coas t between Ait ara and Mamagota
villages, but eventually the name was applied to a longer
stre t ch of the coas t and then the hinterland beyond .
Oliver
states that s in ce the word ' S iwai ' had wide acceptance among
Europeans he would retain it t o ref er t o those people who
spoke Motllll a, their culture and the area in which they lived .
He did not record the people ' s own identif icat ion o f them­
selves and I have no evidence that the people who now call
themselves S iwai have no t always thought o f themselves as
such . Nevertheless the def in ition o f a S iwai area clearly
1
2
6
---
Subdtstncts
--- Census Districts
0
10
20
30
40
50 km
Figure 1 .
Bougainville
3
MolO! roads !Januaiy 1976)
Contour; m metres
6 mites
Figure 2 .
S iwai
4
presented some problems . Oliver speaks o f the S iwai occupyin g
the centre o f the Buin plain :
' The territory iden t ified with
them is roughly demarcated by the Mivo River on the eas t , the
Torovera River on the wes t , the moun tains on the north , and
the swamps and sea at the s outh ' ( Oliver , 1955 : 9 ) , but he
later cal l s this area ' the main part of the trib al area '
{ Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 15 ) . The p re-war administ rat ion seems t o have
recognized the S iwai area as it is now { Chinnery , 1924 : 88 ) .
All S iwai s never co-operated or acted t o gether in any way ,
nor was there a dis t inct and separate political hierarchy
(Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 10 3 ) yet l in guis tic and cul tural homo geneity
certainly then emphas ized the unity of a S iwai area even if
there was a fuzz iness about the actual b oundaries .
There were also dis t ricts within S iwai ( c f . Oliver , 1 9 5 5 :
32 0 and Figure 2 ) - Rataiku , Mokakuru , Ruhuaku , Korikunu and
Tonu - and people for mos t purp oses felt a social un i ty within
these rather than in the more general S iwai area . How thes e
dis trict s emerged is unknown but their boundaries were much
the same b o th in 19 3 8 and in 19 7 5 and were more eas ily defined
than the distant and les s certain S iwai boundaries . There
is a clo s e relat ionship be tween these districts and those
somet imes called tuhia, that is the area usually ass o ciated
with an important feast -giver .
I t is in thi s s ense that a
mi ss ion manual translates tuhia as ' kingdom ' ( Ol iver ,
1949a (3) : 2 3 ) whilst the earliest European miss ionary in
S iwai translated it as ' homeland ' (A. H . Voyce , pers . coDBil .
19 75 ) .
In the pre-war years they were used by the adminis­
trat ion as the b as is for local admini s t rat ive areas ; in the
1970s they b ecame the areas of the village government s that
replaced the local government counci l . These districts have
been the mos t s ignificant and long-s tanding regional groupings
within S iwai .
S iwai s recognized micro-cultural variat ions within S iwai ;
for example , in central S iwai cultural variat ions were
considered to be greater to the wes t than with the villages
of the east and northeas t . Moreover , the villages in the
wes t had incorpo rated Nagovis i phonemes int o the language to
a much greater ext en t than the incorporat ion of Buin phonemes
in northeastern S iwai . Throughout the fringe areas , villages
shared many cultural charac teri s t ics with areas on all side s
o f them t o the exten t that in a few places it was claimed that
the s imilarities acros s language groups were much less than
thos e with o ther more remot e S iwais . Despite the cultural
variat ions that mark districts within S iwai , the s ocial
divis ions that have followed f rom the rel igious dif ferences
5
o f the mis sions are rather more important in contemporary
S iwai social organization .
The Siwai census divis ion is presently def ined by a
couple o f fairly arbit rary l ines drawn f rom Mount Taroka
acro ss the centre o f the Buin plain o f south Bougainville .
The lines are arbitrary t o the extent that they are geomet ric
divis ions, of a kind beloved of colonial administrators,
which include all S iwai villages and also one village, Tarowa,
which was originally an ent i rely Buin (Telei ) speaking village
but is now more or less bilingual, with social t ies increas­
ingly dire ctly towards S iwai . They als o approximate to the
courses of the Puriata and Mivo rivers which are more or less
tradit ional b oundaries o f the S iwai linguistic area . Although
S iwais have right s to land out s ide t hese rivers and o thers
use land within them, it is a division whi ch e f fect ively
demarcates a cult ure region . As communications have improved
and administ rat ion has cons idered S iwai a s ingle area, the
f ragile and t enuous links that shaped the region have been
s trengthened, especially through administration devices such
as the S iwai Local Government Council.
Indeed Oliver foresaw
this when he commented ' there may s ome day develop a t ribal
polit ical o rganizat ion accompanied by explicitly expre ssed
identification b etween t ribe and t erritory ' (1955:104 ) .
Other modern institutions have also generally ass isted in
shaping and f ormali z in g the present S iwai area but the local
government council was the mos t s ignificant of these because
o f it s formal organiz at ion, regular meet in gs, and ab ility t o
In
influence developmental changes throughout the are a .
1975 all villages in the S iwai census division were
repre s ented in the counci l although Haisi and Hiru-Hiru
villages had been in the Bana Council until the p revious y ear .
In mid-1975, the Buin Council ward that consisted o f Tarowa,
S iuru and Tupopisau requested that they be allowed to join
the S iwai Council .
(The Tarowa councillo r then claimed that
their cus toms were exactly the same as those o f S iwai, even
though their language was mixed .
S iwai councillors expressed
general enthusiasm for this, most expres s in g the belief that
it was only to suit administrative convenience that they had
been put int o the Buin Council area . ) The S iwai Society
(see Chap t er 5) has als o emphasized the S iwai Council area,
although there have in the past b een att empt s from the Hais i
and S ininai areas to set up a new s ociety more respons ive t o
their o wn interests ; the three n eighbouring Buin villages
all have many memb ers in the S iwai S o ciety whereas, in the
west, Horino villagers are divided between the Bana and S iwai
S ociet ies . The DASF have t ended to administer villages in
6
the S ininai-Haisi area from their Boku o f f ice rather than
from Konga . Both missions have emphas iz ed the pres ent S iwai
area whils t it is generally believed that the Mono itu Catholic
mis s ion was a s ignificant in fluence on the Haisi area,
strengthening the S iwai language and cult ure there in the
period before Haisi had it s own mis s ion .
A loo sely-def ined
region has become increasingly real ; within S iwai there is
a con s i derable cult ural homogeneity that e ffect ively demarcates
it from neighbours on either s ide but S iwais do not worry
about these divis ions ; there is, after all, an extensive area
between the Puriata and Mivo rivers which cont inues to provide
game, ·timber and land, and their immediate neighbours are
l ittle dif ferent from themselves .
S iwais are not therefore dis s imilar from other convent ionally conceived tribal groups ; they
are not clo sely bounded populat ions in either
t erritorial or demo graphic s enses . They are no t
economi cally and po lit ically integrated and
disp lay po lit ical organizat ion under hierarchial
leaders only as a re sult of contact with already
exist ing states, although s uch cont act may be
quite indirect .
They are not either war or p eace
groups and rarely if ever show congruence with
language communit ies or with religious co mmunit ies
(Fried, 1975:Pref ace) .
,The 'prist ine t ribe' is indeed_a creat ion o f myth a�d
legend (Fried, 1975:114), yet changes in S iwai and elsewhere
in Melanes ia, especially tho s e fostered by councils (cf .
Langnes s, 1963:168-9), have induced and s trengthened beliefs
in cult ural l.nlity and even homogeneity whilst, s imultaneous ly,
the more rapid emergence of ext ernal economic l inks and o f t en
subs t ant ial economic different iat ion within small areas has
minimized the conceptual value o f the concept o f 'tribe'
(cf. Good, 1975) . Nevertheless it is us e ful to .cons ider the
S iwai reg ion as a s ocio-geographical area of relat ive cult ural
uniformit y as recognized by the lo cal people .
S iwai, th erefore, is the central p art o f the south
Bougainville plain, now s ome 100 kilometres from the l argest
town on the is land, Arawa, and about 30 kilometres from the
t iny town of Buin .
In fine weather a S iwai truck may reach
Arawa in three hours and Buin in les s than an hour, but
condit ions are rarely s o ideal ; bridges an d caus eways may
s omet imes be ruptured and floods in the rivers that are not
bridged can o f t en clo s e each o f thes e roads for more than
7
ten hours and somet imes longer .
In 1975 there were three
unbridged rivers between Arawa and S iwai and three more
towards Buin . At Tonu , in cen t ral S iwai there is a small
airfield s uit able fo r twin-engined aircraf t ; this too is
o ccas ionally flooded and heavy rain and thick cloud in the
mountains may also di srupt air travel .
Rapid t ravelling
demands some met eorological expert ise and o ccas ional luck
but S iwai is no longer a rural area remote from the res t of
the wo rld ; increasingly it is part of an island and a nat ion .
From ab ove , the S iwai lands cape appears a monot onous
vis t a o f dark green bush , fadin g int o the grey mount ain
chains to the north and exten ding t o the shores of the
Solomon sea . Neither mountains nor s ea have much relevance
to S iwai l i fe . Pat ches o f . garden cult ivat ion and their
o ccas ional sp irals of smoke are relat ively rare b reaks in
the s cene whilst the rivers are overhung by trees . A few
dusty roads form modern int rus ions in the greenery and the
village l ines also conspire to dest roy the apparent homo­
geneity .
It is an area where secondary bush veget at ion is
dominant in creatin g the visib le s cene an d it takes t ime for
th� unpractised eye to different iate between fores t , s econdary
regrowth , plantat ions and garden s ; t rees are everywhere s o
that the imp act o f centuries o f human res idence res t s light ly
on the l ands cape .
The l ine villages/ which have,. s in ce the early periods
o f Aust ralian administration, charact eriz e d formal S iwai
settlement p at t ern s , are with only two except ions more than
S iwais are emphatically
f ive kilometres from the coast .
' bush ' people rather than ' sea ' people , although this was
Indeed one o f the
p rob ab ly less t rue in the remo te past .
ceremonies that t radit i onally , and o ccasion ally s t ill , marks
the introduction o f a leade r ' s son into the men ' s house is
when the boy is t aken on the long j ourney t o the coast to
see the s ea for the f irst t ime ( cf . Oliver , 1955:189) . For
mos t S iwais any vis it to the coas t is ext remely rare . The
t idy line villages themselves are in s t ark con t ras t to the
varied green of the surrounding gardens and bush ; women are
seemingly always at work removing the o ccas ional intrus ive
weed from the village areas .
It is indeed as Tuz in has
des cribed fo r Arapesh villages of the eas t S ep ik :
Living s ites are tradit ionally b ared o f ground
cove r
People say this i s t o p romote
sanitat ion and protect again s t snakes and
cent ipedes , which may b e true ; but there also
•
•
•
8
seems to be an ingrained notion that human
habitat ion requires, among other things, a flat
area cleared of natural obst ruct ion s . A bit of
gras s, pleasing to the European eye, is an
unwelcome intrus ion to be s tudiously removed
the village has a swept t idines s verging on
bleaknes s , reflecting an anxious concern for
orderliness that extends to squared corners ,
s t raight lines, symmetrical piles and neatly
bound bundles (Tuzin, 1976:8-9) .
Even so, Arape sh villages are not arranged in the s traight
lines on flat sites that characterize S iwai villages ; here
aus terity is relieved only by occas ional t rees plant ed
within the village.
The con trast between the s evere order
of the village and the lush abundance of the surrounding
vegetat ion is quit e remarkable .
Land and s o il
About half o f Bougainville Is land cons i s t s o f mount ains
and foothills with s teep and o f ten precipitous s lope s .
The
copper mine at Panguna is in the centre o f s uch a region but
the plains of s outh Bougainville are lowlying and the only
steep s lo pe s are the s ides of dissected s tream valleys,
sometimes several hundred feet below the general land s urface .
Away from the mountains, the s t reams and rivers are not s o
entrenched an d communicat ions are s omewhat eas ier .
The S iwai
coas t however is partly bordered by a beach ridge which has
hampered drainage and produced cons ide rable areas of swampy
ground ext ending, in a few places, fo r s everal kilometres
from th e coas t .
Mos t of S iwai i s a plain, highly dis s ected by rivers
rising in the mountain s and flowing s outhwes t into the
Solomon S ea . The larges t of these rive rs, the Puriata,
Mobiai and Mivo, flow in deep valleys and are o ften difficult
to cross ; heavy rainfall raises their level by a few feet an d
unle s s they are bridged they are then impos s ible to cro s s .
Each of these rivers is now bridged on the main trans-is land
road but cro s s ing at other points i s s t ill dif f icult; heavy
rains o f t en isolate upland Rataiku at least for a few hours
and, as in 1976, even the largest bridges can be broken in
the worst f loods .
Smaller s t reams are usually unbridged and,
as in Nagovisi (Mitchell, 1976:17) , S iwai paths wind their
way around thes e s o that casual travellers, and researchers,
are o ft en unaware o f the mult iplicity o f s t reams flowing
9
through the plains. The s o f t alluvial surface o f the plain
has enabled these fast-flowing s t reams to deepen their beds
resulting in many flat-topped alluvial ridges, narrow in the
upland areas but wide in the s outhern plains, that are the
main areas for extens ive agricult ural act ivity.
. Villages and hamlets are mainly clustered in cent ral
S iwai, between an alt it ude of 30 and 100 metres above sea
level. Two remote villages are at the coast and there are
several upland villages that o ccupy the wide s t o f the upland
ridges.
Iru is about 360 met re s above s ea level but few
other villages are even 2 00 metres above s ea level.
In these
higher areas communicat ions are rather more difficult and
highly concentrated in a mountain�coast direct ion.
In
no rtheas t S iwai, the Ratai ku, the locat ion o f settlements,
roads an d gardens is in fluenced by the environment to a much
greater exten t than anywhere else in S iwai.
Siwais dist in guish
Rataiku as ecolo gically di fferen t from other parts of S iwai ;
the people o f Rataiku are ' mountain people ' or the ' people
f rom on top ' although they do not necessarily believe that
thi s cause s behavioural differences.
Conversely, for S iwais,
mountains are the uplands o f Rataiku (and Iru for the people
of wes t ern S iwai) and not the central dividing range o f
Bougainville, which is the area where rain clouds build up
This is a
but is otherwis e unimportant in S iwai geography.
useful divis ion which was employed by Oliver and is retained
here. Vill ages in the mountains are usually located on the
high ridges, well away from the rivers which flow in s teep­
s ided vall eys that would be quite impo ss ible for settlement.
In central S iwai the ridges.are much less sharply defined,
hence villages are usually much closer and more accessible
to water although, very o ccas ionally, they may be more
S iwais thems elves , because
sus ceptible to extensive floods.
o f the lo cat ion o f the mountains and the alignment s o f the
rivers radiat ing from them, use the words rano and ronno to
mean respe ct ively either ' ups tream ' and ' downstre am ' or
' north ' and ' south ' (Oliver, 1955:100) . This dif ferent iati on
is one that is much more useful than formal geographical
direct ions .
Bougainville is lo cated in a part icularly act ive part
of the t e ctonically unstable margin o f the Pacific Ocean
and, in s outhern Bougainville espe cially, earthquakes
(S-i.pi) o c cur almos t every week, an average as high as any
in the world, and are a dramat ic influence on the S iwai
environment.
' • • .
s ome o f them are violent enough t o topple
houses and cause dangero us landslides ' (Oliver, 1955:9),
10
even though most do no more than shake house p o s t s and awake
sleeping S iwais .
Damage to hous es or gardens is exceptional .
By any st andards, however, the earthquake o f 2 1 July 1 9 7 5
was except ional ; s i x months had pas s ed without even a minor
tremor when the earthquake, measured at 7 . 2 on the Richter
s cale, with its epicentre about 100 kms southwest o f the
S iwai coast, shook the is land. The init ial tremor last ed
for two minut es ; further substant ial tremors lasted for two
days and daily earthquakes followed for twenty days .
Damage
occurred throughout Bougainville, especially to the more
permanent const ructions of the towns, and in S iwai there was
cons iderable destruct ion ; some 400 houses collap sed complet ely
and others took on eccentric alignment s .
S ince most houses
have sago leaf roofs fastened t o thin girders, inj uries,
result ing from fire as much as from falling houses, were
Bridges were fractured and some roads cut by
rarely s evere .
landslips but most garden s were tm.harmed though in some of
the more st eeply slo ping gardens o f Rataiku, landslip s did
Despite the t ime lost in
destroy s ome newly plant ed areas .
rebuilding hous es, and a couple o f days in which few people
did more than s it near their houses speculat ing on the
likelihood o f another enormous earthquake, it did not have
the dramat ic e f fect s of s imilar earthquakes in an urban,
Rural economy and s ociety are more
industrial environment .
re s ilient to this kind o f disruption .
S iwais believe that earthquakes are a result o f vol canic
activity although it seems that this is not actually s o ;
rather earthquakes trigger o f f volcanic erupt ion s (Blake and
Miezit is , 19 6 7 : 4 7 ) as occurred in 1 9 7 5 .
Few S iwais themselves
can remember an earthquake as destruct ive as that but some
stories recall a previous one, po s s ibly arotm.d German t ime,
when there were t idal waves in the rivers , taro gardens were
destroyed and there was a short p eriod of htm.ger .
Most o f south Bougainville is covered with layers o f
vol canic ash which les s ens in depth away from the motmtains
but is only absent ent irely within five kilometres of the
co ast .
This volcanic ash provides the base for the development
o f most s o ils o f th e area and almost all the populat ed area
o f S iwai i s situat ed on s oils derived from it . These s oils
are e s s ent ially a combinat ion of s ands and loams ; one of
their outstanding features is that they are surprisingly
res i s t ant to ero s ion (S cott, 1 96 7 : 112 ) � Ln condition s of
considerable earthquake act ivity and high rainfall this is
an important characterist ic enabling gardens to be constructed
and maintained even without terracin g on s t eeply s lopin g
11
gro und .
The s canty evidence availab le s uggest s that the s oil s
o f S iwai are generally o f average fertility and all are
subj ect to hi gh leachin g . Apparent ly the only soil analysis
ever made in S iwai, n ear Kut in village, recorded that 'the
result s show the s o il s to be acid in react ion, free of t oxic
levels o f soluble salt s and are marginal to deficient in
phosphorus .
Pot ash levels are low while nitrogen is sat is ­
factory in t h e t o p s ix inches but decreases rapidly with
depth' (Shaw, 1969). Based on the distribut ion of soils in
Bougainville the s outh Bougainville plains were early consid­
ered to have the b est potential for agricultural development
(van Wij k, 1962 :132.), and even the poor growth of co conut s
could not be att ribut ed to soil deficiencies (Sumb ak, 1970).
S iwais themselves reco' gnize variat ions in the quality
of s o ils, and, l ike the agricultural ext ens ion of ficers
(NM - didimen) of S iwai, they believe that co coa grows best
on the loamy s oils o f the upland ridges rather than on the
more sandy low-lying plains .
In a few isolated p at ches ,
there are goo d clay dep o s it s which, unt il recently, were used
for manufacturin g pot t ery which was t raded within and some­
t imes beyond Siwai . However, S iwai soils, apart from the
swamplands that back the coast , have had a very limited
influence on either s ettlement or land use ; the cult ivation
p ract ices that have always been us ed are not demanding o f
the cap acity o f the s o i l s to s upply plant food which has led
most observers to comment on their richness ; only the s ingle
soil s urvey s uggest s otherwis e .
Climate
Often overwhelmingly, the mos t imp re s s ive features o f
the climate o f s outh Bougainville are heat, humidity an d an
ext remely h eavy·rainfal l . There is no apparent s easonal ity .
Years are marked by the fruit ing o f the canarium almond tree
(S-moi) an d not by any climatic changes .
S iwais themselves
dist inguish no seasonal variat ion s . As elsewhere in
Bougainville (Blackwoo d, 1935:30) they speak o f a 't ime o f
rain ' but this applies whenever the weather is wet; rain is
Central
the most dramat ic climat ic influence on S iwai life .
Siwai has about SOO centimetres (2 00 inches) of rain a year
(see Table 1) which is quite typical o f s outh Bougainville
(Ward, 1975:13) ; coas t al villages have much less and up land
villages rather more . There are however cons iderable
variat ion s ; in 1969 there were 32 0 inches of rain at Konga
b ut in 1975, which was an except ional y ear, no more than
132 in ches fell at S iroi . These are both exceptional
12
Table 1
S iwai rainfal l
Sept ember 195 8 February 1969
Months
S iroi
Konga
Tonu
Inches
1957-61 , 1969,
1972-73
Months
In che s
February 1975
March 1976
Months
Inches
J
(9)
17 . 23
(5 )
19. 05
(1)
16. 39
F
(10)
14 . 45
(5)
21 . 07
(2)
13 . 08
M
(10)
17. 39
(4)
16. 46
(2)
13 . 93
A
(9)
12.76
(4)
11 . 46
(1)
14 . 67
M
(10)
11 . 67
(4)
19. 88
(1)
15 . 18
J
(10)
11 . 14
(6)
16 . 96
(1)
13 . 19
J
(9)
25 . 5 0
(7)
24 . 5 6
(1)
5 . 16
A
(6)
16 . 39
(7)
26 . 4 0
(1)
8 . 14
s
(9)
17 . 37
(7)
24 . 55
(1)
4 . 47
0
(10)
16 . 07
(4)
12 . 87
(1)
10. 66
N
(8)
15 . 42
(4)
12 . 41
(1)
14 . 78
D
(7)
12. 82
(3)
14. 77
(1)
17.05
188 . 21
Sources:
220 . 34
146 . 70
Tonu (United Church Mis s ion: S r P. Beaumont ) ;
Konga (DASF Konga, File 37-1) ; S iroi (John Connell
and Joseph Uamo ) . Each stat ion is between 5 0 and
60 met res above s ea l evel .
The figures in bracket s
repres ent the number o f months f o r which a complet e
reco rd was available.
None o f the se data were
collected with the f ine s s e that would sat i s fy a
met eorologis t ; in the two years o f overlap between
the Konga and Tonu records the rain falls are
suffi cient ly s imilar (although naturally different)
to suggest that most o f the dat a are reasonable.
The var iat ion from the 't rue' rain fall is p robably
very sl ight and does not affect the argument s
pre sent ed here. These data are much more useful than
int erpolations f rom more distant observat ions .
13
ext remes ; even so the variat ion about the mean is still
quit e l ar ge. l
A day without rain is quit e rare in S iwai ; almost as
connnon is the sort of period that Oliver reco rded in 1939
when ' there was a downpour which lasted for thirteen days
except fo r a few hal f-hour letups ' (Oliver, 1955:492) .
There
are no good data on dry p eriods ; in a four-year period
between 1959 and 1962 every month had at l east 50 per cent
(and usually over 75 per cent ) rain days although in the
' drought ' of 1975 three suc ce s s ive months, from S eptember to
November , had l e s s than 50 per cent rain days .
In November
1 965 nine succes s ive rainle s s days were recorded at Tonu ;
this was not exceeded in 1 975 although in one 39-day period
there were only 6. 6 cent imet res (2 . 61 inches ) o f rain . Under
a t ropical stm this was effect ively a drought ; small rivers
dried up so that Kapana villagers, amongst others, had to
t ravel as far as the Mobiai for water, and s ome crops withered
in the garden s .
Drought s of thi s kind are very rare but have
o ccurred before ; in 1967 one councillor remembered what was
an improbably s evere drought :
WanpeZa taim i bin gat bikpeZa san; olgeta wara
i bin d:rai. Mobiai tasoi i bin stap.
Gras i bin
kamap long hap we wara i save ran Zongen.
oi
bikpela man oi i traim long wokim tru tasoi
sampeZa oi i no inap; sampela oi i bin wokim gut
na ren i bin kamap.
(Once there was continuous stmshin e ; all the
rivers dried up tmti l only the Mobiai remained.
Gras s grew where the rivers had rtlll .
All the
prominent men t ried to make rain but s ome were
tmab le t o ; some did it p roperly and rain returned. )
(S iwai Local Government Cotmcil Minut es, March 1967. )
S iwais now o f fer no exp lanat ions for these drought s although
in the p as t they were blamed on the act ivit ies o f ill-mean ing
magicians and the 1975 drought was blamed on the enormous
earthquake that had preceded it .
All villages obt ain their drinking water primarily from
the many s prin gs that are of ten the s ources of small S iwai
st reams ; even during the worst drought thes e are rarely dry
1
The mean rainfall in S iwai (averaged between Tonu and Konga
over a twelve-year p erio d: 10 y ears at Tonu and 2 addit ional
years at Konga) is 198 inches (503 ems ) with a standard
devi at ion of 41. 75.
14
s o that dr inking water, of excellent quality, is always
available close to any village. Although s ome villages, and
some households, have const ructed iron water t anks , f illed
from regular downpours, these are nowhere es s ent ial to
adequate water s upply.
Rather more dramat ic than the rare rainless days are
the days of torrent ial downpour and the periods when these
torrent ial downpours extend over days, washing away roads
and bridges, flooding gardens and o ccas ionally leading t o
s erious food shortages. Almost all showers o f rain are heavy
but s hort-lived ; thunderstorms are common, often result ing
in heavy afternoon downpours followed by lightning flickering
A Tonu miss ion cow was once
over the s ea into the night .
killed by light ning but thunderstorms are rarely fatal.
Most days are characterized by s unny mornings, a gradual
build-up of cloud around mid-day, start ing over the dist ant
central mountains and moving t owards the coast followed by
afternoon rain.
At Panguna, where condit ions are not so
very different from upland S iwai, 62 per cent o f all rain
(in a two-year period) fell between 12 . 00 and 17. 00 (BCL,
1 969) . Thi s concentrat ion o f heavy rain in a short afternoon
period o ften has serious consequen ces:
Once in a while rain c louds co llect in the mountain s
and precipit at e enormous quantit ies o f wat er which
then rush down the st ream beds, increas in g the
normal water depths t enfold. These st ream floods
rush down with a roar, and somet imes drown nat ives
who are unable to reach higher ground (Oliver,
1955:9) .
. Voyce (pers . comm. 1975) once reco rded a s ix foot high
wall o f water rushing through Tonu.
On several o ccasions I
recorded two inches o f rain in less than an hour.
This kind
of spectacul ar flood is a greater problem now that S iwai has
come to depend on the out s ide world ; roads and bridges are
washed away, s tores cannot obtain supplies and cocoa and
veget ables fail to reach their market s.
Rather more regular
are thos e o ccas ions when S iwais are forced to remain over­
night in other villages; 'high t ides' block the paths which
become deep in mud.
In the comparative arid ity o f 1975 , heavy rainfall was
rare ; I recorded 2 2 . 3 cent imet res (8 . 78 inches) on one day
in November but thi s was an except ional day . Between 1959
and 1968 at Tonu there were only about eight days, no more
15
than one day p er year , when there was more than 12 . 7 centi­
met res (5 in ches) o f rain .
The s ingle wettest day was near
the start of the wet test recorded month , July 1965, when 31 . 5
cent imetres (12 . 42 inches) fell .
It is the int ens ity o f
rain in an o ft en brief p erio d o f the afternoon , rather than
its durat ion even over a day, that effect ively di srupts most
afternoon agriculture and characterizes the cl imate o f S iwai .
A much more serious dis ruption to S iwai gardening is
the occas ional waterlogging that follows a lon g period of
except ionally heavy rain .
'More generally coconut growth is
hamp ered by inadequate soil drainage , and there fore water­
logging ' (Tomlin , pers . comm . , 1977) . Many S iwais believe
that these cat astrophic floods o c cur at seven year int ervals
and , indeed , the lit t le climat ic dat a available t end t o
support t h i s kind o f general izat ion . The worst floods were
in 1957, 1965 and 1972 . The mo st drQ..nat ic of these was in
the s ingle month of July 1965 when 164. 2 cent imetres (64 . 65
inches) fell ; even so there was st ill one rainless day .
Continued heavy rain in the n ext two months , when 103 . 0 more
cent imetres (40 . 6 inches) fell , never enabled gardens t o
S iwais
regenerat e and there was a substantial food shortage .
have never satis factorily accounted for these floods ; durin g
h eavy rain s in 1967 i t was remarked by the Council Vice­
Pres ident t hat s ince Publ i c Works Department (PWD) employees
do not work in heavy rain but s t ill get paid , 'Plenti man ol
i bilip o Zsem: i gat wanpe Za man i save wok long PWD husat
i save me:kim dispela ren, bikos em i laik bai em i sindaun
nating na kis im pe (Plenty o f people believe that one of the
PWD workers has made this rain s ince he pre fers to do no
work , rest and get paid)' . Other councillors were not convinced
that a PWD worker would have this skill nor that past floods
could be explained in the s ame way .
One o f the worst o f these floods may have been that of
1972 following the brief vis it o f Cyclone Ida . At Konga
there were 2 84 centimet res (112 inches) of rain in the four
months from May to Augus t , and over the whole o f southwest
Bougainville the p at t ern was much the s ame . As early as May
emergency rat ion s had been sent to flood vict ims at Moratona
in Nagovisi and Torokina in Banoni but there was no general
concern unt il Sept ember when very h eavy rainfall (including
117 . 4 cent imet res (46 . 2 4 inches) in one week at Boku) washed
away low-lying sweet pot ato gardens .
Generally upland areas
survived bet t er than the lowlands .
Much sweet pot at o rotted
in the ground and o ther unaf fected roo t s became inedible
because of their poor flavour . Didimen found that the bes t
16
sweet pot at oes, including the only one that weighed more than
hal f a pound, came from mounds .
Banana clumps rotted and
the surviving st ems failed t o form bunches ; leafy veget ables
were in short supply from the gardens but could s t il l be
collected from the bush. Very few pawpaw t rees produced
fruit and peanuts al so rotted.
Chinese taro (Xanthosoma
sagi ttifo liwn) was only slightly affected by the rains. The
root crop by far the best able to withstand floods is taro
(Co locasia spp.); thus pre-war S iwai, before the death of
taro (pp. 73-5), was well able to withs tand floods .
S iwais
swit ched to purchas ing rice and other food from t rade stores,
but s ince road transport was impossible for three or four
months, supplies did not last beyond August . The adminis ­
trat ion then ass isted by distribut ing supplementary food,
inc luding rice, wheatmeal and peanut oil, by aeroplane and
helicopter. Siwais al so reverted to more ext ens ive sago
product ion, and isolated villages like Aitara remained almost
ent irely dependent upon sago for a long t ime .
Although the
Buin marke t seems to have remained well st ocked, sago was one
of the s ix most important foods there (Arndt, 1972 ) .
The
Konga market s urvived le s s well ; by June goods there cons isted
predominantly of pumpkin leaves, other wild leaves, wild yams
and Chinese taro. At the s tart of Sept embe r the t ot al amount
of produce was no more than one man could carry (French,
1972a) . Mais ua village rs remembered cutt ing twelve sago
t rees for food during this f ive month period, a mas s ive
increase on contemporary cutt ing rates (Connell, 1977a:l7),
whil s t one villager bought nine sacks of rice at $4 each and
complained that the main result of this was that his children
then became almos t addicted t o it. There was als o more
hunt ing than usual.
Cocoa too was affected by de foliation, wilt and blackpod,
and unripe pods fell from the branche s ; product ion declined
and because of the destruction of several roads S iwai s reverted
to bush driers wh ich then apparently resul t ed in a loss of
quality (Arndt, 1972 ) . Apart from this kind of dramat ic
destruct ion cocoa can eas ily tolerate high rainfall.
There is rather less informat ion about earlier floods ;
the 1957 rainfall seems to have been rather less severe than
the 1972 one. Nevertheless one patrol officer noted that
' in the mount ain area the people have been spending much of
their t ime huddling over fires, and no out s ide work can be
done for days at a time' .
There was a food shortage and an
increased con sumpt ion of sago but he obs erved wryly that
local con ce rn was over the los s of tobacco crops rather than
17
tubers (PR Buin 3/1957-58) .
The 1965 flood seems to have
been much the same whilst report s o f the 1976 floods indicate
that the main p roblem had become the dis ruption o f comnnm i­
cat ions rather than of gardens .
Increas ingly , as S iwai
becomes inco rpo rat ed into the outs ide world and time becomes
money , floods have a great er impact on local life .
Temperat ures are much the s ame throughout the year but
The
the daily variat ions are o ft en quit e cons iderable .
highest t emp erat ures are on rainles s afternoons when the
th ermometer o ccas ionally reaches 35°C ; the highest temperature
eve r recorded was 36°C (97°F) on several o c cas ions at Tonu
but it is rare for there to be a cool day .
In eight months
in 1975 the lowest maximum temperature that I recorded was
2 5°C (77°F) but this was ext reme ; in four years at Tonu the
mean maximum temp erat ure was 32 °C (89°F) a figure which is
reached around midday be fo re heavy afternoon rains which
can reduce the temp erat ure by as much as 6°C in hal f an hour .
In the same four-year period at Tonu the mean minimum
t emperature was 2 1 . 5°C (71°F) but o ccas ionally , j ust before
dawn , the thermometer slumps even below that . These diurnal
cont rast s can be quite s triking so that p eople typically
keep a fire smouldering all night for warmth and o ld people
e sp ec ially prefer s leep ing in their kit chen house rather than
At Tonu , in t en year s ,
in the cooler , draughty st ilt houses .
the t emp erature only once fell as low as 17 . 2 °C (63°F) .
On
the o ne o ccas ion during my stay when the temp erat ure fell as
low as that I , l ike mos t S iwais , awoke shivering and more
than will ing t o complain about the weather . All-night
ceremonies too can be chilly event s , especially in upland
villages where there are always cool night breeze s . In these
upland villages the temp erat ures are generally coo ler than
at Tonu , in central S iwai , yet there is l it t l e evidence that ,
with the e xception o f taro , this has a s ignificant influence
o n any local crop s , although the temp erat ure variat ions were
cons ide red by the didimen to neces s itat e co ffee planting in
a zone above cocoa {p . 135) .
Dramatic downpours an d exceptionally cold night s mark
the pervas ive effect s o f the high relat ive humidity charact­
eris t i c of s o many t ropical lowlands . As in neighbouring
Nagovis i (Mit chell , 1976:19) , the relat ive humidity falls as
the s un rises and reaches around 75 per cent at midday ; in
the afternoon it rises again , usually reaching 100 per cent
in late afterno o n , and remains close t o that level throughout
the night so that l eaves drip with dew in the mornings .
Arduous phys ical act ivity i s unpleasant and in these humid
18
condit ions fungi abound, on clothes as well as on t rees; it
is al so very close to the ideal environment for taro blight
(Packard, 1975:57-8) and some cocoa diseases .
S ince relat ive
humidity is invers ely correlated with t emperature, respite
from th e humidity and heat is rare ; sweat, mildew and rust
are familiar consequen ces .
The only note on ins ol at ion in S iwai i s contained in a
1969 DASF (Department o f Agricult ure, Stock and Fisheries)
Proj ect Programme where is was e s t imat ed that there were on
ave rage 3 hours 25 minut es o f sunshine a day at Konga .
Records from Buin town, over a one-year period, show an
average o f 3 hours 35 minut es with no significant seasonal
variations (Sumb ak, 1970:4) and from Pomalate� Nagovisi,
ove r a one-y ear period, the average was 5 hours 3 minut es
(Mit chell, 1976:19) .
Supe rficial impres s ions of this kind
o f dat a are o f li tt le value, yet it may well be that the Konga
figure is generally true of cent ral S iwai ; there is, of course,
a considerable difference between the cloudy mountains and
the co ast .
Coconut palms grow rather better nearer the coast
where s unshine is great e r ; elsewhere they grow badly . By
cont ras t , co coa, a shade-loving plant, gro ws except iqnally
well in S iwai (Sumbak, 1970) .
The earl iest cocoa driers
that were intro duced int o S iwai involved a comb inat ion o f
s un and f ire fo r drying beans but insuff icient s un an d its
irregular appearance result ed in their declining use ; only
the largest modern ferment aries, such as that o f the S iwai
So ciety at Konga, bother to inco rpo rate Sllll- drying (s ince
labour is always available to move the roo f ) .
Although
garden shelters are e s s ent ial, and umbrellas useful in heat
as in rain, prolonged s unshine is rarely a det errent to any
kind of physical act ivity .
High winds are unusual s in ce Bougainville is out s ide
Cyclone Ida caused some damage
the usual path o f cyclones ;
to houses in 1972 but it is unusual fo r there to be more
serious problems than the occas ional st rip of roo f in g t hat ch
blown away .
Falling coconut s are pot ent ially much more
lethal ; earthquakes too are a great er hazard than winds .
Heavy rains an d hot sun make expat riate researchers
rather more grat e ful fo r shade and shelter than Siwais , yet
overall there are no real cl imat ic hazards in S iwai ; the
environment is one in which most t ropical crops flourish
extremely success fully .
Rainfall and s tmshine are sufficient
and there are no ext remes of t emperature . Apart f rom a few
irregular floods , the climate is predictable and regular ;
19
S iwais are not subj e ct to the climat ic irregular it ies that
t rouble agricult uralists in less favoured areas .
Vegetat ion and animal l ife
Much of the plain remains covered with rain forest ;
s outh o f the old Buin road (through Ruisei and Haisi) and
no rth o f the upland villages some of this luxuriant and
varied vegetat ion is almo st unt ouched .
It is s t ill
an impre s s ive s i ght .
Each enormous but t ressed
tree-giant is a whole community of veget at ion:
numerous woo dy vines twine around the tree's
aerial roots, and every l imb is covered with
luxurious paras it ic growt h .
So thick are the
branches that very few shafts of sunlight
p enetrat e, and ground- clutterin g s crub growth
is s eldom encot.mtered in the forest s' (Oliver,
1 95 5 : 8) .
In cent ral S iwai t o o · a l it tle o f this s t ill remain s and
even around new garden s it es there is always enough t ree
cover t o p revent views o f more than a couple of hundred
met res, except along the roads . The lands cape of S iwai is
e s s ent ially introspect ive .
Apart from swampy areas clos e to the coast and the high
t.mpopulated mot.mtains inland the nat ural vegetat ion o f S iwai
is remarkably homogeneous through the area ; the t ropical
rain fore s t is dominat ed by Vi tex ( S-moikui ) and Pome tia
species .
Although its comp o s it ion is much the same throughout
S iwai it is t yp ically het ero geneous rain forest , cont ainin g
about s ixty common species o f big t rees with average girths
o f over s ix feet (1 . 8 met res) and s ome 250 sp ecies with
girths of over one foot (Whitmore, 1 966: 1 ) . Most of the
main fore s t t rees are over 30 met re s high with s catt ered
emergent species, such as canarium almonds (galips ) , reaching
over 4 0 met res .
S econdary forest regrown in old garden areas
rarely has time to produce a clos ed vegetat ion canopy ; where
a canopy does exi s t it is no more than about 15 to 18 metres
hi gh .
The most conspicuous o f the larger species in this
woody regrowth are Kle inhovia hospita and Albizia and
Althoffia species ; beneath these t rees there is quite a den s e
shrubby layer dominated by gingers and a few s catt ered palms
and wild bananas .
Increas ingly bamboo is becoming a part o f
this unde rgrowth, much o f which is a valuable source o f
building material s and, p art icularly in the past , was the
20
s ource of t imber for fen ce mat e rial (Oliver, 195 5 c : 2 3-4) .
The s econdary re growth enables regenerat ion o f the s o ils and
the perman ent ve get at ion cover ass i s t s in binding the s o il
surface to prevent s o il ero s ion ; both forest and regenerated
bush remain a valuable reserve of t imber, plant foods and,
ult imat ely, garden lan d .
S iwai homes are made almost ent irely from plant products
although the use o f nails is univers al ; a few ridge crest s ,
which are di f ficult to weat herproo f, are covered with iron
strips .
Roofing thatch is made f rom the s ago palm, which is
somet ime s cult ivat ed partly for this ; s ago palm or split
bamboo forms internal and external walls .
Floors are made
from limbum (Kentiopsis s pp) ; rafters , beams and als o cord
come from various fo rest s pecies .
S ince the fore st also
provides food and medicine, woo d for s pears, s lit gongs,
cocoa ferment aries and s o on, the con sequences t o the
vegetat ion are quit e cons iderable so that for a mile or more
arotlll d any village there is what can be des cribed as a
' deplet ed forest' (Whitmore, 1969:2 66) .
In these areas
small trees, climbers and even fungi have been select ively
removed and the f ores t t akes on a more o pen appearance, with
big t rees standing over the herb layer and the lower part
of the canopy havin g almost disapp eared .
The divers ity of fauna in S iwai is a trtmcat ed version
o f that on t he islands west o f Bougainville and on the New
Guinea mainland . As hunt ing cont inues, the variety is
decreas in g .
For example, there are no venomous snakes in
Bougainville ; nor are there leeches , cas s owaries or birds
of paradise. Even so there are s t ill some species con fined
ent irely to Bougainville, s uch as the g iant t ree rat
( Unicorrry s ponce le ti ) , named after one o f the earliest Catholic
miss ion aries in Buin . The largest mammals are wild p igs ,
now in reduced numbers, possums (fhaZanger orientalis breviceps ),
t ree rat s , which have now almost disappeared, o ther kinds
of rat and many variet ies o f flyin g fox (P teropus spp . ) ,
flying mice and bat s (Trought on, 1935) . There are also
various kinds o f fro gs and land rept iles such as lizards
and snake s . Toads are a recent po st -war arrival into south
Bougainville and are of uncert ain origin .
Snails are not
common and the giant snail, probably introduced by the
Japanese during the war, has not yet reached S iwai and is,
at present, only a menace in east co ast gardens .
21
Birds o f many variet ies occur in pro fus ion ; the largest
o f th es e, hornbills and eagles , are declining in number s ,
but there are many kinds o f pigeons, parrots, cockatoos and
owls .
Ins ect s such as mos quitoes and especially the persistent
sandflies, are a part i cular nuis ance on the coast but apart
from swampy areas they are rarely a problem inland .
Cock­
roaches are an ubiquitous pes t and the cent ipede, which
occas ionally grows to a length o f over 50 cent imetres, has
a s t in g suf ficient to cause severe pain for a couple o f
days. Lice t o o are a p es t in fes t ing the heads o f mos t small
children. On the other hand there are some of the largest
and s ome of the mos t rare and beaut iful but terflies in the
world.
Black beetles, and also baby flying foxes, can be
att ached to pieces o f s t ring t o become divert ing children's
toys unt il they are worn out.
Almos t every living s pecies
had some role, pos it ive or negat ive, in S iwai life.
Ecolo gical divers ity within S iwai is slight , apart
from minor variat ions betwe·en high mount ains and swampy
coas t s .
The rivers· and their immediate surrounds represent
one area o f ecolo gical uniquene s s but then no S iwai would
live far f rom a river or s t ream, a sour ce of wat er for
dr inking and for washing people and clothes . Here the fauna
is more varied and the flora divers i f ied ; s ago palms overhang
the s t reams but rarely so densely as in mainland New Guinea
and the pat tern o f river ine exploit at ion is rather dif ferent
The st reams
from that employed on the int ervening ridges.
cont ain f ish and eels, although it is only in large rivers
like the Hongorai o r Mivo, that they are large enough to
j us t ify f ishing trips (Connell, 1977a:l0) . Prawns abound
in mos t s t reams and rivers except for the small s t reams of
Rataiku (Oliver, 1955:9).
The mos s fore s t s of the mount ains
do not concern Siwais but the coas t al environment s omet imes
does ; here there is a slightly different vegetat io n
(although the exploit able species s eem l i t t le changed) and
a much great er fauna! variety, including crocodiles and, in
the sea, a variety o f fish and t urtles.
The environment al s t age
Be fore the war Oliver found S iwai 'a remote and harsh
environment ' (1955:ix) .
It remains remote yet small aero­
planes fly to the centre o f S iwai and remo teness is not a
problem that S iwais o ften t rouble themselves with.
Oliver
als o s t ated (1955:453) that the phy s i cal environment o f
S iwai was 'deficient i n certain respect s' an d that s ome
S iwai illne s s e s , primarily colds , 'may be laid at the door
22
o f their physical environment ' (Oliver , 1955 : 11 ) .
In what
ways it was a harsh environment and the ext ent to which
dis ease was a direct result o f environment rather than a
p roduct o f cul t ural p ract ices are left unexplained ; i f it
was so then it did not seem that way in 19 7 5 . Nor does it
seem tha t way to the S iwai themselves ; Oliver reco rds the
nearest approach to a sent iment about S iwai , made by a man
who had re turned from work in the New Guinea mainland :
' Our own S iuai fore s t s are good - the source o f all des irab le
things :
of food and game and building mat erials .
Only
madmen woul d choo se to live elsewhere ! ' ( Oliver , 1955 : 104 ) .
Nearly forty years lat er sent iment remained the s ame ; l ike
people eve rywhere the S iwai claim. · that their land is the
best .
S iwai is a highly des irab le place in whi ch to l ive :
a pleasant environment for agriculture and life .
Chapter 2
The p eople of Siwai
1
Every s o ciety tends to keep its vital processes in
a stat e o f bal ance such that populat ion will
replenish los se s from death and grow t o an ext ent
deemed des irable by collect ive norms .
These norms
are flexible and readj ust rather p romptly to
changes in the ab ility of the economy to support
populat ion (Bo gue, 1969 : 5 1 ) .
The mo st distin ct ive characteristic o f Bougainvilleans
is their b lackness, unlike Melanesians t o the west and east .
but to gether with the neares t Solomon Islands (including
Choiseul and New Georgia) to the east . The physical
anthropologist Friedlaender dist in guished Bougainvilleans by
'their
very dark complexion, frizzy hair, and generally
.
Afr ican appearance' ( 19 75 : 2 8 ) .
Yet there are also regional
differen ces within the island; Friedlaender ( 1 9 7 5 : 2 9 )
confirmed that the three divis ions recognized in the early
twent ieth century by the f irst European observers as between
the coastal peoples and the peop le o f the northern and
s outhern interiors � we re recognized by s ome o f his
Bougainvillean informants , who t alked about the long-headed
beach people , the big, broad and heavy northern mountaineers
and the s mall and sho rt-headed s outherners, and als o
eventually emerged f rom h i s own multivariate analysis o f
phys ical charact eris tics .
In this context however S iwais
tend to f it b etween the first and third group s .
Indeed there
are considerable variat ions in all phy s ical characteri stics
within S iwai .
S ome S iwais have much light er skin, a t rait
which Siwais believe to be mo re common in the Haisi area ;
some individuals have redder hair whil st there are even a
few S iwais with almos t straight hair . Bougainville is unique
(amongst areas tested in this way) in its 'ext remely
fragment ed' population st ructure (Friedlaender, 1 9 7 1 : 2 4 ) , a
1
A more detailed vers ion of this chapter, especially in it s
treatment o f s ome o f the more t echnical aspects of demo­
graphic change (and some o f the correlat e s o f the 1 9 7 5
s ituat ion) is provided in a separat e p aper (Connell, 19 7 7b ) .
23
24
social phenomenon which has tended t o preserve or induce
marked local differen ces in phys ique (and also blood types ) .
Unl ike Friedlaender ' s informan t s ( from an unspecif ied part
o f Bougainville) , Siwais did not conceive o f their own
phy.s ical uniqueness ; they believed that it was generally
impossib le to dis t inguish S iwais from o ther Bougainvillean s
in this way . Their uniqueness was a product o f language
and cul t ure .
Historic separat ion and uniqueness were never abs olut e ;
genealo gies from villages on the fringes o f S iwai record
marriages with nei ghb ouring language groups at all per iods
of recent his to ry , and there was t rade rather than enmity
In the
b etween the language groups of south Bougainville .
ninet een th century marriages were con t racted at leas t as
far as Nas ioi in eas t Bougainville and with the islands o f
the Bougainville s t rait , and this was a pattern that has
been maint ained to some extent unt il the p resent day . But
in the mid -twent ieth century marriage links b egan to ext en d ;
i f S iwais had cont racted marriages with the ' redskins ' o f
New Guinea o r the cen t ral Solomon s be fore the war Oliver
does no t record that fact and genealo gies do not demon s t rate
it . S uch marriages b ecame a little more connnon as mob ility
increas ed and there are now a small n umb er of permanen t
res iden t s in S iwai born b eyond the island o f Bougainville
and the Bougainville S t raits . Even so mos t households with
one partner from S iwai and one f rom out s ide Bougainville do
not live in S iwai ; none of the five S iwais who have married
Europeans lives there . Marriages b eyond the bounds o f S iwai
remain excep t i onal and are act ively dis couraged .
Consequent ly
fear and distrus t o f ' redskins ' remains and the cultural
Indeed , as Chagnon
s igni f icance of these marriages is slight .
argues , ' in t ribal cul tures the world over , there is a
general att itude held by lo cal group memb ers that their
neighbours , being remote spat ially and genealo gically , are
there fo re less moral o r less human than themselves ' ( 1 9 7 4 : 7 7 ) .
Permanent mi gration into or out o f S iwai has been almost
non-exi s t ent and recent cul t ural changes in S iwai are
primarily a response to un iversal wes t ern developmental
changes rather than an inco rpo rat ion o f o ther Melanesian
t radit ions .
S iwai has never been an ent irely clo sed populat ion yet
S iwais regard themselves as a dis t inct ethnic connnun ity ,
although with recogniz able s imilarit ies to n eighb ouring
Bougainville populat ion s . However this s imilarity is
reco gnized primarily at the fringes o f S iwai rather than at
25
the cent re . Moreover a t an y given t ime al l persons c an be
cl as s i fied as either nat ives o r aliens and, although an alien
might be des crib ed as ' l ike a S iwai ' the divis ion is innnut able .
One is a S iwai only if at leas t one paren t is a S iwai ;
S ince this
one do es n o t become a S iwai through marriage .
cat e gory covers almost all the populat ion res iden t in S iwai ,
the re bein g no adop tion o f al ien s , the populat ion is
essent ially homogeneous .
Populat ion his tory
The early history o f S iwai population change is almost
llllknown .
Oliver reco rds t hat Siwai went through the crit ical
init ial cont act per iod without suffering the ' customary
decline ' ( Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 10 ) · that was typ ical of so many o ther
parts of the S olomon I s lands and Melanesia . There is no
sub s equent eviden ce to sugges t that this was no t t rue and
certainly S iwai had very s light con t act with the t rading
and plantat ion world be fore the twen t ieth century . Nor are
there o ral account s of epidemics or o ther dramat ic influen ces
on the S iwai populat ion . Even so it would b e imp robab le
that the historic populat ion o f S iwai remained ent irely
s t at ionary s in ce populat ions do not remain \lll c hanging in
every respect for lon g p eriods o f t ime ; whatever · fluctuat ions
there were seem to have more or less balanced at least for
ab out fifty y ears before the las t world war .
The earlies t government estimate o f the populat ion o f
Bougainville Island alone was made retrospect ively b y the
Aust ralian adminis t ration for 1 9 14 , when the is land had an
enumerated popul at ion o f 9160 and an estimated populat ion
o f 2 3 , 5 00 ( P CA , 1 92 3 : 134 ) . The first estimat e of the S iwai
populat ion was made fo r 1922 when a total of 32 72 persons
were enumerat ed (PCA , 1924 : 93 ) . A year lat er the total was
raised t o 3 7 1 3 and in 1924 it reached 4115 ( Figure 3 ) . By
the late 1920s few new S iwai villages were enumerated and
the rapid increase in reco rded number s began to level o f f ;
in S iwai the period o f contact was over . The actual patt ern
of populat ion change in this p eriod is impo s s ib le t o assess ;
there is no means o f recording either natural increase or the
number o f ab sentee cont ract labourers on p lant at ions ( a
figure whi ch p robab ly changed little durin g the post-war
period) who were excluded from the census total s . The only
complete p re-war administ rat ion censuses of S iwai that remain
in exist en ce are those for 1936 and 1 9 38 (Olive r , pers .
comm. 19 7 7 ) . These s uggest that there was a s lowly growing
populat ion at this t ime although the records thems elves seem
26
9000
8000
7000
6000
5000
o O
0
0
0
0
4000
0
0
3000
1 9 20
Figure 3 .
1 9 30
1 9 40
1 950
S iwai population growth
Sources: 1921-40 P CA Annual Reports
1948-on Irregular Patrol Reports
1 9 60
1 9 70
27
unlikely t o b e ac curat e . Oliver re corded the S iwai populat ion
in October 1 9 3 8 as 4 6 5 8 ( Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 9 ) ; however this
included the principally Buin-speaking villages of Tarowa
and Tupopisau and excluded all the villages b etween Muwoku
and Mis iminoi (both o f which seem to have b een ent irely
excluded from the census ) , S ininai , Horino and the Haisi area .
By s ub s t it ut ing all o f thes e villages for the two Buin
villages t he 1 9 3 8 populat ion o f the area that corresponds
with the p resent S iwai area was s light ly over 5 000 . This
est inia.te is the on.ly one that can b e comp ared with post-war
administ rat ion censuses .
Oliver reported o f the 1 9 38 population o f S iwai (and
also Nagovis i and Buin ) that '
we believe that the average
size of those populat ions were not markedly different in the
period 1 8 8 8-19 3 8 ' ( 1954 : 1 7 ) . There was good reason why this
should have b een so . Unt il the war the administ rat ion had
had very s light impact in the area ; med ical services were
available only from the mi ssions but may have lowered the
infant and child mortality rate t o s ome ext ent (but the
impact
of this was reduced by the main t enance of infant icide
.
and abort ion ) whilst the adminis t rat ion ' s movement o f S iwais
int o l ine villages may have raised rather than lowered the
death rat e as it did in part s of the S olomon Is lands . There
had been no nut ritional changes although there is no reason
to s uppos e that the hist oric S iwai d iet was in any way
serious ly de ficient ( Oliver , 1954 : 41 ) . Nevertheless there
are the s light indicat ions from populat ion totals and
compo s it i ons that the S iwai populat ion was already b eginning
to change in size and compositi on at the end of the 1 9 3 0s .
•
.
•
The war had a devast at in g impact on the populat ion o f
south Bougainville ; the crude figures suggest t hat between
1940 and 1948 the S iwai p opulat ion fel l by arollll d 1000
people .
Censuses were carried out throughout Bougainville
early in 1948 and Cole recorded that the S iwai populat ion
had fallen from 4 6 1 3 to 36 6 3 , a drop o f 2 0 . 6 per cent (PR
Bougainvi lle , 10 / 4 7-48) . This was exactly the s ame rate o f
decrease a s in Nagovis i ; in Bai t s i there was a fall o f 2 2 . 7
p er cent and in Buin an alarming 30 . 3 per cent . The
populat ion pyramids of S iwai indicat e very clearly the
resultant ' wais t ' in the wartime-born age groups , and
although it is improb ab le that as much as a quarter of the
S iwai populat ion died durin g or soon after the war the
ac t 11al proport ion was probab ly not much less . Many S iwais ,
especially yollll g children , died and there were few b irths
to rep len ish the populat ion . However , people suf f ered more
28
from malnutrition , lack o f medi cal care an d exposure than
from dire c t milit ary act ion . Moreover , t owards the end o f
the war t h e s t aple food , t aro (Colocasia esculenta ) was
virtually wiped out by t aro b light ( see pp . 73-5) , and during
the year fo llowing the war, there were probably as many deaths
as in the war years . Durin_g this t ime infant icide and
probably al so abortion were con s cious and f requent choices
o f many S iwais . Fecundity may also have declin ed . The only
presently available comparable dat a are from the Tolai of eas t
New Britain ; th ere the war his to ry was no t dis similar to that
of Bouga inville and there too there is a clear ' wais t ' in
the age-sex s t ruc tures both in specific villages (Ep s t e in and
Epstein , 1962 : 7 7-8) and mo re generally throughout the whole
region ( Granger , 1 9 71 : 1 10-1) . In Bougainville Nash ( 1 9 7 4 : 12 )
has ob served a similar situat ion reflected in Nagovis i
genealo gies .
S in ce Long ( 1 9 6 3 : 9 0) est imated that some
16 , 000 Japanese died in Bougainville as a result o f s i cknes s ,
it would be surprising if many o f the local populat ion were
not simil arly affected .
S iwais themselves think of the war
years as b ein g a time of excep t ional hardship al though they
do not usually characterize the p eriod as one in whi ch many
people died .
Constraints on fer t il ity were more important
than deaths in causin g the populat ion decline . The decline
was so severe that it took more than a decade for the
population to reach its pre-war level .
After the war the S iwai populat ion began to grow and
the re was a st eadily increasing populat ion ; indeed the rate
of populat ion change has accelerated and there is no indicat ion
that this is changin g . Pre sent t rends suggest t hat the
populat ion may double in less than twenty y ears , an ext remely
rapid rate of increase . Even so , Mit chell ( 1 9 7 6 : 14 8 ) est imates
that the populat ion of n eighbouring N agovis i will doub le in
less than fifteen years . The 1 9 7 5 admin i st rat ion census ,
carried out in difficult polit ical condit ion s , was incomplete
and exists only for two-thirds of S iwai villages ; however ,
in seven o f these the cen sus dat a were collected more carefully
and in mo re de tail than ever before . An accurate acco un t o f
the S iwai populat ion is made even more dif ficul t b ecause the
1 9 7 2 census , which was quite inaccurate , recorded a total o f
85 5 9 thus givin g an inc r e ase o f 2 1 per cent in two years , a
demograph i c impos sib ility ( in the absence o f migrat ion ) . My
own est imate o f a to tal Siwai populat ion o f about 9 000 in
1 9 75 is b ased in part on the 1 9 72 and 1 9 75 cens uses and in
part on my own censuses o f eight villages and hence on
compari sons be tween these . The populat ion t rend l ine in
Figure 3 is there fore highly generalized .
Of this populat ion
29
some 5 5 per cent are Catholics , 4 4 per cen t United Church
( including a · small p roportion of Evangelist s ) and less than
1 per cen t Bap t ists or Seventh-Day Adven t is t s .
Cont empo rary populat ion data are inadequate for
sophisticated demographic analysis , yet man ipulat ing s tat ist ics
comp iled by mi ss ions , admin i strat ion and mys el f enables s ome
s imple s tatement s to b e made .
The composite age-st ructure
of the S iwai populat ion ( Figure 4 ) , which includes all
migrant s who have maint ained village homes , reveals the s t ill
growing populat ion o f S iwai , which is not dis s imilar t o the
res t of the southern half of Bougainville island ( Fr iedlaen der ,
19 75 : 54-8) . The pro file is typ ical o f populat ions that have
experien ced a de cl ine in th e death rat e whilst maint aining a
high b irth rate .
Relat ively few people are in the older age
gro ups ; b o th the 1 9 7 1 and 1 9 7 5 data suggest that only 15 per
cent o f the S iwai populat ion were aged ove·r 4 5 , although this
is actually a greater proport ion than in eastern Bougainville ,­
wh ere there were only 11 per cent ( Friedlaender , 19 75 : 5 5 ) , o r
in s ome o ther lowland areas o f Melanes ia , such a s Karkar
Is land (Hornab rook , 1 9 7 4 : 2 31 ) where this figure was 12 per
cent . By con t rast the 1 9 7 1 and 19 7 5 f i gures for the S iwai
populat ion less than ten years of age are 33 p er cent and
31 per cen t respect ively . Although the S iwai populat ion
seems to be no t quite so b ro adly based as these o ther two
Melanesian populat ions it is s t ill a .b ro adly b ased pyramid
and one that is s teadily b ecoming even more so . The rap id
expansion of the S iwai p opulat ion has been a l i tt le delayed
by war t ime deaths .
The post-war growth in pop ul at ion is reflected in ,
amongst o ther things , changin g household sizes ; on average ,
households are consisten t ly larger than in p re-war years
despite the reduct ion in the p roport ion of polygynous
households . Households in Melanes ia are always difficult
t o define adequat ely .
Oliver refers t o t he S iwai household
as ' the principal res i dent ial and sub s is t en ce unit . Memb ers
s leep to gether in thei r own house and p reserve a high degree
of privacy . Most households als o act s ep arat ely t o produce
and consume their own food and many o ther basic economic
essen t ials ' ( Ol iver , 1955 : 104 ) .
In recent y ears households
have b ecome rather mo re fragmented bu� by defining contemporary
S iwai households as all thos e who customar ily eat in one
place , s imple comparisons may be made b etween the size o f
households now an d before the war . Before the war adult
males with four or mor e dependent children were excused t ax
payment s ; thus when the 1936 census was carried out only
30
A. Cath o l i c s,�
40-44
1 13
87
35-39
30-34
25-29
20-24
1 5-19
164
10-14
5-9
0-4
316
264
70+
6
65-69
5
60-64
B.
E ight Vi l l ages 1975
(Abse ntees shaded}
55-59
50-54
40-44
35-39
30-34
25-29
20-24
57
15-19
10-14
S-9
0-4
Figure 4 .
Age component s o f S iwai population
31
71 out o f 1 500 adult males were excused .
Four decades lat er
more than half the households ( 6 6 out of 122 ) in four random
vill ages have six or more members although because of the
absences of school children and migrant workers rather less
than half ( 5 6 ) are likely t o regularly eat t o gethe r .
Reapplying the 1936 t ax demands in 19 75 would have resulted
in as many as 52 out of 163 adult males being excused t axes .
By whatever s t andards households are de fined their s ize has
increased eno rmously s ince the war ·.
Marriage and fertility
The chan ging relat ionship b etween factors encouraging
or dis couragin g population growth can b e b r ie fly examined ,
especially as they af fect chan ges in S iwai fert ility and
mortality .
The most b as ic o f these in fluences is marriage .
Marriage itself is almo s t tm iversal in S iwai although it is
p o ssible that this may not have b een so in the distant past
( part ly b ec ause o f the greater p roport ion of polygynous
marriages ) ; Oliver ' s invest igat ions s ug gest that b efore the
war marriage was as un ivers al as it is now . There are a few
tmmarried males in their thirt ies in S iwai and a few more
out s ide , o ften workin g in urban emp loyment , b ut apparen t ly
no t one tmmarried healthy female . Males have a greater
lat itude for choice but there is no cult ural provis ion for
permanent celib acy . All S iwais are expected to marry and
there are no rest rict ions on the remarria ge o f widows and
widowers . Those who do not remarry are usually those b eyon d
child-b ear in g a g e o r , in some cases , those who have out lived
several wives or husb ands and are con sequently feared by
po ssib le spouses . Before the war ' by the t ime S iuai men and
women reach sen ility mos t of them will have been married more
than on ce ' ( Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 2 2 0 ) ; the s ame is less t rue now as
many couples survive to old age . Thus almost all S iwais
marry and most remain married throughout their period o f
fert ility .
The mean age o f marriage has changed very l it tle s ince
the war (Tab le 2 ) .
In the last decade r i s in g affluence has
allowed b rideprices to be fotmd mo re quickly and men no
longer migrat e to con tract lab our ; even so the age at which
men marry h as declined only sl ightly whilst for women it has
not decl in ed at all . Educat ion has no t delayed the age o f
marriage ; rather a comb in at ion o f af fluence an d the end o f
p lan t at ion mi grat ion have t ended t o b r in g the age o f male
marriage forward .
32
Tab le 2
S iwai mean age at marriage
Year
pre-1944
1945-1954
1 9 55 - 19 6 4
1965-19 7 5
Males
23. 6
n= 5 3
24 . 1
n=l 02
24 . 6
n=l 4 0
22 . 0
n=l64
Females
17. 9
n=52
19 . 0
n=l03
18 . 6
n=l 38
18 . 5
n=l 6 7
Source :
F ield data
B ecaus e of all the chan ges that have followed contact ,
especially the arrival o f two Chris t ian mi ss ions in S iwai ,
recon s t ruct ion o f t radit ional beliefs and p ract ices relat ing
to sexual act ivity is almost impo ss ib le . However , l ike many
o ther s oc iet ies in Melanesia (Bulmer , 19 71 : 1 4 5 ) , it seems
cert ain that the s ingle mos t important cultural fact o r
affect ing fert ility was a postpartum taboo o n sexual int er­
course .
In these , and in other att itudes to fert i lit y , S iwai
was certainly very similar to other Bougainvillean societ ies
such as Nas ioi and Nagovisi (Ogan , Nash and Mit chell , 19 7 6 ) .
S iwais have always app reciated the p ract ical p roblems
o f providin g adequate care for children born too close
together , hen ce twins were a sp ecial problem. This was
usually phrased in terms of this level of care bein g too
demandin g on the mother ' s health and preven t in g h er gardening
act ivit ies ; it was less usually phras ed as concern for the
health of the child . In the p as t the postpartum t aboo on
int ercourse was p robably extremely lon g ; thus in p re-cont act
Nagovis i and Nasioi it is p os s ib l e that b irths were spaced
aronnd four years apart (Ogan et al . , 19 7 6 : 5 35 , 5 4 1 ) .
Blackwood ( 1 9 35 : 15 6 ) cons idered that in north Bougainville
there was then an almost nn iversally observed postpartum
taboo period o f two to three years . This s ort o f p eriod
was prob ab ly al so true of S iwai and there as elsewhere b irth
intervals have subs equen t ly become rather shorter .
S iwais generally claim that a pos tpartum t aboo on
sexual int er co urse should be maint ained nn t il the nur s in g
child is old enough t o walk p roperly , exactly the s ame claim
made in o ther parts o f Bougainville (Ogan et al . , 1 9 76 : 5 36 ;
Ring and S c ragg , 1 9 7 3 : 109 ) .
33
suggest , much as they do in Nasio i , a t aboo period o f
arollll d f ifteen months , somewhat shorte r than in o ther
Melanesian s ociet ies .
I f s t rict ly ob served such a t aboo
would res ult in b ir ths bein g spaced at intervals o f at least
two y ears .
In o rder to test the degree to which S iwais actually
observed their s t at e d pos tpartum t aboo on int er course , dat a
was collected on b irth intervals in contemporary S iwai
( Connell , 197 7b : l8-21) . The data show that there has b een
a decreas e in birth intervals s ince the war (although the
change is only j us t s t at is t ically s i gnificant ) and is not
apparen t ly as rap id as elsewhere in Bougainville (Tab le 3 ) .
Comparison o f the b irth interval data also indicates that
the areas of his torically greater change and contact with
western ideas ( in terms of educat ion , health centres ,
plant at ion establishment and so on) on the east coas t
exp erienced a rather earl ier decrease in b irth intervals .
S iwais are st i�l more or less observing the po stpartum t aboo ,
s in ce there is no s i gn i fi cant usage o f non-t radit ional methods
of b irth con t ro l .
Shame is s t ill att ached to those who
depart s ub s tant ially from this part i cular norm ; S iwai
at t it udes are f irmly opposed t o family restrict ions and
generally con s i der a large numb er o f children t o be the i deal
situation .
Tab le 3
Bougainville b irth intervals
S iwai
Nas ioi
1945-4 9
1950-54
2 . 94
1955-59
2 . 87
19 60-64
Nagovis i
Buka
4 . 30
2 . 71
( 1 9 4 7 -4 9 )
3 . 71
2 . 73
2 . 98
3 . 68
2 . 46
2 . 76
2 . 71
3 . 16
2 . 17
1965-69
2 . 90
2 . 75
19 7 0- 7 4
2 . 46
Source :
2 . 68
( 1 9 6 5 -7 2 )
Ogan , Nash and Mit chell ( 19 7 6 : 5 3 7 , 5 4 3 ) ; Ring an d
S cragg ( 19 7 3 : 100 ) ; Connell , f ield data .
34
By compar ison with the Tolai of east New Britain , where
women as early as the lat e 1950s were able to ' affirm that
breach of the inj unct ion no longer carries the so cial st igma
that at t ached to it in former t imes , and is in fact frequen t '
(Epstein and Epstein , 1962 : 74 ) , S iwai birth intervals are
very lon g indeed and populat ion growth is correspondin gly
rather slower . Nevertheles s all the availab le evidence
s uggests that S iwai is moving slowly but inexo rab ly towards
the Tolai s ituat ion ; b irth intervals may be expected to
decline furthe r .
Th e s ignificance o f other t radit ional kinds o f family
limitat ion , con t racept ion , ab ort ion and in fant icide , is les s
easy t o interpret a s eviden ce i s somewhat amb i guous ( Connell ,
1 9 7 7b : 2 2 - 3 ) . Tradit ional forms o f cont racept ion were
certainly pract ised in the past and are st ill used by some ;
the eff icacy o f the plant s that are eaten is unknown .
Abo rt ion may have been p ract ised in the p as t and is cert ainly
not in compat ib le with infant icide , which certainly existed
befo re the war and was resorted to by some in the early
p o st-war years . A nun , s t ationed at Monoitu in 1 9 30 ,
ob served the cremation alive o f a child with its mother who
had died in childb irth and recorded that ' the people did not
want this infant who had killed it s mo ther ' (Catho lia Aation,
1 9 6 ? ) . This was no t an isolated o c currence yet more usually
in fant icide could be con sidered as select ive neglect .
There is t here fore an unresolved confl ict b etween the
exist en ce of abort ion and infant icide in the p as t with , at
the same t ime , culturally s an ct ioned specific lactat ion and
ab s t inence periods , intended primarily to ensure a minimum
period between pregnancies which would imp rove the l ikel ihood
o f the child surviving . However , very lit t le is known ab o ut
the cultural context o f either ab ortion or infant icide and
it is probable that b oth existed on ly in ext reme situat ion s ,
for example , in the case o f ab ort ion , where a con cep t ion had
o c curred which violat ed s o cial norms o r , in the case o f
in fanticide , where i t was considered that the child would
die in any case because o f the unavailab ility o f adequate
maternal care . How often these condit ions might have
o ccurred is impo ssible to s ay .
S in ce abort ion an d in fant icide have now d isappeared
from S iwai , amongst a very few other cul tural p ract i ces
whi ch have suf fered a s imilar demise , it is p o s s ib le that
they were never particularly imp ort ant ( although , equally ,
mis s ions would have reacted very unfavourab ly to them) .
35
Moreover S iwai explanat ions for infant i cide especially are
so varied that it is difficult to bel ieve t hat there was a
st raightforward explanat ion for the pract ice . Tentat ive
explan at ions o f in fant icide were primarily economi c ; it was
hard work to look after children and expensive in terms o f
fl.lll e rary ritual were they to die . However , S iwais d o no t
now believe that infant icide was prac t ised at t imes o f general
e conomic h ardship when adequat e food was unavailable ; they
do not believe that there have even b een such p er iods . Thi s
does not conflict with the view that pre-cont act S iwai was
a worl d o f subsistence affluence' b ut it is possible that there
was somet imes individual e conomic hardship , perhaps primarily
a result o f disease , that could only be reduced by resort ing
t o the direct and dramat ic ext reme o f infant icide . Altern­
at ively infant icide may have been an example o f what Douglas
( 19 6 6 : 2 7 1 ) has called ' the oysters and champagne fact or in
populat ion con t ro l ' wh ere populat ion control o c curs when a
smaller family appears to have a relat ive social advantage .
' A small p rimit ive populat ion which is homo geneously
commit ted to the same pat t ern o f values , and t o whi ch the
lad�ers o f social s tatus of fer a s eries of worthwhile goals
which do not require large families for their at tainment , is
likely to apply rest rict ive demo graphic policies ' ( Douglas ,
1966 : 2 72) .
It would be dangerous t o argue that S iwai leaders
pre ferred rearing p igs to people yet it would not be go ing
too far to argue that a climate o f opin ion was engendered in
which some ind ividuals would be willing to make that de c is ion .
It is p robab le that the decline in in fant icide is partly a
fun ct ion o f a change in att itudes to s t atus and prest ige .
Other measures t hat would have slowed long-t erm populat ion
growth , such as the direct encouragement o f emigrat ion ,
monogamy or late age o f marriage s eem never to have existed
in S iwai . Ult imately too l it t le is known about hist oric
S iwai soc iety to evaluate the extent o f any o f thes e cultural
pract ices , the ir relative importance at different periods o f
t ime an d in different households and therefore the balance
between e conomic and cultural cont rols over fert ility .
It
is eviden t only that every con s traint to increas ed fert ility
has de cl in ed during the present century .
Fertility rates calculat ed from the data for eight
villages (Tab le 4 ) from two separate years give result s that
(even from a small sample) are not great ly dif ferent from
those cal culated els ewhere in o ther s imilar coast al Melane s ian
environment s , in cluding Buka . The t ab le covers all women ;
hence the proportion s actually married are small in the
w
O'I
Tab le 4
Births and age-sEecif ic fert ilit� rates
S iwai
Buka
New Ireland
Karkar
(Eight villages ; 19 70-7 5 )
( 1962-6 7 )
( 1 9 62-6 7 )
(1968)
rat e/ 1000
rate/ 1000
rate/ 1000
rate / 1000
b irths /women
15-19
17
2 88
59
135
170
56
2 0-24
68
206
330
348
279
307
2 5-2 9
43
12 8
3 36
383
258
3 35
30-34
37
114
325
255
1 74
3 15
35-39
32
139
2 30
32 0
121
248
4 0-44
16
125
12 8
188
55
1 35
4 5 -4 9
3
98
31
7
14
71
7.4
8. 5
5.4
6.8
To tal fertil ity rate
Source :
S iwai - Connell , f ield dat a ; Buka and New Ireland - Rin g and Scragg ,
19 7 3 : 92 , 94 ; Karkar - Hornabrook , 1974 : 2 32 .
37
youngest age group .
S iwai women are as fert ile as Buka
women only in the age- group 45-4 9 .
S ince Buka has had a
much great er exposure t o western educat ion and medicine
whilst b irth intervals are much smaller there , it seems
prob able that S iwai fert ility will eventually rise t o at
least the s ame leve l as that o f Buka .
As others have ob served elsewhere in Bougainville i t i s
n o t easy t o as sess changes in cultural p ract i ces af fect in g
fert ility . Mis sion s have e f fect ively eliminated in fant icide
and the Catholic mis s ion has opposed b o th t radit ional and
European methods o f b irth con t rol ; both Catho lic and Methodist
miss io�s emphas iz ed ' the j oys of parenthood ' ( Ogan e t al . ,
1 9 7 6 : 5 38 ) , and t o s t re s s thes e att itudes the mi ss ion s them­
selves fre quent ly raised orphaned or s ick children . This era
has not complet ely ended and , as Ring and S c ragg exp ressed
it for Buka , ' the Christian church and government have b een
s ilen t on the so c ial pattern that should be adopt ed while
they wel come the munificent increas e in children ' ( Ring and
S cragg , 19 7 3 : 11 8 ) . There may be differences be tween the
at t �tudes o f the two mis sions in S iwai but the result s
remain the s ame . Modern family planning is almost unknown
in S iwai and there is no l ikel ihood that it s adopt ion will
b e more rap i d in the next decade or so .
In a climate o f
economic affluen ce ( see p . 4 6 ) S iwai at t it udes have b ecome
more st rongly in favour of larger families , an att itude
fost ered in part by mi ss ions and polit icians .
Only a t iny
proport ion o f younger men , primarily in l ineages with
relat ively poor access to land, have begun to query some o f
thes e at t it udes . This has not yet had any effec t on p ractice .
Changes in S iwai have b een towards a declin e in cust oms and
belie fs that main tained the b irth interval ; moreover the more
recent exposure of women to the wes t ern influen ces that
allowed these chan ges is resul t in g in further decline .
Lab our migrat ion , rather than changes in at t itudes , has
in pract ice b een a more sub s tan t ial in fluence on fert ility
and the process of populat ion growth . P lantat ion lab our
dis rupt ed family life for p eriods of at least two years ;
indeed one S iwai mi ssionary has gone so far as t o claim
(Beaumont , p ers . comm. 19 7 5 ) that men designed their p eriods
o f ab sence on plant at ions t o coincide with the difficult
p er iods of b irth and the following few months , but it may
have b een no more than an in c iden t al resul t of con cept ion
following a man ' s return home at intervals between work
per iods which , for many men , were quite regular o c curren ces
38
fo llowing two-year work p eriods on plantat ions .
During the
1960s the succes s ful adopt ion o f cashcropping and the
cons truct ion o f a copper mine at Pan gllll a result ed in there
being ·v ery few worke rs ab sent fo r mo re than a few weeks at a
t ime hen ce the potent ial for sexual int ercourse is now great er
than before . The current permanence of families is much the
best explanat ion fo r higher fert ilit y . Ogan et al . ( 1 9 7 6 )
have separately come t o the s ame conclus ion f o r Nagovis i .
Mortal ity
Dat a for est imat ing mo rtal ity are more inaccurate than
those for fert il ity . There are no est imates availab le for
pre-war mortal ity rat es b ut they mus t have b een high in S iwai ;
in 1938 after a b rie f period o f exposure to western medical
practices there were st ill a number of potentially fat al
diseases in peacet ime S iwai .
' Malaria , pneumon ia and pulmonary
t ub erculo s is are prevalent and seem to be the principal
kill ing diseases , b ut dysentery and filarias is are als o
common ' ( Ol iver , 19 55 : 10 ) . Hookwo rm , yaws and leprosy existed
then but s in ce the war have largely b een eradicated by west ern
techniques . Nor are the o ther killin g diseases apparent ly
so prevalent now . Very few epidemics have ravaeed S iwai s ince
the war ; that of January 19 4 7, when there were thirty-five
deaths f rom a men ingit is-pneumonia epidemic , was prob ab ly
the mos t lethal .
Indeed S iwai generally has es caped serious
epidemics and by 1 9 4 8 it already had a reput at ion for bein g
free o f s icknes s and disease compared with other parts o f
south Bougainvi lle , whils t in 19 60 one kiap recorded that
' the general health of the S iwai people is I think the best
I have s een anywhere in the Territory to dat e ' (PR Boku
2 / 60-61 ) .
Ot her patro l o f f icers too have obvious ly found
S iwai health t o be at least adequat e .
In 19 5 6 one kiap
claimed to have seen child malnut rit ion in S iwai but when
this was invest igated further from the Tonu Health Cent re
there was no eviden ce for the as sert ion . There has b een n o
other reference t o malnut rit ion within S iwai ; even a t t imes
of h eavy rain S iwais have always managed to find adequat e
food . By 1956 there were s ix aid posts throughout S iwai
cap able o f t reat ing primar ily minor illnes ses . The main
diseases ob served on one patrol in 1 9 5 1 were yaws ( 10) ,
t ropical ul cers ( 79 ) and t inea ( grille) ( 4 4 ) , although
conj unct ivit is and dysentery have sub sequently b een mo re
common in the sporadic re feren ces to health made by the
pat rol o f fi cers .
39
Between 1960 and 1 9 72 causes o f death were recorded with
varying degrees o f enthus iasm in S iwai Lo cal Government
Coun cil records but no mo re than 130 deaths were actually
reco rded there .
It is impossible to derive useful con clus ions
from the s e dat� other than to note the con s is ten t and general
prevalence of such diseases as dysen tery , t uberculosis ,
influen z a an d , in the earlier years , malaria . Ep idemics o f
influen z a and whoop in g cough have reached S iwai in the 19 7 0 s
but west ern medicines have been able t o prevent a s igni f icant
increase in mortality . Although all the maj o r dis eases seem
to have decreased in inciden ce in the post-war years , it is
only for malaria that the decline has b een sub stantial
followin g a sprayin g campaign which b e gan in 19 60 ( c f . S cragg ,
1969 : 7 7 ) ; the main causes o f the decline in mortality have
b een the greater availab ility o f penicill in and ant i-malar ials ,
increased numbers o f clini cs and DDT sprayin g against malar i a .
Improved hous in g has reduced resp irato ry diseases whilst the
disposal of garb age in holes an d the almost universal adopt ion
of p it latrines have each reduced illnes s . Throughout the
post-war y ears health measures have gradually reduced the
mor .t ality and morb idity of diseases such as malaria , yaws
and gas t roen t erit is and so far the more obvious western
diseases , such as cardio-vas cular degenerat ion , have had
only the mo st l imited impact in S iwai . Overall S iwais are
now almos t certainly healthier and have a lower mo rtality
rat e than at any t ime in the pas t . This improved health is
refl ected in the stature o f the present populat ion ;
Friedlaender and Ol iver ( 1 9 7 6 : 15 7 ) found that S iwai males
were b igger than their fathers by at least a cent imet re .
Moreover b e fore t he war in the whole o f no rtheast S iwai there
were no cases o f a - child l ivin g at the same t ime as it s
great-grand-paren t (Oliver , 195 5 : 2 74 ) . Now there is one in
almo st every vil lage .
The admin is t ration censuses enab le est imates to be made
o f the crude death rate at dif ferent p eriods in S iwai . With
the except ion o f the last census in 19 7 0- 7 1 all these
s ub s t an t ially underestimat e the death rate be cause of their
exclusion of infant mortality ; even so they do indicat e the
S ince
fairly c on t inuous de cl in e in death rat e s ince t he war .
1 9 7 1 the mor t al ity rate has probab ly cont inued t o fall . Even
so it remain s a high death rate comp ared , for example , wit h
p ar t s o f eas t ern Bougainville ( cf . Friedlaen der , 19 75 : 60-1)
b ut one that is likely t o cont inue to fall , especially
becaus e o f the developin g youthfulness of the S iwai populat ion .
40
Table 5
Death rates in S iwai
Year
All deaths
Populat ion
Death rate
( D e aths / 1000 )
19 5 0-51
132
3919
34
195 4-55
225
422 8
53
1 9 5 5 -56
86
42 9 1
20
19 60-61
101
4 9 94
20
1 9 70-71
99
85 5 9
12
S ource :
Patrol Repor t s
It is even possible to cal culat e crude infant mortal it y
rat es from the p re-war administ rat ion censuses , but given
that S iwais did not repo rt b irths and in fant deaths the
rates have no real validit y .
Indeed inspect ion of the
administ rat ion censuses would sugges t a gradual in crease in
inf an t mortal ity s ince before the war : the exact reverse
of the act ual s it uation .
It is impossible t o det ermine what
the t rue mortality rate is and it is primarily the consist ent
oral evid_en ce of S iwais an � lo cal ob servers such as
mi ss ionaries and heal th workers that permits the oppo s it e
con clus ion t o b e drawn . The infant mortality rate is
certainly fallin g b ut there are no measures o f the rate o f
de cline .
The people o f S iwai
The S iwai populat ion is s t ill growing fas t and many o f
the in fluences on this growth are tho s e ass o ciated e ither
with the development of better health services , enab lin g
people t o live much longer , o r with t he decl ine o f various
kinds of s o cial con trol applied to populat ion growth ,
enablin g the level o f fe rtility to have risen rapidly .
There is no evidence that rapid populat ion increase it sel f
has directly alt ered t radit ional p ract i ces , n o r can it b e
correlate d with the af fluence that followed co coa farmin g .
Analysis o f fert ility sugges t s that the S iwai populat ion
growth rate is not yet at its peak whilst there appear t o
b e no s ignificant influen ces that will p revent a cont inuing
41
rise in fer t il ity . Fert ility decl ine would require community
part icipat ion in child spacing t o re-estab lish pre-war family­
s iz e levels ; this would ent ail the estab l ishment o f modern
techniques of family plann ing t o f ill the role previously
t aken by postpartum abs t inence from interco urse and high
in fant mortality . There are now almo s t no so cially imposed
impediment s t o realiz at ion o f maximum potent ial fert ilit y ;
moreover at the moment there is almo s t no economic cos t t o
high fer t i l ity . The pat tern o f mortal it y decl ine , followed
at an early date by fert ility decl ine , has not yet o ccurred
in Bougainville ; fert ility is s t ill increasing . The relat ive
inf luen ce of cultural chan ge , imp roved infant s urvival rates
and imp roved marital health are impo ssib le t o dist inguish .
The 1 9 7 1 census indicated that the annual growth rate
of the Bougainvillean populat ion (within Bougainville ) was
3 . 4 per cent ; only three other provin ces in the count ry
exceeded this growth rat e . The eviden ce from S iwai , and
from Nagovis i an d Nas ioi (Ogan e t a i . , 1 9 7 6 ) , suggest s t hat
in these p art s o f Bougainville at least the populat ion growth
rate is s t ill not as fast as it might be , especially when
compared with areas such as Tolai in east New Brit ain where
populat ion and land p rob lems are now crit ical ( Gran ger , 19 7 1 ) .
All available evidence sugge s t s that the S iwai populat ion ,
and that o f the rest o f Bouga inville , will cont inue t o grow
at an increas ing rate so that there , as in eas t New Britain ,
populat ion den s it y will b ecome crit ical in some areas .
Mit chell concludes fo r the neighbouring Nagovisi that there
is an ' absence o f realist i c efforts t o reduce the rate of
populat ion growth . The rate of growth is much too h igh .
How can rural peopl e plan their future when their populat ion
will doub le in less than fifteen years ? ' ( 19 7 6 : 148) .
It is
much the s ame in S iwai .
Chap ter 3
Traditional agriculture :
development an d destruc tion
Taro o ccupies so prominent a place in S iuai l i fe
that one might appropriat ely go on for pages
des cr ib ing the numerous variet ies grown ; . . . the
high value placed upon it as the vege tab le food ;
the feelings of deprivat ion nat ives express when
they must go without it ; the frequency with which
it enters into conversat ion ; the numerous
metaphors for it and it s use in ritual . . . S iuai
nat ives spend more hours growing taro than in any
o the r en terprise ,
the plant comprises 80 per
cent of the ir diet , an d
it is the b as i s of
thei r sub s isten ce e conomy generally .
I f that is
f orgo t t en durin g cons iderat ion of mo re dramat i c
act ivit ies , then t rue persp e c t ive o n S iuai life
will have been lo s t ( Ol iver , 1 9 5 5 : 2 6 ) .
.
•
.
•
.
•
The p r ehistory o f south Bougainville is as lit t le known
as any part of Melanes ia .
In 19 7 3 it was only po s s ible to
suggest that ' on the basis of evidence from Aus t ralia and
f rom othe r Pacific islands . . . it would be reasonab le t o
suppose that Bougainville-Buka b egan to b e populat ed ,
init ially by people speaking non-Aust rones ian l an guages [ of
which Siwai is one ] , several millennia ago ' (Oliver , 19 7 3 : 40 ) .
More recently Howells ( 19 7 6 : 6 4 6 ) has sugge sted that man may
have b een on Bougainville as early as 30 , 000 years ago . The
Aus t rones ian language speakers were more recen t arrivals in
Bouga inville , but could have been there as long as 5000 years
ago . Much of even this limited account o f Bougainvillean
p rehis tory is based on no more than speculat ive interpretat ion s
o f linguistic , phys ical anthropolo gical and a thin s catter
of archaeolo gical dat a . All that i s clear is that Bougain­
villeans have been there a very long t ime and that the
con s i derable genetic an d also lin guis t i c d ivers ity on the
island are a resul t of the long separat ion o f quite small
populat ion groups whi ch may have been as s is ted by the early
adopt ion of horticultural techniques .
42
43
S iwai stories des cribe a mythical t ime in the remot e
p a s t when there was n o agriculture and no hunt ing in S iwai .
The only food eaten was wild food plan t s gathered in the
fore st and cooked ; Maker (Tantanu) , fleein g along the coast ,
came upon these early gatherers and showed them how to cook
t aro , yams , mami yams (Diascorea escu lenta) , bananas an d o ther
kinds o f food that they had not known before . Other t ree
crop s such as sago , almonds and co conuts grew as a shelter
to Tantanu as he trudged along the b each ; they too became
part o f the S iwai diet and pigs were incorporated about the
same t ime .
There are , of course , some inconsistencies in
these stories ( O l iver , 1 9 5 5 : 41-4) but overall it is clear
that S iwais believe they have a lon g-estab lished agricult ural
t radit ion , which may indeed have been b rought by the earliest
human arrivals into Bougainville . Pe rmanent agricult ure
tmdoub t edly has a long hist ory on the island .
Between the t ime o f the first agriculturalist s and the
immediat e post-war period , des cribed in s ome detail by
Oliver ( 19 55 ) , there were naturally a numb er o f changes in
the agricultural sys t em o f S iwai, o f which t he mos t important
was probab ly the int ro duct ion o f sweet potat o ( S-pe teitas ;
NM-kaukau ; Ipomoea batatas ) which subsequently b ecame the
mo s t important sub s is t ence crop throughout Bougainville .
S ince there are no mythical s to ries explaining the later
arrival s of minor crops and there are many different vers ions
o f the myth o f Tantanu, each o f which credit him with a
slightly d i f ferent range o f food crop introduct ions , it is
impo ssib le t o do more than make cert ain assumpt ions about
new crops b as ed on what is known of the hist ory of the l imited
contact between S iwai and the out s ide world .
New plan t s could have been deliberately b rought to
southern Bougainville before the nineteenth cen tury although
the direct his t oric trade l inks that are known were o f
l imited ext ent (Oliver , 1 9 7 3 ; Connell , 1 9 7 7 c ) and apparently
between areas with a similar e co lo gy although this need not
have precluded new int ro duct ions .
Contacts with Europeans
were non-exis t ent . The sweet potat o , possib ly s t ill
t ravelling westwards through the Pacific (Yen , 1 9 7 4 : 2 5 9 ) ,
might have reached Bougainville before then but S iwai oral
t radit ion at leas t maintain s a more re cen t origin . A few
crops have no recent origin in S iwai tradit ion yet they are
not usually associated with the mythical t imes of Tantanu
and hen ce with great ant iquity ; these include edib le p it p it
( S-suri ; Saccharurn edule ) , aip ika (Hibiscus manihot) and
tree crops such as b readf ruit .
44
S iwai tradit ions at t r ib ut e the earlies t ' modern ' crop
int roduct ion t o migran t workers returning from various
Pacific plantations , mainly in S amo a . l S ince there were
very few worke rs there , plan t s would almo s t certainly have
travelled badly and mi gran t s were quit e likely to have b een
more interes t ed in mat erial goods , it seems mos t l ikely
that some of these plan t s were in troduced f irst to o ther
Solomon islands , which provided many more migran t s , and
l ater to Bougainville , p o ss ib ly picked up by return in g
migran t s a t some point in thei:r j ourney .
The number o f
plan t int roduct ions, if any, that came directly from Samoa i s
prob ab ly very few whils t there are others which must have
originally come from there (or Fij i and Ro tuma) .
S ome o f
these are innne diately identifiab le from their names ; one
kind o f b anana is called samoa and another fiji .
( A third
S amoan kind is reported t o be kihiri , the name of a coas t al
mis s ion s t at ion in Buin ) . An early variety o f Chines e t aro
was al so called samoa .
It was said that this was t raded
for maruko , a kind o f banana that grew especial ly well in
S iwai , suggest in g that t raders may have played s ome part in
food crop diffus ion s . Later trader s carried plant s around
Richard Parkinson , who could have
for their own b enefit .
had S iwai servan t s , 2 int roduced some o f these food plan t s t o
New Britain .
In 1884 h e found plant s , including cot ton ,
that he had int roduced a year earlier being grown in Tolai
gardens ( Salisb ury , 19 70 : 111) . Other introduct ions from
around S amoa may have been ent irely new crops on Bougainville ,
such as sugar ( S-tongo ) , p ineapples and pumpkin s , al though
even the las t two of these may no t have f inally arrived in
south B ougainville until the period o f German admin ist rat ion .
Sugar can e , whi ch was an indigenous P apuan cult igen , may
have come from the wes t but the reported S amoan origin o f
1
Experience working on plantat ions may have had some influence
on migrants return ing with new plant types yet it is
probab le that missionary influence was even greater .
2
Durin g the las t century the London Mis s ionary
Society in Samoa was an act ive centre of distri­
but ion of economic plants . As an indirect resul t
o f its act ion , t oday it is po ssib le to find in
the maj ority o f South Pacific is lands banana
variet ies called ' S amoa ' or ' Hamoa ' as well as
b readfruit and taro variet ies (Massa! and Barrau ,
1956 : 16 ) .
Parkinson ' s grandson , pers . connn . 19 7 5 .
45
a t least s ome types may reflect the lack o f contact to the
wes t durin g this period .
S ome S iwais also claim that the
first short-no sed p igs came from Samo a .
One o f the more recent int roduct ions that def in itely
did not come directly from S amoa was the sweet potat o . The
first kin d known in S iwai is generally con s idered to be
konua which came to S iwai from Konua , on the northwes t coast
o f Bougainville , and probab ly arrived there around the
middle of the ninet eenth century . 3 S ome S iwais believe that
it first reached there from S amoa and , since there were marry
more migran t s from there than from south Bougainville , this
seems possib le . Another story , t old in different part s o f
S iwai , relat es how Tuhori , a Kaparo man who died about the
t ime that Aus t ralian administrat ion began , b rought back
sweet pot atoes from Fais i in the Shortland islands . He did
not really underst an d what they were so that the f irst
S iwai leader who t ried them , planted them bes ide st icks so
that they might climb up them like b eans . Only lat er did
he dis cover that the food was un derground ( c f . Ogan , 19 72 : 2 5 ) .
Many other kinds o f sweet pot at o , includin g those int roduced
by ·the Japanese in the war (pp . 71 ) , are named after their
s uppo sed p lace o f origin or the place they had recently
come from.
In S iwai , there are amon gs t o thers mabiri ( east
coast of B ougainville) , honiara , bomboi (a S eventh Day
Adven t is t mis s ion in the Solomon Islands ) , tomeka ( or tonga) ,
buin , sinakot (Tenakaut , north Bougainville) ; paka was
reported to have come f rom Rotuma , but there are many more
kinds of unknown der ivat ion .
Chinese t aro or Kongkong taro ( S-karahai ; Xanthosoma)
may also have reached S iwai at much the same t ime as sweet
potat o ; in the 1880s Guppy ( 18 8 7 : 84 ) not iced one kind called
kalafai grown in the Bouga inville S t rait s . Like sweet
potato i t s int roduct ion int o S iwai is recen t enough an d
import ant enough f o r th ere t o b e disagreements over its origin
3
There is l it tle doub t that sweet potato is . . a very recent
arrival in most p art s of Bougainville , compared with mos t
other p art s o f Melanesia . lri Nas ioi · ( Ogan , 19 7 2 : 2 5 ) the
account of it s arrival is much as in S iwai b ut in Teop it
appears t o b e even more recent ; the Teop s ay that although
they knew about t aro in German t imes they did not p lant it
themselves un t il the 19 30s .
S ome variet ies were introduced
from nearby plantat ions and o thers came from the Buin area .
( Shoffner , 1 9 7 6 : 2 7 1-2 ) . The availab le eviden ce on the origin
and spread o f sweet potato in Bougainville is con s idered in
a separate p aper ( Connell , 1 9 7 8a) .
46
and it may have reached the Pacific only in the ninet eenth
cent ury (Keleny , 1962 : 12 ) . There is no s ingle S iwai t radit ion
o f it s arrival ; fo r example in Morokaimo ro it seems to have
come first from Tupop isau , the nearest Buin village , rather
than from elsewhere in S iwai . This part i cular kind ( S -makona)
was at first feared , s ince it seemed l ike wild taro , hence
it was f irst fed t o p igs .
(The same kind is known in part s
o f Buka as S amoan or mi ss ion taro . ) Other areas o f S iwai
and Bougainvi lle have different vers ions of i t s o rigin .
Crops that Guppy ob served around the Bougainville s t raits
in 1884 p robab ly exis t ed in S iwai too . These included
cucumb ers , l imes , man goes and pawpaws , al though the particular
kind of pawpaw grown then may have been sub sequen t ly d isplaced
by a later int ro duct ion . Tobacco was al so growing , although
it had only re cently been int roduced (Guppy , 1887 : 9 4 ) ,
pos sib ly f rom S amoa . Gorai , the Alu ( Shortland Island) chie f ,
was trying maize , apparently a recent gift from a European
trader . 4 Between then and the arrival of the German admin is­
t rat ion in 1905 , runner b eans , water me lons and t omat oes may
al so have reached S iwai .
Crop in troduct ion was a cont inuous
pro cess of experimentat ion .
The history o f early plant int ro duct ion is necessarily
vague and un sat isfying ; the tentat ive outl ine above is from
consisten t account s from at least two widely separated
villages , but even so it is much t oo late to be conf ident
about accuracy . Nevertheless , in an is land chain where the
fauna and f lo ra are depleted eas twards , it is s i gnificant
that most his t oric plant in troduct ions seem to have come t o
south Bougainville from the eas t . Trade , espe cially the
lab our trade , direct ly or ind irectly , was the mean s by which
Why they were int roduced is less clear .
they came .
Everything that is known ab out ninet eenth century
Bougainville , and indeed it s historical antecedent s , suggest s
that Bougainville lived in a world o f ' primit ive ' or
' sub sisten ce df fluence ' which can b e iden t i f ied as condit ions
where
they are ab le to produce , from their own resources ,
as much as they can consume o f the normal s t aple
foods that they are us ed to , t ogether with a
4
At much t he same t ime , around the
was int ro ducing c it rus f ruit s and
no rthern Bougainville ( Blackwood ,
p rob ab ly very lit tle contact then
of the is land .
1890s , the t rader Parkinson
other ' use ful t rees ' int o
1 9 35 : 11 ) but there was
between the s outh and north
47
reasonable surplus for entertainment , display
and emergen cy , and a st andard o f hous ing , clo thing ,
and entertainment , requisites ( e . g . kava) that is
tradit ionally accept ab le , with the employment of a
relat ively small part o f the total potent ial
resources of labour and land availab le to them.
This means that within their self-sub s istent ,
nonmonet ary product ion sys t em the product ivity o f
their l ab o r is very high , and i t is s t ill quite
common in these region s [ the larger Pacific
territories ] t o f ind sub s tan t ial groups o f peasants
able t o sus t ain this level of consump t ion from
their own resources at the cost of an average labor
input o f about three hours per man-day or less
( Fisk , 19 7 5 : 5 9 ) .
In such condit ions S iwais did n o t n eed new sub s istence
crops : t hey were not hun gry and their diet was var ied and
easy t o ob t ain even with stone t ools . We can suggest that
what they did re ceive from the t iny number of migran t s ,
however , were rumours and s tories that o ther people enj oyed
dif ferent foods and that the migrant s thems elves had t ried
them and fo\lll d them ·satis fyin g . New plant s there fore were
almo st certainly not attempt s to improve the diet or make
life eas ier but int erest in g experimen t s that could eas ily
be incorp orated int o the exist ing agricult ural sys tem .
Several o f th ese crops were s imply different species o f
exis t in g plan t s b ut o thers , such a s sugar and t obacco , were
of an ent irely different kin d .
S ome , l ike sweet potatoes ,
were planted with no knowledge o f what to expect .
One o f
these was a kind of grass ( S , NM-purpur) b rought from Alu
because it made a n ice decorat ion for the hair .
The f irst
pat ches were z ealous ly guarded b ut s oon af terwards it p roved
to be a p art icularly int ract ab le weed which even smothered
b ananas .
( It is s t ill common in S iwai . ) There is no o ther
informat ion on o ther pos s ib ly \lll s uccess ful innovations .
S iwai t radit ions record, again with \lll known accuracy , that
in these historical t imes leaders were more power ful an d
more aggre s s ive ; the leaders must have legi t imized these
chan ges and they may indeed have felt that s uccess ful
int roduct ions would give them ext ra prest ige , or even as sist
them in produc ing the ne cess ary wealth to ensure their
eminence in compet it ion with o ther leaders .
At s ome point , probab ly well before the end o f the
nineteent h cent ury and possib ly aro\lll d the t ime of several
new plant int roduct ions , the maj ority of the S iwai population
48
b egan to make the t ransit ion from stone t o s teel tools .
This was the maj o r con tribut ion o f the workers return ing
from S amo a , although even s o the vast maj or ity of steel
t ools prob ab ly came from traders and espec ially the whalers
who by the mid-nineteenth century were using Mono (Treasury)
Island as a regular b ase ( Corris , 1 9 7 3 : 7-8) . No S iwai can
now remember stone tools b e ing used although in 1 9 39 ' many
nat ives ' claimed to have remembered using them ( Ol iver ,
1 9 5 5 : 11 ) . Mit chell ( 1 9 7 6 : 11 ) places the int roduct ion o f
s teel tools int o Nagovis i around the 1880s whilst the E ivo ,
who seem t o have received most o f the ir st eel tools from
the Nagovis i , probab ly had them in common use by 1900
(M. P . Hamnet t , pers . comm. ) .
S teel tools probab ly reached
S iwai a de cade or two before they reached Nagovis i and were
accepted ext remely qui ckly by S iwais ; for a t aro growing
populat ion , oc cas ionally ext ending garden s into dense
trop ical rain fores t , this is not surpris in g . Bush kn ives
however were at leas t as important as axes . Around the upper
Sep ik river , an area probab ly not dis s imilar t o s outh
Bougainville in th e ninet eenth cent ury , Townsen d ( 1 9 6 9 : 2 04 )
est imated that steel tools had a 4 . 4 t o 1 t ime advantage
over ston e tools in clearing an area of mat ure fores t . The
quantitat ive data that exis t s on the implicat ions o f s t one
t o steel transformat ion for the use o f labour in agriculture
is also s omewhat arb it rary yet much the same was probab ly
t rue in S iwai ; 5 for labour saving and prest ige , steel tools
The t ime s aving could have encouraged
were essen t ial .
exper imen t s in crop innovat ion b ut these were probab ly
independent and there is no reason t o correlate the arrival
of new too ls with new crops or even necessarily with new
techniques . Their impact is impossib le to assess .
In the Bougainville S t rait s is lands in 1 884 , ' yams ,
sweet pot atoes , two kinds of t aro , cocoa-nut s , plantains ,
and sugar-cane form the s t aple sub s t an ces of the diet '
( Guppy , 1 88 7 : 84 ) .
In S iwai it seems t hat sweet potat oes
5
Lea ( 19 7 2 : 2 54-5 ) argues that estimates o f t ime s avings such
as this , although probab ly accurate for cut t ing act ivit ies ,
may overemphas iz e the t ime gained s ince cut t ing was only
one of o ther act ivit ies where the t ime saving may not have
In Bougainville cut t in g was probab ly more
been so great .
important than in the other act ivit ies ment ioned by Lea ;
mo reover t hese latt er act ivit ies were o f t en predominantly
carr ied o ut by women .
S ince fallowing did not t ake place
unt il un dergrowth had died the mos t sub s t an t ial t ime s avings
were those in cut t in g . Other agricultural act ivit ies may
have gained very l i ttle from t he t ran s it ion .
49
were less important an d t aro much more dominant , but this
was the comb inat ion of crops that became important .
Sugar
and sweet potat oes were new in troduct ions and although they
could not rival t aro they were s i gnificant int roduct ion s , a
clear indicat ion that even in a remote area in condit ions o f
sub s istence affluen ce agricult ure was quite capable o f change .
The era o f administ rat ion
The in fluen ce o f the Germans in south Bougainville was ,
at most , minimal . Their p lantat ions on the eas t coast
int roduced new crops int o Bougainville ( in clud ing cot t on and
rubber) an d although they may have b rought new food crops
there is no evidence for it . Although some informan t s claimed
that Germans encouraged S i�ais t o plant co conut s as adminis­
trat ion policy in Bougainville , this was almost cert ainly
not t rue . 6 It would have assisted German t raders who were
vis it in g most p arts of the islan d ' s coas t l ine b ut conver sely
it would have s lowed lab our migrat ion to the n ew plantat ion s
in Bougainville an d New Britain .
Indepen dent ly t rade
probab ly encouraged increased co conut p lant ing in this
period b ut it can have b een very sli ght . 7 I f there were
agri cultural changes in the German era they have gone
l.llln ot iced .
The Aust ral ian administ rat ion e f fect ively reached s outh
Bougainville in 19 19 when a police post was set up on the
Buin coas t at Kan gu .
Improvement o f agriculture was
necessarily not the primary interest of the new administ rat ion
although , as the f irst Report to the League of Nat ion s ,
whi ch covered the seven-year period f rom 19 14-192 1 , recorded :
6 ogan ( 1 9 7 2 : 7 9 ) was equally l.lll c ertain about ef fect ive German
pol icy even in the areas closest to Kiet a where their only
s t at ion was established . Rowley ( 19 5 8 : 2 41-3) maintains that ,
unl ike B r it ish policy in Papua , the Germans did not force
villages t o plant co conut s and Salisbury ( 1 9 7 0 : 113-8) implies
that there were no forced p lant in gs . In S amoa the Germans
certain ly forced village chie fs at least t o plant coconut s
(Pitt , 1 9 70 : 24 ) .
7Thurnwald ( 19 36 : 34 8 , 35 1 ) imp lies that even in Buin there
was no copra trade at leas t un t il 1909 although returned
labour migrant s h ad carried out more extens ive co conut
planting . On the o ther hand Ribbe describ ed a quite ext ens ive
copra trade on the Buin coast by 1894-5 with some of the
t rade goods b e in g b ar t ered from t r ibe to trihe and ending
up in distant mol.lll t ain villages ( Ribbe , 1903 : 9 0-6 , c ited
by Oliver , 19 7 3 : 2 1- 3 ) .
50
The e f forts of some Di st rict Off icers t o p romote
nat ive plant at ions , thus en couragin g nat ives ,
lat e ly taken from a life o f t r ibal war fare and
s t renuous hunt ing and agricult ure carried on with
p r imit ive implements , t o occupy themselves in
indust ry use ful t o thems elves and help ful t o the
mat erial development o f the coun try , deserves
spec ial men t ion (PCA , 1922 : 14 ) .
None o f this was apparent in south Bougainville . Even s o ,
as early as 192 3 it was repo rted for Bougainville that
' Except in areas where the al t it ude prohib it s bearing , the
nat ives have their own co conut groves and have b een regularly
ins t ructed as to the measures necessary to comb at diseases
and pest s ' ( P CA , 1 9 2 4 : 62 ) , but this almo st cert ainly meant
only the area immediately around the Kiet a s tat ion . Two
years lat er , ' Many of the nat ive co co -nut groves are now
coming in to b earing, and the pol i cy o f regular annual plant ing
of addit ional co conut s has been cont inued (PCA 1 9 2 6 : 39 ) .
Lit tle of this influence had reached south Bougainville
wh ere the Adminis trator commen t ed on his return f rom Buin
in 19 2 8 that ' more work of a penetrat ive nature [ is ] to be
carried out in th is port ion of Bougainville ' ( P CA , 1 9 2 9 : 83 ) .
The next report pointed o ut that ' even in the " un cont rolled
area" of Nagovis i the nat ives have b een induced t o plant ,
and 2 9 00 new palms are being cult ivated there ' ( P CA , 1 9 3 0 : 4 8 ) .
Elsewhere , presumab ly around Kiet a , ' many o f the plantat ions
will soon be in full bearin g , and will be a source o f wealth
t o the owners ' (PCA, 19 30 : 4 8 ) .
It is un iversally believed
by S iwais that early in the period of Aust ralian adminis­
t rat ion a law was pas sed that ten coconut s should be planted
for each child born ( Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 2 8 ) . Although there seems
no trace o f such an ordinance , it probab ly exis t ed . a The
19 3 3 Repo r t did note that ' as in other dis t ricts the village
groves are communal though lines of palms are allot ted to
fami l ies to maintain and to harvest nut s ' (PCA, 19 34 : 71 ) .
Whi ch p ar t s of Bougainville this was t rue for is unspecified .
The Aus t r a l ian adminis t rat ion were unden iably int erested in
8
J . P . ' Fred ' Archer has s t ated that Captain Henry Clair
Cardew , the Dis t ri ct Of ficer , ordered the plan t ing of ten
co conut s per h ead soon after the st art of the Aust ralian
administ rat ion ( pers . comm . 1 9 7 6 ) . Blackwood recorded
that the administ rat ion was encouraging co conut plan t in g
by ' requiring t rees to b e s t arted f o r every child born '
( 19 35 : 31 0 ) . Ol iver also call s this an ' admin is t rat ion
pres cript ' ( 19 5 5 : 52 7 ) .
51
encouraging copra product ion , thereby cont inuing the general
German policies for New Guinea .
Indeed throughout the two
inter-war decades they took lit t le int erest in o ther kinds
of agricultural act ivity .
Although there were o c cas ional int er-war agricultural
pat rol s there are no records o f their act ivit ies other than
Chinnery ' s ob s ervation s in 19 2 8 that · • almost any of the
known t ropical economic crops should do well - a fact to
which the att ent ion of the nat ives is b eing constantly drawn
by travelling ins tructors o f the Department of Agriculture '
( Ch innery , 192 4 : 8 7 ) . The int er-war S iwai leader , Kope , who
became a paramotmt luluai , organized the people of Unanai
to p lant t en coconut t rees each .
S in ce he had , at one t ime ,
ten wives and he planted more than ten co conut s himself , he
must have had s omethin g approaching a t iny plantat ion . The
Annual Report for 1922 has a mys terious reference to two
S iwai ' p lantat ion s ' , owned by kukerais Kob i ( clearly Kope)
and Angus , who was presumably Ain kes , the lu luai o f the
coastal Buin village of Riorio ( c f . Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 319 ) .
The mys t ery is the ext ent o f t hese plantat ions ; that o f Kope ,
the l argest o f the two , was recorded as having 2 5 00 co conut
trees bearin g , 2 5 30 t rees not yet b earing , 2 4 6 9 acres of
' nat ive foods planted ' , 454 p igs and labour res erves o f 72 4
males and 714 females (PCA , 192 3 : 112 ) . How these enormous
developmen t s escaped earl ier not ice may have puz z led crit i cal
readers of the Annual Report s . Assumin g , perhaps llll.j us t i f i­
ab ly , that the numb er o f t rees , p igs and gardens was the
t o t al s t o ck o f some 300 hous eholds that might have b een
dominated by Kope , this would give a plaus ible level o f pig
and coconut (if not garden ) ownership for 192 1 .
It probab ly
represented the s ituat ion over the whole area of S iwai ,
excludin g the eastern part un der Ainkes , that was then
I f these ' p lantat ion s '
inf luenced by the admin i s t rat ion .
were ready b earin g then there had indeed been s ome early
influence of either t raders or German administ rat ion .
Certainly by 192 9 copra was availab le for s ale from S iwai .
' One firm which had a pedler ' s [ s i c ] l icence in the Buin sub ­
dist r i ct reported t hat durin g the year it had purchased
2 7 7 5 bags of copra f rom the natives in that area ' (PCA ,
1930 : 4 8) , an d there were t h e f i r s t repo rted indicat ions t hat
prices were affect ing product ion ; the ' low market price o f
copra has adversely affected nat ive t rading ' (PCA, 1930 : 4 8 ) .
Even in that y ear of poor prices 5 9 copra-trading l i cences
were is sued on the island , p robab ly mainly to east coast
One o f the areas most suited to
plantat ion owners .
indigenous co conut product ion mus t have b een north east
52
Bougainville where t raders found ready an chorages and
European plant at ions were nearby . 9 However , in 1930 copra
product ion had become almost non-exist ent there :
. . . now that the copra market has fallen upon evil
days , it is be coming increas ingly difficult for
the nat ives t o get a price for it in any way
commen s urate with the lab our involved , and there
seems but lit t le fut ure for the indus t ry , as far
as they are concerned
Once in a while ,
espec ially after a reprimand from t he Dist rict
Officer , there i s a s udden b urst of act ivity , in
which everyb ody sets t o work c lean in g away the
undergrowth which cover s the root s , and tearing
down the paras it i c and o ther creepers whi ch
festoon the b ranches .
The casual way in which the
nat ive t reat s his coconut palms is all the more
no t i ceab le in cont rast to the met iculous care
whi ch is lavished on the t aro garden ( Blackwood ,
19 35 : 310-1) .
•
•
.
S in ce the p eople o f Kurt atchi village , describ ed here , had
no sour ces o f cash o ther than those available to S iwais it
seems highly probab le that co conut plantings in S iwai were
in even worse condit ion than tho s e in the north of the
island .
In the 1 9 30s the price of copra fell dras t ically
(Tab le 6 ) so that for at leas t two y ears after 1 9 3 0 there
was only a small trade in copra over the whole of the is land
whilst in 1 9 31 ' there was a revival in the collect ion o f
ivory nut s ' ( P CA, 1 9 32 : 5 6 ) , the seeds o f t h e s ago palm that
were sold for but t on manufacture . However annual admin is­
t rat ion reports covered the whole island and rarely d ist in g­
uished dif ferent condit ions in d i fferent areas .
Thus in
1 9 31 , when the price o f copra was already less than half
what it h ad b een a decade earlier , only a small p art of Buin
was under ' complet e government cont rol ' . Almost all o f
(Nagov i s i
S iwai was merely under ' government influen ce ' .
was a t b es t under ' part ial government in fluence ' and the
mountains inland were only ' penet rated by pat rols ' . ) Most
9
What l i ttle evidence there is suggest s that the east coast
was t he main area of p re-war co conut growing in B ougainville .
Ext racts from apparent ly t he only s urviving repor t o f a
pre-war agricultural p at rol to northwest Bougainville show
that there were very few coconut s in e ither Konua or Hahon
(Gilb ert , 1 9 39 ) .
53
Tab l e 6
Copr4 price 1913-19 40
Mean price per ton ( Rab aul )
1 9 13
£21 . 12 . 9
1 9 2 9 - 30
£ 13 . 10 . 0
191 7-18
£1 8 . 15 . 4
1 9 30-31
£11 . 10 . 0
1 91 8-19
£16 . 8 . 3
1931-32
£10 . 8 . 0
19 19 -2 0
£ 32 . 16 . 3
19 32-33
£ 9 . 4. 3
1 92 0-2 1
£2 7 . 0 . 2
1 9 33-34
£ 4 . 11 . 0
1921-22
£18 . 6 . 2
19 34-35
£ 6. 8. 6
1922-2 3
£18 . 19 . 8
1935-36
£11 . 4 . 6
192 3-2 4
£19 . 12 . 7
1936-37
£16 . 2 . 4
1924-2 5
£20 . 19 . 10
1 9 3 7-38
£11 . 1 0 . 0
192 5-2 6
£22 . 3 . 6
19 38-39
£ 9 . 18 . 6
19 39-40
£ 8 . 10 . 0
192 7-2 9
S ource :
n.d.
P CA Annual Reports 19 22-19 41 .
of what trade there was in the south , and hen ce mos t o f the
co conut product ion , probab ly came from Buin l O with the S iwai
villages that were closest t o the coast contribut ing a p art
of the total . Almos t certainly the l ocal p rice was much
less than the o f ficial figures suggest ( c f . S alisbury , 19 7 0 :
5 0 ) . Voyce (per s . connn . , 1 9 7 5 ) bel ieves that_ in the 19 30s
co conut s were sold at 100 for a shill ing mainly from the
coast al areas , although Ebery , the owner of Toiumonapu
plantat ion s outh of Kieta had set up a trade s tore at Tonu
aroun d 19 31 which survived for perhap s hal f a decade or more .
He may h ave t raded goods for copra as was certainly the case
in early s t o res in northeas t Bougainville (Blackwood ,
19 35 : 44-6 ) .
There may have been s t o res or trading posts o f some
lO
S ince Thurnwald ( 19 36 : 35 1 ) notes only that ' some of the
natives were selling coconut s or copra to traders ' in Buin
it seems that many of the Annual Reports may have been
exaggerat ion s b ased on the enthus iasm rather than ob serv­
at ion of district o f f icers .
54
kind on the S iwai coast during the period o f German admin is­
trat ion ; the oral eviden ce of coastal S iwais suggest s that
st o res were there but avail ab le contemporary do cument ary
evidence provides no corroborat ion .
Certainly traders
occas ionally p i cked up labour and copra on the coast and may
well have t raded intermittently in o ther conunodit i es but it
seems prob able that the first store buildin gs did not exis t
llll t il the period o f Aus t ral ian admin i st rat ion . During this
later period there is ampl e evidence for the exis t en ce o f
s tores a t Mamagota on the coast an d others built b y European
and Ch inese t raders in asso ciat ion with the two mis s ions .
Pur chases could be made with either cash or shell money
( S-mauai) and the conten t s o f the stores were reported to be
quit e s imilar to those o f present-day stores .
I f co conut s ,
which were the main source o f cash income , were s old at
around 100 for one shilling it is unl ikely that there was
ever much cash availab le for purchases from trade stores .
They must have operated at best sporadically and although
one or two S iwais were taught to l ook after the s tores and
cotmt mon ey they were in no way respon s ible for their
management . The stores were , in a sense , s imply the first
tentat ive phys ical penet rat ion b y the commercial world .
Writ ing some three decades lat e r , Father Lebel recall ed
how the p rice of copra in Bougainville f rom 19 30 t o 1935 was
around £15 to £2 0 per t on , but how it had fal l en to £3 by
1940 , whilst at the same t ime the price of a bag of rice had
risen from 10 shil l in gs to £1 (Catho lic Aation , 1 9 6 0a) .
This comment , al though almo s t cert ainly in erro r over the
prevail in g cop ra p rices , ind icat es the way in which the t erms
o f what l ittle trade exist ed and moved rap i dly again s t local
copra pro ducers .
In S iwai there had prob ab ly been no mo re
than min imal in corpo rat ion in this cash economy , especially
s in ce the high es t copra prices more o r less co in c ided with
their own in it ial plant ings , s o that by the en d o f the 1 9 3 0 s
there was e f fect ively no cop ra being t raded . B y 19 39 ' the
s ale o f co conut s and copra to out s i ders had ceased ' ( Ol iver ,
1 9 5 5 : 34 7 ) . Even so , in the period unt il the war , coconut s
were the only crop that S iwais had planted for sale and ,
even in uplan d Rataiku , where Oliver est imat ed that each
family had twenty-two palms , this number was increas in g so
much that ' co conut plan t at ion s will probab ly become important
fact o rs in land use ' ( 19 5 5 : 4 79-80 ) . Ho t air driers that
could have produced more valuable copra never reached south
Bougainville , hen ce the bulk o f copra product ion in Bougain­
ville was from the east coas t . Plant at ion lab our was the
usual source of cash in come and in the 1 9 3 0 s the f irst , and
55
las t , European plan tat ion in s outh Bougainville , began at
Tobo ruai , j us t inland from Kihili and the port of Buin .
The 1924 Annual Report on the Territory o f New Guinea
recorded that in Bougainville ( and apparently only in
Bougainville) :
' Fruit and nut t rees have been planted along
the p atrol routes , in accordan ce with a general s cheme
whereby i t is p roposed that every patrol route will be l ined
by trees of s ome economic value ' (PCA , 192 5 : 51 ) . Co conuts ,
and in a few cas es betel nut p alms , (which the admin i st rat ion
certainly did no t encourage ) are the only planted trees that
presently line the roads of Bougainville but there is a hin t
that the adminis t rat ion were b eginning to look beyond
co conuts . The 1924 Report expressed concern ; ' in some p arts
of the Terr itory the nat ives neglect t o make gardens o f
sufficient area to s upply the needs of themselves and their
families an d p re fer to sell their copra , which , in many
in st an ces , is made by their women folk , for rice and t inned
meat ' (PCA, 1 9 2 5 : 19 ) .
This was mo s t unlikely to have b een
t rue o f s outh Bougainville but i t is an indicat ion o f the
chan ge in administ rat ion att itudes so that they were
con side ring ' propo sals
for the s t imulat ion of nat ive
agricul tural p roduct ion ' (PCA , 1 9 2 5 : 1 9 ) which would as s is t
them ' in the growin g o f economic crops f o r their own b enefit '
(PCA , 1 9 2 5 : 19 ) through consump t ion rather than through sale .
The adminis trat ion intended to s t art by encouraging corn
produc t ion and by 192 6 had published leaflets on ' The Grot.md
Nut ' and ' Addit ional Crops for the Territory ( Cas tor , Grotmd
Nut s , Mai z e , Sesame and Tob acco ) ' but emphas is remained
f irmly on the plantin g o f co conut s for copra product ion even
though it was becoming apparent that coconuts were not
everywhere being rap idly a s s imilated int o the agricultural
system . This was blamed on the ' sys t em of agr iculture ,
known as s hi f t ing cult ivat ion ' which was only p ractised by
' t.mcivilized races ' (PCA , 1 9 2 9 : 22 ) , but the Director of
Agri culture , G . H . Murray , was caut iously op t imistic :
•
•
•
Mo s t nat ives are , to a l imited exten t , agricul­
turalist s , and our aim s ho ul d be no t to destroy
but t o modify and improve their sys t em of cul t i­
vat ion in such a way that will be understandable
to them.
In future , therefore , nat ives will not
only b e trained t o space their coco-nuts more
widely , but will b e taught the nece s s ity of usin g
cover pl an t s ( leguminous weeds) or the cult ivat ion
o f food plan t s like t apioca , taro , maize , between
the coco-nut l ines s o that the land may b e fully
56
occup ied , which is but a modificat ion o f the ir
own methods (PCA, 192 9 : 2 3 ) .
Consequen tly an agr icultural s chool was set up at
Keravat in New Brit a in , but throughout the int er-war y ears
there seem to have been no more than a dozen New Guinean
s tudent s each y ear , mo st o f whom probably came from New
Brit ain . A ro tat ion cycle o f rice , maize and peanut s was
taught there and also in the villages o f New Britain where
there were limited successes ( Salisbury , 1 9 7 0 : 4 9 -5 0 ) .
In
1936 Bougainville too had some sort o f school ; ' a nat ive
foods experimental garden has b een s t arted at the Government
stat ion at Buka Pass age by the Agricult ural Inspec t o r and
Inst ructor an d has acted as a cen t re for dis t r ibut ion o f seeds
and for demon s t rat ion o f me thods o f cul t ivat ion to natives
in the district ' (PCA , 1 9 3 8 : 84 ) . There are no o ther accollll t s
of this garden ; it is n o t known what seeds were dist ributed
and what me thods were shown to which Bougainvilleans .
It
can not have b een important . The admin is t rat ion had
de f in itely b ecome int erested in food crop product ion ,
especial ly in their o f f icial publicat ions , but there is no
evi dence that south Bougainville was even in fluenced by this
chan ge ; there , as elsewhere , copra product ion remained the
main concern of the administrat ion . 1 1
The mo st important source o f new plants in the pre-war
years were the two S iwai mission s .
The Cathol ic miss ion had
11
In south Bougainvil le the mis s ion teacher J . H . L . Waterhouse
(who was also a spare-t ime plant collector for Kew Garden s )
made his own asses sment o f the situat ion following a year ' s
s tay at Tonu miss ion in 1 9 30 .
It was reported that ' he
c ame acro ss a very primit ive race at S iwai ' but neverthele s s
h e ' was impres sed b y the excellent roads which are main tained
by nat ives throughout the coast al areas . He cons iders that
sugar-cane , kapok , pineapple s , l imes and peanut s would grow
success fully for the so il is wonderfully r ich and deep .
The collll. t ry is well-watered , which would make it ideal for
cat t le-farming and p ig-rais ing ' (Anon , 1 9 3la : 7 ) . Waterhouse
was als o o p t imist i c about the commerc ial p o s s ib ilit ies o f
the mass ive wild bananas that were s imilar t o Manila hemp
and , on his re turn to S iwai , he in tended to carry out
experimen ts on ' ma ize and various t ropical p roduct ' .
Implicit in th is proposal was that the o r gan i z at ion would
necessar ily be by Europeans , hence the chief drawb ack was
con side red to be the lack o f shipp ing facilit ies ; S iwais
never learnt about these p art icular development s t rat egies .
57
no mor e than s light in fluence .
Fr S chl ieker is reported to
have int ro duced one kind of Xanthosoma taro to the Laku area
o f eas tern S iwai in the 1920s and he was also known t o have
distributed seeds and to be keen on growin g various kinds o f
plant s , y e t there is no evidence t hat these demon s t rat ions
encouraged Cathol ic S iwais t o accept new crops . Nor is there
any evidence that most o f the Catholic mi ss ionaries were
part icularly int eres ted in en couraging agricul tural change .
The Methodist Mis s ion however had a much greater influence ,
part ly through the in fluence o f the first Methodist miss ion­
ar ies , who b rought at least one species of taro from Roviana
(New Geor gia) in the 1920s , b ut mainly because of the presen ce
at Tonu f rom 1 9 2 6 to 1 9 36 o f Mr A. H . Voyce (who subsequently
worked at Kihil i in Buin and , after the war , returned to Tonu) .
He grew a range o f n ew crops in his own garden , which he
int ended to expand for agricultural t rain in g, but was unab le
to obt ain land in S iwai so moved to Kihili on the Buin coas t .
Despite this init ial rej ect ion many o f the crops that he
first plan ted in that decade event ually be came regular
componen t s of S iwai garden s . Voyce b rought in anything that
t ook h is f an cy rather than anythin g that might become a cash
crop or have a p ar t icular nutrit ional value , and he reached
an agreement with the Bot an i cal Gardens at Rabaul to t rade
Bouga invillean o rchids for anything they thought he might
l ike .
Consequently almo st all his introduct ions came direct ly
from New Brit ain , although the p lant s might not have been
nat ive to there .
In no more than a decade he introduced over
fifty new plants t o S iwai .
Coco a , b rought from Vunakamb i , Rabaul , was planted by
him in 192 8 and a few t ree s , s t ill b ear in g , remain at Tonu .
(Lat er he planted it for connne rcial purposes at Kihili , Buin
and it was j us t beginning to b ear when the war s t ar ted and
des t royed the experimen t . ) The o riginal cocoa became no
mor e than an unusual decorat ive plan t .
Some o f these food
plant int roduct ions were new species o f already exis t in g
crops : King co conut s , Queen pineapples , . kuma sweet potato
( from New Zealand) , Tongan yams , sword beans , wing b eans ,
mamioko p awpaws and new k in ds o f aip ika and t omatoes . Others
were apparen t ly ent irely new : guavas , peppers , swee tsops ,
soursops , European potatoes , lemons , oranges , l imes , pomolo es
{pink and whit e ) , man gosteen s , Madagas car plums , avo cado
pears and pos s ib ly mangoes , ginger , nutmegs , cust ard apples ,
the tul ip tree and okra. His o ther plant in troduct ions
included a variety of flowerin g plan t s and shrub s , including
Bougainvillea, whi ch is not a nat ive o f Bougainville , a
mis cellany o f poten t i al cash crops such as co f fee , oil palms ,
58
rubber and cot ton (both o f whi ch lat ter two had been grown
on the earlies t Ge rman plantat ions in Bougainville ) , and
mi scellaneous t rees such as Kapok , Indian teak and Klinki i
p ine . 12 Later , a t Kihili , h e began rice growin g ; some
Methodis t S iwais t ook rice back to S iwai and before the war
a very small amount was bein g grown there and milled at
Kihili . 1 3
The maj o rity o f the food plan t s were even tually incor­
porated into man y S iwai gardens although few ever became
valuab le food crops . Never theles s all could be grown with
apparent ease , especially rice and the several c ash crops .
Almost al l , except English potatoes , can st ill b e found and
several are now regular components of S iwai market s . No
del iberat e attempt was made to en courage S iwais to grow these
food plan ts but Methodis t s tried them and l iked mos t o f them
enough to adopt them in a small way ; the decade that Voyce
stayed in S iwai was a minor perio d o f local agricultural
experimen tation . He is rememb ered fo r several s uccess ful
introduct ion s and individual S iwais o ften at t ribute recent
plant in t roduct ions to his e fforts . Peanuts and on ion s are
somet imes claimed to have been introduced by him but corn ,
also some t imes att rib · uted to him, had certainly arrived
12
A. H . Voyce (pers . comm. 1 9 7 5 ) . He l i st ed a t o t al of fif tys ix species, plus o ther unnamed shrub s and f lowers , that he
claimed to have in troduced int o south Bougainville .
13
The benefits that might have then accrued to S iwai and the
po tent ial of south Bougainville for agricul ture are more
than re flected in Luxton ' s account of Voyce ' s work or Kihili
befo re 1 9 36 :
agr iculture and animal husbandry were now int ro duced
on a s cale not pos s ible hitherto . In a very short t ime
the j un gle area was t ransformed int o a f ine mi ss ion
s tat ion with th e appearance of a well-tended park .
In
less than three years
the re were n early three
huridred acres under cul t ivat ion , and over three hundred
var iet ies of plant s were growin g on the s t at ion co conut palms , various nuts and fruit t rees , root and
grain crops , ve getables , shrub s , flowers and grasses .
Hill ri ce was in tro duced and grown succes s fully , and a
rice mill was in stalled to husk the rice .
Cas sava
flour and corn meal were made experimentally . Peanut s ,
a wide range o f variet ies o f bananas , and o ther foods
were int ro duced .
In the livestock area there were
fowls , ducks , geese , p igs , and a few goat s (Luxt on ,
1 9 5 5 : 1 3 7- 8 ) .
The n eares t turkeys were on the Shortland Islands .
.
•
.
•
•
.
59
be forehan d .
Others learnt f rom him d i fferen t ways o f cooking
cas sava (which already existed in S iwai) and also ways o f
milling it ; today a line o f kapok t rees i s a definit ive
marker o f a United Church village where kapok seeds s t ill
provide pillow fillin g .
In S iwai , a s amon gst the Tolai o f east New Brit ain ,
there exi s t s an ext remely large numb er o f plant s
that have b ecome indigenously cult ivated after bein g
introduced in European gardens
Only a few have
become e conomic crops , either for consumpt ion o r
f o r s ale , b ut they are familiar an d have been tested
by nat ive plant in gs . Among them are the various
anona fruits - soursops , cust ard-apples
and
sweetsops - teak and f icus rubber t rees , garlic and
cap s icum, kapok t rees , dry r i ce , giant var ie t ies of
co conut , tobacco , cit rus and guava
Those that
have been accept ed as important in nat ive product ion
are few - peanut s , man io c , p ineapples , rubber
b ean s , t omat o es , cacao ( Salisbury , 19 7 0 : 111 ) .
•
•
•
•
•
.
•
.
.
It is not surpris ing that b o th Tolais and S iwais should
follow the same p attern of innovat ion ; nor is it surprising
that it was also a famous Methodist miss ionary , Geo rge
Brown , who int ro duced many o f these crops t o the Tolai .
The numb e r o f crops that b ecame widely plant ed may have been
few ; they were certainly important .
Cro p s that are o f uncertain o rigin but p robably arrived
dur in g the t ime of the pre-war Aust ralian admin ist rat ion
( and po ss ib ly through their ef fort s ) in clude peanut s .
Cas sava , def initely in Bougainville in 1 9 2 1 , may have b een
a rather earl i er int ro duct ion . The admin ist rat ion made few
introduct ion s , and the b ann in g o f t rade with the Shortlands
and cen tral S olomon Islands meant that mos t o f the new
int roduct ions were tho s e o f the mi ss ions . Nevertheles s new
kinds o f plants were always being b rought int o S iwai ;
migrant workers would o ften t ry something new , find that
they liked it and b r in g it back .
In this way a s catter of
new crops emerged in s in gle villages whilst some o f the very
early int roduced species were edged out by sub sequen t
compet ito rs ; konua , the f irst kind o f sweet potat o , is n o
lon ger grown n o r are the earliest p in eapples : and pawpaws .
One chan ge in this early era o f admin i st rat ion was that ,
perhaps f o r the first t ime for centuries , the n ew plant s
that reached S iwai were coming from the west and not the east .
60
S ome new animals had also b een int roduced into S iwai
b ut their hi sto ry is even mo re uncertain ; the mos t important
o f these were differen t variet ies o f p igs , s ome of which
came in the n ineteen th century , which were twice or even
four t imes as large as the exis t in g p i gs (Oliver , pers .
comm . 19 7 7 ) .
Chickens ( S-kukulaku ; NM kakaruk) had also
prob ab ly appeared wel l be fore the end o f the nineteenth
century and , despite the ir lo cal name , may have b een cont emp­
oraneous with pigs . There were also d ifferen t kinds of dogs ;
S ome new
one kind at leas t came indirectly f rom Samoa .
species reached Bougainville in the twen t ieth century but
mos t never left the mi ssions ; Voyce int roduced cows , goats
and ducks t o Tonu and the Catholic mi ss ion also had cows
(which were eat en by the Japanese during the war) .
Overall the r emoteness o f Bougainville, and especially
of south Bougainville from the cent res of Aus t ralian admin­
istration meant that in ter-war agricultural plann ing was
almo st t o t ally ab sent . The adminis t rat ion were able to do
no more than encourage the plan t ing o f a min imum o f t en
co conut s , which meant that there was lit t le copra for remo t e
t raders .
The exi s t ing horticultural sys tem was more than
adequate fo r S iwai food requirement s and market s for potent ial
foo d surpluses were quit e inaccessible . The po licy in the
Madan g are a of the no rth coas t of New Guinea of develop in g
' large co mmun al vegetab le o r r i ce garden s usually involving
more than one village ' (Moraut a , 1 9 7 4 : 31 ) would have b een
pointless in s outh Bougainville . 14 There was nowhere t o
sell an y s urplus product ion . Nor were there t h e compuls ory
village group plantings of coconut s , rubbe r and citrus t rees
that t ook place in the Northern Dis t rict of Pap ua ( C ro comb e ,
1964 : 4-5 ) .
The little commercial agricul ture that had
succeeded in Bougainville was mainly very clo s e to government
s t at ions and required con s t an t supervis ion ; it had l it tle
t o do with lo cal condit ions and demands and nothing t o do
with south Bougainville . The S iwai con t r ib ut ion t o the
economy was in the pass ive role of providing labour rather
than in act ive product ion for the t rading world .
14
Evidence from around Madang indicates that p re-war
agr icult ural pol icy there was lit t le different from that
around Rabaul , and p o ss ib ly o ther towns in New Guin ea .
Rice was bein g plan ted in indigenous garden s there in the
1 9 30s and b etween 19 36 and 1 9 3 8 didimen had int roduced
cof fee , cher ries , rambutans , avocadoes , soursops ,
mandarin s , man goes , let tuces , cabbages and t omatoes
(Marr , 1 9 38 : 30-6 ) .
61
Before the war the b ulk o f what lit tle ev iden ce is
availab le suggest s that cash c ame int o S iwai either from
return in g wage lab ourers ( almost all o f whom had b een on
plantat ions ) or from a small number o f sales , mainly of copra ,
but o ccas ionally of ivory nut s and o ther commodit ies .
However o ther goo ds were bought and sold essen t ial ly within
S iwai ; Oliver ob served that cash was used ' by some individuals
to purchas e pot t ery , l ime , and even foodstuf fs .
In such
cases , the ven do r usually accept s it , ins t ead o f shell money ,
in order t o raise money to purchase western goods or to pay
his head-t ax ' ( Oliver , 1955 : 51 5 ) .
The shill in g was the main
\lll i t , rarely divis ible , in such purchases and Voyce {pers .
comm. 1 9 75 ) ob s erved how b efore the war one span o f ma:uai
shell money , or a shilling , could be used to p ur chase a plot
o f taro , al though sales o f t aro were only made on ' rare
o c cas ion s ' (Olive r , 1955 : 2 5 ) . Although cash sales were
relat ively rare there were cons iderab ly more exchanges us in g
tradit ional shell money whi ch , a s has b een argued el sewhere
( Connell , 19 7 7 c ) , then p erformed a fun ct ion that was almost
identical t o that o f cash . A sub s tan t ial numb er o f trans­
act ion s , especially fo r the p ro ducts o f special is t s ( su ch as
po tt ery and bows ) , were carr ied out through one or o ther of
these two fo rms of monet iz at ion .
Cash exchanges with the
worl d b eyon d S iwai may have been rare but they were not
something that was novel an d unusual ; they could b e incor­
porat ed relat ively eas ily int o the t radit ional soc ial and
economi c o rganizat ion of S iwai society .
Before 19 39 there are only the b riefest overall accounts
o f S iwai agricul ture ; Chinnery observed in 1924 that ' the
S iwai people plant taro , yams , sweet po tatoes , sugar cane ,
b an anas , and o ther nat ive foods , and have domest icat ed p igs
and do gs
certain European veget ables have b een int roduced
and these are planted in many of the villages . The gro\lll d
is fert il e , and there always appears t o be plenty o f food '
( Chinnery , 1 9 2 4 : 9 9 ) . A plant coll e ctor who had spent s ome
months in south Bougainville in 1 9 30 commented :
•
•
•
A s t rong t ropical sun , a genial climat e with no
great ext remes , bount eous rainfall , and rich soil
enab le them to produce all the food they require
with lit t le e f fort .
Th e garden s are primit ive
affairs , with no at t empt at serious cult ivat ion .
The only great e f fort is to erect pig-proo f fen ces ,
for all the p igs , although n at ive-owned , run wild
and dep en d for their l ivel ihood upon their
foragin g propensit i es .
62
The s t aple o f the nat ive diet is t aro , and as the
nat ive eat s but one regular large meal a day he
has to plant ab out 500 t aro s f or a food-supply of
s ix months to one year (Kaj ewski , 1946 : 30 3 ) .
Ten years later the bas ic sys t em was exactly the s ame and
few o f the new plants had b een successfully estab l ished ;
Oliver ob served that ' few S iwai have yet acquired tastes f o r
the recen t ly int ro duced maize and t omato ' ( 19 5 5 : 2 6 ) .
Of the
newer int roduct ions only rice had fared much better . Despite
several kinds o f en couragement and demonst rat ion , cash crop s
had not b e come a part o f S iwai life , whilst the bas ic
hort icultural sys t em s t ill remained much as it had b een at
the end of the nineteenth cent ury .
Taro cult ure
Unt i l the war the S iwai horticult ural economy was
dominat ed in every way by the product ion o f taro ( S-hame ;
Colocasia esculenta ) ; S iwais reco gnized more than f ifty
dif feren t kinds different iated by s iz e , colour , flavour ,
texture an d so on ( Ol iver , 1 9 5 5 : 49 2 ) whils t Waterhouse found
considerab ly more than 2 0 0 named var iet ies o f t aro (Anon ,
1 9 3lb : 5 ) .
Sweet potat o took it s p lace soon after the war
and now dominates the present s ub s is t ence e conomy . The sys t em
o f growing Colocasia taro that exi s ted then has disappeared ;
the l it t l e t aro that is s t ill grown is n o t grown in the same
way and the organizat ion of t aro growing is no t now paralleled
in the cult ivat ion of sweet po tat o . The s ub s isten ce economy
o f S iwai llll d erwent an except ion al t rans format ion .
Befo re the war t aro garden s were
l aid o ut on well-drained t errain wh ere the soil is
deep and f ree of sand . Another t e chni cal requirement
is that gardens be locat ed in areas o f s econdary
growth
Taro gardens are laid out in patches
fenced in to keep out pigs
Very rarely does one
see isol ated pat ches ; they are generally arran ged
in s equence . . . The gardener ' s ideal is to have
several con t iguous pat ches in various s t ages o f
growth (Olive r , 1 9 5 5 : 2 2 - 3 ) .
.
.
•
•
.
.
Such a l inear system might con s ist at one t ime o f f ive
or s ix garden pat ches , each contain ing t aro at different
s t ages , with the sequence ideally con t inuing in a more o r
less s t raight line as lon g a s there was land available
63
( Figure 5 ) .
In Rataiku such l inear systems were unl ikely
to progres s far becaus e of the shortage o f suitable flat
land , hen ce a s ingle household might have a couple o f systems ,
whereas in cent ral and southern S iwai there was normally no
need for more than one . Finally , after the f i rst pat ch has
lain fallow for s ome s ix or s even years the sys t em begin s
again ; however , ' such an ideal is seldom real iz ed ' (Oliver ,
1955 : 24 ) and the situat ion was much more comp lex with each
household own ing up to three o r four garden s .
The lin ear sequence appears t o have b een imposed on
Rat aiku gardeners by the t opo graphy o f lon g and narrow
r idges ; it would have been impossib le t o cut acro s s these
rid ges whilst the s t reams in the val ley bot toms were often
l ineage land b oundaries .
The system that existed in cent ral
S iwai ( Ol iver , 1955 : 24 ) , where the ground was level , was
much less regular and the direct ion o f garden ing was probab ly
much more random than is impl ied by Oliver ' s model , which
is not a S iwai model .
B
A
Figure 5 .
Source :
Pre-war garden sequences .
Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 24 .
64
Garden fences varied in height and s t ren gth according
t o th e locat ion of the garden . Tho se near busy paths were
high enough ' to blo ck out the s t ares of st rangers ' (Oliver ,
1 9 5 5 : 2 5 ) ; near houses the fences had to be s t rong enough t o
withs tand hun gry dome s t i c p igs .
(Wild p igs were smaller an d
weaker . ) The taro garden was divided int o plo ts ( S-nopu) ,
1 0 feet by 45 feet , marked by logs and with pathways left
cl ear alongs ide the fen ces and between every two or three
plot s . Each plot cont ained about a hundred t aro plan t s ;
although the un it o f s ale for t aro was a plot-full and the
plot was also a bas is for compen sat ion in the event of p ig
damage , it is not ab so lut ely clear why S iwais p lan ted in
plot s . Ol iver ( 1 9 5 5 : 2 5- 6 ) sugges t s that delineat ing plots
with logs saved the ef fort required t o drag the logs clear ;
al though this is t rue it does no t explain the app arent ly
regular l ayout o f the plo t s . There are two other possib le
part-expl anat ions .
Firs t ly in the Rataiku area , where this
practice seems to have b een mo s t coIIDiton , lo gs would have als o
Secondly ,
min imized s o il eros ion in the slopin g gardens .
this kind o f organizat ion enab led the plann ing o f a sub s is t ence
enterp rise . A regular layout o f squares enabled an exact
ac count t o be t aken o f the amotmt o f food bein g p ro duced at
any one t ime ; moreover this was a sys tem that could eas ily
be ext ended for ext ra feast requiremen t s . This kind o f
s t rat e gy existed el sewhere in the Pacif i c and is s t ill
maintained in s ome areas , includin g the To ' amb ait a coast o f
north Malaita .
The apparent s impl i city and regularity o f the t aro
gardening sys t em was disturbed b y a certain divers it y .
In mos t t.aro pat ches nat ives al so grow some t ob acco ,
a doz en o r so plantain and banana plant s , and
several yam and gourd vines t rained up along the
fences . Now and then one comes acros s a pat ch
contain ing a few s talks o f maiz e , some t omato es ,
and a bush o f t iny red [ chill i ] peppers which are
used as condimen t s . Few S iuais have yet acquired
tas t es fo r the recently introduced maize and
t omat oes . Yams s omet imes reach len gths of three
and four feet and are pointed out as curios ities ,
but no spec ial effort is made to p roduce o r display
them ; because o f their coarse , fibrous t exture
they are not rated highly as a food ( Oliver , 19 5 5 :
26) .
65
The garden ing sys t em therefore was st ill a con servat ive
one ; taro provided 80 per cent o f the S iwai diet and other
planted species merely gave a little variety . Although
Oliver apparen tly did not see rice bein g grown in northeast
S iwai in 19 38-39 , some small-s cale plant in g may have b e gun
around the Tonu area at about this t ime , following the return
o f S iwais educated at Kihil i . Much later Halin g reported
that ' s in ce 19 38 the rice crop has b een p laying an increas ing
role in th e sub s istence pat tern ' of the Rataiku area (Agric­
ult ural Patro l Report [APR] Eastern Divis ion , S iwai , 1960) .
Even so few new crops had f oun d a n i che in the garden syst em ;
ne ither Chinese taro (Xanthosoma) nor cassava , each of whi ch
give a greater yield per un it o f t ime than Co locasia taro ,
had found a significant pl�ce . The innovat ions o f the
previous century had divers i f ied b ut not sub s t ant ially chan ged
the agricultural system of S iwai .
However , the introduct ion o f sweet potatoes had resulted
in chan ges . Although the ir use was then expanding , and
potato acreages increased in the eighteen-month period o f
Oliver ' s s t ay , o lder people were cont emptuous o f them
( ' children ' s food ; not solid , st rength-giving food like taro ' )
and they were import ant only in the d iet s o f households with
mis s ion-trained members ( Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 2 7 ) . They had however
some advant ages over t aro s in ce they grow in poore r , sandier
s o il , requ ire little care after plan t in g an d p rodu ce a
higher yield per acre and per un it o f t ime . A d isadvantage
was that sweet potatoes were mor e t emp t in g to pigs , hence
sweet potato garden s were made in the valleys of s t reams ,
some dis t an ce from sett lement s and hence f rom domest ic p igs
( Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 2 7) .
The only o ther regular component o f S iwai diet s was
co conut s which although planted , and o ccas ionally cared for ,
were not p art o f the gardening sys t em . Breadfruit s too were
planted , but there were few of them and , like coconut s , the
lon g period before maturity meant that they were dis t inct
from the gardens .
Indeed b readfruit t rees belonging to one
individual S iwai owner o ften o ccurred in the garden o f
another .
T e chnology was uncomplicated ; there were only four
implement s : axe , b ushknife , wooden rake and diggin g s t ick .
Ol iver suggested that ' it would b e di fficult t o devise a
more e f f i c ient pro cedure ' although a st eel-bladed hoe would
probab ly have reduced the t ime spen t weed ing ( Oliver , 1955 :
2 5 . The f irst s t ages of garden preparat ion were men ' s work :
66
cut t ing down small t rees , s t rip-b arking large ones and
buildin g the garden fence . Meanwhile women carried t aro
plan t ings there and made sago-palm that ch sheet s for the
garden hut .
After fen cing and burn ing were over men arranged
lo gs t o demar cat e the plots and the maj o r part of their
cont rib ut ion t o garden work was completed .
In sweet potato
gardens men worked even less s ince the ideal s ites were sandy
flood plains and shorter fences were used there .
Women worked in the gardens four t imes as lon g as men ;
nearly every mo rning women went with their children to the
gardens and remained unt il mid-afternoon , plant ing with a
digging s t ick , weeding by hand or harvest in g .
Ol iver suggest s
that ' mo s t women regard garden ing as a f ixed part o f every
day ' s life rout ine , an end in itsel f ; whereas for many men
it is a rather onerous but necessary j ob t o be complet ed as
quickly as pos s ible in order to move on t o o ther act ivit ies o r lack o f act ivit ies ' (Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 1 3 1 ) . There was
the re fore a dis t in ct divis ion of lab our in garden work ,
wh ere women , with their S iwai t ools and large amoun t o f t ime­
consuming hand act ivit ies , work for longer hours than men
and be come much more exper ienced in growing food plant s .
Nevertheless some men did spend n early as much t ime as women
in the gardens and were noted for their f ine t aro , their
s t raight s t urdy fences and their carefully aligned pat ches .
It would have b een unusual for even the mo st industrious
woman to spend mo re than about s even hours a day at garden
work , includin g the time spent goin g to an d from the garden
(Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 1 32 - 3 ) .
The f inal input into t aro cult ivation was garden medi c ine ,
o r magic ( S-maki ) ; each household made their own arrangemen t s
fo r magic although some did nothin g , relyin g o n their own
skills t o p rodu ce good t aro . The same principle s were used ,
but les s f requen t ly , for th e protection an d growth o f sweet
potat oes , co conut s , s ago , almonds and b readfruit ( Ol iver ,
1 9 5 5 : 1 35 , 4 9 8) . Magic was men ' s work .
At the s t art o f the 1940s , before the Pacific war
extended out towards· Melanesia , S iwai agr iculture was almost
ent i rely o rien t ed towards the s ub s istence production of t aro ;
the new in t roduct ion s o f the previous century , especially
sweet potat o , had taken a small place in the system b ut it
was t aro that dominated in diet and ceremonial . Although
small quan t it ies of food were o c cas ionally s old within S iwai ;
this was invariab ly the result o f except ional circumstan ces ;
there were no households that were not depen dent upon their
67
gardens . The only crop that had been planted for money was
co conut s which were st ill far from ext ens ive ; although the
earl iest return ed wage labourers were enthus ias t ic enough t o
plant them on their return , their o wn enthus iasm was not
then shared by other S iwais . Desp ite the need for money for
t axes an d despite the encouragement and ins i st ence of admin­
ist rat ion o fficials , o ther factors such as the unpredictab le
fluctuat ions o f copra prices , the distance o f Kangu on the
Buin coast , the irregular vis its to it o f European t raders
an d the relat ive ease of obt aining wages in plantat ion
empl oyment were more than sufficien t to check the need for
money and hen ce co conut s .
The S iwai agri cultural economy. , as it had been half a
century earl ier , remained a world o f ' sub s istence af fluence ' .
There was n o indicat ion that there had ever been a period o f
shortage ; there were apparent ly always food surpluses ,
beyond dome s t ic requiremen t s , even with relat ively small
input s o f labour . Nevertheless fundamental changes were in
store ; the taro gardening economy des crib ed here survived
as . such for no more than five more years un t il around the
end of the second world war .
The war economy
The war had an eno rmous impact on the l ives an d economy
o f S iwai ; ' the shock waves
convulsed Bougainvilleans at
the t ime , and con t inue to do so today ' (Oliver , 19 7 3 : 12 4 ) .
In March 1 9 42 Japanese t roops moved int o south Bougainville
and remained there for over three years unt il after they
s urrendered in August 1945 ; the long Japanese presence in
the area resul ted in s everal chan ges , the mos t important of
which , in t erms of last ing influence on the S iwai economy ,
were agricultural . For the first year the Jap anes e seem t o
have and only a limited influence in S iwai , concent rat in g
their forces in Buin , but , followin g their evacuat ion o f the
S olomon islands of Munda , Kolomb an gara and finally Vella
Lavella in October 1 9 4 3 , there were over 6 0 , 000 Japanese
t roops in Bougainville ( C ampbell , 1946 : 2 - 3 ) . At the s ame
t ime communicat ions b eyon d the island were almost cut o f f
an d the Japanese were more o r l e s s forced to spread westwards
into S iwai . At this t ime
•
•
•
certain fresh veget ab les were already being grown
but now a s cheme was des igned whereby it was
cons idered that a s t at e of full self-sufficiency
for a rmy t roops would be reached as quickly as
68
possib le . Great er areas were placed under cul t i­
vat ion and approximately 40 per cen t o f all t roops
were detailed fo r gardenin g dut ies ( Campb ell ,
1946 : 3) .
Light vehicle t ransport was pos s ible as far wes t as the
Puriat a where a group of t roops were s t at ioned s in ce the
Japanese feared an American invas ion in Gaz elle Harbour ,
near Mot upena Point .
In S iwai t roops were s t at ioned close
t o the Mivo (at a camp called S is ikatokoli) , near Mus imino i ,
at Hari , Mono itu , Miheru , Ru ' nai , near Tokonoitu and in
smaller detachment s el sewhere as far north as Mos iget a
(Bait s i ) .
No merchant ship s we re ab le to supply the Japanese army
after January 1944 although submarines delivered small amounts
of food f o r about ano ther s ix mon ths . By then the Japanese
program of self-suf fi ciency was well under way and from
about March 1944 they were ab le to l ive almo s t ent i rely on
their garden p roduce ( Campbell , 1946 : 10 ) . Even s o th ere
was a certain amount of malnut rit ion whi ch , together with
dysen t ery and malaria , produced a high death rat e . Durin g
the lat t er half of 1 9 4 4 35 p e r cent o f the t roops were
engaged in gardenin g dut ies ; although this was still no t
enough for total self-sufficien cy food reserves could b e
conserved , new gardening areas were opened u p and there was
even enough fishing (presumab ly in rivers ) to enab le o f ficers '
messes to have several fish meals per week ( Campbell , 1946 : 11 ) .
Campbell ' s int erviews with Japanese survivors from the S iwai
area provides a us eful account of Japanese agricult ure .
The garden s were well-tended and producin g large
crop s o f sweet potatoes , corn , eggfruit , b eans ,
peanuts and green ve getables . Tropical f ruit s
such as pawpaw , p ineapple and bananas were also
plen t iful . Very little rice was cul t ivated owing
to the very arduous work that is necessary .
Chickens and eggs were in every un it ' s lines but
the fowls were o f poor quality and e ggs small
No fresh meat was t asted after March 1944
(Campbell , 1946 : 13 ) .
There were also melons , pumpkins and marrows in garden s
In
a s lar ge a s 6 0 0 yards b y 4 0 0 y ards (Lon g , 1 9 6 3 : 151 ) .
nor thern Bougainville co conut s formed a con s iderab le port ion
of the army diet . At this t ime it seems that the Japane se
had relat ively litt le contact with S iwais ; there was no
69
warfare in Bougainville and the S iwais themselves cont inued
to main tain their own garden s . There was , of course , no
ext ernal t rade but some produce was t raded with the Japane s e ;
Japanese obtain ed tobacco leaves , co conut s , pawpaws and sweet
po tatoes from S iwais and in exchan ge gave l ime (which they
had made thems elves on the coas t ) and espe cially salt , yet
at the end of t he war many S iwais were complaining that
the ir ' payment s ' were quite inadequate (Anon , 1945) . Probab ly
towards the end o f 1944 S iwais were increas ingly drawn , or
rather dragged , into the agricultural lab our force .
S iwais
from the Toit o i area stated that they were cal led upon t o
supply lab our f o r the gardens for two days each week , but
generally the enemy t roops worked their own gardens and l ived
in ' gras s hut s ' on the edges of them (Anon , 1945 ) .
For the
Japanes e ' the s ituat ion in Bougainville was no t unpl easant ,
morale was high and a s tate o f resigned con tentment existed
towards the end o f 1944 ' ( Campbell , 1946 : 13 ) . The mount in g
o f the Aus t ral ian of fen s ive in December 1944 , that followed
the American occupation of Torokina, des t royed any t race of
normal it y .
The neces s ity to defen d their p o s it ions and prevent the
Aus tralian advance meant that the Japanese had t o withdraw
many t roops from gardening dut ies with the result that although
the remain ing gardeners were never allowed to relax , S iwais
were incre as in gly forced into garden ing act ivit ies and also
had to ins t ruct the Japanese in the preparat ion and cooking
of lo cal ' vegetat ion ' . Even s o food p ro duct ion decl ined
through 1 9 45 .
Consequen t ly the Japanese were forced to
demand food and t o steal it from S iwai garden s ; meanwhi le
most o f the S iwais themselves had withdrawn int o the mountains
to avo id Aust ralian bomb in g raids plus Japanese aggress ion
and the phys ical labour o f maint ainin g their garden s . The
Aus t ralian air force were sys t emat ically b omb ing Japanese
camps and gardens and in the con fusion many S iwai gardens
were also destroyed . Although under cover of darkness S iwais
occas ionally returned to harvest their garden s , cult ivat ion
was impo ssib le except in the mos t remote upland villages .
For more than hal f a y ear S iwais were forced int o at least
part ial dep enden ce on a hunt ing and gather ing economy ; there
was some malnut rit ion and a very high rate of infant an d
child mortal ity (pp . 2 7 -8) .
The Japanese too were
starving and many were dying from malnut rit ion ; there were
not even any fish s ince all the grenades were being used in
military operat ions .
Con sequent ly the Japanese were desperat e ;
near Kumuki a Japanese of f icer supervis in g sago manufacture ,
presumab ly with S iwai as sist ance , told the iuiuai o f Ru ' nai
70
that h e was endeavouring to s upp ly sago to 5 00 men (Anon . ,
1945 ) .
Dep let ion o f garden resources meant that the Japanese
also ate what lo cal animals s t ill remained , in cludin g the
do gs , to the ext ent that in some part s of B ougainville
(PR Buka Pas sage 1 / 45-6) , probab ly including S iwai , there
were not even enough do gs after the war to allow wild pig
Mo reover reports from the S ininai and Monoitu
hunt in g .
areas seem t o confirm that in s ome except ional circums t ances
some Japanese were reduced to eat ing S iwais ( c f . p . 7 7 ) .
Finally during th e las t ret reat , even in the Buin area wh ich
the Aus t ralian forces never reached , the Japanese made
sys t ema t i c efforts to des t roy their own gardens and therefore
any plant ing mate rial that might have been salvaged f rom
them.
(This was not ent ir�ly success ful s ince Aust ral ian
troops later harvested some Japanese garden s in S iwai . )
Mo reover Japanese cult ivat ion had become b oth so int ens ive
and ext ens ive that European agr icult ural o ff icers , after the
war , were des crib ing the Buin coas tal plains as ' over­
cult ivated ' (Anon . , 1 9 4 7 a) .
At the end o f the war S iwai was largely devas t ated ;
between April an d June 1945 , at the height o f the Aust ralian
o f fens ive , 769 ton s o f bomb s had b een dropped on 140 tar ge t s
between the Hon gorai and Mivo rivers , in part aimed at
Japanese milit ary installat ions and t roop con cent rat ion s
but also int ended t o clear t imber an d undergrowth from
roadways .
Before this offen sive , durin g the American
presence at Torokina , American planes dropped 2 5 00 gallon s
o f diesel oil aimed at Japanese gardens in various par t s o f
the is land . Apparently it was n o t a success and the pilo t s
had difficulty in different iat ing b etween Japanese and
indigenous garden s , many o f which we re p robab ly also sprayed
with o il ( Packard , 19 7 5 : 81 ) .
Despite these uncertain t ies
the Aust ralian for ces main tained this policy , and from
Feb ruary 1945 onwards they were making s t r ikes , usin g
incend iary gelatrol , against crops and gardens , t o s imul­
taneously reduce food supply an d morale (whilst also driving
away the Bougainvillean labour force and clearin g j ungle
cover ) .
In J uly 19 4 5 to me et in it ial requirements some
22 , 000 gal lons o f gelat rol were supp l ied t o the Aust ral ian
forces , s ome o f whose leaders were un sat is f ied with this and
con t inued to press fo r napalm which may have b een , b ut
probably was not , used in Bougainville (Anon , 1 9 4 7b ) .
In
any case , in military terms , it was a success ful bomb in g ;
in the area bordered b y the Hon gorai and Mivo rivers an d
the two S iwai east-west roads few t rees or garden s survived
the war .
Coconut s and s ago palms were dest royed and gardens
71
t o rn apart ; animals and villages almost disappeared from
cent ral S iwai and elsewhere the s ituat ion was only a l it t le
bet ter . S iwais were con fus ed and demoral ized .
The s ub sequent agricultural impact o f the Japanese
oc cupat ion followed from two kinds o f int roduct ion : new
food plant s and new t e chniques o f cult ivat ion .
Some o f the
plant s that they b rought with them such as squash , cabb ages
and eggplants may have been ent i rely new to some parts o f
Bougainville and o thers were variet ies of exist in g species .
Although it seems that they int rodu ced no new variet ies of
taro (Packard , 19 7 5 : 4 8 ) , they int ro duced several species o f
sweet potat o , includin g trimun , (which matured in three
mon ths , · probab ly fas t er than any species then presen t in
S iwai ) and also tokyo and tokuhama , whi ch were also fast
maturing variet ies apparen t ly imported from Japan . 15 Hal ing
( 1 9 6 0 ) e s t imat ed that they int ro duced about seven sweet
pot ato variet ies to south Bougainville . They b rought their
own variet ies of rice and , for unknown reasons , the milk
thist le (Mimosa pudica ) ' , " now a maj o r pest in all types o f
garden s , and als ·o the Afr ican snail whi ch seems t o have
b een import ant only in Buin .
It was , however , the techn iques o f cult ivat ion that
mo st impressed Bougainvilleans . Apart from minor changes
such as d i fferent t echniques o f planting cassava and trans­
plant ing pawpaws , which may not have b een important in
Bougainville,. but have been recorded in east New Brit ain
(Leadley , 19 7 6 ) , the Japanese also used human excret a on
their garden s , a technique which certainly did not impress
Bougainvilleans . What was most impress ive was the s cale o f
Japanese agriculture ; both the cult ivat ed acreage an d the
s iz e of individual garden s were ext remely large .
S in ce in
194 4 , when the sel f-suff i ciency pro gram began , there were
perhaps as many as 3 0 , 000 Japanese t roops in south Bougain­
ville (which compares with a local population , including
women and children , o f around hal f that) , the extent o f
cul t ivat ion was obvious ly phenomenal compared with what had
gone before . Moreover , although there was prob ab ly no
mechanizat ion of agriculture on Bougainvil�e , although small
tractors were used by the Japanese on Kolombangara island
(Oliver , pers . comm. , 19 7 7 ) , some new agr icultural implement s
15
Trimun seems to be what the Japanese called Taiwan Gago
( Taiwan Number Five ) , a variety developed by the Japanese
in Taiwan and flown to Bougainville during the ir occupat ion
( S . Lin co ln , pers . comm. , 19 7 7 ) .
72
were in troduced such as the large rounded hoe ( S , NM-bai la) ,
now used in S iwai sweet potato gardens , and ext en s ive lab our
l ines were organiz ed . Langtry (pers . comm . , 1 9 7 6 ) observed
groups of seventy t o eighty Japanese wo rking in a s in gle
garden . Mos t of the lab our was Japanese but S iwais were
also incorpo rat ed int o the labour force and, in Buin b ut
probab ly not in S iwai , captured Ch inese p risoners were
drafted into Japanese gardens .
It was a much mo re intens ive
agricultural sys tem than Bougainvilleans had ever seen
before ; furthermore it seemed to be supplyin g the whole
Japanese army on the island more or less adequately with
only a min imum of lo cal t rade , food impor t s and s teal in g .
Only small quan t it �es o f rice were grown in S iwai
be cause o f it s heavy demand on labour but this seems to have
b een the crop that mos t impres sed S iwais both at the t ime
(Anon , 1 9 4 5 ) and much later in their recollec t ions o f the
war y ears .
(The basic rat ion o f the Japanese s oldiers was
al so , of course , rice and , in their turn , S iwais s t ole rice
from Japanese stores . ) For mo st S iwais , especially adult
males , rice was already known as a popular food b ut for many
this was the first t ime they had seen it growing in S iwai .
The rice that was planted may have b een a wet rice variety
s ince it was planted in tren ches . In Buin there was probab ly
rather more ext ens ive rice cult ivat ion , followin g f rom the
longer s t ay of Japanese forces there , s ince the J apanese
ope rat ed a rice mill somewhere near Tab ago miss ion .
For the
first t ime in Bougainville there was at leas t mechan iz e d
preparat ion o f a food c rop and i t was a crop that was already
becoming popular there .
The Japanese usually grew sweet pot atoes in lon g ,
straight r idges , a s a t Mono itu (Lon g , 19 6 3 : 9 2 f ) , but somet imes
these were b roken up into the small heaps that are now common
in S iwai p o t at o gardens .
Deep hoein g o f weeds was also
pract ised . Throughout Bougainville both deep hoe ing and
motlll din g were learnt f rom the Japanese ; neither were t e ch­
n iques that were known previous ly . Although the 1940 Annual
Rep o rt fo r the Territ ory ( P CA , 1941 : 82 ) s t at ed that ' the
general method o f plant ing sweet potat oes in the Territ o ry
consists o f making small , low hills and ridges ' , this must
have been a reference to the newly-dis covered New Guinea
Highlands .
There were few lowland sweet potato cult ivators
and where sweet potatoes were a crop there seems t o be no
re ference to moundin g ( e . g . Oliver , 1 9 5 5 ; Blackwood , 1 9 35 ;
312 ) .
It was a te chnique that was particularly appropriat e
t o the heavy rain fall o f south Bougainville and one that
73
became part i cularly useful with the ext ens ion o f sweet
potat o gardens away from sandy , alluvial areas .
(There is
no clear eviden ce , although it s eems probab le , that , o ther
thin gs bein g equal , moundin g actually increases the product­
ivity of sweet potato garden s . )
At Torokina on the wes t co ast o f Bougainville there were
al so large garden s , begun by the, Ameri cans and extended by
In June 1944 115 acres
the Aust ralian forces and ANGAU .
were plant ed there in an att empt t o give the t roops something
to do and al so provide them with s ome fresh vegetab les
(Bowman , 1946 : 42 7 ) ; these U . S . Board of E conomic Warfare
gardens cont ained t omatoes , lettuce , canteloupe melons ,
corn and probab ly also radishes , cucumbers and s quash .
Unl ike the ir Japanese count erpar t s the American cult ivat ors
had t racto rs and t railers and used groups o f Bougainvillean
women working under white supervis ion . Although S iwais were
necessarily less familiar with these, un t il the very las t
st ages o f the war when some were evacuat ed to Torokina , this
kin d of agricultural development rein forced their opin ions
o f .what they had already seen o f Japanese garden s in the .
south . Large gardens , cult ivated by labour l ines and
organiz ed with milit ary precis ion , were something that it
might b e ext remely worthwhile to t ry themselves espec ially
for rice , a new and des irab le food and a potent ial s ource
.
of cash income .
The war tot ally di srupt ed the S iwai e conomy
yet it gave some promis e of a rather different future .
The death of taro
16
Where the taro Blight (Phytophthora ao loaasiae )
originated and how it arrived in Bougainville is likely t o
remain a mystery ; it may have b een p resen t in Bougainville
j ust before the war , intens if ied dur ing it and afterwards
spread t o almo s t all of the island . Throughout Bougainville
the almos t unanimous view o f the local people was that the
disease appeared towards the end o f the war and had never
been known before that . The ef fect o f the blight was
devastat ing ; throughout l owl an d Bougainville Co loaasia taro
was eventually completely wiped out ; not even isolated stan ds
would grow .
The low-lying plain s o f S iwai and Buin provided
op t imum condit ions in which the di sease could flourish ;
like the b l i ght o f the s ame genus that caused the Irish
potato famine in the nineteenth century , it sp read mo st
16 A more detailed accoun t o f the r eplacement of taro by sweet
potat o both in S iwai and Bougainville is given P. lsewhere
( Connell , 19 7 8a) .
74
rapidly during periods o f con t inuous rain (Packard , 1 9 7 5 : 62 )
and s outh Bougainvil le was an ideal environment .
Almo s t inevitably Bougainvilleans mainly blamed the
Japanese p resen ce for the introduct ion of the disease ; the
as sociat ion was clearest in the south where there had b een
bomb ing and a long period o f Japanes e o c cupat ion . 1 7 Although
a small mino rity of S iwais n ow b el i eve that a disease killed
the taro the standard exp lanat ion remains that the h eavy
bomb in g o f the plains poisoned the soil t o the ext ent that
t aro would no lon ger grow . Others believe that it came with
Japanese plant introduct ions . A sl ight ly dif ferent vers ion
( relat ed to Packard by Lais i , of Hari) was that pet rol and
oil had remained in the grotmd ( f rom the aeroplanes of the
American Marine Corps wh ich dumped 2 5 00 gallon s of diesel
o il on Japanese gardens ( Sherrod , 1952 : 2 10) so that it was
too contaminat ed for taro cul t ivat ion .
Both versions accoun ted
for the s urvival o f taro in the motmtain s where there had
b een little bomb ing and where there were plen ty of incised
s t reams in which the poison could drain out .
It was usually
s aid that sweet potato did no t die because ' it was j ust like
a bush vine ' ; S iwais told Packard in 1 9 7 3 that ' swee t potato
was only a vine but taro was a t ree ' and ' t aro was like a
man ; it could feel sick wh ereas sweet potato was j us t a vin e '
( Packard , 1 9 7 5 : 82 ) .
Taro had a soul and was not j ust another
.plant , like sweet potato or the other crop s that survived ;
it was the ab solute bas is o f the subsisten ce economy .
Its
ab sence was almost impos s ib le t o contemplate , s t ill less to
reo rganize l i fe around .
The in it ial S iwai respon se to the blight was to con t inue
the garden magic wh ich had hitherto ensured good taro crop s
( and , to a minor ext en t , also produced good yams ) . None was
suc ces s f ul ; the ir cures were considered to be insuf ficient ly
power ful against a disease whose origin was al ien (Packard ,
1 9 7 5 : 84 ) .
S iwais soon real ized that taro could s t ill be grown at
higher alt it udes but high motm tains were many miles away
an d even at isolated Iru , the highest village in S iwai ,
success was not great .
Repeat edly taro was b rought f rom
dif ferent mountainous areas , wh ere f i ght ing had been les s ,
but nowhere in the plains could it be persuaded t o grow .
17
This p aragraph is de rived partly from accotmts given to me
and par t ly from Packard ' s analysis of accounts he collected
(Packard , 19 7 5 : 7 9) .
75
Throughout south Bougainville cont inued at t empt s were made ;
cont inually they failed with the t aro dyin g well before
maturity .
In the early 1950s a dif feren t plan t ing s t rat egy
was attempted with small isolated pat ches of taro being
planted , o ften mixed with sweet potat o ; o ccas ional pat ches
then survived to maturity .
S ome S iwais , including those at
Kapana (Packard , 1 9 75 : 89 ) , t ried plant in g t aro llll d er the
eaves o f the ir hous es but without much success . Spaced
plant ing seems to have b een the mo st success ful s t rategy
t r ied anywh ere in Bougainville ; the administrat ion p roduced
nothin g b et t e r . Even so by 1960 Coloaasia taro would s t ill
not grow ; Hal ing obs erved in eastern S iwai :
' Original nat ive
t aro
is almo st ext inc t in this area , only two small
gardens were no t i ced . No disease res istant st rains were
not iced '
(APR, Eas tern S iwai , 1960) .
S iwais have cont inued
to make experiment s , mainly with t aro brought from upland
areas , but so far with little succes s . There was no shortage
of po s s ible solut ions to the prob lem but there were none that
was success ful ; the t enac ity and versat ility o f the local
response were never rewarded .
( Although a f ew variet ies o f
t aro with lower yields have been estab l ished in Buka none
ha s really b een succe s s ful in S iwai . )
•
•
•
Development and des truct ion
S iwai agriculture has p robab ly always been changin g .
The s ub s is t en ce economy that exist ed centuries ago gradually
incorporated new crops and new an imals as rare t ravellers
beyond the island b ro ught their dis coveries t o the shores
of Bougainville . Unt il the nineteenth cen t ury there is
almo s t nothing known of whatever changes t o ok p lace ; few can
have been significant compared with the changes that followed .
The affluent economy o f the n ineteenth century began to
incorporate new plant s , the most important o f these eventually
turn in g o ut to be the sweet potat o . When labour migrat ion
eventually b e gan from Bougainville t owards the end o f the
century the pace of change increased : a new technology b as ed
on s t eel tools enabled t ime savin gs and therefore a great ly
increased capacity to experiment with new condit ion s . There
was no int ernal demand for change , merely an interest in
experimentat ion .
The first hal f-century o f colon ial administ rat ion b rought
little change ; German int erest s were fo cussed elsewhere and
their economic po l icies had l it t le impact on Bougainville .
Aus t ral ian admin is t rat ion , likewise , was concerned with law
and o rder rather than economic development . However their
76
pacificat ion pro gram ended local war fare and again released
more t ime for experimentat ion ; the cash that plant at ion
labourers earned enab led them to ob tain bet ter tools . They
had al so seen n ew techn iques and new crop s . Yet it was the
mi ss ions , be tween the wars , whi ch mos t encouraged chan ge .
Miss ionaries were rather more familiar with the lo cal
condit ion s that administ rators rarely saw more than once a
year .
They proved that b o th new food and cash crops could
be succe s s ful in south Bougainville but markets were remote
and t ran sport to them almost non-exis t ent .
S iwais o ccas ion ally
sold copra to t raders in the inter-war years but it was not
a source of income that could be depended upon so that un t il
the war the whole sequence o f agricultural change in Siwai
had s imp ly imp roved upon an al ready sat is factory syst em ;
st eel tools had replaced stone tools , sweet pot at o had proved
an easier crop to grow fo r pig food and o ther new crops and
possibly animals had divers ified the diet .
The war and the coincident t aro blight killed o f f the
old system but b rought with them the seeds of the n ew . The
ext raordinary labour int ens ity of Japanese gardening , and
the ab ility of the Japanese to grow rice , had been ob served
well by S iwais ; some , indeed , had been forced t o t ry their
Rice was a new and excit in g possib ility .
own hand at it .
Taro blight totally removed Co locasia tar o from the sub s isten ce
sy st em; sweet potato , perhap s the easiest and mo st product ive
o f all the food crops that could be grown in lowland
Melanesia , was its obvious successor as the main food crop .
The s low evolution o f S iwai agricult ure that had gone
on for cen t uries had b een completely disrupted ; the s t aple
food crop had gone and in less than a couple o f y ear s the
agricultural econ omy had b een diverted ont o a complet ely
new path .
It was , e f fe ct ively , almost the end o f a lon g
period o f agricultural history in which product ion was aimed
towards s ub s is t en ce requirement s . The war marked the s t ar t
o f a new phase o f in corporat ion int o the internat ional
e conomy yet S iwai s t ill remained , in many ways , a wo rld o f
i t s own .
Chap ter 4
. 1 tura 1 recovery :
Agricu
t h e rise
o f r i. ce 1
.
The S iwais are an eager people , keen to b et ter
their villages , their children ' s educat ion an d ,
o f course , their f inanc ial p o s it ion (Gidd ings , 1 9 5 7 ) .
. . . the [ S iwai ] native is not over fond o f hard
labour ( Boag , 19 60) .
The f irst patrol into Nagovisi t owards the end o f the
war , which was carried out li terally within earshot of the
bat t le soon after the Japanese ret reat , noted that , ' During
the ret reat to Buin
the Japanese ravaged every garden
in their c ourse and even ate two or three nat ives ' (PR
Nagovis i , 1 9 4 5 ) . They also ate o r des t royed even the t aro
st �lks that were necessary for replantin g . Although there
were small sweet potato , cas sava and yam gardens secreted
•
•
.
1 Source s :
Apart from a few published sources cited in the
t ext and a few types cript reports that may be availab le
out s ide Bougainville (such as the Bougainville Dis t rict
Annual Reports and the Buin Sub-district Annual Repor t ,
b oth of which apparen t ly s tar t in 195 8-59 and end in
19 7 0- 7 1 , and Patrol Report s ) and apart als o from oral dat a ,
this and the following chapters are b ased upon b rief
report s and let ters generally not availab le out s ide
Bougainville and mos t not availab le o ut s ide south Bougain­
ville .
S ome o f these , includ ing those at S iwai L . G . C . an d
Buin Sub-dis t rict Off ice , have now b een burn t and access
t o mos t of the rema in der would be quit e di f f icul t .
Consequen t ly they have no t been cited in the text , which
would have then b ecome almo s t unreadab le , but are lis t ed
separately in Appendix IV . However , commen t s are attribut ed
to didimen , kiaps and o ther out siders , and , as far as
po ssible , where I have cons idered these observers were
particularly conversant with condit ions in S iwai , they have
b een iden tified .
S imilarly , the mo st important of these
report s have b een cited in the t ext .
77
78
in the hills these we re o f t en spoilt b y wild pigs . People
were short of food and fo rced ·to eat immature sweet potato .
There was insuf ficien t t aro planting mat erial for replacement
o f all the dis eased crops and th ere were definite food
sho rtages . The s ame was t rue o f S iwai where the war was
s t ill going on and where the Japanese were even mor e desperat e .
At the end o f the war the agricul tural economy of S iwai
was in total disarray ; lowland garden s had almost disappeared :
co conut s , sago and many villages were dest royed .
It was not
then known that taro would no t grow , hen ce the early attempt s
a t re-establishing f o o d gardens con cent rated on taro and were
all failures ; there was some s t arvat ion .
S iwais were con f used
about the who le sequen ce of events and shat tered by s ome o f
its effe c t s . The first year o f the post-war era saw the
economy at its lowest ebb ; there were few thoughts t o b e
spared fo r cash crops and none f o r migrat ion a s plant at ion
labour . The task o f S iwais and administ rat ion alike was t o
res tore a war-damaged agricult ure , a s rapidly a s possib le ,
to self-sub s is t ence .
Government int ervention
The earli es t adminis trat ion responses were dramat i c ;
the Sydney Morn ing Herald reported in November 1946 that
' A government food ship is hurrying to Bougainville , where
2 0 , 000 nat ives are facing hunger ' (Packard , 19 75 : 14 ) . At the
same t ime a government o f ficial flew from Port Mo resby t o
Queens land t o buy pigs , chi ckens and even do gs (but for all
these there was no transport availab le to Bougainville for
Th ere were further reports o f s t arvation and
a whole y ear) .
in 1947 the Adminis t rator o f the Territory , Colonel J . K .
Mur ray , led a par ty acro ss southern Bougainvil le ; they fotm.d
that although a few people had managed t o redevelop the
Japanese rice plot s , after the war there was s t ill insuf ficien t
food t o eat .
They did however find that health was , on the
who le , very good with only ' t iny signs of diet deficiency ' .
A survey t eam in 1947 that followed the Adminis t rator ' s p arty
found it nece s s ary t o make several b as i c recommendat ions
in cluding those that f i fty pounds of seed yams and Chinese
t aro (Xan thosoma) suckers b e given to each village in south
Bougainville , there should be two dist ribut ions a y ear t o
every household o f on e pound o f corn , two pollll d s o f peanut s ,
an ounce o f pumpkin seeds and one gramme each o f tomato and
chinese cabb age . P lan t ing o f a quarter o f an acre o f good
quality t apioca ( cassava) per house as a reserve food supply
should be en forced immediat ely an d , as soon as po s s ible �
81
program ; s in ce DASF employed on ly thirty-five s t aff throughout
Papua and New Guinea this was not ent i rely surpri s ing .
Moreover the administration were far from enthus ias t ic about
the ir p re-war s uc cess in en couraging lo cal agri cul ture :
' the
nat ive peoples , due to their disinclinat ion to adopt new
methods or ideas , are at present in a primit ive s t age o f
agricul tural development ' (PCA , 1 9 4 7 : 13 ) . Despite the p res sure
that was p laced on the administration by the Catholic miss ion
in the y ears innne diat ely after the war , policies were
apparently never refin ed or fur ther elaborated . The admin­
ist rat ion reac ted rathe r than ini t iated .
Eventually in 195 6
it seems that there was some move t owards es tablishing at
l east a plan for Bougainville ; the Buin sub-dis t rict agr icul­
tural o fficer , K . I . Tomlin , submit ted his own t en-year plan
to the Dis t rict Connni s s ioner . He was clearly not op t imistic
about eith er finance o r s t aff support and the plan ( Appendix
I) is of more value as an account of south Bougainville in
1 9 5 6 than as a contribut ion to a not yet emerging agricultural
pol icy .
By the 1950s the nat ional adminis trat ion was beginnin g
to formulate rudimentary policies towards agricultural
change ; the stated aims , which in 1952 were novel and
innovato ry , were ' to improve the Nat ive s ' methods of producing
their p re s en t crops , and to improve existin g variet ies , an d
secondly , to encourage the development b y b o th Europeans and
Native s of n ew agricultural indus tries ' (PCA, 1953 : 6 1 ) .
The
1 9 5 1-52 r eport also in cluded a lengthy accoun t o f the ' bush
fallowing rotat ion ' sy s t em and , perhap s for the first t ime ,
there was no longer even an implicat ion that this was a
was t eful and ineffici en t sys t em .
Research cont inued to
con centrate primarily on cash crop s but without estab lishin g
crop or regional priorit i es . N evertheless the shi ft in
orientat ion had immediate result s ; in 1950 it was already
possib l e to observe ' a quickening of the t empo of nat ive
development and an awareness in the more advan ced p eople
that their labour is not the only thing they have to s ell '
(PCA , 1 9 5 1 : 2 3 ) . Nevertheless in the f irst quarter o f a
cent ury af t er the war it remained impossible to detect the
crystallizat ion of a con s is t en t administrat ion policy on
rural development .
Bougainville , an d especially south Bougainville , was
always remote from administrat ion int erest and concern .
Thus in 1 9 5 2 when the administrat ion were making concerted
att emp ts t o develop rice farming in Papua and N ew Guinea a
team of exper t s visit ed twelve dif feren t areas in the coun t ry ,
80
that sweet pot at o is now generally accepted by the nat ives
as the s t aple and the desire to return to taro growing on a
large scal e is much less frequent ly expres s ed than was the
cas e formerly ' . There is no eviden ce that Bougainvilleans
lacked this desire t o return to taro despit e the hopes of
admin istration off icers who were losin g int erest in experimen t ­
at ion and who saw lit t le difference b etween t h e two crops .
The Act ing Dire ctor o f the Department o f Agriculture , S t o ck
and Fi sh er i es (DAS F ) s t at ed in 1 9 54 that ' there is no reason
why taro cannot be superseded by thes e crops . . . yams ,
kongkong taro , sweet potat oes and t apioca ' yet at the same
t ime ' al l over the is land . . . people . . . were b emoan ing the
loss o f the ir taro and having t o eat what they regarded as
' p ig food ' - sweet potato ' (Tomlin , pers . connn . , 1 9 74 ; cited
by Packard , 1 9 7 5 : 72 ; cf . Connell , 1 9 7 8a) .
For a decade there
was no mo re res earch on dis ease-res istant t aro yet for two
decades kiaps , didimen , miss ionaries and Bougainvillean s
en thus ias t i cally ' discovered ' diseas e-res istant s t rains o f
taro , none o f which ever survived f o r long .
The first agricul tural ext ens ion centre on Bougainville
was built at Sohano , Buka , in 1946 as a respon se t o the f o od
sho rtage on the is land and by 1948 both cot t on and j ut e were
growing t h ere s ucce ss fully .
This was of no use to t he s outh
(or indeed any o the r part of Bougainville ) , where they were
concerned with the b as ic food crops that the S ohano s t at ion
had not developed .
In early 1948 preliminary work b egan
to set up a sub-cent re at Kangu on the Buin coast whi ch was
in tended to provide facilit ies for dist ributing p igs in
south Bougainville an d to serve as a bas e for ext ens ion work .
The Buin s t at ion lasted only two years and closed in March
1950 becaus e of staff shortages ; pigs were s t ill urgen t ly
required .
S iwais o f t en observe , with the wisdom of hinds i ght ,
that Buins rej ected the agricultural stat ion whereas they
had ins i s t ed that one b e built in S iwai .
De spite these changes , dramat ic by the s t andards of the
pre-war e r a , no consistent agri cul tural policy emerged
e ither for the country or for the dist rict . The n ewly­
created Department of Agriculture , Stock and Fisheries (DASF)
through it s director , W. Cot t rell-Do rmer , had announced that
its aim was to ' build up a commun ity based on a type of rural
peasant prop rieto rship , for nutrit ional improvemen t as well
as for economic purposes ' al though at the same t ime ,
' te chnical as s i s tan ce would also be provided for European
During the firs t year almost nothing was
settlers ' .
accomplished towards implemen tat ion of an announ ced extens ion
83
sugges ted that n ew planters could be a great help in opening
up the sparsely populat ed , high quality cocoa areas o f
Bougainville and New Brit ain and therefore that the estab­
l ishment o f two t o four new European estates annually over
the following f ive years , ' could provide a mo st valuab le
s t imulus and demonst rat ion to indigenes ' ( IBRD , 1 9 6 5 : 9 7 ) .
Why these two areas then needed s t imulus is not clear .
S iwai
re sponse to such moves , had they been aware of them, would
have b een p redictable . Unlike the Gorokans of the New Guinea
Highlands , S iwais had no in terest in having set t lers in their
mids t and they were cert ainly no t seekin g buyers for their
land . The administrat ion policy of p artnership never had
any s ign i fican ce in south Bougainville .
This and the following chap t ers seek to analyse the
process and p attern of po s t -war agricultural developmen t and
the role o f S iwais and o thers in thes e chan ges . The following
sect ion attempt s to des cribe brie fly s ome of the earlier
historical s equences as S iwais recall them whils t the
sub sequent sect ions discus s these changes in the ext ended
cont ext of exis t ing writt en records whi ch , without except ion ,
cons ist o f the report s and analyses o f European administ rators
and obs ervers . This there fore also contains my own as sessment
o f th ese changes .
S iwai persp ec t ives on agr icul t ural change
2
Be fo re the war Catholic villages did not have r ice
2
rnevitab ly it is impossib le that this account accurately
port rays S iwai j udgemen t s of their recent history ; there are
many S iwais and almost as many vers ions of history . Mo reover
almos t al l these accoun t s were collected within the framework
of my own quest ion s . They are not what any s ingle S iwai
would write although the j udgements are all tho se o f indiv idual
S iwais . Maverick p ercept ions have been excluded . Hence i t
is a composite and therefore rather unsat is factory view o f
his t ory . Mos t o f the collected accounts reco rded here come
from the villages around Amio and Konga . The area around
Kon ga was in the forefront of some agricultural changes
whils t the villages around Amio followed in much the same
way and at much the same t imes that o ther areas followed .
The s tories were those of young men and old men , some o f whom
were prominent in th es e changes , and the dates are those
that could later be verified .
It cannot b e the complete
story but then nor is any vers ion , even with it s complement
o f recorded dat es and dat a .
84
although a few Methodist villages had ob t ained seeds from
the Kihil i mis s ion and begun plantin g .
But everyone l iked
rice and durin g the war they saw that it grew well and the
Japanese had shown them how to plant it .
S oon after the war
Rangai ( from Panake village) got o ther S iwai l eaders t o gether
to try and st art something new . Kuiaka (Kapana village)
wanted to plant rice , s in ce he had eat en and enj oyed it but
Dio (Panake) thought that they didn ' t know enough about rice
plant ing to s tar t it themselves .
Teremo (Amio ) spoke out
s t rongly arguing that they could plant it themselves and the
Buin As sis tant Dist rict Commis s ioner , Mr Cole , thought that
this kind o f leadership would enab le success and encouraged
them by b r inging seed from Kihili fo r them to p lan t .
At about the same t ime four leaders, Dio (Panake ) , Hianu
(Unanai ) , Piruruho (Musimino i) and Ariku (Laku) , again from
b oth S iwai religious groups , collected a small amount of
money as a token ges ture and went to the Methodis t Minis te�
Mr Voyce , at Kihili to ask him to help them s t ar t up some
kind o f b us iness act ivity . He was not par t i cularly in terest ed
whil st Bishop Wade claimed that it was not mission work to
set up busines ses ; cons equen t ly they then went , at Mr Voyce ' s
sugges tion , to the Buin ADC , who had begun the agricul tural
s tat ion there , but this was no t successful s ince the admin­
ist rat ion had no ground in S iwai . He however ret ained their
cash wh ich caused con siderab le resentment . The vis ion o f
S iwai leaders was responsib le for this change in att itude
to development ; 11ever theless the first developmen t s within
S iwai were a result of lo cal init iat ive rather than admin­
istrat ion as s i s t an ce .
The first village that t ried communal
rice gardenin g was Panake , us ing some of Rangai ' s ground on
the road to Rabaulu. Kuiaka , the Kapana leader , was not
keen to j oin to gether the villages of Kapana an d Panake (as
other villages had done ) and , al though he was will in g for
there t o be a communal rice garden , Panake began their own
garden first so that Kapana j oined with Kin irui , Munnu and
S ikurai villages t o es t ablish a rice garden at Konga . Around
1948 this group were wo rking a garden o f about three acres
an d were c onsiderably assisted when in 1949 the government
put a rice mill at Konga ; it had b een located there s in ce
this was ab out the b es t rice proj ect in S iwai .
The villages
o f Ieku and Turugum began a garden at much the same t ime and
when Kaparo saw that the Panake garden was success ful they
too b egan one o f their own . The area around Konga seems t o
have b een ahead o f mo st other parts o f S iwai at t h i s t ime .
85
Mikompi , a leader who had been one o f the earliest
catechis t s in S iwai and who ' l iked looking after money ' ,
organized the rice cult ivat ion at Kaparo . A f ield was
cleared south o f the village l ine , p robab ly about 400 yards
by 150 yards , and sub sequent ly another field near Hire of
about the s ame size . In this they planted a ' s t rong ' kind
o f r ice , l ike that of the Japanese , un t il the didimen later
int ro duced an improved kin d of whi te r i ce ( from Mekeo ) which
replaced this .
The rice was winnowed on banana leaves when there was a
wind , and threshed by a machin e con s t ructed f rom a b icycle
bought from the Chinese trader Ton Lep in Buin .
It was
milled either in old cartri.d ge cases (which could be operated
l ike a mor t ar and p es t le , a smaller vers ion being used for
betel nut ) or in a t urtle shell .
It was smoked and dried
in a ' haus s un ' s o that it could be s t ored for sale .
The f i rs t rice p ro duced was s old to villagers , espec ially
ret urned p lant ation labourers , and also Mono itu miss ion , and
the . money was collected by Teremo (Arnio) and looked after by
Tom S ipana (Unanai ) , then an administ rat ion clerk in Buin
town .
Some of the early rice product ion was also carried
to the port o f Kangu , where Buin town then was , nearly 5 0
km away , where i t was sold t o the administ rat ion , Buin
mi ssion s an d Ton Lep , the f i rst of a numb er o f Chinese
traders in Buin, who p aid a penny a pound . Not many peop le
carried r i ce this far and some o f tho s e who did were paid
not with cash b ut with ' cards ' ( credit notes ) which were
useles s after Ton Lep died .
S ome coconuts remained f rom
b efore the war but new p lant in gs were not en couraged because
the admini s trat ion felt that the soil was unsuitab le ; the
little copra that was produced als o had to be carried t o
Ton Lep in Buin . Even t ually enough money was collected from
rice sales , mainly to returned p lantat ion labourers , t o
estab lish a s t o re and a small b akery near Monoitu which Tom
S ipana o r ganized , although he remained in Buin . Goods were
obtained f rom Ton Lep ' s s tore in Buin . Various people looked
after the s tore at different t imes , inc ludin g S umma (Arnio)
who was able to writ e , and Motoi (Kaparo ) , who could count
on fern l eaves . This was one of the f irst pos t -war stores
in S iwai .
S ome t ime in the early 19 5 0s Teremo h eard that Bishop
Wade , the Bishop o f Bougainville , was vis it ing Piano mission
in Buin s o he walked there , a distance of about 2 0 kilometres
from Amio , and asked him for a better rice mill . He did this
86
b ecause, without rice sales , the old men and women had no
money , unlike those young men who had returned from the
plant at ions . He pointed out that s ince the people o f the
Monoitu area had built the church for no co s t , this was a
Soon aft erwards a mill was provided and instal led
fair deal .
at Monoitu and a thir d of the revenue f rom rice millin g there
went in to church funds . This generated new en thus iasm for
r i ce growing and Arnio and S iro i villages j oined with Kaparo
to develop a n ew and . larger area .
( S iroi later began their
own communal garden but this only las t ed a short t ime because
many villagers wanted t o be gin thei r own garden s . ) Arnio and
Siroi received their money separat ely and each village had a
savings b ank accollll t where the money s t aye d .
The adminis­
t ration r i ce mill at Konga and the miss ion mill at Monoitu
app eared to have been two separate and s imilar foci for rice
growers in the early 1 95 0s .
Rice however grew b adly in many part s of S iwai or died
from a disease which caused the b as e of the s t em t o go b lack .
Con sequently Mikompi t o ld the Kaparo people t o grow p eanut s ,
whi ch he had l earned how to grow when he was a mi ssion
catechist in Buka . P revious ly - s ome people in many S iwai
villages had grown a few p eanut s in their own gardens b ut
thi s was the f irst t ime peanut s had b een grown commllll a lly
with the int en t ion of earning cash . The Kaparo villagers
als o t ried corn .
Th e revenue con t inued t o go int o the village s t ore
(although in o ther villages t here were different sys t ems o f
distrib ut ion ) but this suffered from a problem which b ecame
quit e familiar for S iwai st o res .
Too many p eople looked
after the store and some of the money disappeared ; ' o l i
kaikaim mani bi long mipe la ' ( literally , ' they ate our money ' } .
There was no one with enough knowledge to rl.lll a s tore and
thos e who looked after it became wo rried ; o l i seksek long
bikpe la m:zni i kamap long s toa ( they were s cared o f the
large amount s o f money that were made f rom the store) ' .
S in ce the rice garden money disappeared in the s ame way ,
enthus iasm for connnun al work faded rapidly and neither s t o re
no r conmrunal work was s t ill goin g in the late 1 950s .
In Buin the lo cal people did not appreciate the possib ­
ilit ies o f agricultural developmen t and would n o t give the
didiman land so he left and first c ame to S iwai in 1 95 0 .
Although- a house was built for a didiman at -Kon ga , S iwais
too would not at first p rovide land for an agricul tural
s t at ion un t il the Dist rict Connni ss ioner arrived in 1952 and
87
asked them again . The Konga s tat ion was then built on
Keheno clan land provided by Kuiaka , who was an o lder man
and spoke no P i dgin En glish but nevertheless appreciat ed the
possib i lit ies of cash crop development . The first two
didimen spent mos t o f their t ime operat ing and repairing
the Konga rice machine , which S oiri o f Kapana looked after ,
but they also s t arted o ff corn and p eanut s .
(Peanut s had
been grown b efore b ut n ever for sale ; the changes in commllll al
gardens followed these recommendat ions . )
The name o f Kevin Tomlin inevitab ly emerges from any
dis cus s ion of the s t art o f co coa growing in S iwai ; moreover
his is the only European name that emerges in di scuss ions o f
recent agricultural history and h e i s a s respected and
revered as any o f the handful of Europeans who have been
clo sely as s o ciat ed with S iwai life in the p as t .
Con sequen t ly
3
it i s not always easy to s eparat e man from myth .
Tomlin
was the first agricult ural o fficer t o be p ermanently pos t ed
t o S iwai where he estab lished himself in July 1956 . Work on
the Konga Agr icultural S t at ion b egan soon aft erwards and a
ho�se was f in i shed there a y ear later . He was a man o f firm
opinions an d o f con s iderab le energy , almo st all o f which was
di.rected t owards agricultural improvement in S iwai . When
his motorb ike was out o f order he would b orrow a b icycle t o
t ravel around .
( On one such day in 1 9 5 6 h e t ravelled from
Kon ga to I ru and on to Kimaku , Hiru Hiru , Usokoli and Tonu ,
a distance o f ab out 40 miles , at each o f which places he
inspected possib l e cocoa plantat ion s i tes . ) He is rememb ered
for the b litzes he carried out on un t idy co conut plantat ions ,
his insisten ce upon cocoa bein g the b es t cash crop ( and that
those who were foolish enough not to plant co coa would have
their heads beaten t o gether by him) and for his t o t al
ab sorption in S iwai life ( on one o ccas ion dispers ing the last
known volub le disput e between Catholic and Methodist fact ions
near S i ro i , t ipping a blackb oard in the r iver an d telling
them to go and do s omething useful , l ike p lan t ing cocoa) .
During th e first three y ears t hat he l ived in S iwai Tomlin
was s ing l e s o spent many o f his evenings dis cus s ing agricul­
tural development s with S iwai leaders and their supporters .
3
1 was often told that Tomlin was well over s ix feet tall ;
when I eventually met him he proved t o be no more than about
five feet , ten inches t all . Tomlin t ells a story of his
own return t o S iwai in 1 9 6 9 , after a decade away , when he
overheard a youth , who had never known him earl ier , remarking
' Is that really Mr Tomlin ; he seems quit e human ' (Tomlin ,
pers . comm. 19 7 7 ) .
88
Indeed he app ears to have act ed accordin g t o S iwai t radit ion
by operat in g through the supporters , rather than goin g d i rectly
to the l eaders , but en surin g that the leaders were carefully
in formed about his p roposals . This made him ext remely
popular , especially by con t ras t with his succes s or who
' expected the atmosphere o f - a coun t ry gol f club ' .
His own
demands on lab our were there fore t o lerated even when he
doubled the t radit ional government work day hours from 9
un t il 2 t o 7 un t i l 5 in an effort t o provide access road s
f o r t ract or s , and cont inually supervised the work t o the
ext ent that when adul t S iwais , who for any reason were n o t
working at any t ime , encount ered him they were filled with a
sense o f shame . When Tomlin finally left S iwai , for a post ing
in Papua , he was given a large number o f shillings by many
individual S iwais . He donat ed the whole lot t o the Rural
Pro gres s So ciety .
When Tomlin proposed a Rural Pro gress S ociety , S iwais
responded quickly ; some of the money that allowed them t o
s e t up t h e S ociety c ame f rom the s ale o f pigs . Teremo
believed that it was t ime to s top money , especially war_
damage mon ey , being hidden in the bush and t ime to do s omethin g
use ful with it , s o that all the early members were asked t o
cont ribute £ 1 each . Haranu (Miheru) believed that s everal
mumis contributed £2 5 each t owards s et t ing up the society
whereas ordinary men con t ribut ed £5 . Whatever the b alance
in fun din g it is apparent that the leading suppo rt ers o f the
S ociety were the S iwai leaders .
The f irst communal cocoa was planted mainly by Kapana ,
Kin irui and S ikurai villages with the as s is tance o f men from
many parts o f S iwai on Kuiaka ' s ground near Kon ga , at the
suggest ion o f Mr Tomlin . There was a Kapana Company which
looked after this plant at ion but it was believed that Kuiaka
and another leader ' at e ' all the money so that too disinte­
grat ed . Lit tle of this cocoa now remains s ince it grew
badly on poor soil , although it was used by the didimen as a
demonstrat ion plot . At leas t hal f the villages o f S iwai
began vil lage companies : a new idea of unknown origin .
Their aims were fundamen tally the s ame as that o f Kapana ;
vil lage leaders would provide land for plan t ing cash crops
and the money from this would go in t o a s ingle fund which
would enab le some equalizat ion o f incomes within the village .
Almo st all o f these companies have now f inished although
some , like tho se of Usokol i , Kumuki and S iroi l inger on ( c f .
Chapter 8 ) .
89
In mo s t villages , s in ce the didimen had recommended it ,
the ear liest co coa plantat ions owned by individuals were
planted by all the village men ; in S iro i , as elsewhere , the
village bell was rung and all the men had to turn out for
work . Three plantations were plant ed l ike this in the village
and then , l ike the earlier communal rice gardening , the idea
fell through and l ater planters had t o p lan t their cocoa
us in g hous ehol d o r hired l ab our . The early planters , there
as elsewhere bein g mainly leaders , had b een given an
advantage .
One o ther . Plantat ion had been planted communally :
that o f t he S iro i Company on the edge o f the village l ine
and a little l at er a Company copra p lant at ion was s t arted on
the beach near Ait ara .
The two p lantat ions were on the land
of the two mo st important � ineages in S iwai .
Thus , early int e rest in cash cropping b egan with the
communal plant in g of rice ; this was init ially success ful b ut
decl ined with the onset of diseas e , the inab ility to organize
communal work ( and the s tores that followed from them) , and
the lack o f an as sured market . Much o f the r ice produced
was eat en within S iwai .
Consequen t ly S iwais were always
int .er.e st e d in new cash crops ; corn and peanut s were tried
but again it proved difficul t to sell these crops and the
Cocoa
low return o ft en made the ef fort s carcely worthwhile .
was init ially grown in the same way as rice , in communal
plant at i on s , but these were more diff icult to organ iz e than
rice garden s , s ince there was a lack of int erest in co coa
and many S iwais thought that it t oo would be unsuccessful .
S ome individuals showed that coco a could be suc cess ful and
after that int erest in o ther p oss ib le cash crops faded as
almost every S iwai began to plant coco a .
A cash crop emerges
A few S iwai villages , b ut p robab ly only those close t o
the Japanese camps , grew rice after the war and i t cont inued
to grow well so that administ rat ion patro ls met constant
request s for assistance in rice growin g , husking and market in g .
In March 1948 the sub -dis t rict o f f i cer , Mr Cole , found that
at Ruisei
the o ff i cials we re very anxious t o grow rice but
refrained from doing so in any quant ity as they
had no husking machine .
They suggested that they
would provide the cash if I would undertake t o
sen d t o Aus t ralia on their b ehalf and purchase a
suitab le rice-husking machine .
They also appointed
90
two young men who were to be s en t t o any s choo l
o r p lantation t o learn how · to operate the machine
so that they could train others in the village on
thei r return (PR Bougainville , 10/4 7-48) .
By the middle o f 1948 garden cult ivat ion had been
succe s s fully reorgan ized ; al though t aro would not grow and
the admin ist rat ion was s t ill dist ribut in g various kinds of
seeds t o the people , the garden s were already p roducing
enough food to feed the local populat ion .
The evidence o f
the p at ro l rep o rts o f this period is that S iwais were no
longer concerned about their gardens and were interested in
expandin g rice growing ent irely b ecause o f its known value
as a cash crop .
It is no t always and everywhere clear why post-war
enthus iasm for rice cul t ivat ion was so great .
Cer tainly i t
had been a prest ige food in Siwai before the war ; Oliver has
des cribed how for large feas t s in 19 38-9 someone would go
some f i fty kilometres to Buin and purchase a s ack of rice
which would be con sumed by var ious leaders in the men ' s
club-house (pers . conun. 1 9 7 7 ) . At least as early as 1 9 2 3
it was part o f daily pol ice rat ions and was al s o regularly
eaten by p lantation workers .
In the war it was a bas ic
staple fo r both the Japanese and Aust ralian t roops and it
was known to grow well lo cally .
The associat ion o f rice and
European affluence that had already b een fostered by plan­
tat ion labour experiences was th erefore emphas ized durin g
the war . Meanwhile the environmen t had changed ; respect fo r
the technological achievement s of European s had grown and
c oupled wi th it was an admirat ion for the effectiveness o f
co-ope rat ive organization in agricultural product ion . All
o f the se however seem neces s ary but insufficient conditions .
Mo reover the emphasis had shif ted dramat ically from the
productio n of rice for c onsump tio� as it was from the few
individually owned pr e-war rice garden s , to the product ion
of rice for sale from l arge communal garden s . Participat ion
in cash cropping was avidly sought in a way that it had never
b een even a decade earlier .
Elsewhere in New Guinea the same movement t owards the
communal cul t iva tion of r ice was common in the post-war
years , with the dis t inct ion that in a number of areas ,
especially around the Madang coast , it was encouraged by the
admin is t rat ion rather than being a lo cal demand . The Garia
only planted r ice b ecause they had been told to do s o
(Lawrence , 1 964 : 2 6 9 ) whil st in T�ngu i t had actually been
91
the administrat ion who had ins isted on t h e connnun al o rganiz­
at ion ( Burridge , 1 9 6 0 : 2 6 0 ) . Nevertheles s there , and als o
elsewhere { c f . Cro combe , 1964 : 2 9 -30) , there was a s trong
as so ciat ion be tween rice cult ivat ion and cargo beliefs .
The requiremen t , from the admin istrat ion , that in
order to cul t ivate r ice the connnun ity should be
organized as a whole , devo id of sect ionalisms , is
clearly reflec ted in the arrangement for the cult
rituals . Like cargo , rice pertains t o the en t i re
united commun ity , and no t merely to p arts o f it
( Burridge , 1960 : 2 2 6 ) .
The diffe rence between these communal rice gardens and
o therwise ' rat ional ' agricul t ural act ivit ies was commonly
ident i f ie d , as it was in the Orokaiva area , by the bel ief
that ' mere p ar t icipation
woul d , magically or myst ically ,
quickly raise their s tatus in all respect s to that o f
Europeans ' ( c f . Crocomb e , 1964 : 2 9 ) .
Despite these associ­
ations rice cult ivation was carried out in much the s ame way
in Tangu as it was elsewhere in New Guinea ; the problems
were also mt1ch the s ame ( Burr id ge , 1 9 6 0 : 2 60-1 , 2 80-1 )
eventually foundering on the p roblems o f labour o rganizat ion
and the d i s t r ibut ion of returns .
•
•
•
It is now impossible to assess the ext ent to which there
was a cargoist ic element in S iwai connntm al rice cult ivat ion
or even that expectations were in some sense ' irrat ional ' .
What evidence there is s uggests that although S iwai expect­
at ions o f the various returns t o r ice-growin g were ext remely
high , they were no t tmreas onable and they did no t in corporate
element s of cargoism ( see Chapt e r 8 ) . They expect ed that the
their s tatus would indeed be improved by r i ce-growing and
that they would be able to p ro duce as much rice as they had
seen the Japanese produce .
The administrat ion at t empted to respon d to the reque s t s
f o r ass i s t an ce with rice growing ; their int erest was , in
part , a result o f concern over rice p r i ces s ince the price
of Aus t ralian rice ro se 2 7 8 p er cen t b etween 1945-6 and
The concern was b o th that the
195 3-4 (Jef freys , 19 71 : 15 ) .
price of rice would raise co sts in the plantat ion sector to
an uneconomic l evel and also that supplies woul d actually
become non-exist ent , irrespec t ive o f price .
Import replace­
ment appeared to be a n ecess ity . Lat e in 1 9 48 a survey was
92
carried o ut to assess the possib ility o f growin g r i c e in
south Bougainville ; it seems that emphas i s was placed on
S iwai s ince the re quests had come f rom there .
The f irst
report caut iously emphasized the commercial po ssibilit ies o f
large-s cale rice product ion cen t red in the area between the
Mivo and Hongorai r ivers and south of the old Buin road that
went thro ugh the v illages of Ruisei and Ru ' nai .
' S in ce the
land is all h eavily t imbered the in itial clearin g required
to brin g it t o a s t ate wher e t ractors , multi-disc ploughs ,
cult ivat o rs , seed-drills and harves ters could be used would
take some con siderable time ' . Ac ces s was expec t ed to be
through Mamagota which was s t ill the ma in landin g place for
mi ss ionaries and o c cas ional traders .
Init ial response to
the repor t was t o propose an experimental s t at ion at Ruisei ,
where bo th wet and dry rice cult ivat ion could be tried .
Mechani z at ion was deferred for future con s iderat ion and the
idea o f wet rice was abandoned when no water re tainin g s o ils
could b e fotmd . At the same t ime that large-scale mechan iz ed
rice-growin g was being cons idered by the administrat ion ,
they wer e al so s tarting to ass ist with the small village
developmen t s that S iwais had begtm thems elves .
The first government effort at agricultural ext ens ion
in S iwai , an d th e first act ivity of the new Buin agricultural
s tat ion , was the supervis ion of rice plan t in g in September
1948 on two p atches o f land at Rabaulu and Mamagota villages
which were in tended to b e used for seed product ion . A pat rol
into hal f a do zen western S iwai villages fotmd rice planted
at Kumuki .
' Rice had also b een planted at o ther places and
seems t o b e doing well . All the nat ives o f the area are keen
to grow rice ; all that s tops them is the absence o f a rice­
huller ' but the Bougainville Dis t rict Officer had already
recommended that their en thus iasm be rest rained un t il p roper
provisions could be made by DASF to give them inst ruct ion s
on plant in g and harvest ing and to give them machinery (PR
Boku 1 / 4 8-49 ) . Nevertheles s plan t ing went ahead rapidly .
In Augus t 1949 fourteen acres were bein g prep ared for r ice
plant ing at Konga and already an area of about one and a
half acres had been harvested there . At Ruisei eight acres
were bein g divided in to blocks fo r plant in g . At Morokaimoro
there was ' a n ic e crop of rice about 2 feet 6 in ches in
height ' and further clear ing was in p ro gres s . Many other
villages want ed t o s t art big blo cks of this kind .
S iwai was
already well ahead of o ther parts of south Bougainville in
rice plan t in g and almost every v illage had experimental r ice
crops (PR Boku 4 / 49 -5 0 ) .
93
The mos t out standing characteris t ic o f rice farming was
the emergence o f communal o r ganizat ion , essent ially a new
form o f organizat ion in S iwai agricult ure . Before the war
product ion t echniques did not require large-scale teamwork .
Al though Oliver notes that the village o f Moronei had a
gardening team, even this was unusual and only a very small
proport ion of total product ion came from t eamwork , whils t
even the Moronei team seems to have existed primarily to clear
and fen ce land which was sub sequen t ly divided between indiv­
ideal village househol ds (Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 309-13) . There was
no conununal work or product ion o f the kind that later char­
acterized rice growing although there was an increase in
conununal work for ' mo dern ' act ivit ies such as road maintenan ce
(Oliver , 1 949b : 5 9 ) . Af ter the war the administ rat ion in
some o ther p art s o f New Guinea had encouraged farmers t o
develop j o in t ly a s in gle area o f cash crops in the village ,
in preferen ce to individual plo t s , but it was not a whole­
hearted policy , bein g merely the extens ion of a p re-war
In S iwai conununal
policy that had only l imit ed s uccess .
organizat ion was inspired from within . When the o f ficer in
charge o f the new Buin agricultural s t at ion made what was
pro b ably the first full reconnais s an ce o f S iwai in May 1949 ,
he be came aware o f the emergent co-opera t ive sp irit . Villages ,
some o f which had t en t at ively grouped to gether int o larger
villages after the war ( cf . Connell , 1 9 7 8b ) , were att empt in g
t o make j oint village gardens ; o ther villages were s imply
making one for the whole village .
Thus in Ruhuaku the Buin
didiman Dornan found that Ruisei , Hurai and Mus imino i had
begun one large garden which was well un der way ; one acre
was planted and about t en more acres partially cleare d .
P iruruho , o f Musimino i , ' a very able man ' , was in charge and
' with s t r i ct sup ervis ion by a European this group will do
well ' . Kut in and Kohkui villagers had begl.lll one small garden .
Kl.llln u (which had incorporated Kereiso village) wan t ed a
garden o f its own b ut had not y et s t arted .
In o ther p ar t s
o f S iwai the pat tern was much the same ; Konga had the b e s t
established rice garden i n S iwai . Two and a half acres were
almo st ripe and a large area was cleared for further plant in gs .
Under the leadership o f the luluais o f the villages o f Kapana
(Kuiaka) and Kin irui (probab ly Pakanu) s ix villages includ ing
Kapana , Kin irui , Ml.llln u , S ikurai an d Ieku had worked on a
s ingle garden . Eleven villages at Morokaimoro and seven
villages n ear Mono itu had comb ined to develop one garden b ut
usually no more than one or two villages worked t o gether .
Dornan makes no referen ce t o any individually owned garden s ,
although a y ear later there were some . Later the didimen
themselves began t o encourage these communal garden s , part ly
94
as a response to very s catt ered individual plantin gs ; in
April 1 9 5 1 the didimen as s is ted in c learing two o f an intended
four clan areas near to Kon ga . The Poporu clan had an area
of 1 . 6 acres and Huhu had 0 . 8 - acres .
In Sept ember 1951 they
est imated that there were 10 acres actually under communal
rice farmin g . The very large areas that were cleared s eem
to con firm that rice was inten ded to be sold rathe r than
eat en ; it was separat e from t he sub s is t en ce economy in almo s t
every way .
The emerging dis t ribut ion o f rice growing can
be part ially t raced from Dornan ' s reconnais sance o f S iwai in
1949 ( Figure 6 ) although it is an incomplete p icture . He may
_ no t have visited some areas , notab ly Mokakuru , and in some
cases all the villages participatin g in communal gardens were
not named .
Like o ther sub sequent attemp ts at communal forms o f
work o rgan iz at ion , i t i s impossible t o ident ify the mos t
important factors that prompted t h e adopt ion o f t h i s ab sol­
ut ely new form of organization .
Cl early s igni ficant was the
observed s uccess of the large Japanese communal garden s that
flourished in S iwai during the war years .
All ied with this
was the int ent ion that this should be a business venture to
produce money and that the way t o achieve success was by
mobiliz ing as much labour as pos s ib le . Moreover , as in the
early communal rice-farming ventures of the Orokaiva
( Crocomb e , 1964 : 30 ) , it was not even real iz ed t hat cash crops
could be grown by in dividuals . The bas ic S iwai model was
the European plan tat ion sys t em , modified by the Japanese food
gardens into more manageable propo r t ions .
As was app arent to all concern ed the main con s t raint t o
great er rice product ion was millin g machinery .
The Kangu
s t at ion at Buin had a rice mill in the middl e of 1949 but
there was n o adequate transport from S iwai to Buin ; in March
1 9 5 0 about a hun dred drums of paddy were at Konga waiting
to be milled and s ome was germinat ing .
Some S iwais had been
t rained to op erate a rice mill , but inst ruct ions had b een
is sued that th ere should be no more plant in g un t il a mill
coul d be obtaine d . In Ap ril 1 9 5 0 a mill was unloaded at
Mamagota an d carried to Konga where it was ins t alled and
where at l eas t fi ve t ons o f paddy rice were then st ored .
In 1 9 5 0 , with the rice mill installed at Konga , the
Buin didiman was attemp t ing to es tablish a commercial o rgan­
izat ion that might event ually become the basis of a S iwai
Rural Progress So ciety . The in itial charges for mill ing
would be ld . a pound .
( It was estimated that 100 pounds o f
95
6
t.e)
A
E X I ST I N G
G A R DE N S
PRO POS E D
D E F I N I T E LY
- ·· - · · CO M M U N A L
· ·· - ···· · ·
.. P R O B A B LE
G A R D E NS
NO
GARDEN
WOR K
COMMUNAL
. "" o'
S' :,...-'
0
2
Figure 6 .
4
6
/
8 km
Rice gardens 1949
Source : Dornan 1949
.. :: - •
._ ,\O�
Q)�f'/
WO R K
/ .. . . ../'
C!>\)� /
c, e<' ....
/
,
,II'
I
, ... ,.,
96
paddy would give about fifty pounds o f commerc ial rice . )
S iwais would there fore pay l / 2 d . per pollll d o f paddy rice o r
leave part o f their own rice o f equivalen t value . When a
So ciety emerged it could pur chase p ad dy at 2 d . per pollll d an d
commercial rice would be sold a t Konga at 4 d . p e r pollll d an d
a t Buin a t 5 d .
(This ld . p e r pollll d differen t ial represented
the est imated co s t o f transport either by carriers from Konga
to the coas t at Mamagota , and then on by t rawler to Buin , o r
b y carriers t o the t rucking point which was then s even hours
walk away on the Silibai river, but was soon expected to reach
Aku village in B uin . ) The s olut ion to the t ransport problems ,
recommen ded by the didiman, was the in troduction o f b eas t s o f
burden , such a s horses , bullo cks o r oxen ; now that the mil l ing
problem had been solved market ing was the next bott leneck .
The Buin didiman C . S . Franke , who had already had a couple
of years expe rien ce runn ing the Mekee rice s cheme in Papua ,
pointed out , ' it is no solut ion to co lonial agr icul ture t o
s imply induce nat ives to grow crops unless we provide him
with all the o rganiz at ion required for market ing his produce ' .
The administ rat ion hoped that an organiz .at ion might follow
along the l ines of the Mekee So ciety of Papua when a S iwai
Rural Pro gress So ciety could be set up , b ut it was expected
that this would b e d i f f icult ' s ince few villages are conver­
sant with money ' . By then this was p robab ly a doub t ful
j udgement but apart from the beast s of burden this was more
or less the commercial o rganizat ion that did emerge a few
y ears lat er .
The didimen felt that the seed remain ing from the
Japanese period was in ferior . This and b o th white and b rown
r ice seed supplied by the Methodist Mis s ion at Tonu were the
two pos t -war seed sources un t il the governmen t b egan in
1 9 4 8 to dist r ib ut e some Mekee rice from Papua . This was
in it ially lit t le imp rovement , being weak in s t raw and un even
in mat uring and in 1 9 5 0 an experimental plot o f Borneo rice
was t ried at Konga , but the problem o f quality was n ever
ent irely solved . A Japanese salvage team in Buin in 19 5 8
d i d n o t like S iwai rice and Ton Lep , t h e leading Chinese
t rader in Buin , cons idered the rice grown at Mo goroi in
up land Buin t o be vas t ly superior to that grown in S iwai
(PR, Buin 2 / 5 8-59 ) .
Rice was planted by hand and garden s
were divided up b y f allen timber ; the usual method o f plan t ing
was for one mar. to us e a di gging st ick and dibb le whilst
ano ther followed behind placing seeds in the hole and
covering them over .
In smaller gardens there was t rans­
plant ing of rice from large gardens (APR, Buin 1 9 5 4 ) .
97
Thre shin g was done in the villages ; most had const ructed
their own rice-threshin g machines from a wooden barrel ,
studded with s t ap les . These were hand operated but geared
by the sp ro cket , chain and driving wheel of old Japanese
army bicyc les ; they were , in fact , cop ies o f the machines
that the Japanese themselves had used . The only limit t o
their development was the availability o f o l d b icycles and
the perfo rman ce of this part icular p iece o f intermediate
technology seems to have been always sup erior to that of the
modern r ice mills . Hand rice hullers were sold by DASF for
£10 each .
By 1 9 5 0 rice was availab le in commerc ial quant it ies ;
in the two months o f S eptember and Octob er one ton o f
commercial rice was produced and in the next five months
there was another one and three-quarter tons .
In this second
period one ton was sold at 6d . per poun d to the administ rat ion ,
a S iwai t rade store and Europeans stat ioned in Buin ; the
rest ( 1609 potmds ) was marketed within S iwai at 4�d . per
pound . At the s ame t ime only 2 7 7 pounds were retained by
S iwais , after mill in g , for their own consumpt ion . The early
problems seemed to have been s o lved , cash was at last coming
in and S iwai enthus iasm was enormous . Early in 19 51 it was
repo rt ed that ' small plo t s of rice may be seen in all gardens .
However p roduc t ion is almo s t entirely for sale and no t
consumpt ion . Threshed rice is carried from the villages t o
Konga Agricultural S t at ion where it i s hulled by the Admin­
ist ration machine there .
Quality is excellen t but grain
size is uneven there fo re some grain get s b roken durin g
hullin g .
It is cons idered that they will readily change
over to p roduct ion solely of Mekeo rice when the o rder is
given ' . The s ame kiap commented :
' From t ime to t ime , it
app ears , the p eople have grasped upon one of several ideas
by which they hope to secure their connne rcial s alvat ion .
The mo st prevalent o f th ese ideas is the large-s cale cash
p ro duct ion of rice . As Father Barrett , s t ationed at Mono itu
in S iwai for several years , expres sed it , the Rice has become
their s cr iptural Golden Calf , the panacea f or all the ir
money-htm gr iness ' (PR, Buin 5 / 50- 51) .
Rice had b ecome a
cash crop and S iwais wanted to go much further ; all villages
requested that the kiap pay 30 per cent of their war damage
compen sat ion into a common S iwai fund for the purchase o f
agricultural implement s , including a t ract o r , a plough , a
It
circular saw an d rice hull ing and threshing machinery .
was a reques t that was never met .
98
After the war the co lonial adminis t ration agreed to
make compensat ion paymen t s for death or inj ury and also
.
damage to p roperty ( in cludin g crops and t radit ional valuables) ,
that had b een sus tained in the war ; it was int ended that the
local population throughout the war-affected areas should be
enabled t o return t o a physical condit ion comparab le t o that
of 1941 .
It took more than· five y ears from the end of the
war for anything t o happen so that its int ended aims had
S iwai claims were mainly for
long been met or bypassed .
houses or coconut palms and , by March 1952 , mos t of the war
damage claims had been paid o ut ; £17 , 843 was distributed and
£17 , 6 75 . 13 s . was received back as deposits int o S avings Bank
accotmts rather than being inmediately spent as it was else­
wh ere ( cf . Leadley , 1 9 7 6 : 2 00- 7 ) . Mos t claims tmder £5 were
paid in cash ; in some cases , where the recipien t s were old ,
sick or crippled , more than £5 was given o ut in cash (PR,
Buin 4/ 51-52 ) .
S in ce there were 6 30 claims the t otal compen­
sat ion paid was about £30 per household .
Cl early , S iwai
demand for rice was no t the result o f any lo cal cash shortage .
Although much of the war damage money eventually wen t towards
establishing the S iwai Society it is equally c lear that it
was not the payment o f what was , by p revious s t andards , a
huge sum o f money that fost ered the drive t owards cash
cropp in g .
It is almo st a paradox that cash croppin g appar­
en tly emerged essent ially independent of a demand for cash .
The s ingle year 1 9 5 0 was the z enith o f the S iwai rice
In 1951 the Buin agricul tural s t at ion was closed
economy .
down , at exactly the moment when a milling and market in g
organiz at ion had become established , and a cash crop had at
las t emerged . Between 1 9 5 1 and 1 9 5 5 there were , at b es t ,
irregular pat rols through south Bougainville . Rice con t inued
to be grown , a little was sold to the mis s ion s and the rice
mill at Konga cont inued to rtm , mann e d by Soir i of Panake .
The ab s en ce o f didimen mean s that records are sparse but it
seems that for about four years very lit tle r ice was t aken
as far as the governmen t s t at ion an the Buin coast at Kangu .
Market in g and millin g were difficul t but there were o ther
p roblems thro ughout south Bougainville ; in the Kono area o f
Buin, much n earer than S iwai t o a marke t , rice was only being
produced for home consump tion by 1 9 52 (PR, Buin 1 / 52 -5 3 ) and
by 195 5 there was no int erest at all s ince it was apparently
dyin g before maturation . Three y ears later it was s t ill
o ften diseased and grew best in the drier years , of which
there wer e very few ( PR , Buin 3 / 5 8-5 9 ) , although the climat e
o f south Bougainville is suit ab le for opt imal rice p roduction
in all months of the y ear (Hale , 1 9 7 5 : 2 0 6 ) . Whil st the Buin
99
station exis t ed , rice had al so been encouraged a t Mongontoro
in the Kiet a s ub-di st rict ; this too was abandoned during the
p er io d o f decline and replaced by coconut grove s . A further
factor in the overall de cline was the return to rice-growing ;
rice is very demanding of lab our , especial ly for weedin g
( compared with t radit ional roo t crop s ) and , in addit ion , i t
s eems that the larger communal garden s , unlike household
gardens , were ro tated less fre quen t ly hence soil product ivity
Thi s , especially ,
was l ikely to fall af ter a couple of y ear s .
dis couraged communal garden in g .
By March 1 9 5 4 there were about twenty acres o f rice in
Buin sub -dist ri ct ; at S :ln inai and Mus iminoi there were two
clan garden s , each· about four acres in ext en t , but all the
remaining rice was grown by in dividuals (APR, Buin 1954 ) .
There was however a lat e r revival in communal growin g ,
especially in the Korikunu area , following the es t ab l ishmen t
o f a rice mill at Monoitu in 1955 (and the res t o rat ion o f a
marke t for the rice) . Later again Hal in g observed in 1 9 60
how some clans had banded t o gether
in a j o int ent erprise to plant an acre o f crops
within a defined clan area . Gradually however
the clan as a whole lose interest in the venture
and the bulk ot the work falls to one o r two
individuals . On maturity of the crop the clan
s t il l claim a high p ercentage of the return s
(APR , Eas t ern Division , S iwai , 1 9 6 0 ) .
Although the rice growing groups of ten came f rom
individual villages , each village was divided betwe·en
lineages an d there wer e frequent disput es over ground ; the
members of one l ineage d id not l ike plant in g cash crops on
the gro nn d o f ano ther lineage , s ince they only had r.'ights
t o use such land for food crop s , hence several village s chemes
even t ually b ecame l in eage s chemes . Moreover the t radit ion al
work group s that had exis ted earlier were always for act ivit ies
of short durat ion , rarely more than two o r three s uccessive
day s . Group s were quite unus ed to workin g t o gether at
i rregular intervals at all the s tages of product ion over a
lon g pe rio d .
There were no t radit ional ( o r administ rat ion )
preceden t s for sanct ions against those v illagers who were
not int erested in con t inued participat ion in communal cash
cropp ing .
Fin ally there was also the venality and inexperience
o f some o f the leaders o f these ventures ; there was no
tradit ional basis for distributing cash in S iwai so that
when returns were low and pro f it s dwin dled enthus iasm for
connntm al cash-cropping naturally mel ted away .
100
When the dis advant ages of connnun al cash cropping had
become more apparen t , especially elsewhere in Papua and New
Guinea , the adminis trat ion emphas ized the role of individual
famil ies in cult ivat in g separat e plo t s of cash crop s . By
1 9 60 communal cash crop plan t in g was bein g s t ron gly discouraged
by the dist rict authorities , al though group work on individual
holdings was encouraged . Thi s emphas is became clearly
estab lished throughout the co'llll. t ry and in 1961 the Minister
for Territories , Paul Hasluck , s t at ed
the big maj ority o f the present populat ion are
l ikely to f ind their advancemen t in changin g from
village subsistence t o cash cropping , forming a
nat ive peasantry that
will not be a maj o r
employer o f wage-earning labour ( Cheetham , 1 96 3 : 6 9 ) .
.
•
.
.
.
•
Th is became estab l ished adminis t rat ion policy although
much later some at t ent ion was also given to int roducing new
food crops in to tradit ional agricul tural syst ems in o rder
to improve nut rit ional standards .
Af ter only one year o f real success , three or four years
of failure were a b it t e r disappoin tment to S iwai hopes . As
rice sale s declined s o S iwais swit ched their att ent ion t o
other cash-earn ing alt ernat ives ; even so in 1 9 5 5 the kiap
s t ill detected great enthus iasm fo r rice-growin g ' al though
they couldn ' t explain why the Agri cult ural Officer s t arted
them o f f and left them to it ' .
The s ame kiap als o not iced
some rice rot t in g in houses and at t ributed this t o ' the
l az ines s o f the nat ives ' even though he s imult aneously
recorded that people from villages near Unanai and Tonu had
formed a s avin gs bank account , and depos it ed £100 , so that
they would be able to purchase a rice machine (PR, Buin
1 / 55-56 ) .
Throughout the early y ears of rice growing there was a
contrast b etween , on the one hand , the enthus iasm o f S iwais
and lo cal didimen and , on the o ther , the caut ion o f the
district o f fice at Sohano who were arb iters of the development
There was no o f f icial
ef fort and f inanciers of new ventures .
admin i st rat ion in terest in the gene ral expans ion of rice
growing in New Guinea un t il after 1 9 5 2 although there were
then odd pocket s of developmen t in Madang and Sep ik . Paul
Has luck , the Minis t er for Territ ories , notes how he was then
aiming at making the Territ o ry self-suf ficient in rice but ,
in the en d , prob lems of admin is tration and a decline in the
co s t of Aust ralian rice prevented import sub s t itut ions
(Hasluck , 1 9 7 6 : 1 33-5 , 306-7 ) . The DASF headquarters in Port
101
Moresby were therefo re un int eres ted and at one point the Buin
didimen angrily complained that the o f f ice sent them copies
of AustraZian Goat World b ut seemed un ab le t o provide l iter­
ature on eithe r rice o r t ropical agriculture . Al though a
Rice Proj ect Manager was s t at ioned at Buin for two y ears ,
and in 19 5 0 a local materials house was built fo r him at
Konga , he was rarely ab le to leave Kangu where s t at ion admin­
is t rat ion t ied him down .
It was a f rus t rat in g period for
S iwais .
There was al so a con flict o f ideas between S iwais and
didimen although this made l it tle dif ference to the expansion
o f rice farming . Although , to some exten t , rice had al so
replaced t aro as a sub s is t ence crop , it was the inten t ion o f
Indeed , as
S iwai growers that rice b e ·the b as ic cash crop .
in East S ep ik (Allen , 1 9 7 6 : 2 0 7 ) , although villagers did eat
much of the rice , there is no evidence that they were at all
Rice was for
interes ted in r ice as a sub s is t ence supplemen t .
money .
( Throughout these early years S iwai and apparently
didiman interes t in copra p roduct ion was t o t ally ab sent ,
p r imarily b ecause many o f the co conut palms had been dest royed
in the war . ) Despite the opt imism of their first propo s als
the admini s tration never expect ed south Bougainville t o
export r ice , hence their lack o f int erest , and lo cal o f f i cers ,
although keen to encourage rice , con s idered that it would b e
used almo s t ent irely t o imp rove the local diet ; '
at all
t imes it was s t ressed that the first obj ect of the proj ect
was t o supply the nat ives with a good grain which could be
s to red for emergency and that the connne rcial s ide was only
a secon dary considerat ion ' . Again , exact ly as in Eas t Sep ik ,
didimen as s isted the villagers with r ice as a cash crop
whilst , in corresponden ce with headquarters , crit iciz ing
them for this approach , arguing that cash cropp ing o f rice
was impossible there . The main difficulty preven t in g
connner cial rice p ro duct ion was t ran sport ; there were at
leas t five maj o r rivers b etween S iwai and Kan gu , the only
p o s s ib le port , and almos t no transport in the area .
In 1 9 5 0
one Buin man owned a war-di sposal t ruck ; any o ther t ransport
was government owned and almost impos s ib le to hire . Moreover
in 1 9 5 1 the Mivo river was ' a more or less permanent obst acle
to t ransport ' with rice having t o b e o f floaded on one side
and carried over to the o th er .
S ome S iwais in ten ded to buy
t rucks with war damage payment s but they had no driving or
mechan ical skill s , war damage payment s were insuff icient and
They also observed the
the admin is t rat ion di scouraged them.
diff icult i es that the administrat ion had with their own
transport . Even after the l imit ed success of rice growin g ,
•
•
•
102
Tomlin s t ill cons idered in 1955 that rice should not b e a
cash crop s ince co coa , co f fee and peanut s o f fered better
opportunit ies and , since rice could b e s t o red , it was a good
ins urance aga in s t food shortages .
S iwai produced 5 t ons o f
rice in that year .
What is mo st remarkab le about the S iwai experience with
rice growin g is the way in which it dupl icated and in its
turn was dupl icated by rice proj ec t s in o ther areas o f Papua
and New Guin ea . Allen ' s summary o f the reasons for the
failure of rice-growin g in the mid-19 5 0s in part s of the East
Sepik provin ce is , in almo st every detail , the same as that
of S iwai :
People believed the mere growin g o f rice was
enough . Their expectat ions were very high , and
when no radical changes occurred in their
villages af ter one o r two years they were
disappointed . The returns from rice growing per
family were very low . Areas planted were small ,
and large group s o f people cul t ivat ed one garden .
When their rice was sold and the money dist ributed
to al l who had part icipat ed in the garden , each
family received only a few shillings , when they
had been expectin g much larger amount s of money .
Nor had they taken int o con s iderat ion the co s t s
of carryin g rice harvested t o the mill s . . .
Lack o f working cap ital meant that s omet imes when
rice was b rought to [ the mills at ] Supari or
Brukham , growers could not be paid . Many people
complain that they were never paid for some
harves t s and for this reason they decided to
dis cont inue growin g . Many accused the bisnis
men of emb e z z lement , but this almo st certainly
did not happen .
Lack o f techn ical skill in
managing and runn ing the mill s resul ted in
in creas ing mechan ical b reakdowns .
Rice was s t o ck­
p iled in inadequat e st orage , and the weather , rat s ,
poult ry and peop le caus ed a deteriorat ion in the
sto ckp i le and much rice pur chased was never milled
(Allen , 1 9 7 6 : 2 0 4 ) .
In a nearby part o f the East Sep ik Prov�nce Tuz in
( 19 7 6 : 37 ) ob served that ecological degradat ion followed the
collllun
ll al cult ivation of rice s in ce both t he des iccat ion o f
the garden centre an d the greater dist ance between i t and
the surrounding vegetat ion ret arded reaf forestat ion durin g
103
the fallow p e riod .
It is pos s ible that this also o c curred
in S iwai .
Two separate accounts of the Mekeo rice proj ect
in the Gul f o f Papua illus t rat e the s imilarit ies in greater
detail .
Environment ally it [ the Mekeo area ] was unsuit ed
for upland r ice growin g . At the t ime the proj ect
was developed in frast ructure was insufficien tly
developed . The f inanc ial and s t af f res our ces o f
the Adminis t rat ion were insufficient t o enable
adequate capital support and supervis ion of the
proj ect .
The proj ect was beset by a number o f
t e chni cal p roblems rel at ing t o p roduct ion , milling
and marke t ing of rice and these should have been
ironed out b e fo re exten s ion work pro ceeded
From detailed enquiries it seems cert ain that the
at t it ude to rice growing as a means of e conomic
pro gress had been complet ely irrat ional - the
people had regarded rice growing
not so much
as an economic act ivity , but more as a patt ern o f
behaviour which , if followed , would aut omat ically
accomplish their t ran slat ion f rom their exist ing
e conomi c level to the s upe rior economic state
enj oyed by Europeans
The people reasoned that
if t he government went to all the t rouble of
sen d ing o f fi cials and pol ice t o s upervise the
plan t in g and harvestin g o f the crop , then it must
b e very valuab le indeed and that the small
monet ary return they had received in p re-war years
must be only a fract ion of its real value
The land t enur e system in the Mekeo was neither
oriented to ext ens ive cul tivation nor did it adj ust
to this need (Jeffreys , 1 9 71 : 16 , 2 2 - 3 ) .
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While the failure o f the government ' s s chemes
cannot be at tributed to the Mekeo ' s lack of
support , it is obvious that their respon ses were
often negat ive and obs t ruct ive , if un int ent ionally
so . People ' s · dis t rust of the administ rat ion and
of their own leaders would have created serious
ob st acles to development even in the absence of
all o ther p ract i cal and admin i st rative diff icult ies .
Field staff also had cause to complain o f vil lagers '
apparent inab il ity t o work t o gether at the village
unit , and below . . . Villagers were as unaware of
the result s of their own negat ive responses as they
were of the effect s of high t ransport co sts . . .
They had wanted the rice s cheme and the co-operat ives
104
to succeed - their perseverance over more than
a decade at t e s t s . t o the t ruth of their s t at ement s
. . . t hey b el ieved they had carried o ut their part
to the b es t of their ab ility : they had planted
rice , made copra and j o ined what ever s o c ie t ies
the government had seen fit to devise . . . Peop le
had begun to realiz e that they need not b e
dependent on the governmen t for the things they
wanted : they could earn money for themselves ,
s t art their own bus ines ventures ( St ephen , 1 9 74 :
305- 7 ) .
The same kinds o f con clusions could cert ainly have been
r eached from the other rice growing areas in Pap ua and New
Guinea , and espe cially thos e around Madan g and in East New
Brit ain .
Lo cal people expected too much from rice cult ivat ion
and did not always appreciate the high labour requirement s
whilst the adminis t rat ion never gave suf f icient as s istance
to ensure that prob lems of milling and market ing could always
be solved . In Mekeo , j us t as in S iwai ,
Whatever the innned iat e cause o f the collapse in
19 5 6 , it stemmed not f rom the Mekeo ' s refusal t o
grow enough rice , b ut from an admin ist rat ive
failure to dispose o f what they produced : in
1959 f ield staff could barely cont ain their
impat ien ce with the few obs t inate villagers who
s t ill wan ted tg plant rice ( St ephen , 19 74 : 2 80 ) .
Much of this imp at ien ce may well have also resulted from the
fact that the import price of Aust ralian rice f inally s t ab ­
il ized in the mid-19 50s , and sub sequently decl ined , whilst
supply appeared t o be assured . This removed much of the
in cent ive for the admin is t rat ion to develop a lo cal rice
indus t ry whils t declinin g p ri ces als o dis couraged the lo cal
produ cers .
Communal organiz at ion was generally characterist i c o f
the early pos t -war rice s chemes although everywhere prob lems
resulted f rom this . As McAuley ar gued from his observat ion
of the Mekeo s cheme :
While the n ew ent e rp rise remains thus marg inal t o
the sub s isten ce economy this [ communal organiz at ion ]
may seem app ropriate ; but the s it uat ion is very
different if the new form of commercial product ion
be comes mo re and mo re central in the village economy ;
the s o c ial and e conomic consequen ces are then far-
105
reachin g , for good o r ill
Should collect ivised
p ro duct ion be come dominant in the economic l ife o f
a New Guinea community i t will b e necessary t o
solve the prob lem o f communal l an d t enure .
In the
init ial s t age of group enthusiasm and goodwill ,
while the communal ri ce-field remains something
except ional and marginal , yieldin g only a small
cash return , individuals are con tent to lend their
l and to the Rural Pro gress S ociety ; but this will
not do in the lon g run (McAuley , 1952 : 2 7 9 ) .
•
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•
Communal o rganiz at ion p roved even more inadequate in the
Gona area where the people looked upon the harvest ed rice
e ither as an inessent ial by-product of the grand bus iness
of group act ivity and ceremonial or as having a purely
symbolic value .
Init ially they made lit t le move to e ither
eat it or sell it (McAuley , 1 9 5 2 : 2 80 ) , and communal rice
cult ivat ion soon failed there - for the same complex of reason s
as it had failed elsewhere ( Dakeyn e , 1 9 6 5 : 118-9 ) .
S in ce the
Mekeo were able to s at i s fy the ir cash needs in other ways ,
by wage lab o ur , cop ra manufacture or sellin g betelnut , they
had less incen t ive to t ake part in communal agriculture than
S iwais whose al ternat ive sources of cash were limited .
S ince
the organ izers of r ice gardens had t radit ional status as
leaders, these communal ent erprises were an integral part of
S iwai s o ciet y . They b roke up b ecause o f internal pressures
that aro s e from n ew cons ider at ion s ; as in Mekeo . . (cf . S tephen ,
19 74 : 35 7 ) and Eas t Sepik , ignorance o f bus iness principles
gave rise to suspicions that members of the group were not
receiving a fair share o f the pro f it s , which in at least some
cases was true , and the venture was aban doned in an atmosphere
of disput e and int rigue . This was essent ially a new problem ,
the con fl i ct o f bus iness principles with t radit ional prin­
ciples o f exchange and dist ribut ion , b ut it was one that
recurred within S iwai and indeed throughout Melanes ia durin g
the pos t -war y ears .
Divers ity and divers ification
Although the admin is t rat ion expres sed the ir view that
rice should be a sub s istence crop they took lit t le interest
in o ther sub s i s t en ce crops ; the stat ion in Buka had no
succes s with taro and there was no eviden ce of int erest in
other crops there o r at Buin .
The only reference to sweet
pot at o in the monthly repo rts of the Buin s t at ion is in
1 9 5 7 when there was an increas in g foo d shortage b ecaus e the
ground was too wet t o plant sweet potat o . Then there was
106
some o f fi cial encouragement o f moundin g .
S ome didimen were
imp at ien t with what they s aw as the inefficiency of agricul ­
t ural methods :
' while cult ivation is carried out wi th a
digging s t ick lit t le pro gress will b e ob t ained
oxen are
the only solut ion to the prob lem ' . No t surpri s ingly oxen
did not arrive in S iwai and sub s is t en ce agriculture changed
only as new introduction s were tried and mounding of sweet
po tatoes became more common .
.
•
.
Although post-war enthus iasm for rice growing was
enormous , peanut s , another crop int roduced and widely grown
succes s fully by the Japanese , never met quite the same
respon se .
Both S iwais and adminis t rat ion cons idered that
it s connne rcial po ss ib il it ies were slight . Market in g prob l ems
were wo rs e than those for rice s ince there was l it t le demand
for domest ic consumpt ion within Bougainvill e . New variet ies ,
mainly Virgin ia Bunch and Spanish Red , were introduced t o
S iwai b ut they were s imply incorpo rat ed in t o domest ic gardens .
Dis t ribut ion o f imp roved peanut varie t ies , and the test in g
of sweet potat oes , sorghum and o ther f o o d crop s , were all
o f ficial aims of admin is t rat ion policy in the 195 0 s , following
the assump t ion that there would be a rapid populat ion growth
in the Territory (Has luck , 1 9 7 6 : 135 ) . Apart from th�
improved p eanut variet ies very little of this development
reached S i.Wai and , indeed , the res t o f Bougainville . Peanut s
were widely grown in the 1950s , both alon gs ide and a s an
alt ernat ive to rice , but it was not un t il the Rural Pro gre s s
Society began that commercial market ing b ecame success ful .
The same crops were famil iar almost throughout lowland
New Guinea ; rice and peanut s were invariable po st-war
development s with addit ional emphas is being placed on sweet
potat o as a cash crop in areas acces s ib le t o European
set t lement .
In specially favoured areas , l ike the Gazelle
Pen insula o f eas t New Brit ain, they had b een pl ant ed much
earlier ; in 192 7 Keravat Agricul tural S t at ion p roposed a
rot at ion cycle of rice , maiz e �d peanut s and both rice and
peanut s were cash crops there in the 19 30s ( Salisbury , 1 9 7 0 :
50-1) .
S iwais ( and also miss ionaries and admin is t rat ion
o f f icials ) had seen something of these suc ces ses and this
may have in fluenced their own post-war s t rat egies .
Another al ternat ive to rice was one that S iwais had
During the war , damage to the
long been familiar with .
co conut groves was sub s t ant ial , so much so that there was
no copra p ro duc t ion for nearly a decade afterwards .
Innne diately after the war ANGAU forces brought many thousands
10 7
of nut s f rom the Short land Island s and dumped them on the
beach to b e carr ied away to the gardens . Few ever got t o
the garden s ; characteris t ically Tomlin s t ated that this was
' mainly through laz iness ' although there were only a few
villages within eight kilometres of the coast . Whatever the
reason ne ither the S iwais nor subsequen t ly the admin is t rat ion
were at all in teres ted in copra unt il aft er the pro spect s
o f rice farming be gan to fade .
Res t o rat ion o f the co conut groves only general ly b egan
around 1 9 5 3 , co inciding with a significant rise in copra
prices , although a y ear lat er a small amount of copra was
being p ro duced in Tonu and Ruisei villages . Tomlin est imated
that total product ion was less than 10 cwt per month . Many
areas st i ll had very few co conuts and nut s for planting were
ext remely s carce .
In some areas they were b e in g sold for
3d . each , al though a very few S iwai copra purchasers were
b uyin g them for l d . The coast al villages could produce copra
but inl an d only one S iwai vil lage had enough co conut s ; mo s t
were b e in g eat en and for feas t s villagers had to st ore nut s
for ' quite a few mon ths ' (APR Buin , 1 9 5 5 ) un t il there were
enough .
Inland therefore ' where very l it t l e area has been
planted , villagers are b eing encouraged to plant ten palms
for each member of the family , all in one cont inuous block
close to the village . . . It i s al so desired that more palms
be pu t in along the roads ' . The oldes t administ ration policy
for agricu ltural development had b een resurrect ed .
Inter­
plan t in g with p eanuts and sweet potat o was being encouraged
so that the groves would b e well-maint ained in their early
stages ; even so , only s ix months l ater , Toml in was conduct in g
' a b l it z o n unt idy co conut plantat ion s ' ( AP R , Buin , 19 56 ) .
The copra was o f poor quality ; it was usual ly dried unevenly
by roast in g on arc mesh trays (made from army re fus e) over
44 gallon drums , b ut it o f t en rot ted be fore it could b e sold ;
mor eover even when it was ca rried to Buin the price was only
3d . per poun d .
S iwai copra t raders ( see p . 1 07 ) were purchas ing
co conut s at ten for a shill in g an d s el l in g the copra to Ton
Lep in Buin .
Somet imes they returned with the money but
more o ft en Ton Lep retained it as credit ; the kiap explained
that this prac t ice was to encourage busines smen to open bank
account s in Buin . Many S iwais had less laudato ry explanat ions
of the pract ice . Emergent ent rep reneurs had to cope with
many disin cen t ives in these early days . Total product ion was
increas in g but local enthus iasm con tinued to be directed t o
the promise o f o ther crop s .
The p rice p aid for copra an d
the diff i culty o f carryin g it t o Buin were con s iderable
deterren t s .
108
It did no t immediat ely
A third possib ility was cocoa .
att ract S iwai growers and was first grown elsewhere in south
Bouga inville .
Early in 1952 a Banoni man had reques t ed
in format ion on co coa p lant ing from a pas s ing pat rol but the
kiap had dis couraged him (PR, Buin 3 / 52-5 3 ) ; later that year
a group of Nagovisi leaders t ravelled to Buin with a s cheme
to grow cocoa in the Bait s i and Nagovis i areas .
Sub sequen tly
two Nagovisi wen t to Aropa plantat ion , near Kieta , and one
wen t t o the agricul t ural s t at ion at Sohano , where co coa was
then b ein g t e s t e d , to ob t ain the necessary pract ical experience
to es t ab lish it themselves . The first man to grow co coa in
south Bougainville was Widokuma o f Mo siget a , a village on
the borde rs of Bait s i and Nagovisi , who planted a thousand
cocoa t rees in March 1 95 3 . He had previously worked on a
Rabaul plan t at ion , and possib ly also at Keravat agricultural
stat ion where the cocoa s eeds came from .
One year lat e r there were three blo cks o f co coa planted
in s outh Bougainville : that o f Widokuma and two at a s ingle
village in Buin . Almo st all the o thers who had cleared sites
had p revious experien ce on plantat ions . None were S iwais ,
who were s t ill more o r less committed to rice and no suggest ion
was made to them that they should develop coco a .
Followin g
pat ro ls into S iwai in 1 9 5 5 and 1 9 5 6 it was s imply noted that
' co coa has been int roduced and more could be planted if there
were no doub t s about t ransport and market ' . There were
o ther p rob lems too ; Tomlin observed in 1 9 5 5 that land disput es
had caused a lot of pro spective cocoa growers to lo se in terest
after t heir rights t o plant on land they had cleared had
been disputed (APR, Buin , 195 5 ) . A year later the kiap
pat rollin g S iwai repor ted the increas e in the ' numb er o f
disputes over the ownership o f coconut palms now that they
real ise t he value o f such palms for copra ' . He thought that
these d isputes would be more numerous when the Rural Progress
Society go t going and cop ra was produced there . Each luluai
was therefore in structed to go ove r every p ie ce o f land in
his control t o ge ther with a literate nat ive and the owners
of the lan d and writ e down the t o tal numb e r o f coconut s owned
by each native on each piece o f ground (PR, Boku 3 / 5 5-56 ) .
This attempt at reco rding was not a suc cess and there are no
In 1 960 t oo Hal ing claimed
known reco rds o f the result s. .
that the main reason for th e slow rate of permanent crop
plan tin gs was ' due solely to the reluct ance of the individual
to plant crops wh ich will be lite rally taken from him by the
clan ' (APR, Eas t ern Divis ion , S iwai , 1 9 6 0 ) .
109
Apart from the issue of land acquis it ion and t enure there
was als o a second prob lem. Al though cocoa (and , later on ,
co ffee) were reco gnized to share some o f the s imilarit ies
of th e old t ree crop , co conut s , especially in respect of land
alienation , there was one maj o r dif feren ce . Unl ike coconut s
co coa beans could not b e eaten ; i f they did not become a
goo d cash crop th ere was no chan ce o f t h eir being a us eful
food . Those who had not worked on plantat ions where cocoa
was grown were p art icularly conscious of this ; they queried
' can you drink water from coco a ? ' and were s cept ical o f a
crop l ike this whos e food value was generally out s ide their
range o f experien ce . Fo r cocoa more than any other previous
crop S iwais needed a demon s t rat ion of it s p ro f it ab il ity .
Durin g th e early 1 9 5 0 s , then , cocoa was not encouraged
in S iwai but around 1954 the administ rat ion ' s att itude began
to change .
Cocoa had b een recognized as success ful at
Keravat ; indeed it had been succes s ful on plantat ions b oth
in New Britain and Bougainville be fore the war and in New
Britain a few Tolais had p lanted their own co coa (Epst ein ,
1968 : 61 ) .
By about 1 9 5 3 it was b eing grown succes s fully on
the Tolai Cocoa Proj ect and was being sold as wet bean to
the administ rat ion ; cocoa was also spreading ext remely
rap idly el sewhere in east New Britain where there had been
few previous problems with ot her crops . Att empts were bein g
made in 1 9 54 to develop co coa on settlement s chemes , such
as S ilanga in New Britain (van Rij swick , 1 9 6 6 : 19 ) , and it
was at las t reco gnized by DAS F as a viab le ' crop for the
owner-manager ' (Henderson , 1954 : 45 ) . The annual report on
the Territory of New Guinea for 1 9 5 3-4 provides the first
indicat ion that en couragement was being given to cocoa
plant ing in suitable areas , with e�phas is bein g placed on
plantat ion-type development s rather than sporadic cult ivat ion
in village gardens .
In 1954 experiment s on cocoa growing
began on the S ohano experiment al s tat ion at Buka Pas sage
(PCA, 195 5 : 4 9 ) .
In the following year a Cacao Act ion Plan
was formulated , which recolllle
ll nded the expans ion o f cocoa
plant in g on all suitab le areas , includ ing int erplant in g with
co conut s if po ss ible . The prin c ip les adopt ed were that
co coa should be p lanted in blocks o f 5 00 t rees ( t o prevent
indiscr iminat e planting s ince it was felt that small areas
would be forgotten and become harbours for pes t s and disease) ,
all areas mus t be regist ered an d proce s s ing was to b e
carried out in central ferment aries ( P CA, 19 5 6 : 4 9 ) . These
changes in policy and pract ice had not b ecome apparent in
Bougainville , although by 19 5 5 there were ' many cocoa groves '
on Buka and ' many others want ed t o plant cocoa ' there
110
(PR SOH 3 / 5 5 - 5 6 ) . In Nas ioi too several p lantat ion s existed
and s ome were coming in to p roduct ion (PR KIE 2 / 5 5-5 6 ) .
Southern Bouga inville , remote from adminis t rat ion in fluence
and in teres t , was not yet n ear this s t age .
By the middle of 195 5 two cocoa plantat ions in south
Bougainville were b earing ; b oth of thes e were in Bait s i
( in clud in g that a t Mos igeta) but there were many o ther new
The first plant ings had been made in S iwai ;
p l an t ings .
5 80 t rees had been planted by Kepoama near Mus imino i and
S ome o f the seed came
o thers were ready t o s t art at Kon ga .
from Kieta plantat ions and some from the S ohano s t at ion but
mos t came from Mos iget a . At Konga ab out 400 trees were
planted in that first year ; the cocoa seeds were supplied
by the manager of Aropa plan tat ion , south o f Kieta , who had
recently visited the area, and t emporary shade had b een p lanted
by DASF didimen .
It was not a smooth s t ar t . Tomlin noted
the ' indiscriminat ive [ s i c ] plan t ing o f co co a
All b adly­
plant ed and ill-tended b lo cks have now b een dest royed and
the nat ives con cerned have been told to clear the land
properly ' (APR , Buin , 1955 : 6 ) . He was then encouraging one
individual in ' each o f the villages which are fairly
concentrated ' to s t art a demonstrat ion plot .
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•
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After 1 9 5 1 , the one y ear in which rice product ion and
sales s at is f i ed everyone , rice product ion began to fall of f
and S iwais at l eas t , somewhat reluctan t ly , began to con s ider
o ther pos s ib il it ies . Peanut s , copra and , t o a much smaller
Overall there
exten t , co coa were the main alternat ives .
was an in terim pe riod of exper imentat ion in divers if icat ion
which lasted four or f ive years ; it was a period o f
un certainty . Ext ernal as sistance was almo st non-existent ,
market s were ab sent and the poten t ial of crops such as cocoa
was little known .
Con sequently enthus iasm for cash croppin g
was n o longer a s i t had b een in the f i r s t post-war per iod ;
migrat ion to wo rk in plantat ions res t ar t ed and there was a
measure o f disillus ionment with the low cash returns that
followed greater in corporat ion in the market economy . The
agricul tural economy had made a spectacular recovery from
wart ime devas tation but had not begun to p rovide the rewards
so anxiously sought af ter .
Chap ter 5
S iwai Rural Pro gress S ociety :
the organizat ion of diversif ication
The f i rs t pos t-war decade was a period o f abort ive
promise for S iwai commercial agricul ture . Enormous local
enthus iasm had resulted in no more than a s ingle y ear o f
success where the cash returns to rice growing seemed t o
have genuinely j ustified the eno rmous exp enditure o f t ime
and e ffort . But 1951 was a decep tive year and the success
could not b e repeated ; rice plan t ing began to decline and
new crops app eared , ye t despite the attempted divers if icat ion
away from rice, the re was s t ill l i ttle hint o f a success ful
e conomic future for S iwai agri cul ture . Rice was dying and
uns aleable , the returns to copra were t iny and cocoa was
almo st an unknown crop at village level . However dur in g
this period o f quies cen ce Tomlin had been appo inted didiman
fo r the Buin area and had made patrols into S iwai where he
was mos t impressed wi th the agricul tural potent ial o f the
area and the willin gne s s of the people .
Tomlin recommended that an agricultural s t at ion be set
up at Kon ga , t o replace the one that had closed at Buin , and
this was agreed . Following this succes s , and before the
s t at ion had s t arted , he set about establishing a Rural
Progres s S ociety . His own enthusiasm for S iwai and its
development prospects is apparen t in ext racts from a report
o f February 1956 which neatly sunnnar izes the existing
e conomic s ituat ion :
There is no form o f o rganized marketing in
existence anywhere in the s ub-district at the
momen t . Haphazard att emp t s have been made in the
past by various tradin g int erests to b uild up
their trading with nat ive produce but they have
no t p rovided pro ducers with any real service ,
have not paid compet itive p rices and were not
generally rel iab le .
At present there are two Chinese traders operat ing
giving the only market o ut le t t o nat ive p roduce .
111
112
The act ivi t ies of th es e individuals are no t
very extens ive and are mainly con f ined to retail
stores .
They do no t indul ge much in copra buying
and do not provide any t ransport for p roduce .
Presen t at t it ude o f nat ives towards p roduct ion
This coul d be des crib ed accurately by the word
frus trated . The re is no t ranspo rt p rovided ; they
thems elves are not suf ficient ly well o f f f inan­
cial ly or educat ionally to be able to purchase a
vehicle or to be capab le o f rtmnin g it without
as s i s t an ce .
Should transpo rt be provided they
could pro duce much more in the way of cash produce .
They have the potent ial o f big areas o f part ic­
ularly fert ile so il and the labour force to handle
it .
They do no t en t ertain the thought o f carryin g
bags o f copra to Buin over miles o f first clas s
all-weather vehicular roads and should not b e
expected to d o so . They have been caught t o o many
t imes .
They have grown peanut s and wat ched them
go b ad in the s t o re , made copra and seen the same .
Some grew rice at S iwai two y ears ago , about two
t ons of it , and it hangs here today .
Some nat ive
busines smen have on odd o ccas ion s bought nut s with
the in tent ion of makin g copra and have produced
small amotmt s but ne�er of any quant ity or qual ity .
Pro duct ion possib ilit ies
the area has a great pot en t ial . As this
o ff i cer has s t rayed further away from the main
roads he has found more and mo re co conut s hidden
in p o cket s by rivers and n ear old garden s and
village sites . The. carryin g out of a mild b litz
on the clean ing of grove s has b rought t o l ight
many more nat ive palms than were imagined in our
records , and a far greater number of young palms
which were previously covered with secondary
growth . With the p rovis ion o f mo tor t ransport
and the erect ion of two connnun al driers the S iwai
peop le themselves could produce at leas t 5 t ons
o f copra per month .
•
.
.
Of co co a there are over 5 000 t rees planted and
p reparat ion for fur ther plantin g is being made on
much mo re ground .
I feel s ure that a goal o f
5 0 , 000 t rees can be reached within 4 years . A
b lock is bein g prepared for co ffee in the mountains
above the cocoa l ine .
This will be the forerunner
113
o f co f fee growing in that part icular area ; all
the produce from here will go to Tarub a [ in
Nagovisi ] , the proposed s i te o f one of the five
co coa fermentarie s .
Peanuts are being grown fairly widely . There are
about four tons awaiting p urchase now but there
is no transport to ge t them to Buin .
Transport
I t will be po ss ible onc e a few b ridges are repaired
and s ome cut t ings made to drive from Jaba to Buin ,
via Taruba, S ovele , Mosige t ta , Tokono itu and Aku
this should b e po ssible in 18 months to 2 years .
.
•
•
Proposed form of organised marke t ing
A S o c ie ty could be formed to handle copra , peanuts
and any s urplus rice and in later years assis t in
the marke ting o f cacao .
The society could p rovide
transport for co conuts to two nat ive-material built
Ceylon driers lo cated at central poin t s in S iwai
and l ikewis e in the Buin area . Transport could b e
p rovided again f o r cured copra t o the shippin g
point s . Once Socie ty copra is collected a t shipping
points it can then b e shipped to Buin by lo cal
small ships , collected again there and cleared by
MVS P olurrian which makes regular s ix-weekly trips
direc t to Rabaul . Copra should be marketed under
the S ociety ' s own b ran d .
I e s t imate that o f 4 , 29 1 natives in the area about
3 , 5 0 0 could be memb ers . . .
The wholehearted cooperat ion o f the people i s
ass ured once w e can provide the ways an d means to
marke t their p roduce . To date DASF has b een held
in high regard by them and the assis t ance given
them has been really appreciated .
Once we have
ventured into this next stage of development I
feel s ure that the area will never look back .
( Tomlin , 1 9 56a) .
Following a mee t ing in S iwai ' at which batmen and
headmen f rom almos t all S iwai villages were in attendance '
he expanded on some o f the reasons why such a s o cie ty should
be based in S iwai . S iwais ' have shown repeatedly to b e the
mo s t p ro gres s ive ' people in south Bougainville ; they were
ent irely a rural people who had ' no t been spoilt by payment
114
of exo rbitant war damage claims ' . There was a goo d internal
road sys t em (because of Monday work) , an excess of lo cal
building materials and they were ' gene rally much more will ing
wo rkers ' ( Tomlin , 1956a) .
The mee ting itself in February 1 9 5 6 passed a number o f
resolut ions which summa ri z ed S iwai demands a t that t ime ,
al though the s e were h eavily depen den t upon Tomlin ' s advice .
Obvious reque s t s were that a socie ty should be s e t up , with
a t ruck , a driver and a clerk ; building labour would be
supplied free and all co sts would be met by so ciety memb ers .
S iwai re que s t s cent red around growing copra and r ice . They
resolved ' that copra be pro duced on a communal b asis ' ;
coconut s from all villages would b e made into cop ra at three
so cie ty driers to be buil t at Konga , Hari and Kuhino .
' Wh ere roads permi t ; the so cie ty would provide transpor t t o
tho se driers .
The copra was t o be shipped direct to Rabaul
and marke t ed under the s ocie ty ' s re gis tered b rand ' .
It was
resolved that ' ri ce return to the s tatus of a cash crop
wh ere nat ives o ccupying and us ing ground do not have t itle
to it and hence cannot estab l ish, permanent crops ' ; a b igger
rice mill would have to be built at Konga , and the old one
trans ferred to S ininai , and an engine-driven thresher
con structed . Otherwis e ' all crops can b e expanded , especially
co coa ' and a p eanut sheller would be purchased to increas e
the in come f rom peanut s .
The resolut ions concluded with
Tomlin ' s observat ion that the demand to set up a so cie ty was
best summe d up by the remarks o f one Siwai l eade r :
Pas taim mipe la i laik le s long ol wok long wanem
mipe la i no gat ro t bi long salim o l samting .
Taso l sapos y umi kirapim Rura l Progress Society
yumi gat ro t bi long salim ol samting na y umi i
ken s trong tru long o l kain wok bi long winim mani
na yumi no ken rabis moa .
( First we b ecame t i red
of working b ecause there was nowhere t o sell
anything .
But if we s e t up a RP S we will have
somewhere to sell things and we will wo rk hard at
many kinds o f money-making ent erp rises so that we
won ' t be poor any more . )
No S iwais knew any thing abo ut organized marke t ing ,
al though some may have seen early developments in east New
Britain , but they needed little convincing that this was a
good idea .
The ills that the Society might cure were tho s e
that they were ent irely famil iar with .
The dr ive came from
Tomlin and local response was overwhelmin g .
115
Following the en thus iasm o f Tomlin and the S iwai people
DASF mus t have been convinced s ince only four mon ths later
Tomlin repor ted that all was now ready for the o f ficial
regis t rat ion of the So ciety .
For the firs t t ime there was a
visible agricultural o rganizat ion in S iwai : an ins t itut ion
that had b een set up by the admin is t rat ion in response to
the S iwai wishes that Tomlin had art iculat ed . Al though the
organ ization itself was exact ly what was required to realize
thes e aspirat ion s the init ial problems were cons iderable
Inevi tab ly a new rice mill had no t arrived (and the exis t in g
rice mill was producing very unat t ract ive r ic e ) ; nor was
there any sign of the p eanut sheller but purchasing had b e gun
and expanded rap idly with the s e cond half o f 1 9 5 6 . Rice was
being pur chased , dire ct from gardens , at 3d . a pound ; coconuts
were bein g bought for l d . p er pound of b roken husked nut s
( co llected from the roadside ) which was an improvement on
the ld . pe r whole nut that had been paid by S iwai copra
In June peanuts were being
purchasers in the early 1950s .
purchased at 4 d . per pound ( in the shell , at the garden ) and
in October at 6 d . per pound . Parts of Baits i and Buin were
also selling to the Socie ty and plan t in g of p eanuts was
' go ing ahead rap idly ' . More baske ts were b e ing purchased
than had been expected ; they had ' proved to be a lucrat ive
business ' and were b eing encouraged .
( This is the first
record o f baske t sales in S iwai . )
Apart from the lack o f machinery there were the inevit­
able transport problems ; rice was bein g purchased in the
gardens but could no t be b ro ught to the Soc iety . In October
no cop ra had yet b een cured although a Ceylon type drier had
b een comp l eted at Hanong and work was go ing ahead on o thers
at Konga and Hari . Moreover the Socie ty had purchased 3 3
bags o f smoked cop ra from S iwai ' bus ines smen ' at 3d . per
pound . A mo re unusual prob lem was the somewhat imp robable
compe tit ion from a different market ; the Methodist Miss ion
at Kihili was also buying p roduce .
It was annoying to Tomlin
that ' the character concerned is outwardly using his
" divinity'' to ext ract from the natives any sort of produce
that he can get his han ds on - at very nominal prices ' .
This prac t ice did not las t long so that overall he concluded
that , wi th 214 full memb ers ( at £5 each) and 414 contributo rs ,
all was go ing well .
' Pe t ty j ealousie s which previously
exis ted amon g dif ferent fac t ions are b ecoming a thing of the
pas t and all are wo rking to gether fairly well
gardens
seem to be ge t t in g b igge r and b et ter as more and mo re natives
j oin in the race to see who can p roduce the mo s t ' . Af ter
lit tle mo re than hal f a year it was an encouraging start .
•
.
.
116
This was the first s tage in the emer gence of a marke t in g
sys t em in S iwai ; the prices were in i tially extremely
generous , particularly s ince in seve ral cases some of the
produce , for examp le peanuts , may never have been sold b e fore .
At the s tart o f 1956 the price that Chin ese traders p aid for
copra was only 3d . per pound ; at Konga the S iwai S o ciety was
giving exac tly the same p rice . Inevitably much of the
op erat ion was artifi cial ; the S o c ie ty was buying peanuts at
6d . per pound and selling them shelled to DASF at Konga , for
a shill ing a pound , who then had to marke t them . Purchasing
was des i gned so that the producers would have the least
pos s ible difficulty .
Milled rice was sold at £ 7 5 per ton in Buin , and it was
no t enough to mee t all the requirements o f the sub-dis trict .
Copra wen t to the Market ing Board in Rabaul but basket s were
the mo s t s uccess ful ; there was a great demand for them and
they we re sold at 20 p er cent above the purchase price in
Rabaul , S ohano and Kie ta . Po s s ible future marke t ing p roblems
were bein g reco gn ized ; peanuts wen t t o a totally art i f ic ial
marke t .
( I t is not clear if the peanuts purchas ed by DASF
then were ever resold by them . Peanut s may have b een sold
by DASF from the b each at Mamagota t o Chinese traders ; if
this was the ir only marke t i t could not have b een important . )
I t was als o very dif ficul t t o f ind marke ts for s to ckfee d
(a comb inat ion o f co rn , rice , peanuts and also sorghum)
and i t would soon be necess ary t o find external markets for
the rice .
Tomlin also es t ima ted that about £20 a y ear could
be made from selling po tatoes , swee t po tatoes , eggs , poul t ry
and fresh vege tables to Buin town re s ident s . This s t rategy ,
to tally dependent on transport availab ility , never s eems to
have been carried o ut which is scarcely surprising if Tomlin ' s
e s t imat e of the pos s ible annual income i s accurate .
Transport
indeed made all market ing a problem. Until February 195 7
some Buin - owned trucks could be chartered ; by mid 195 7 they
we re all b roken down and the only transport was the S iwai
tractor , which spent 40 per cent of its t ime go ing to Buin .
The implementat ion o f the Rural Pro gres s S ociety mean t
that the adminis trat ion had e f fectively chan ged their minds
on the pos s ib i l i t ies of connne rcial agricult ure in south
Bougainvi lle ; once again they had b e gun to believe that
rice , this t ime with o th er c rops , could be pro f i table . In
195 7 one kiap no ted how the Dis tric t Commi s s ioner had earlie r
s t re ssed that rice was introduced t o the area as a consump t ion
crop and not as a cash crop but now he was himself disap­
p o in ted to ob serve in S iwai that ' the fac t that only 350 lb s .
11 7
a week is b e ing sold seems to indicate that the p eople are
marketing only the s urp lus ' (PR Boku 7 / 5 7 - 5 8 ) so that
Bouga inville alone ' could ab sorb all lo cally p ro duced rice
for a lon g t ime to come ' (PR Buin 1 / 5 8-5 9 ) . Tomlin too had
changed his mind ; in 1 9 5 6 he not ed that desp ite the original
adminis t rat ion aim of sub s is t en ce p ro duct ion rice had risen
to be a cash crop and had then fallen back to its intended
range . He wan ted comme rcial product ion to go ahead again .
Paradoxically , when the admin i strat ion eventually recogn i zed
the possib il i t ie s o f commerc ial rice p roduct ion in south
Bougainville , S iwais themselves had almost given up hope o f
i t ever providing much cash . Ye t once more rice p roduct ion
was increas ing ; a marke t had b een resume d .
Durin g that first important y ear Tomlin himself had
gone to Wewak and Madang to study the operat ion o f Rural
Pro gres s Societies there but even more important he had
organized a vis·it by seven S iwais , the f irst dire c tors of
the Society , to eas t New Britain to see the Nat ive Cacao
S cheme , Lo cal Government Council o r ganizat ion , Vudal Land
S e t tlement S cheme and anythin g else o f interes t .
Tomlin
wro. t e to the Dis trict Commi ssioner of eas t New Britain :
I t is requested that the Department of Nat ive
Af fairs , the o f ficers of the Nat ive Cocoa
Autho rity and o f fice rs concerned with Lo cal
Government Organizat ion g ive their co-operat ion
to en sure that these natives return to the ir
villages , well and t ruly indo c t r inated on the
s ubj ect of e conomic development an d what is
entailed in b r in ging i t about .
The vis i tors were exp e ct ed to s t ay in New Britain for
a couple of weeks but s eem to have s t ayed much longer .
Tomlin had held meet in gs throughout S iwai and in each dist r ic t
one man had b een selected by t h e people i n that area to
b ecome a director of the S o c ie ty .
They were Anthony Potungah
(Kapana) , Hinna ( Ieku) , Mus ireu (Mo rokaimoro ) , S awang
(Purikoli) , S iwa ( Tonui ) , Kuipuru (Arnio ) and Kepoama
(Musimino i ) ; each o f these was a prominent man but none was
then a S iwai leader or big man , in the sense that he might
be referred to as mumi ( c f . Olive r , 1955 ) . All had some
experienc e o f work outs ide ; some , l ike Kuipuru , were involved
in mis s ion work and o the rs , l ike Kepo ama , had already demon­
s t rated their int eres t in cash crops , includin g co coa . l
1
r interviewed all these directors apart from S iwa o f Tonu .
118
The seven directors s tayed for p erhaps three months in
eas t Kew Brita in ; they visit ed Keravat agr icul tural s tat ion
and saw how cocoa should be planted , and the way group wo rk
could do this best , and in spected various To lai gardens .
They were al so taken int o th e upl and Bainings area, which was
a much poo rer inland area where there were no cash crops ,
apparently to demons t rate how much more p rogress ive and
success ful the To lais were . Drying o f cocoa and fermentary
con s t ruct ion were demonstrated (al though there were then only
sundriers in Tolai) . They saw cat tle at Vunakakaul but they
were no t taught any thing ab out them s ince they were s t il l
only o n the agri cul tural s t at ion :
' bikpe la samting bi long
gavman taso i ( an important gove rnment development only ) ' .
They also saw two co-operat ive societies , one at Vunamami ,
and saw how their co-ope rat ive stores op erated . At the same
time they vis i ted some o f the lo cal government councils in
the Gaz ell e , although they had expe cted that the t rip was
only to be concerned wi th agri cul ture , including at leas t
two vis i t s to Vunamami council to obs erve the kind o f
dis cus s ions and the manner o f vo t ing .
On their re turn the directors t oured their own parts
o f S iwai , explainin g the advantages of plan t ing cocoa and
how it should be done and p romis ing to check sub sequent ly
that they were do in g it co rrectly .
They also told the p eople
tha t they shoul d work in groups , so that the village men
would first estab l i sh one man ' s co coa and later ano ther
unt il even tually every family would have co coa . Almo st
everywh ere this p ar t i cular s t rat egy was eventually unsucce s s ful ;
after a few men had had their co coa gardens plan ted for them
people both lost int erest in group work and also in co coa .
'OZ i no harim gut mipe la ( They didn ' t
As Savan g said :
listen to us p roperly ) ' and Anthony Po tun gah was t old that
these new i deas were ' Giaman taso i ( Jus t lies ) ' . But the
d irectors themselves were slow to develop their own cocoa ;
two decade s l at er they were retro spect ively enthus ias t ic
about what they saw in Tolai but on their return only
Kuipuru and Kepoama , who had previously s t arted co coa plant­
at ion s , maintained their interest in cocoa .
The o thers
followed much mo re s lowly . Throughout S iwai there was l i t t le
posit ive react ion to the Tolai trip ; there was no en thus iasm
fo r ye t ano ther cash c rop , especially one that had a delayed
crop and permanent ly oc cupied land . 2 A locally success ful
2
At about the s ame t ime Has ing ( Jeku) and Maimoi (Turugum)
went to Wewak , in the Eas t S ep ik Dis tric t , to look at
peanut plan t in g an d they also saw co ffee . When they
119
demonstrat ion was required .
Fo r the y ear ending Novemb er 1956 Tomlin made a rough
e s t imat e that total S iwai p ro duce amoun t ed to 2 tons o f
copra , 5 tons o f rice and 2 t ons of peanut s . When Toml in
wrot e his first annual report o f the S iwai DASF s tat ion in
July 19 5 7 business was booming .
In the firs t year o f
operat ion , 1956-57 , S iwai had pro duced 6 . tons o f copra ,
between 35 and 40 tons o f rice ( a mas sive increase over the
1951 product ion ) , 16 t ons of p eanut s , 12 tons of ' o ther
c ereals ' ( mainly corn for chicken feed) an d £600 worth o f
baskets .
This was much higher than he had predicted even
six months earlier and had been done with only one t ractor ;
a reques t to the Nat ive Loans Fund in Port More sby for £ 3600
to purchase a truck had not yet succeeded . At leas t the
p eanut she ller and the r i ce mill were working well but co rn
cob s were b ein g purchased at l�d . a pound where it had
It was a fairly impressive s tart
been 2 d . a pound befo re .
for the Society and optimism reigned supreme ; ' . . . the Buin
sub dis trict has never seen greater progress in any one year
than it has in the y ear 1 9 5 6 -7 ' . Even apart from agricul tural
changes about fifty miles of new ro ads had b een buil t and a
whar f con s t ruc ted at Buin . The ' percen t age o f labour
po t ent ial workin g away from the area has de creased sharply
and there are very few wo rking on plantat ions ' ; moreover ,
' even aged females , no t no rmally occup ie d in any wo rk before ,
now have their small peanut and corn gardens
in tere s t
has tho roughly penetrat ed all age groups ' .
S iwais were
al ready generally cons idered to be ' part icularly " cash crop"
cons cious ' and be caus e they wanted to go ahead s o quickly
the Bougainville agricultural department always retained ' a
s o ft spo t ' for them , ( D . N . Brown , pers . connn . , 1 9 7 5 ) .
•
.
.
In the next couple o f y ears almost no copra was made ;
by 1 9 5 7 there were s t ill very few growers .
The exis t ing
ones produce little copra and the groves are no t weeded '
(PR Boku 1 / 5 7-5 8 ) . P ro duct ion for cash was almost en tirely
of r ice and p eanut s . At the s t ar t of 1 9 5 8 rice was again
declin in g a little in popularity s ince Tomlin was reconnnend ing
peanut s , rather than rice , because peanuts could be used as
a catch crop in new co co a plantat ion s but lat er in the y ear
2 ( cont inued)
returned they explained the virtues o f p eanut planting but
no one was in t e rested .
( I can t race no administ rat ion
record o f this trip , which could have been b efore the society
began , hence the date is impo ssible t o p inpo in t . )
12 0
' since readj ustment of prices [with r ice go ing from 3d . to
4d . p er pound and peanut s from 6 d . to 4 d . ] has b een affected ,
much more rice is being grown and peanut acreage has b een
A year later a
cut down s l ight ly in favour o f it ' .
co -op erat ive o f f i cer from Rab aul no ted that the r i ce price
of 4 d . per pound was effectively sub s idizing rice growing
to p reven t a swit ch to peanut s (at the same price) ; he
reconnnende d that the r ice p rice be lowered to 3d . o therwise
rice s tocks would be come too large . Apparently the advice
was acted on but on ce again pol icy was s omewhat vague .
The
ext ent to which the adminis t rat ion should in terf ere in
man ipulat ing the marke t was never spec ified ; scarcely surp ri s­
in gly , one kiap noted in 1958 that the p eople cons idered the
S iwai so ciety and DASF to be synonymous (PR Buin 3 / 5 8-59 ) .
At leas t there was a general assumpt ion on the part o f local
officers that S iwais wo uld respond rap idly t o changing prices .
But what ever the pri ce , rice marke t ing was no t progre s s in g ;
one tract or load disappeared into the f looded Mivo rive r ,
whil s t the admin istrat ion p romised t o p urchase an other cro p
but failed so that 2 8� tons had t o b e s old a t a dollar . a
Some was resold to society
ton less to Wong You at Buin .
memb ers at 8d . a pound .
Ri ce mil l in g too was always a
the new mill , ins t alled in 1956 , was adequate only
problem :
for produc ing rice for local t rade rs and Bougainvilleans .
After one month it was diff icult to operate and only Tomlin
himself was ab le to manage it . Peanuts p romis ed wel l ; in
Thi s
November 19 5 8 , ' marke ting has b een progre s s in g well
alone will pull the balance sheet r ight o u t o f t h e " red"
[ the first o fficial indicat ion that f inan ces were no t as
they should be ] and en sure a good net s urp lus in the next
balance ' but no more than a month lat er the merchan t who had
bought mos t of the society ' s p eanuts had made a lo ss on his
last two con s ignmen ts t o Aus tralia and the prosp ec t s were
In the s ix months b efore Novemb er 195 8 the Society
doub t ful .
had purchas ed 36 tons o f peanut s , 1 7 t on s of rice , £300 o f
b asketware , £ 3 3 . 5 s . o f cane furni ture ( al l o f which came
from Buin ) and 4 tons of s to ck fee d . Al though th� Society
was ' in the red ' the income to growers was £3 , 0 7 7 . 11 . 7 in a
four month period , which was apparen t ly typ ical of this
p eriod ; this had been built up from nothin g over a perio d
o f only two years and speaks volumes for the in tere s t o f the
S iwai people in ' local development ' . Moreover fo r the first
t ime the S o c iety had a S iwai secretary , Luke Pauru , al though
the manage r , Kanku , was from Buin .
.
.
•
Early in 1 9 5 9 the So ciety further diversified i t s
interes t s ; j oin t ly with DASF a sawmil l was const ructed t o
121
purchas e lo gs from S iwais and mill them f o r u s e in lo cal
cons truct ion .
In March this was workin g very well ; the
Dis t rict Agricul tural Off icer cons idered that the ' arran gement
be sanct ioned and allowed to con t inue ' since t imber was
produced at an average co st o f £2 per hundred s quare feet
compared with £6 or £ 7 from the usual suppliers in Rabaul .
Mo reover a S iwai was op erat in g the mill and no sup ervis ion
was required . Neve r theless the S en ior Agricultural Officer
in Port More sby found that ' the present sys t em of share work
[between DASF and the Soc iety ] is highly irregular and cannot
be sanct ioned ' so that when the blade b roke s ix weeks late r
h e re fused t o sanct ion the purchas e o f a new one . Bureaucracy
collapsed a promising local industry and one that , de spite
many s ub s equent attempts , has never b een re-e s t abl ished .
Neverthele s s in the first hal f o f 1 9 5 9 the So cie ty made
a pro fit o f £ 7 04 from peanut marke t ing and, al though they
lo s t £21 on rice transac t ions , this was the fir s t overal l
profit that the So cie ty had recorded .
(De sp i t e adminis t rat ive
p l easure over the apparen t early success of the Socie ty the
implicat ions of the fragmented accounts that remain is that ,
apart from durin g thi s one p erio d , losses were cons i s t ently
reco rded . ) Once again i t was a very short pe riod o f pros­
In
perity ; once again init ial o p t imism appeared unfounded .
the second hal f o f the y ear a period o f decline b egan .
Tomlin had le f t S iwai and the quali ty of p roduc t ion suffered ;
Won g You cancelled his o rder for rice ( s ince he claimed i t
was ne ith er r ip e when c u t nor was i t dried prope rly) and the
European peanut merchant was concerned with the poor quality
o f the p eanut s .
The f inal 1 9 5 9 S iwai Soc iety accounts were very dis­
appo in t in g s ince in that y ear the peanut market , never very
a s sured , collaps ed compl et ely . Even so , as late as June
1959 S iwais were s t ill b ein g recommended to con t inue growing
p eanut s ' as the Honorary Adviser [ the European didiman at
Konga ] is con f i dent that Aropa E s tate will soon recommence
buying ' ; mor eove r , at the same t ime , the rice p rice had
fallen and the peanut price risen so that the So ciety coul d
no t fulfil its o rders f o r rice , ' partly b ecause members
pre fe r t o p roduce p eanuts at Sd . per pound rather than rice
at 3d . per pound ' . By the end o f the year the Soc ie ty
decided that they did no t wish to purchase any more peanut s ,
although fo r the first months o f 1 9 6 0 they did agree to
purchase village s tocks at ld. per pound ; they argued that
' i f p eople want to keep planting them it should be for their
p igs ' b enefit ' . In its p lace the S ociety recommended more
122
plantings o f rice and corn and more baske t manufac ture while
the Socie ty ' s Adviser was considerin g the pos s ib il ity of
in t roduc in g o il palms . After 1960 no more p eanuts were ever
again purchased by the Society , although nearly a decade
later they became one of the mos t importan t foods in S iwai
markets and later the main p roduce s old to Panguna . Official ,
and lo cal , concern for the future o f the So ciety and therefore
marke t ing in S iwai was growin g .
The failure o f the peanut market s eems t o have induced
a fairly rapid response by p eanut growers ; in eastern S iwai
alone Halin g es t imated that although 7 6� acres were plant ed
in the previous year no more than 8 acres were then tmder
cul t ivat ion (APR Eastern Divison , S iwai , 1 9 6 0 ) .
Two years
later in the same area peanut s were no longer grown as a cash
crop but s ome were grown by a few people for food (APR
Konga 1/ 61-62 ) ; the Bougainville co-operat ive o f ficer no t ed
that ' Un t il 1 9 5 9 , peanuts were a good cash crop ' but had
become ' an expens ive lesson in economics as far as the S iwai
are concerned ' .
In Buin the ' failure of the peanut market
is con s idered to have made the Buin very conservat ive ' and
they were tmin teres t ed in t ryin g o ther c rops ; there was a
little more opt imism about condit ions in S iwai . At leas t
one agricult ural o ff i cer felt that there was a possible
consolation ; p roper attent ion could now b e given to cocoa
and co f fee , whi ch had b e en igno red b ecause of the quicke r
and eas ier re turn to peanut s .
In fact there s eems t o have
b een tm iversal disappo intment in the s udden failure o f
peanut s , which had become the b es t cash crop an d a more
important s ource of cash than rice ; throughout south
Bouga inville there was an inevit ab le d i s t rus t o f alternat ive
cash crops .
Rice too was once again pas s in g through a disappoin t in g
perio d . Al though almos t all Bougainvillean pro duct ion now
came from S iwai it was suffering from d isease (Leptocoryza
varieoPnis ) especially at altitudes below about 140 metres ;
p roduct ion had decreased and the seed had degen erat ed .
Moreover , although the Society could easily s ell all the
rice produced in S iwai within Bougainville , it was of poor
qual ity , needed lengthy cooking and the p rice they ob tained
for it was so small that the rice economy was rtmning at a
lo ss . Reques t s for new r ice seed had b rought only a small
quant ity from central administrat ion whils t staff shor tage
had hindered extens ion work .
In these c ircumstances of
decline , copra once aga in began to revive .
There was a low
turnover o f copra and the purchase price was very low but a
123
small surplus was expected to be maint ained and i t gave the
b es t pro f it margin even though it was all used for stock
feed . No t all the copra produced wen t to the society ; the
three villages of Ru ' nai , Kotu and Ait ara had set up a s ingle
village fund to manage j ointly owned and planted co conut
plantat ion s . As sisted , in some way , both by the Department
of Nat ive Af fairs and DASF they had two copra driers working
and their copra was carried by mi ss ion ships from the beach
at Aitara to Sohano . The revenue from this was shared out
t o villagers according t o the nun.her of days that they worked .
(Transport problems eventually caused its decline around
1 9 6 5 . ) Between 1 9 5 9 and 1 9 6 1 there were s teady sales o f
copra t o the society and the first so ciety drier had been
built us ing 44-gallon drums .
However in 19 6 0 all the copra
produced in east ern S iwai was bein g sold to three individuals
who had their own driers and who then sold copra to the
Society (APR Eas tern Division , S iwai , 1960) . The Society at
least p rovided a bet ter market than the Chinese t raders from
Buin who came irregularly and with whom there were o f t en
disput es over p rices . By 1 9 6 1 copra seemed to have finally
es tabli shed itsel f as a cash crop with long-t erm potent ial .
Drfers were bein g cons t ructed at Hire and Horino and planned
for Mamago t a , Kunn u , Laku and Musiminoi ; each -of these
villages had large areas of coconut s near the coast , some
surviving from b efor e the war .
At tempts were als o being made , with unknown succes s , to
increase corn p ro duct ion sin ce this was a profitable en terp rise
but there wer e even prob lems with baskets . Many had proved
to be unsaleable s ince ' no-one knows what s tyle Europeans
like ' ; moreover , much o f the pro f i t s seemed t o be going to
middlemen , rather than to the S o ciety , b ecause of the problems
involved in t ran s po rt in g the baskets to Rabaul .
S t andard­
izat ion minimized problems of sales but especially befo re
the emergence o f Bougainvillean market s the ' middlemen ' have
always exis ted .
It seems that the Society left no s t one
tmturned ; in the second hal f of 1960 the mos t profitable
item was tmspecified ' vegetables ' purchased for £ 7 and sold
fo r £16 .
The high p ro f it was p artly due to a low purchase
rate of 3 / 4 d . p er pound which suggests that this was probably
one ton of sweet po t atoes sold in Buin .
If this was so it
is the only recorded case of sweet po tatoes being marketed
by the S iwai society and a po ss ible indicat ion o f the desper­
at ion then app arent t o the adminis t rat ion .
( It also sugge s t s
that th ere were quantit ies o f swee t potatoes s urplus t o
dome s t ic requirements . )
124
Co co a was s till a lon g way from real i z ing its po tent ial ;
the whole o f Buin sub -d i strict p roduced only 3 tons in 1 9 5 9 6 0 (po ss ib ly a l l from Mo s igeta) and in S iwai there was s t ill
In the whole o f S iwai t here were reported
l i t t le pro gress .
to be 1 5 0 0 t rees at the s t ar t o f 1 9 5 6 and 5 0 00 not lon g
afterward s (Toml in , 195 6a) . P lan t ing gained sl ight momentum
in the late 1950s but there were on ly small re turns t o the
earliest producers . What happened to the earliest cocoa
produced in south Bougainville is not clear ; it may s imply
have rot t ed . The first reco rd of any s ales is in April 19 5 8
when the S iwai Society purchased e ight b ags o f co coa from
Widokuma in Mo s igeta and sold them in Rabaul but it was ' no t
o f goo d qual i ty ' (Tomlin , 1 9 5 6a) . As late a s 1 9 5 9 the
Bougainville co-opera t ive off icer reconnne nded ' that permanent
t ree crops be int roduced ' t o S iwai , although in the prev ious
year Has ing (Jeku) had won the K . I . Tomlin Trophy at the
annual Buin Agricultural Show fo r the best owner-managed
co co a garden in the distric t . Extens ion work was ' handicapped
by the land t enure problem ' but it was expected that ' the
newly fo rmed Siwai Lo cal Government Council will as sist the
planting of p ermanen t crops by campai gning for individual
family ho ldings of land in st ead of the tradit ional communal
land us age ' . The future of cocoa was s t ill uncertain ; even
the admin i s trat ion was unsure of i t s poten t ial .
The 1 9 5 9 - 6 0
Annual Report fo r th e Territory of New Guinea was n o more
hopeful than to s t at e that in Bougainville ' further p lant in gs
of cacao and robus ta c o f fee were made in the int eres ts o f
In the south there was even
dive r s i f i cat ion ' ( 19 61 : 6 7 ) .
less conf idence .
Even the as sets of earlier y ears were fading away ; the
tractor was no t st andin g up well t o the long and arduous
t r ip to Kangu beach at Buin . Each t rip cost the S ociety £6
per ton , which was a prohib it ive price on almo st anything
produced in S iwai .
At least S iwai was b e t ter o f f than
Nagovis i where ' con side rat ion should be given to shelving
the Society ' s act ivit ies un t il river cro s s ings are b r idged
o r suitab ly forded ' but the s i tua t ion was s t ill deteriorat in g .
' By the t ime cocoa comes into b ear in g there may be no
tractor to t ranspo rt the c rop to the market ' .
Competitive
marke ts for the small amo un t s o f p roduce had al s o re-emerged ;
rice and baskets were sold to the mi ss ions at Tonu and , to
a les ser extent , Monoitu , al though lat er a special mee t in g
was held a t Amio , early in 1962 , to ensure that this compet­
it ion did not b reak the So ciety .
12 5
The earlies t t rading accounts of the S iwai Society are
now lo s t .
( Indeed , it was t en months befo re s t at ione ry o f
any kind reached Kon ga and there may never have been accurat e
records . ) Those that do exist (Appendix I I ) from the first
four years of operat ion , al though in complete and inadequate ,
do shed some light on the Society ' s problems and successes .
They suggest the artificial ity of the s ituat ion ; al though
the quan t i ty o f each crop pro duced was relat ed t o the
So ciety ' s p rice these were no t real ma rket prices but simply
prices fixed by the Society at the in st igat ion of the didimen ,
which were expec ted b o th to st imulate p roduc t ion and to
enable a p rofit t o be made on each crop . Profit s rarely
fitted t ime periods ; it was not that the So cie ty had ready
credit available , rather that the administration sub s idized
purchas in g .
( It is not clear how , or for how lon g , this
may have existed . ) It was a period of trial and erro r ;
effe ct ive ly the Society was purchas ing whatever came on the
market and selling whatever and whenever it could .
Repeated
large s t o cks , at the end of each t ime period , of product s
which could not ne ce ssar ily b e success fully stored for long
periods nor s ub s equen t ly sold , indicate the diff icult ies
that the S o ciety had in identifyin g market outlets .
Thes e
two y ears from 1 9 5 8 to 1 9 6 0 cover a period when there were
few problems in en couragin g p ro duct ion but many in selling
the resul t ant p ro duce .
Rice and peanuts s t ill dominated cash crop p ro duct ion
in the two years from 195 8 to 1 96 0 . Howeve r the decline o f
peanut pro duct ion i s well illus t rated in the S ocie ty ' s
accotm t s ( Appendix I I ) ; purchas es o f p eanuts fel l from
£2118 to £ 81 fo r s imilar per iods in l it t le more than two
years whil st there was no compensat ing in crease in the income
from othe r pro duct s .
( Even in the las t period o f 1 9 6 0 when
cocoa showed some re turns these wen t t o a very small number
of p ro ducers . ) Mo reover p eanut s were such a large p art of
to tal product ion and therefo re S o c iety purchases that over
the same two-year p eriod tot al purchases fell f rom £ 302 9 t o
£595 . Fluctuating prices and p ro duct ion make general izations
about S iwai incomes from the Society difficult ; however it
is p robab le that in 1958 the total income that S iwais received
from sales to the S o ciety (which represented at least three­
quarters of all agricultural sales from S iwai) was about
£ 7 000 whereas in 1 9 6 0 it may have been no more than £180 0 .
This was a con s i derable fall in income ; dependen ce on rice
and peanut s had p roved inadequate as a source of cash .
126
Inevitab ly there was o f f ic ial concern f o r t h e organization
o f the S o c iety ; in 1 9 5 9 the As s is t ant Registrar o f Co­
op erat ives in s ist ed that the So ciety ' mus t no t be allowed to
op erate at a lo ss ' ; although societ ies were ' no t pro f it making
concerns for the b enefit o f o ut s ide invest ors they mus t at
l eas t keep capital in tact ' . A year lat er the co-operat ive
regis t rar in Rabaul was worried . He eventually refrained
from recommending liquidat ion b ut was con cerned about the
peanut market , sugges t ing that there should b e an inves t igation
o f the po ssib ilit ies of growing o ther tree crop s in south
These
Bougainville , such as g inger , vanil la and cas t o r o il .
do no t seem t o have been tried an d in February , 19 61 , the
Society secretary in formed the d irectors that unless the next
bal an ce sh ee t showed a p ro fit the Socie ty would be forced t o
close sin ce there were no longer any pur chasers f o r the rice .
No t surp ris ingly all the members ins isted that the Society
go on ; only one man , who was b l ind and therefore thought to
be short of money , t ook back his share capital . This was
the great est crisis that the So ciety had faced and what
exactly happened then is not cl ear ; nevertheless d isaster
was somehow aver ted .
Once again rice returned t o the fo re ;
a new market was ident ified and the Society s taggered onwards
towards a s t il l uncer t ain fut ure .
By then there was a new interest involved in agricultural
The S iwai Local Government Council which held
developmen t .
its first meet ing in January 1 9 6 0 was , with Teop-Tinput z
Council , the firs t to be set up on the island .
From its
incep t ion it was concerned with agricultural chan ge ; indeed
at its third mee ting the As sistant Dis t rict Officer told
memb ers t o plant cocoa , cof fee and coconut s . There followed
the f i rs t dis cus sion that the coun cil had ever had on anything
o ther than admin istrat ive mat t ers an d in the first few years
of the council there was a familiar pat tern o f a t alk t o the
coun cil by an admin i s t ration o f f i cial , a sub sequent d is cuss ion
of the event ual s uggest ion and then , usually , as sent .
By
the seventh meet in g , in Augus t 1 9 6 0 , the Coun c il were becoming
more amb it ious ; they requested an aircraft landin g s t r ip
( to cut out carrying cocoa and cof fee over the long road to
Buin ) b ut they were beginning t o evolve their own ideas on
the o rgan izat ion of commercial agr iculture . The Coun c il
obj ec ted t o the didimen requesting them to plant j o intly 5 00
co coa t rees per head ; they cons idered that it would be better
if each ind ividual , working alone , b egan with 2 00 and lat er
worked up to 5-00 t rees and that the kiap shoul d give them
as sistance in marking out the are a . The Chairman sugges ted
that rice and co rn fi�st b e plant ed and then the grol.lll d could
12 7
be marked o ut fo r cof fee or coco a .
The dis illus ionmen t o f
this p eriod i s refl ected in some o f the discuss ions . Laisi
(Hari) , one o f the S iwai l eaders , complained o f the vagaries
o f agricul tural pol icy and practice :
Bipo a l kiap i save tokim mipe la long p lanim pinat,
rais na korn . Bihain yupe la i tokim mipe la gen
long p lanim kakao na kopi, taso l rais na pinat i
lus pinis (Befo re the kiaps used t o te11 · us t o
plan t peanut s , rice an d co rn . Aft erwards you t o o
[ the kiaps ] t o l d u s again to plan t coco a and
cof fee but rice and peanuts have complet ely
fin ished ) ( S iwa i Local Government Coun cil Minut es ,
Oc tob er 1 9 6 0 ) .
S t ill in their first y ear o f exis ten ce the Coun cil had
appointed their own ' didiman boi ' , Kuipuru of Arnio (one o f
the S iwai Society Directors ) s ince h e was known to be hard
wo rking and had already finished his own co coa plantat ion .
He would go r�und and as sist in developing the new cocoa
gardens ; the salary was £1 8 a year and his b icycle co s t £ 10 .
Al t hough there was some con fus ion between the exact s t rat egies
that the S o ciety , the Coun c il and the admin ist rat ion
reconnnended , ove rall there was no doub t that each o f these
in the ir own way were determined to expand cash crop product ion
throughout S iwai .
In the early 1960s meetings o f the Society were much
like tho s e o f the Coun cil ; they provided goo d oppo rtunit ies
for the advisers t o lecture a l arge group , includi�g S iwai
leaders , on the merit s of part icular crops and the t echn iques
involved in cult ivat ing them and rather les s oppo rtunity for
S iwais t o set out their own aims . In July . 19 61 councillors
were warned no t to plant food crops in amongst co coa and
co conut s , whilst in January 1962 S ociety memb ers were b e ing
lectured on the necess ity for plantin g leucaena as shade fo r
cocoa and cof fee , but t here were o ft en con flicts between the
in tere s t s and pol icies of d i f feren t lecturers .
In April
1961 the Konga didiman , David Brown , spoke to the Coun cil
about catt le farming ; there were only plans to s tart a cat t le
proj ect at Sohano hen ce at £ 800 f o r a b ull and £90 for a
small cow , there was app aren tly lit tle lo cal in teres t then .
Three y ears later , in March 1 9 64 , a different didiman told
the Council that S iwai was no t a good area for ca t t le .
Although ' plenty o f people wanted to keep cat tle � he po inted
out that the income from this was b elow co co a and also b elow
b aske t s .
128
Con f l i c t a l s o occurred between the Council and the
Socie t y ; the Socie ty dire cto rs at t empted to get workers fo r
the Socie ty whilst the councillo rs wanted people for Coun cil
work .
In 1961 the Council inst igated a sy s t em un der which
all adul t males in the Co uncil area wo rked alternat ely for
two weeks as d ire cted by the Council (which in cluded work on
their own cash crop s ) , followed by two weeks according to
their own wishes . Al though the council lors were usually
mo re in f l uent ial leaders than the d irectors , Coun c il work
was less obvio usly reward ing so that the conflict was no t
eas i ly reduced . Mo reover the con flict s eems t o have b een
one of authority rather than over the actual work to b e done .
Par t ly as a re sult o f this and the disappearing market s, by
October 1 9 6 1 int ere s t in the Socie ty had ' declined very
rap idly ' even though a fieldwo rker had b een ass igned to the
Coun cil to in sp ect the development o f cash crops in S iwai .
Tlie extent to which the So ciety actually o rganized their
own p riorit ies for crop development , machinery , market in g
and s o on i s unclear b ut i t i s certain that their own wishes
played a small p art . Apart from plan t ing and maintaining the
new cro p s , of wh ich they were t o t al ly famil iar only with rice ,
mo st o f the op erat ion s o f the So ciety we re then b eyond the
t e chn ical competence of the people . Machinery could not b e
rep aired , ac counts could n o t b e maint ained correctly and
market s could no t be e s t ab l ished .
Inevitab ly the directors
were very depen dent on their European advis ers , although the
const it ut ion of the So ciety p rob ab ly gave them t o t al con t ro l .
What impact changing l evel s of int erest in cash crops
had on the s ub s is t en ce economy is not cl ear . Thus , in 19 5 7 ,
at a t ime when cash croppin g seemed to be succe s sful Tomlin
obs erved that ' much more t inned meat and fish are consumed ' ;
on the o ther hand , a y ear later , he felt that ' cash c ropping
has had only a minor e f fect on tradit ional sub s i s tence
cropp ing and has no t altered the qual ity o r the var iety of
such foods grown
the actual quan t ity grown o f such crop s
as sweet p o t ato , e t c . has b een reduced only s l i ght ly if at
all ' . Neve rtheless r ice consump t ion was s t eadily increasin g .
In 1960 Halin g re garded it as the mo st importan t food crop
after swee t potato ; ' by far the great est proport ion ' of
planted r i ce was consumed in S iwai . By then rice was ent i rely
grown in hous ehold , rather than connne rcial , gardens and it
was est imated that in the Rataiku area alone (where rice
always grew bes t ) there were 1 4 2� acres o f rice , which
represented 0 . 16 acres p er p erson ( compared with 0 . 42 acres
per p erson o f sweet po t ato ) and rice followed sweet potato
•
.
•
129
a s a rot a t i on crop ( AP R Eas t ern Divis ion , S iwai , 1960 ) .
These f igures are unlikely to be whol ly accurate but they
certainly indicate what an impo rtan t component o f the sub­
sistence e conomy rice had be come ; it was never the cash crop
that S iwais wanted it to be but it had , even tual ly , produc ed
significan t changes in the sub s is t en ce economy .
Once again , after the firs t f ive years of operat ion of
the S iwai Rural Pro gress Society , the future o f cash cropp ing
seemed to hold out lit tle oppo rtunity in the S iwai area .
S iwais had seen rice and p eanut s int e rmit t en t ly s ucceed and
fail , and failures had b een more common than s uc ces ses .
Although didimen were ab le to o ffer an at t ractive future
to co coa g rowers mo st S iwais felt that they had seen it all
before ; this t ime , for the f irs t t ime , it was the adminis­
t rat ion , rather than th e S iwais themselves , that pushed cash
cropping through ano ther d is appo int in g spell in to what they
at l eas t felt would be a period o f succes s . Even so , durin g
this half decade , there were the f irst real indicat ions o f
very rap i d S iwai responses , via plant in g s trategies , to
chan gin g crop prices .
In o ther part s o f New Guinea the
1950s marked the emergence of cocoa and cof fee ; in 1 9 5 0-51
only 31 7 t ons o f cocoa b ean s and 33 tons o f co f fee b eans
were expo rted .
In 1 961-62 these figures were 10 , 014 tons
and 3444 ton s respec t ively (Hasluck , 19 7 6 : 13 9 ) but in south
Bougain ville there was no con f idence yet in the fut ure of
cash crop s .
In 1 9 6 0 S iwais themselves were again looking
outwards ; as Fathe r Lebel , who had been s tat ioned for some
t ime at Monoit u , recorded , ' The S iwai RP S is at a s tand s t il l .
Many youn g men are goin g away t o work on p lantat ions t o
find their t ax money ' (Catho lic Action , 1960b ) ; desp ite a
s ign ifican t ins t itut ional change the future was again gloomy .
Chap ter 6
Cof fee and cocoa :
towards the cash economy
Perhaps it is always darkest immediat ely before the dawn ;
the commerc ial economy o f S iwai in 1 9 6 0 p romised very little
to either the S iwais or the adminis t rat ion o f f icials who had
lab oured to bring cash in to the area b ut , unknown to either ,
the s tage had already b een set for the mass ive expans ion o f a
sin gle cash crop . Nevertheless at the s tar t o f the 1960s ,
apart from the disappearance o f p eanuts as a cash crop ,
con dit ion s were much as they had been throughout the previous
de cade . The old crop s were being persevered with and there
seemed to be no p romising newcomers . The administ rat ion
could p romi se S iwai lit t le ; there seemed no alternat ive but
to con t inue with rice , where there had somet imes been good
prices , and make cop ra , for which the price was often low
but there had always been a market .
The fate o f the c rop
that had hither to earned the mos t cash , peanut s , was discour­
aging but th ere was st ill some hope that a new market might
be found . Nevertheless for the first t ime it was didimen
and admin istrat ors , rather than S iwais themselves , who seemed
to be mos t enthus ias tic , although , as Tomlin later recalled ,
' the faith o f the in fluen t ials acted as a bolster ' ( 19 6 9 : 1 ) .
Rice retained its impor tance for some t ime ; as the
didimen enc ouraged the new t ree crop s, the S iwais main t ained
their des ire to grow and sell rice .
In 1961 the society
directors wanted t o plan t a soc iety rice garden (on the lines
o f earlier communal efforts ) but the Society ' s adviser
warned them against it because o f p o s s ible problems involved
in o rgani z ing labour . A year later each director was
p resent in g the S o ciety at its monthly meet ing with a report
on how many baskets and how much rice had been p roduced by
each vil lage p er month and which vill ages were workin g bes t
(p resumably at rice growing) .
For the y ears 1961-62 sales
of the 45 tons o f rice produced in S iwai p rovided a revenue
o f £165 7 , over 90 per cent of the Society ' s income . Al though
sales to the So ciety fell ( apparently b ecause the price wen t
from 4 d . to 3d . ) rice planting was increas ing so that in
1 9 6 3 pro duct ion had increased to 60 t ons and DASF were
130
13 1
int roducing a new fuller-grained variety . However in 1964
there was ano ther setback ; once again the Konga mill had
broken and spare p arts were unobt ainable for the best part
of the y ear .
Rice trade at the Society was almost non­
existent although the p ri ce had more than doubled to 8d . per
pound .
On ce aga in it was a frus trating period ; at exactly
the time that rice reached its highe s t price it could not be
milled .
But rice p ro duct ion remain ed ahead o f its comp et itors ;
even in 1 9 6 4 -65 40 tons of rice were p roduced in Siwai
comp ared with 2 2 t ons of cocoa , 10 ton s o f copra and 1�
t ons o f co ffee .
S iwai i t s el f was becoming the main market fo r rice ; in
the f irst hal f o f 1 9 6 3 S iwai people purchased rice worth
£2 7 8 . 12 s from the Socie ty . The Japanese rice varieties had
been rep laced by Mekeo rice from Papua , which had higher
yields and was also prefe r re d as foo d . Hopes were s t ill
high , mainly on the part of the administ rat ion , so that in
1964 it was expected that a new rice mill would be set up
at Boku and rice growing extended into that area .
This was
never built .
S imilarly when there was a foo d sho rtage in
1965 , followin g h eavy floodin g , the So cie ty ' s adviser hoped
that this food shor tage would encourage an in crease in rice
plantin g .
(Why rice was expect ed to survive better than
swee t potato is not cl ear . )
In 19 64-65 rice sales f rom S iwai So ciety brought in
£3240 , desp ite - decreased plan ting (when the rice mill was out
of orde r) ; in mid-1 965 replan t ing had begun and rice was
continuing to ' make an important contribut ion to the economy ' .
Despite the large income from r ice , much larger than any
earned previously , this was the last f lourish o f the rice
economy . The exact s equence of decline is no t clear but two
factors were crit ical ; firstly , cocoa had begun to provide
large incomes an� secondly, the price of rice declined sharply
so that in 196 7 , when the society was purchas ing rice at
only two cen t s per pound , there was little in teres t in
producing it .
One reflect ion of the fact that by 196 7 rice­
growing no longer h eld quit e the same int erest for S iwai
agr iculturalists was the rather p laint ive comment of one
councillor , relat ed to a mot ion on fencing in chickens , that
' even if the whole of a garden is p lanted with rice chicken s
can finish it all in a s ingle day ' . Nevertheless early in
196 8 John S imiri (Mus iminoi ) , a Konga didima:n and also
Chairman of th e Lo cal Government Council , and the directors
o f the S iwai Society o r ganized a plan t o res tar t rice growing ,
in response to constant concern over the poss ib il ity that ,
132
l ike almo s t al l the crops that had gone b efore , cocoa too
would eventually fail .
S imiri was himself then engaged in
spraying a paddy rice f ield at Panake , whi ch he est imat ed at
12 acres .
Something may have come of this s ince between 1 9 6 9
and 1 9 7 1 there were a numb er of r ice sales to the Soc iety
from Panake ; even so the f inal dec l ine of rice had begun b ut ,
p redic tab ly , it was a ve ry s low decl in e . Af ter more than
two decades in S iwai it was no t des t ined to d isappear quickly .
Even in the 19 70s attempt s were made to revive p ro duct ion
of rice for s ale .
In 1 9 7 1 the Rice Growers ' As soc iat ion
(Aust ralia Pty Ltd) were in teres ted in starting commercial
r i ce proj e c t s in the Buin sub - district , possibly with the
shared in teres t of the co-op e rat ives , following the complet ion
o f the trans-isl and road in 1 9 7 2 . No thin g came of this
interes t .
In 1 9 75 there were more island-wide moves to
rest art r i ce plan ting ; didimen toured Bougainville with n ew
high-yiel d ing rice variet ies b ut there was no apparent
interes t ; en thus iasm for rice had f inally evapo rat ed .
The
advan tages o f rice , its known comme r c ial value , ease o f
growing an d access to land (un l ike permanent t ree crops )
were f inally insufficient for i t t o compete with co coa or
even, in the end , sweet potat o es .
Ri c e was s t ill produced for sale in S iwai at least un t il
July 1 9 7 3 , when S iwai S ociety pur chased r ice worth $ 1 7 from
one Panake man , but b efore that there had been no purchases
s in ce November 1 9 7 1 . Once again the r i ce mill had broken down .
In the two and a hal f y ears b efore that some 2 3 separat e
pro ducers ( Fi gure 7 ) had sold rice to the Society earn ing
$ 12 5 ; s in ce the So ciety was no longer int erested in r ice
purchas in g the p r i ce was prob ab ly very low s o that much
larger quan t it ies of rice may have been sol d in t ernally in
S iwai marke t s , apart from b e in g grown for domest i c consumpt ion .
In 1 9 7 5 , on one o ccas ion, I saw r ice from Panake on sale at
Konga marke t ; it may also have b een grown on a t iny s cale in
a few other villages but this s eems t o have b een the f inal
flourish o f S iwai rice .
It p ers isted lon gest an d earned
the mos t cash for growers closes t to Konga .
Ove rall rice cul tivat ion eventually proved t o be
unsucce s s ful for a variety of reasons , none o f which had
originally creat ed p rob lems , namely the emphas is on cotmmm a l
cul t i vat ion and management . These final deteren t s included
the lack of in fras t ructure , essent ially roads b oth within
S iwai and between S iwai and potent ial markets , inadequat e
administration guidance and f inally changes in the supply
1 33
0
0
RICE
PROD U C E R S
2
4
Figure 7 .
6
8 km
Rice producers
19 69-7 1
134
situat ion of r i ce in P ap ua New Guinea .
(It is s ignificant
that none o f tho s e expat riates who t ried was ever ab l e to
make a long term commercial s uccess of rice growing anywhere
in the coun try . ) None o f the s e factors was e f fe ct ively able
to deter the S iwai rice producers un t il the 19 7 0s when the
rap idly r i s ing price of co coa , and improved acce s s ib ility ,
proved b eyond doubt that emphasis could mo st effectively b e
pl aced on co co a . Af ter a chequered career spanning over
th ree de cades a historic cash crop di sappeared from S iwai ;
dive rs ity o f crop product ion was con t inuing to declin e .
Corn disappeared mo re quickly from the cash e conomy ;
unlike r ice and peanut s i t had neve r b een plan t ed in s ingle­
crop gardens . Nor was it pr imarily a cash c rop , having been
a small p art o f the S iwai garden economy fo r the whole o f
the century .
Its price was neve r high and , probab ly following
chan gin g administ rat ion requiremen ts for foodstuf f s , the
market co llapsed . Like peanuts it b ecame j ust ano ther
componen t o f subsistence gardens .
Copra too was neve r a very succes sful compet itor ;
throughout south Bouga inville it grew badly ( Sumbak , 1 9 7 0 )
and in several areas , like wes t e rn B uin , even l imi t ed success
o f co coa and r ice meant that by 1 9 6 4 copra manufacture had
ceased to be important (PR Makis 5 / 64-65 ) .
Copra prices
after the war had s carcely r isen s i gnif i can t ly un t il the
ear ly 1 9 5 0s ( Appendix I I I ) and it was generally no t un til
the late 1 9 5 0 s that S iwais b egan to re-es t ablish coconut
plantat ions .
In the e arly 1960s the p rice o f copra on ce more
s t agnated so that in many vill ages there were no real co conut
plantat ion s beyond sub s is t en ce and ceremonial requirements .
Thus in 1 9 6 2 Ham was the first S iroi villager to p lant a
coconut plantat ion ; a few oth er villagers followed this lead
but tha t was all .
Other p arts of S iwai were much the same
so that in 1962 there was not on e copra drier in either the
Hai s i or Rataiku areas . Yet copra always retained its
S ince co conut s were
marginal role in the cash economy .
planted as one of the shade trees for cocoa it was inevit ab le
that , desp ite unp roduct ive t rees , there should be a s urplus
o f coconut s above domestic requiremen t s .
Con sequently in
the late 1 960s , in creased cocoa plan t ings and greater use
of co conut s rather than Zeucaena as a shade t re e meant that
pro duct ion of cop ra increased again , although it always
remained greatest in the coastal villages where there were
b et ter trees .
135
The S iwa i Society purchased l i t t le copra in the early
1960s and there are no surviving records of whatever trans­
act ions o ccurred , hence prices and quan t it ies are unknown .
One set o f ext ant records refers to the period from mid­
November 1 9 6 5 to mid-June 1 9 6 6 ; in this seven-month period
no mor e than eight individuals sold copra t o the Soc iety ( as
the price ro s e from 3d . to 4d . in that period) . Th es e s ellers
came from S in inai , Kumuki , Nukui , Toito i , S iro i , Turugum,
Materas and Kunnu . To tal S iwai p roduc tion mus t have been
greater , s ince the Ai tara-Ko tu group were s t il l producing
copra and o th er p ro ducers may also have sold t o t raders from
the b each .
In 1 9 6 5 the Ait ara group were st ill selling to
a privat e t rader on the beach rather than to the S iwai
Society who had o ffered to help them and may have been ab le
t o o f fer them a better price .
For tho s e who had cop ra driers
the ef fort gave a reas onab le cash return ; thus the elderly
leader , Manako (To itoi ) , earned £ 21 . 1 7 from 1504 pounds of
copra .
(Ten y ears later the price had no t increased . ) How
the return to e ffort then compared with that in to co coa or
co ffee is now impo ss ib le to say ; only one man sold two of
these three crops at this t ime and he had l it t le o f e i th er .
Th roughout the 1960s , copra again remained in the background .
Co ffee
One of the las t int ro duct ions int o south Bougainville
was cof fee robus ta ; this seems t o have b een ent irely a
government de c i sion based o_n the ava il ab il ity o f a stat ion
and didiman at Konga and con s iderab le lo c al enthus iasm for
all kinds o f new developmen t s .
I t is unl ikely that many
S iwais could have seen co f fee growing on plantat ions , although
co ffee had been grown in some north Bougainville plantat ions
befor e the war , an d there were app arently no lo cal pressures
for its int roduction . At the s tart of 1 9 5 6 Tomlin made a
co f fee nurs ery at Konga and dis t ributed seeds and marked out
a plot fo r one man in I ru , cons idering that co ffee was mos t
l ikely t o b e succes s ful a t higher alt itudes , indeed that it
' shoul d be planted above the cocoa l ine ' .
It was al so
recommended for the more remot e villages , which t ended to be
higher up , because an individual grower was ab le t o process
his own co ffee .
It was therefore viewed by the administrat ion ,
at leas t , in much the s ame way as cocoa an d returns to the
two crop s could also b e expected to be much the same ; admin­
ist rat ion policy aimed at plan t ing cof fee in areas where
cocoa did not flourish (PCA , 1 9 5 6 : 4 9 ) and , as with cocoa ,
the admin i st rat ion recommended that adult males p f ant 5 00
t rees each .
136
I n 19 60 most of t h e cof fee in eastern S iwai was recorded
as ' mainly in higher villages ; b et ter main tained than cocoa ' .
Has in g (Jeku), who had previously won a prize fo r cocoa a t the
Buin show, won the co ffee prize in 1 9 6 0 and a census of coffee
trees throughout S iwai carried o ut in the same year ( Figure
8) found more than twice as many coffee trees as there were
co co a t rees , and they were distribut ed quite widely . Konga
(with 6 30 tree s ) was the only place where the co f fe e was
mat ure and I ru apparen t ly the only place with mor e than one
grower . There were more than 5 000 t rees spre ad ove r e ighteen
villages . Neither the reconnnended number o f trees per grower
no r the geographical ' cocoa l ine ' had b een ob served .
Cof f ee was the first o f the two new tree crops to produce
a cash return in S iwai . In July 1960 , whi ch was probab ly the
first mon th in whi ch co ffee was pro duced commercially , the
Society was paying l / 3d . a pound for co ffee if it was good
and 9d . if it was not goo d . There was probab ly very litt le
sold s ince at the s tart of 1 9 6 2 most of the co ffee in eas t e rn
S iwai was s t i ll n o t b earing (APR Eas t ern Divis ion , S iwai ,
61-62 ) . A census of the whole of S iwai in 1962 recorded that
250 pounds of co f f ee were sold t o the S oc iety , but no more
than two b l o cks were then producin g .
The s e census f i gures
show an apparent (and probably spurious ) declin e in the number
of co ffee t rees ; there were s ome 240 mature trees and 4 031
innna ture t rees . But by then cocoa had already gone wel l
ahead ; there were eight or t en t imes as many cocoa trees and
1000 pounds of co coa were bought by the S ociety . Although
the 1 9 6 1-62 annual report for the sub-dis t rict s t ated that
the r e had b een no new co ffee plan t ings in S iwai , and early
in 1 9 6 2 the didimen were advis ing again s t further p lant ing ,
there mus t have b een cont inued local int erest s ince a couple
o f y ears l ater some 4 76 4 mature and 4486 immature t rees were
reco rded .
Co ffee may have been quickly reco gnized as in s ome way
in ferior to co coa, and even pe rhaps to ri ce s ince early in
the 1960s there was a lack o f in terest in some e s t ab l ished
co f fee gardens .
In 1964 ' p reviously neglec t ed ' co f fe e plan t ­
at ions were b e ing worked aga in followin g o n the s p o t purchases
by the S ociety at 4 / - per poun d .
S ince the price of cocoa
bean was then . only 4 d . per pound for wet bean ( and l / 3d . for
dry bean ) cof fee s eemed to have reasonable price advantages ,
an d int erest was s t imul ated despite the greater labour input s
that coffee required . Even so there was l i t t l e enough plan t in g
or product ion ; in 1 9 6 3 the S o ciety received three quart ers
o f a ton of co ffee ( comp ared with 12 tons of cocoa ) .
137
Figure 8 .
Cof fee producing villages 1960 .
S ource : 1960 Village Census
1 38
The only y ear for whi ch there is a complet e record of
co f fee sales t o the S iwai So ciety ( the only out let for co ffee)
( Figur e 9 ) .
Thi s was a year in wh ich the coffee
is 1965
price was 1/- pe r pound , whi ch was lower than in the previous
y ear , but s ince the co coa p r i ce remained much lower than this ,
' the previous ly neglec ted cof fee indus t ry has had new life
breathed in to it ' (PR Buin , 12 / 64-6 5 ) .
Sales p art ially
reflect the suppo sed earlier dis t ribution of coffee t rees
( Fi gure 8 ) ; Tonui had inco rporated Taira in to a s ingle l in e
vil lage by then but other apparen t changes in dist rib ut ion
probably indi cat e neglect of some of the earl iest coffee
plantations . The only one o f the f irst So ciety directors
who then produced co ffee was S iwa of Tonui ; the rest , an d
almost all S iwa is who subs equently b ecame bus ines smen , were
already connni t ted to co coa . Al though one or two mwnis ,
in clud ing Norus e o f Kumuki , were s elling co ffee , the l imit ed
evidence sugge s t s that t rad it ional S iwai leaders were not at
the fore fron t o f co f f ee growing .
Co coa and especial ly rice
were crops for whi ch there was a local demand an d in whi ch
both tradit ional and younger ' modern ' leaders took the
in it iat ive ; cof fee was a crop reconnnen ded primarily by the
admin is t rat ion . Tho se who t ried it were a much more random
sample of villagers .
Income from the cof fee was not great ; only three growers
earned mo re than £10 in the year 19 6 5 . The lead in g s eller
was Unkon g (Arnio ) who had sold 4 80 potmds and received £24 .
Unkon g was born in Arnio around 192 5 .
Before the
war he went to work on a plan t at ion at Hakau in
northern Bouga invill e ; his father rece ived a p re s ent
o f about £2 when he s i gned on whil s t he himself
worked a three year contract durin g whi ch he claims
t o have received three shill in gs a month and £30 at
the c omp l et ion of the contract .
(His real in come
may have been l ess than £1 0 . ) He worked on b o th
co coa and co f fee there so that when he decided ,
aro und 1 9 6 0 , to plant cof fee on his wife ' s ground
near Mamago ta he was already famil iar with i t .
Some prior experience with cof fee seems to have b een
the main characteris t ic of the early coffee growers .
Unkon g was no more famil iar with coco a and was
en couraged by the didimen 's suppo rt for co ffee . At
f irst pleased with his income , he became disappo inted
that he had b acked the wrong crop but cont inued
produc ing co ffee unt il about 1 9 6 9 .
Soon aft erwards
he planted his first cocoa t rees near Mamagota ; now,
139
©
0
POUNDS
2
Figure 9 .
4
OF
COFFE E
6
8 km
Coffee product ion 1 9 6 5
140
as an older man w ith no par t icular n eed for cash ,
he has no mo re than 2 0 0 cocoa t rees but has an
adequate in come . His co f fee t rees are reverting
to bush .
Nevertheles s two y ears _ o f l imited success encouraged
some S iwai co f f ee pro ducers , especially s in ce in 1 9 6 7 the
Society was payin g only two cents p er pound for c o co a (wet
b e an ) compared with 15 cents per pound of co f f ee .
It was
only then that the local didimen began to ac tually dis courage
tho se who wanted to plant cof fee ; even then in Muwoku village ,
at leas t , growers were s t ill reques t ing co f fee in 19 6 8 . By
mid-19 6 9 the Bana Society (of Nagovis i ) was handl ing s everal
tons o f co f fee per y ear , the Buin So ciety was handlin g about
f ive s acks and the S iwai So ciety even less than that .
In
other p arts o f s outh Bougainville co f fee seems to have s tarted
mo re slowly than in S iwai , although in upland areas i t was
always expect ed by the adminis t rat ion to rival cocoa . Thus
in upland Buin , in 1 9 6 6 , it was ' s t ill thought to have the
b es t po t ent ial ' (PR Buin 7 / 19 6 5-6 6 ) and a y ear later was
s t ill b e in g planted whilst in upland Nagovisi it remained
even longer .
Co f fee produc t ion was s t ill increas in g there
in 1 9 7 2 when the kiap s t at ed that it s t ill s eemed to b e
wo rthwhile (PR Boku 1 / 72 - 7 3 ) .
Alt hough histo rical ly more important in S iwai , the
compet i t ion from cocoa was too great and co ffee disappeared
earl ier there than elsewhere in south Bougainville ; even so
it was a s low declin e . S iwais who had inve s t ed in co f fee
were natural ly reluctan t to abandon a permanent t ree crop
that h ad b een a reliab le source o f cash income .
But in i t s
l a s t y ears the co f f ee came mainly f rom the uplan d areas where
it h ad b e gun ( Figure 1 0 ) ; in the end the demise was fair ly
abrupt although even in 1 9 7 0 the Buin co-operat ive o f f icer
was s t il l t rying t o f ind a b et t er market (po s s ib ly CRA) for
S iwai c o f fee , and four t ons were pro duced in the y ear .
In
the penul t imate year 1 9 71 there were f i f teen sellers ; in the
last year there were only f ive . S iwai co f fee p ro duct ion
con t inued un t il ab out S eptember 19 7 2 when the S o c ie ty recorded
its las t purchas es ; the f ive growers then were from the villages
of Tonui ( two ) , Iru , Moko l ino and Maino ita . Kuba (Maino ita)
earned $ 1 8 . 80 and the others earned $2 7 . 32 between them ;
co ffee p ro du ct ion ended , as it had begun , quietly .
The ma in dis incen t ive to great er co f fee plant in g , an d
especially pro duct ion , s eems t o have been the demand o n labour
rather than low prices . Although co f f ee is supposedly
141
A C O F F E E S E L L E RS TO S IWAI
S OC I E T Y
�
c:
0
0
2
F igure 1 0 .
4
6
8 km
Coff ee p roducers 197 1-72
142
unsuit ab l e t o a wet , equat orial climat e b ecause of its need
fo r a short dry , cool spell it grew quit e s a t is factorily in
S iwai and there is no evidence that the trees thems elves
were unproduct ive .
S iwa is foun d that , apart from the work
invo lved in establishing a plantat ion , the labour o f picking ,
carry in g , ferment ing , pulp ing an d carrying to Konga was t o o
great . Main t enance , such a s prunin g , was rarely carried out ,
even by the b iggest co ffee pro ducers .
Cocoa was less labour
int ens ive and even rice seemed to be much the same ; co coa
eventually replaced rice and , scattered throughout S iwai ,
co ffee plantat ions are revert ing to fore s t .
Cocoa t riumphant
At the s t art of the 1 9 60s co coa growin g was st ill a novel
venture thro ughout S iwai ; in January 19 60 the didima:n Hal ing
counted 15 b lo cks of 32 8 0 t rees in Rataiku ( two were larger
than 5 00 t rees ) . Only three were mo re than a year old ; all
were badly managed , there were o ft en no shade t rees and co coa
was usually mixed with sub s i stence gardens (APR , E as t ern
Division , S iwai , 19 6 0 ) . A year later when the f irst systemat ic
count throughout S iwai was conducted co coa was growing almost
everywhere (with the except ion of the Hai s i area which may
no t have b e en vis i t ed ) . There were over 7 000 mature and
1 8 , 000 immature t rees spread over 35 villages (Figure 1 1 ) .
Apart f rom Muwoku , mos t of the villages with mature t rees
were fairly close t o Konga , although Kin irui , the n earest
village , had no trees at all . Arnio , with 800 mature and
1 89 6 immature t rees , seems to have led the field with
Mus imino i close behind . ( As in every sub sequent coun t the
didimen themselves were expected t o count every t ree , al though
even in the earliest years this would have b e en ext remely
di f f i cul t because of the disp ersal o f village t rees , hen ce
mo s t coun t s were b ased on growers ' e s t ima tes . ) In 1 9 6 2 , another
coun t was made by the dire ctors of the S iwai Soc iety (Figure
12 ) whi ch more or les s con firms the dist r ib ut ion recorded
in the f irs t survey . Even so , the di f f eren ces b e tween the
two surveys are in dicat ive of the l imit ed value of all crop
coun t s ; mo st are no mor e than general guides t o numbers and
d i s t r ib ut ion . Their accuracy has steadily declined .
Although there were growers throughout S iwai there were
few o f them and mos t S iwais were quite un in t erested in cocoa .
However , the didimen had b ecome ext remely enthus ias t ic ; at
the Coun c il mee t ing o f Novemb er 1961 the Buin didiman told
the Coun c il to make a rule that each man must plan t 5 00 cocoa
t rees an d look af ter them. He was also con cerned that people
143
were no t taking enough in tere s t in co coa and that tho se who
did have plantat ions were no t lookin g after them but were
allowin g the bush to encroach on the cocoa ; ' Sapos man i no
save lukautim gut kakao garden bi longem, didiman em i gat lo
long rausim dispe la garden, taso l mipe la i save isi long
yupe la ( If someone does no t look after his cocoa plantat ion
properly , the didiman himself has a law for ge t t ing rid o f
this garden , b u t so f a r we have b een easy o n you) ' ( S iwai
LGC Minutes , Nov . 19 6 1 ) . How the didimen might have r emoved
a garden is f ar from cl ear ; they were j us t very keen on
cocoa growing .
The o ff i c ial guidelines for cocoa growing were that each
hous eho ld should have a 5 00-t ree holding ( covering about
2� acre s )
with a pos s ib il i ty , at least in Nasioi ( Ogan ,
19 7 2 : 12 6 ) al though it may never have b een expres s ly formulated
in S iwai , o f working up to a 3000-tree plantat ion ( on 15
acres ) which could b e main t ained by a household with two
adult sons . During the y ear 1954-55 a Cacao Action Plan had
been drawn up by the nat ional adminis trat ion , where the
principle o f 5 00-tree b lo cks had first b een s e t out . The
'
aim was to p revent indis criminate planting , s ince didimen
believed that small areas tended to be forgo t t en and s ub s e­
quently became a home for pests and dis eases .
(At much the
s ame time 500 trees was also b eing reconnnended as an
appropriate number o f co f fee trees to p lant whils t , a few
y ears late r , the number once more reappeared as the reconnnended
number o f rubber trees . )
The council was no t ent irely
convinced about making any rules but agreed at l east to
recommend tha t S iwais look after their co coa gardens . Each
month , almo s t without excep tion , the councillors were lectured
on th e values o f hard work and , to a lesser extent , health
and educat ion ; the counc illors themse lves o f t en responded
willingly but their messages were not always t ransferred into
ac t ion . The next month was no excep t ion ; the Buin As s istant
Di strict o f fi cer pointed out :
Yupe la; lukim long Kie ta, o l i gat 300, 000 diwai
kakao, na p les ia Kie ta emi' no s tre tpe la graun
o ls em long Siwai, em i ple s i gat maunten taso l
na bikpe la diwai moa . Na yu, yu gat gutpe la graun
na yu save les long mekim garden .
Siwai i gat
20, 000 diwai taso l na dispe la em i liklik samting
long o l narape la .
Trai mekim dispe la yia 1 96 2 em
i wanp e la gutpe la yia tru bi long yupela o l Siwai
(You have seen around Kieta that they have 300 , 0 00
cocoa trees and the Kieta area isn ' t level l and
1 44
A
0
M AT U R E
2
F igure 1 1 .
4
COCO A
6
TREES
8 km
Cocoa producing villages 1 9 6 1
1 45
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M A TU R E
2
Figure 1 2 .
COCOA
4
6
P L A N TAT I O N S
8 km
Cocoa producing villages 19 62
146
l ike in S iwai ; i t ' s only go t mountains and much
bigger t ree s . But you people , you have good land
S iwai has
and you ' re too lazy to make gardens .
only 2 0 , 000 t rees and this i s t iny compared with
o ther areas . Try and make 1 9 6 2 an excellent year
for the people of S iwai) .
S iwai cocoa t rees produced the ir f irst co co a in 1 9 6 1 .
A small amount o f cocoa was sold on an experimental basis
to DAS F . However almost all o f this cocoa was sun-dried ;
there had not b een enough s un and two tons had ro t t ed and b een
completely des t royed so that the only cocoa purchases that
the socie ty made in that y ear were from Mos igeta in Bait s i .
( Indeed the society had made even earlier c ocoa pur chas es ,
all o f them from Mo s iget a . )
In March 1 9 6 2 the S iwai Society
made the ir first purchases of S iwai cocoa .
Sellers of we t
bean had to carry their p roduce to the DASF s tat ion ,
apparently on only one day p er fortnight , where they then
had to s t ay and assis t the s tat ion lab our to dry the bean
The
so that they would know how the ferment ary wo rked .
fermentary had been p lanned in 1 9 60 when it was also
determined that the ini tial paymen t for cocoa beans (pos s ibly
wet but probab ly dry ) would be 6d . per pound . A new c ash
crop had emerged .
The earl i es t exis t ing records o f co coa pur chas ing by
S iwai So c ie ty dat e from Augus t 1 9 6 2 , only a few mon ths after
the firs t sales within S iwai , and the record o f the twelve
mon ths a f ter that provide s a valuab le guide to the d i s t r ib ­
The
ut ion of p rod uct ion and the incomes o f early producers .
amount sold to the socie ty was less than the potent ial total
S iwai product ion since ve ry small quant it ies taken from or
left on immature t rees were not sold to the society . Although
one Kuhino man sold two pounds to the society and re ceived
6 d . , mo s t sellers carried much mo re to Konga and ignored
Rather more important , in October 1962 the
small amo un t s .
so ciety took various quant i t ies o f cocoa from f i f t een sellers
whi ch , when i t reached Rabaul , was rej e c t ed by the inspectors ;
the society re fus ed to pay anythin g to the growers . Mo reover
all the co coa that the society obtained in the four months
between November and Feb ruary was lost when the MVS Polurrian
cap s i z ed ; once again no one was paid al though in neither
case were the growers at faul t . S everal o f these s ent no
It was not an impressive
mo re co coa to the society that year .
s t art t o S iwai coco a market ing y et , unl ike co f fe e , there was
never disappo intment in the amoun t of labour involved in
ob tain in g satis factory marke t prices .
There are no records
14 7
o f negle cted cocoa plantat ions .
Product ion figures from 1962-63 ( including co coa rej e c ted
and drowned) emphas ize the e arly concentrat ion of product ion , !
and growers , around Konga ( Fi gure 13 ). Western S iwai apparently
produced very little despite their clo se links with the
Bait s i area where cocoa p roduct ion had first b egun in south
Bougainville . All the big pro ducers were even then drying
much o f their own p roduct ion ; fermentaries were being operated
by Has in g ( Jeku) and Kepoama (Musiminoi) whils t Kuipuru ( Arnio)
and Kuiaka (Kapana) had access to the society fermentaries .
Surpri sin gly only two o f the seven directors o f the socie ty
were pro ducing cocoa ; their rhetoric and ob servat ions had
no t convinced even themselves . S ince the price o f wet b ean
o s c illated b etween 2 d . and 3d . _ a poun d , tho s e who earned
most from co coa were tho se who dried their b eans and received
from 9 d . t o 1 / - per pound . Kuiaka earned most in the year £5 7 . 19 s - desp ite los in g about £1 7 worth in the Polurrian .
Kepoama received £48 . 3s an d Kuipuru got £31 . l s ; b oth o f them
also lo s t cocoa in the s ea .
S ignificant ly the b igges t earner
o f all was the company plantat ion in Arnio village ; the vil lage
produced co coa which sold fo r £62 . 4s .
I t was s carcely
surprising when the owner o f the gro un d on which the connnun al
plantation was growing decided to take it over hims elf a
year later . Kepoama , who received £48 in that year was the
app arent l eader . Within three more months he had received
£2 36 . 7 s from the s o c iety , an ext raordinary sum in 1963 .
Born around 1 9 25 he had a couple o f years _ in s chool ,
served in the war with ANGAU but never went away to
p lant at ion work and therefore was quite unfamiliar
with coco a growing . Af ter the war h e was one o f
the first people t o b e intere s t ed in rice growing
and s ub sequently became the first person in S iwai
to plant cocoa . En couraged by Barry Holloway , at
that t ime a young policeman in Buin and with the
as s is tance o f Hatah then working in a Buin store ,
who p rovided money to pay for lab our which cost
two shillin gs , p lus food , per day , he cleared land
and p lanted about 250 t rees . When he travelled to
New Britain in 195 6 , as one of the Siwai Society
direc tors , his own cocoa was al ready b earing fruit .
1
Dry b ean product ion figure s have been conve r t ed to wet b ean
here as elsewhere in the t ext us ing the rule o f thumb that
the re is a 60 per cent weight lo ss from wet to dry b ean .
148
@
5
POU N D S OF
WET BEANS
N U M B E R O F PRO D U C E R S
F igure 1 3 .
Cocoa Production 19 62-63
149
Wi th the assis tance of Hat ah ' s bro ther , Tokura ,
he buil t the first tiny fe rmen tary in S iwai , which
used both fire and the sun to dry the b eans . His
f irs t output , one rice sack ( about 50 pounds ) o f
By
dry beans was sold to Tomlin a t the society .
1 9 6 3 he had more mat ure cocoa t rees than any o ther
S iwai and was already buying small quantities o f
wet bean in the Hari-Mamagota area t o dry and
re-sell to the socie ty . He was the first co coa
based S iwai bus ines sman .
In the first y ear the soc iety had demonst rated that
al though there might s t ill be p roblems cocoa provided for a
few individuals an income greater than had b een achieved
from any o ther crop .
I t was a demon s t ration that was not
ignored al though ironically the so ciety itself made a loss
on co coa in 1962 because much of its purchase was o f poor
qual i ty . Al though the to tal income from cocoa was not great
S iwais obs erved that the few individuals involved received
much large r s ums than had been p reviously ob tained from any
other c ash crop .
Con sequently even this t iny new income ,
because o f it s uneven dist ribut ion , may have b een enough
to generate the int erest tha t resul t ed in a mas s ive ext ens ion
of plan t ings ; it was estimated that in the nine months ,
between Ap ril and Decemb er 1962 , some 16 , 5 00 t ree s were
planted in Siwai bringing the tot al numb er of t rees to about
One year later , at the end o f 1 9 6 3 , th ere were a
52 , 000 .
Co coa growin g was unde r way .
repo rted 119 , 000 t rees .
Many o f the exho rtat ions that adminis t rat ion o f f icials
made in the Council and So ciety mee t ings were appeals to a
S iwai spirit o f p ro gress and development rather than to a
mor e obj ect ive analysis o f the e conomic s ituat ion .
The kiap
who had claimed at the Ap ril 1962 Council mee t ing that S iwai
was b ehind both Buin and Nagovis i in their rat e of cocoa
plantin g was p robab ly fairly accurat e but when later in the
year it was s t ated that ' Siwai em i Zas tru Zang o Z wok
bi Zong painim rrani ( S iwai is the very l as t p lace in s t artin g
work t o get money) ' , this was somethin g o f an exaggerat ion ,
albeit p ardonable , espec ially s in ce a dif ferent kiap was
no t ing at the same t ime tha t , in southern Buin , cash crops
' remain merely a s ideline for the indus t rious ' (PR Buin
2 / 62 - 6 3 ) whils t three y ears l ater in eas tern Buin the people
were s t ill more int eres ted in coconuts s ince they cons idered
that cocoa was a European crop . S ome o f them felt that s in c e
they were unable t o compete with Europeans they would s t i ck
to copra ; they claimed that the high coco a p rices did not
150
impress them (PR Baku 5 / 6 5 -6 6 ) .
S iwai , in reality , was
ahead of almo s t all th e rest of south Bougainville .
There
we re s t ill however appeals directed to particular villages
tha t seemed to be un intere s t ed in cash crops so that the
first youn g S iwai didiman told them :
Sampe la p les o l i no laik p lanim kakao na kofi
sa1nting .
Tupe la p les hia, Siroi na Ruisei, o l
i s lip ye t . . . o Z i no girap . Moa gut o l man
bi long Siroi i mas tingting gut na girap long
p Zanim kakao long dispe la yia ( Some villages
are no t in terested in planting coco a , co f fe e or
any cash crop . Two places in S iwai , S iro i an d
Ruisei , are st ill as l eep . . . they haven ' t got
s tarted .
It would b e b e t t er if the S iroi men
thought wisely and began to plant co coa this year ) .
A year lat er in 1 9 6 4 , whilst the councillors from
Hanon g , Tonui , Arnio , Mo ronei and Kapana were claiming that
every man in their villages had planted co co a , although not
necessarily as many as 5 00 t rees each , the council cha irman
was demanding an explanat ion o f why S iro i villagers had not
ye t s tarted .
There were known to be disput es over land
ownership b ut the chairman , who was from Unanai , and therefore
familiar with S i ro i , observed ,
Mi save sampe la Siroi o l i save gat gaden taso l,
o l i no save wok long en o l taim .
Samp e la o l i
save wok long gaden bi long o l long wanpe la de
taso l long wan wik samting ( I know that some
p eopl e o f S iro i only have food gardens and don ' t
work there all the t ime .
Some only work in their
gardens about one day a week) .
A mot ion was unanimously agreed that every man had to p l ant
5 00 co co a trees .
The Society and the Council were at last united in
their at t empt s to encourage cash crop pro duct ion .
The Soc iety
directors maintained their p ressure on vil lagers to plant
cash crops an d reported the s uccess or f ailure o f these
in it iat ives .
In lat e 19 6 3 the So ciety received repo rts f rom
the direc tors re sponsible for the Rataiku and Korikunu areas .
In Rat aiku , two villages , Mo rokaimoro and Mokol ino , were
'empty tru ' ; they had no cocoa , co f fee , rice o r coconut s .
In the Korikunu area , Ru ' nai and Ko tu were the s ame whils t
in Hari , the young wanted t o plant cocoa but the o l d were
15 1
preventing their acces s t o ground .
Indeed this was a more
general problem ; Father Leb el , then stationed at Mono itu ,
obs erved how some men would plant on three or four plo t s o f
ground b e fo re mat ril ineage elders allowed them t o keep their
co coa on the site (pers . conun. 19 75 ) .
There were no reports
from other p arts o f S iwai but a So ciety s tore had b een built
at S ininai and a ferment ary was bein g cons tructed there .
The census that was carried out at about the s ame t ime
( Figure 14 ) indicates that the s t at ed dist ribut ion was more
or less true ; in Ruisei , the largest of all S iwai villages ,
there was not a single cocoa grower whereas villagers on
either s id e had more than ten . Apart from a few mainly
smaller villages , cocoa had reached almost every corner o f
S iwai in c luding Iru , the s upposed st ronghold o f co f fee
growin g . Ab solutely everyone was convinced about the virtues
o f cocoa ; S o c iety and Coun cil , didimen and S iwais were all
equally enthus ias t i c .
So too were the mi ssion s ; Father
Lebel (pers . conun. 19 75 ) rec alled how by about 1960 he was
t ellin g S iwais to plant cocoa in his s e rmons and in his
convers at ion s . P ro gress was now rapid .
Even in this phase o f cocoa growing a number o f the
earlies t cocoa plant ers had b egun t o hire l abour ( pp . 2 0 1 - 2 )
Accordin g to Tomlin (pers . comm. 1 9 7 7 ) very few o f the early
cocoa growers spent money ; rather they s aved it unt il they
had enough to hire labour . Nagovis i labourers were recrui t ed
to clear ground for more ext ens ive cocoa plant ations and
were p aid wages of around £1 per month ; many remained in
S iwai for p eriods o f over three months . Thi s employment
s ituat ion , which s eems to have few contemporary parallels
el sewher e in P apua New Guinea , l as t ed for four o r f ive y ears
after 1 9 5 5 and ended primarily b e cause Nagovis is began to
develop their own cocoa plantat ions .
It was an early
ind icat ion o f the determinat ion of the early cocoa producers .
S iwai society made its first pro fits from coco a in
1 9 6 3 and in the y ear ending in May 1964 it provided the main
income o f the s ociety ( £9 9 6 out o f a to tal o f £1610) . As
one didiman noted with pride , ' Rott ing o f pods on the trees ,
lack o f o rganized pro duction , t ransportat ion e t c . . . . is now
ancient his tory ' . The s ame year was the one in which co coa
planting really t ook a hold in S iwai ; in the s in gle year of
1964 about 140 , 000 co coa t rees were planted in S iwai ( Figure
1 6 ) a rate that was not quite main tained in the fo llowing
year when cocoa p rices reached a record pos t-war low
(Appendix I I I and Figure 1 7 ) . The Konga fermentary was
working satis factorily and more amb i t ious developmen t
152
@)
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N U M BE R
NO
2
Figure 1 4 .
OF
GROW E R S
G R OW E R S
4
6
8 km
Co coa growers 1963
153
proj ects were Wlder way ; in 1 9 6 3 the Soc ie ty expanded cocoa
buying to include Nagovisi , Bait s i and Banon i but only dry
bean was purchas ed s ince there was too much t ime and labour
involved in buying wet bean .
Con sequen t ly the Society
secretary recorded that ' centralized fermentaries have b een
const ruc t ed throughout the above areas ' whilst the Society
had also b e gun t o build ano ther fermentary and store at Kan gu
on the Buin coas t .
Co coa could be carried and s to red there
when t ransport to Buin was easy ; there were eleven large
rivers between Boku an d Buin and unpredictable floods had
prevented co coa reaching exp e c t ed ship s .
( I t was even claimed
that basket product ion had fallen b ecause o f the int erest in
cocoa plan t in g . ) Both admin i s tration an d S iwais remained
convinced about the po t ent ial of cocoa.
In the y ear ending in S ep t emb er 1965 , despite low cocoa
prices and bad weather (wh i ch apparently reduced yields )
co coa gave the Society an income o f £2 3 3 7 o u t o f a total o f
£4 785 ( rice still contribut ed £62 7 ; b aske ts b rought in £12 7 6
and co ffee a mere £131) . For most of this period the So ciety
pai� 2 d . a pound for we t bean and 9 d . fo r dry bean . All the
earlie s t So ciety co coa sal es were to Rabaul Tradin g Company ;
there were s t ill the familiar diff icult ies of transpo rt plus
o ther mo re llll familiar problems .
In 1965 Rowntrees , ult imately
the main purchaser o f New Guinea cocoa , re fused to give a
grade to the whole o f S iwai product ion b e cause o f its t ast e .
(Ten years l ater good S iwai cocoa was the best in Bougainville
and ranked with any in the wo rld . ) Nevertheless by 1965 the
developmen ts in S iwai were con s i dered to be the best in
Bougainvill e .
Just as S iwais had gone to New Britain to s ee
how cocoa was grown and so cieties operat ed so , in its turn ,
the S iwai S o ciety became a mo del o f integrated development ,
based upon coco a , and there were o f fi ci al vis itors from Buin ,
Kie ta and Buka , all areas which had hitherto been in advance
o f S iwai in terms of cash crop exp an s ion .
By then some large co coa plant ers were b eginning to
emerge in S iwa i .
In mid-1965 the Buin Annual Report l isted
seven ind ividual grower s in s outh Bougainville wi th more
than 1000 t ree s , b ut all were in Buin .
One o f these had
3000 t ree s ; although none had ful l-t ime labour some were
hirin g men fo r short p eriods of t ime . Widokuma had begun a
separate Mo s igett a Company in Baits i ; the company had 6000
cocoa trees , were purchas in g wet bean f rom neighbouring
villages and market in g their co co a independen t ly . However
a 1963 cocoa census of S iwai had already iden t i f ied ten
growers with more than one thousand trees , al though none o f
154
them had a thous and mature t rees .
( It is po s s ib le that this
is wh at th e Rep o rt in cluded and that there were s t ill no large
S iwai pro ducers even in 1 9 6 5 . ) In 1 9 6 3 Soiri (Kapana) , who
was a didiman at Konga , had 216 8 innna ture trees , whil s t
neither Kepoama n o r Kuipuru were far b ehin d .
Buin was not
as far ahead as the Repo rt impl ied . But it was not all s t eady
progres s ; in July 1965 cocoa prices s lumped to a low o f £ 6 9
p e r ton ( in s t o re , Rabaul ) .
There was a growing feel ing ,
amon gs t both expat riates and Bouga invilleans , that it was
scarcely wo rth the price of picking and proces s ing the b ean s .
One kiap was anticipat ing serious unrest in the future (PR
Buin 11 / 6 4 -65 ) .
This turned out to be the rock bot tom price ;
there was no unrest , s imply a delayed expans ion in plan t ing
unt il prices ros e again .
Cocoa eas ily survived its only
cris is of con fidence and , in th e three y ears that followed ,
co coa prices went up again , the So ciety had a ' meteoric rise '
and turnover in creased six- fold .
One o f the few y ears for which there are reas onab ly
comp rehens ive records of the purchases of the S iwai Socie ty
is 19 6 5 -6 6 , which also happens to b e the las t y ear in whi ch
the S o ci ety dealt with a s ub s t ant ial variety of agricultural
pro duce .
In that year of low cocoa p rices they paid out
$ 12 , 3 8 7 to 7 75 members ; the mo st important product of all
was baske t s fo r whi ch the So ciety p aid $ 4 9 3 7 (40 per cen t ) ,
clos ely followed by co coa purchases o f $ 4 914 (40 per cent ) .
Rice ( $ 9 5 2 ; 8 per cent ) , co f fe e ( $ 811 ; 7 per c en t ) and
copra ( $ 6 5 2 ; 5 per cent ) were minority specialit ies : r ice
and cof fee decl in ing and copra remain ing much as it had
done for some t ime al though in the co coa p rice slump o f
1965 copra prices had b rie fly been better than cocoa prices .
Un fortunat ely there are no adequat e Society records o f
b asket purchases yet i t seems that for more than a decade
after the start of the Society , baskets remain ed a stan dby
product s o that whenever there was some cr is is in agriculture ,
o r merely a lull before t ree c rops became ripe , b asket
p roduct ion inc reased significantly . As early as June 1 9 5 6 ,
Rangai (Panake ) had a ' wholesale sto re ' deal ing in baske t s ;
the r e was always an identif iable market and s t eady in comes
were always po s s ible .
Indeed the first indi cat ion from a
pa t ro l report that there was an apparent ly permanent divers ion
of labour f rom b asket s to agriculture came in 19 6 7 when the
k-iap ob s e rved that ' money earned from baskets is supplement ary
to earnin gs from cocoa or copra (unle ss the person doesn ' t
have any ) ' and that ' they are usually made in spare t ime and
no t dur in g the day (when garden or co coa wo rk take precedenc e ) '
155
( P R Konga 1 / 6 7-68) . Baskets provided something o f a prob lem
and the S ociety was always amb ivalen t in it s at titude to
baske t producers . At t imes of poor crop p roduct ion they were
dependent on baske t purchas es t o retain profitab ility and
consequen t ly lashed out against tho se who sold their baskets
elsewhere o r who came to t rade fo r them; there were many of
these occas ions s ince demand for baske tware for a very long
t ime s eemed t o b e above the supply . On the other hand , when
the Society was tempo rarily short o f cash from overspendin g
o n cocoa purchases , a s in July 196 7 , the directors agreed
to suspend basket buying in this cas e for two mon ths b e caus e
o f its low p ro fitability .
Five y ears lat er t h e s ituat ion
was much the same , with the Socie ty un in teres ted in f inding
new marKet s for what app eare d to b e a surplus o f baske t s .
In that f ive-year period the arrival o f a large numb er of
Europeans to work in the mine operat ion had result ed in a
considerab le inc rease in demand , a rise in p rice and the
product ion of large numbers of sub-standard b aske t s by les s
regular makers ( cf . War d , 19 75 : 76 ) . When this market had
been s aturated prices fell and producers were dissat is fied .
Neve rtheless after 1 9 6 5 , for the first t ime , a cash crop
promised an income cons i s t ent ly high er than could b e ob tained
from basket-making .
Cocoa and companies
Rather l ike the communal rice gardens that had b egun
when widespread rice plant ing s tar ted , the people from almo s t
every village in S iwai , and indeed elsewhere in Bougainville ,
planted communal coco a plantat ions in their vil lages , at
much the same time that they began to plant the individual
c o coa plantat ions .
Thus in S iroi village , a lat e starter
in co coa growin g , the village men worked together in the mid1960s to clear and p lant cocoa plantat ions for three of the
more p rominent villagers ; after this they cleared and planted
a cocoa plantat ion , the S iro i Company plantat ion , for the
whole vil lage . This was done essent ially at the ins t igat ion
of a youn ger man , then the village councillor , who had become
convin ced o f the n eces sity to ins t i gate bus iness- type
act ivit ies in th e village , and who had already seen the s t art
o f compan ies (S , NM-kampan.i ) , as all these essent ially
plantat ion ent e rp rises were known , elsewhere in S iwai . A
l it t le l ater , and in the same way , a copra plantat ion was
planted on the coast n ear Aitara ( s ince two village men had
access to land and it was believed that it would be easy to
load copra ont o ships there) . The es sen t ial aim of the
S iro i Company was to t rade cocoa and copra and save the money
15 6
unt il there was enough to buy a truck for the village which
would enab le further business developmen t . Although the
lat ter aim was never r ealized , the S iroi Company , which could
depend on the lab our of all the village men for one day a
week for s everal years , made a considerab le income from cocoa
Inevitab ly
selling and some income from cop ra sellin g .
disput es over the receip t s based on inadequate maint enance
of t he re cords make it impossible to as sess the Company ' s
income ; the receipts t hat exist in S iro i sugges t that in the
years from 1 9 7 0 to 19 72 the Company made at least $ 100 a y ear
from both cocoa and cop r.a sales to the S iwai S ociety alone ,
in which the Company had its own share .
Comp ared with the
achievement of s ome o ther vil lage compan ie s that of S iroi
was unimpressive ; o ther village s , inc luding Kumuki and Toit o i ,
certainly eventually earned enough from their companies to
purchase land cruisers , and many of the village companies were
runnin g trade s tores by the start of the 19 70s . By the mid19 70s few of the companies were s t ill as success ful as they
had b een only half a decade earlier ; mos t had succumb ed in
some way t o the t ide o f individualism .
Despite the failure o f the early conmnmal rice garden s ,
in th e sense that the reco rds were inadequate an d d isputes
aro se among participant s after the first flush o f enthus iasm
was over , the conmrunal e thic was maintained and the village
companies exemp lified this ethic .
Once aga in group ventures
became more important at a t ime when innovat ions were bein g
in corporated int o th e village economy . This par t i cular fo rm
o f communal organ izat ion , the Company , was almost ub iquitous
in S iwai in the mid-19 60s although the t erm kampani itself
seems to have emerged around the s t art o f the 1960s .
In
19 6 8 , a y ear when some companies such as that in Arnio village
had already disin t e grated , there were at least 5 0 villages
in S iwai with co coa compan ies ( Figure 15 ) ; this p ar t icular
lis t , culled from a variety o f sour ces , is undoub t edly
in complete whi l st the smaller villages , many of which did
no t have companies , may have worked alongsi de their neighbo ur s
in a s in gle company . Mo reover the company plantat ions wer e
almo st a l l very large ; although new plan t in gs were rarely
carried out on the company plantat ions after about 196 7 many
were , for s everal y ear s afterwards , the largest s ingle holdin g
o f cocoa in the village .
The S iroi Company plantat ion , with
about 1000 t rees was the lar ge st in S iroi fo r n early a decade
and there were a number of other companies with more than a
thousand t rees .
The essence o f the compan ies , as in S iroi ,
was that they linked together men from di f feren t l ineages
within a village in a s ingle co-op erat ive ent e rprise although
15 7
0
VIL L A G E
COMPA N I E S
1
c:
.�,
0
2
Figure 1 5 .
4
6
8 km
Village comp anies 1 9 6 8
15 8
in many villages , as was t rue also in Nagovisi (Nash , 19 7 4 :
107-8) , the companies had a dispersed memb ership based on
membership in a s in gle mat ril ineage group .
The s e latter
companies wer e invariab ly the mo s t success ful .
As in the earl ier communal ventures there were almo s t
always disput es over the organi z at ion o f work and the use
o f the in come from crop sales . Thus as early as the middle
of 1964 a Council agenda mo t ion read , ' All those who set up
companies (NM-wok kampani ) mus t in form b o th the kiap and the
co uncil s ince plenty o f disputes arise out o f them ' . The
minutes of this mee t ing are lost but the p rob l ems rose again
s in ce in 1966 the councillors were once again debat in g the
topic and con cludin g that the companies were a ' good thin g ' .
In th e S iroi Company , which is probab ly typ ical o f mos t S iwai
comp an ie s , the re were con t inuous disputes which eventually
resul t ed in the decl ine of co-op erat ive work on the co coa
plantat ion and the almost complete abandonment o f the co conut
plan tat ion .
The Company had its own bank account and income
was depo s i t ed there but it was rarely drawn upon for any
reason ; some o f the early a ims , inc luding payment o f s chool
fee s and medical charges ( cf . Nash , 1 9 74 : 108 ) , s eem never
to have b een realized .
Individuals who fel t that the income
should h ave been dis t r ibuted for the s e and o ther purpo ses
became dis illus ioned , failed to turn up for work on the
plantat ion and thereby created further o rganizational prob l ems ,
in almo s t exactly the s ame way as had happened on the r ic e
gardens o f a decade e arlier . Exact ly the same probl ems
o ccurred in the co coa companies o f Nagovis i and Mit chel l ' s
explanat ion o f these is als o valid for S iwai :
It is diff icult for Nagovis i , with no clear
hereditary leader ship , t o decide on how decis ions
shall be made . Probl ems will be t alked over
ext ens ively , but a s t ubborn individual can keep
a decis ion from b e ing t aken , even when the o thers
are agreed . Also , there is a definite disinclin­
at ion on the part of most Nagovis i fo r argument
and heated debat e ; a p erson o r a couple who are
unhappy about some aspect o f the kampani are much
more likely to withdraw quietly and cease to
par t icipate than they are to cause a ruckus
Within the kampani there were no e f fe c t ive
s an c t ions to force tmwilling labourers to main tain
the c ac ao , nor were there any o rganizat ional
mechanisms which would allow for the dividin g up
of any funds which might b e earned
[ this
.
•
.
.
•
•
159
problem.] was usually the one which led to the
dissolut ion of the group . . . I suspect that this
re fl ec t s a belief on the part o f older Nagovis i
that money is to be equated with viasi [ shell
valuab les ] , t reated in the s ame way and hoarded .
The thought that the communal p ile o f money is
growing is said to be one whi ch makes old people
very happy ; they do no t care whether it is
dist ributed or n o t . Young people , however , usually
do n o t see things in this l ight (Mit chell , 1 9 7 6 :
89-90 ) .
The companies foundered o n t h e s ame rocks that had sunk
the rice s chemes and mos t of the e arly s t o re s {pp . 249-50) .
Int ended t o move the agricultural economy towards a ' modern '
economy organized around b us iness princ iples , their e s s en t ial
communal o rgan izat ion , roo t ed in t radit ional forms of co­
op eration ( s uch as fishing , hun t ing and ceremonial garden
lab our , where the product was invariably eaten or used by
the pro ducers ) , was inimicable to succe s s .
Compan ies existed and in many cases thrived success fully
for well over a decade in south Bougainville .
( Indeed many
s t ill exis ted in the mid- 19 7 0s . ) Although they do no t appear
to have b een · s igni ficant elsewhere in Bougainville ( cf . Ogan ,
19 72 : 1 75 - 6 ) they also existed in New Guinea , for example in
New Ireland (Lomas , 1 9 7 4 : 2 18 ) and in Papua where , for example ,
Bakoiudu migrant s set up a communal rubber kompani (Go s t in ,
19 7 2 ) .
In the Purari delta o f Papua an e s s en t ially s imilar
form of communal economic organizat ion , also known as the
' kompani ' , had emerged earlier (becaus e of the more rapid
payment of war damage compensat ion ) but foundered on the
inability t o mast e r t e chnological p roblems , ob tain access
to market s , and use adequat e accoun t ing p rocedures (Maher ,
1961 : 6 4 - 8 ) .
In o ther parts of Papua such as Milne Bay
(Moul ik , 1 9 7 3 : 88) and even in Guadalcanal ( Bathgate , 19 75 : 8 5 8 )
the kampanis were much more obvious ly related t o t rade s t o re
management only . For each o f t he s e areas , and for S iwai as
well , t he o r igin of t he kampani i s un cle a r ; why it developed
in the s ame b asic manner in many parts of Melanesia is equally
uncertain .
On ce again it refl ected the t ransposit ion o f
expatriat e bus iness organiz ation , l ike bisnis ( see pp . 249-50)
and p lante s in , to lo cal s itua tion s which were not the s ame
as the alien variety but wher e the t erms were appropriate .
The b re akdown o f communal farming fol lowed rathe r
Commun al rice farms
di fferent p att erns for rice and cocoa .
160
declined partly b ecause o f prob l ems with the rice itself ; i t
was somet imes impo ssible to sell and i t suffered from diseas e ,
but more impo rtant was the impo s s ib ility o f satis factorily
main tainin g group lab our in condit ions where the returns were
very low , partly b ecause o f mismanagemen t . The concept s of
reciprocal e conomic ob ligat_ions that had existed in pre-war
sub s ist ence garden s and feast - giving act ivities were not
applicab le to the new communal rice f ields and no clear
definit ion o f what would t ake their place was ever achieved
(Mahe r , 1 9 6 1 : 6 8 ) . Tho se who were mos t en thus iast ic about
rice left to begin their own gardens ; o thers s imply dropped
out .
Cocoa had no s imilar t e chnical problems but leaders ,
to some ext ent disillusioned with r i ce , were less en thusiast ic
about cocoa , hence exerted less pressure on suppo rt ers t o
establish an d maintain communal garden s .
Indeed , it was
partly the low int erest born of dis illus ion with rice, and
hence pres sure , on the part of leaders , that result ed in the
slow adop tion of co coa whi ch was , in any case , a slow
maturing crop .
Diversific at ion and dis illusion
There were st ill some at temp t s to int roduce n ew cash
crops int o south Bougainville although n one were promp ted
by the 1 9 6 5 s lump in cocoa prices . Perhap s the least
success ful o f al l t hese was rubber ; it was first planted in
19 6 3 in s outh Bougainville at the Buin DASF s tat ion and one
Buin-based didiman ( Roger Por teous ) was suf ficient ly enthus­
ias t ic to travel around s outh Bougainvil le to encourage i t s
development .
There was some j us t i f ic at ion for in t ro ducin g rubber int o
south Bougainville ; i t had previously b een s ucce s s ful on
Bougainvillean plantat ions so that in 196 1-62 rubb er - wo rth
£ 7000 was expo rted from Bougainvill e , the only rubber exported
from Papua New Guin e a . Mo reover at ab out the t ime it was
tried in south Bougainville resul t s from the smallholder
rubber s chemes o f Kerema in Papua were in conclus ive and ,
although s t ill dependen t on an upt urn in price , rubber showed
some po ssib il ity of future success (Ho gb in , 1964 : 10 9 -14 ) .
In any case it was t e chn i cally easier to grow , t o keep
disease free and to pro ce s s to a higher standard than coco a .
In Bougainville the int en t ion was that i t would b e grown
with coco a , in it ially as a shade t ree . Unt il about the
eighth y ear the value of co coa produced would be great er
than that o f rubbe r .
Sub s equently the cocoa could be
gradually lopped as the rubber b ecame t appab l e .
Rubber was
161
planted by 49 people in the south , which was the only part
of the island where rubb er was t ried (4 7 in Buin and 2 in
S iwai ) , most in b lo cks of 5 00 t rees , which by 1 9 7 0 were
almo s t all o f tappab le s i z e . Lo cal plant ings occurred
be tween 1 9 6 5 and 19 6 7 .
Jo shua Mon toro , o f Hanong , a man who was willin g
to t ry many new things , f irst planted rubber in
January 19 6 7 ; he had about 1300 rubber t rees
which were s t il l growin g in 19 7 6 , when he was
talking about replacin g them with cocoa . He had
first s een them on Aropa plantat ion , when he was
at s chool near Kieta , and heard that they provided
a good income .
Cons equen t ly he did not want t o
wait un t il they b ecame estab lished in Buin but
wen t ahead on his own . Hining o f Rabaulu , at much
the same t ime , was the only o th er S iwai to plan t
rubbe r . Both looked after their trees f o r s everal
years un t il dis i llusionment s et in .
None o f the trees g rown has ever produced rubb er and
Cocoa was always adopt ed more quickly than
never wil l .
rubb er . By the t ime that rubbe r was introduced the admin­
is t rat ion throughout Bougainville favoured cocoa , and it
was a crop known to almost all the Bougainvilleans who f irst
t ried it .
They were llll l ikely to t ry the almost unknown
rubber ( although Aropa plantat ion , n ear Kieta , had 1 7 5 acres
S oon af ter its int roduct ion rubber prices fell
in 19 5 7 ) .
t o the extent that the administ rat ion could not support
furthe r ext ens ion of plan t ings (so there would never have
b een enough t rees in south Bougainville to support the
pro ces s in g plant s that would have been required) .
Cash
returns from cocoa came much mo re quickly . At least S iwais
never dis covered the considerab l e demands on l abour of rubbe r
cult ivat ion n o r the llll p leasantness o f some o f the working
condit ions . Neither have they ever seen rubb er produced in
S iwai ; drawing latex from the ornamen t al rubb er trees arollll d
Kon ga s chool always p rovoked interest and surprise .
Seemingly inevitab ly , in the l i ght of p revious experi­
mentat ion , there was even a fore s t ry p roj ect in S iwai ;
although s ome S iwais had b een t o the Bulolo S chool of
Fo res t ry in the early 1960s , they b ro ught back only the
Bap t i s t religion . A lat er S iwai visitor e s t ab lished his
own forest ry plantation .
162
Kinokua , born in Morokaimoro around 192 2 , was
educated b efore the war in the village s chool and
at Kihili an d , a f ter the war , at Mb anga in New
Georgia . He then returned to Bougainville and
became a Me thod ist teacher and catechist mainly
in the Buin area .
Tiring of this , after about
t en o r twe lve years , he used some of his s avin gs
to trave l around New Guinea where he vis ited
friends in Bulolo and b ecame enthused with the
teak growing there . Re turning to S iwai he buil t
his own hous e a few miles out side the Morokaimoro
village line n ear the Mivo river where he plan t ed
teak trees on his ext ens ive land and ignored all
village activities . When a didiman interviewed
him in June 19 71 he had planted 2 4 8 teak trees
and was in t eres ted in trying Kamarare trees and
pines ; he had diversif ied his economic activit ies
to include nin e pigs , thir ty chickens ( s ince he
hoped to sell b o th eggs and b irds ) and s ales of
corn . Although he had cons idered b eginning marke t
garden ing , s e t t ing up a trade s tore and starting
a cat t le p roj e c t he was not int eres ted in coco a .
Five y ears later the t eak was growing well but he
was becoming worried about road acce s s ib ility to
this r emo te part of S iwai , s ome two miles north
east o f Moronei , where apart from a few cocoa
p l antat ions his was the only economic a c t ivity .
His chickens had never b een commercially successful
but he had got a half share in a t rade s tore at
Jeku ( Tikai) and was spending mo re t ime in the
Mo rokaimo ro l ine . Now t ired of wat ching th e t e ak
grow he was thinking o f s t ar t in g a cocoa
plantat ion n earby .
Unlike almo s t everything else, the administrat ion has never
re commended t imber growing as a cash crop for individual
villagers ( as opposed to small village p lo t s for village
use ) . Kinokua , to an even greater ext ent than the rubber
plant ers , was an individual ist who p referred his own un t e s t ed
development s t rategy ; un fo rtunat ely it was a bad choice and ,
like o ther individual ists be fore and after , he eventually
took up co coa and became in te gra t ed into what had become the
s t andard pattern of S iwai change .
Throughout the post-war years the re were always new
crops to b e tried , s ome at the ini t iative o f S iwais them­
s elves and s ome in respons e to adminis t rat ive p ressures .
163
Every crop that was tried somewhere in New Guinea , with the
exception of a few crops l ike tea and pyrethrum that were
climat ically con f ined to the highlands , at some point found
its way int o south Bougainville . Mos t o f these minor crops
flourished briefly in the cash economy before disappearing
for ever .
Such a crop was the English po tat o . Potatoes
were tri-ed succe s s fully in s everal parts of Bougainville ;
in 1956 villagers around the Banoni village o f Piva were
selling goo d quality potatoes to the mi ssion at 6 d . a pound .
Other Banoni villages were reques t ing seed po t atoes which
they could l at er sell in the Buin market by t ransport ing
them on the fortnightly mail run o f the MV Isis (PR Boku
2 / 5 6 -5 7 ) but t ransport p roblems finally resul ted in this
t rade en din g in 196 8 .
In S iwai there was no s imilar enthus iasm
for the po tato ; they were t r ied by the governmen t in upland
areas o f Buin and Nagovisi and at Iru in S iwai (APR S iwai
No . 2 , 195 6 ) and although , like almo st everything else , they
grew ext remely well , the impossib ility of marketing substan tial
quan t it ies and the local dislike o f potatoes as food meant
that they were n ever accepted . At various t imes , especially
in the lat e 1960s , when there were several Europeans in
S iwai , potatoes have b een grown for sale b ut there are none
now .
In the 1 9 50s Buin villagers close to the small town had
planted extra areas of sweet potatoes for sale to the admin­
is tration , and probab ly also sold various o ther kinds o f
vegetab les . P r ices were probab ly quite low ; in 1 9 5 5 Buin
villagers were sellin g sweet potatoes at a rat e of 2 0 pounds
fo r a shilling (PR Buin 2 / 5 5-56 ) , however for a brief period
around 1 9 6 0 there was a b oom in sweet potato purchasing and
sweet potatoes were actually exported from Buin to Giza in
the wes tern Solomon Island s . These were both markets quite
inaccess ib le to S iwai and there were no local alt ernat ives
although some S iwais were ab le to sell vege tab les to miss ions
Thus in 1 9 55 the
and t o pas s ing administ rat ion patrol s .
kiap recorded that ' a plenti ful supply of bananas , a nat ive
type o f bean , Chinese cabbage , es chalo t s , pawpaw, p ineapple ,
yams and cray fish to gether w i th numerous eggs were presented
to the p at rol ' . The food was pur chased [ a t unknown rates ]
for s t icks of tobacco ; sweet potato was in such plenti ful
supply that the p at ro l could not buy it all so much was lef t
f o r the p i g s ( P R Buin , 1 / 55-56 ) .
It was certainly not a trade
that S iwais could rely on .
In 19 6 8 the adminis tration was
predict ing that the const ruc t ion of the airst r ip at Boku , at
the same t ime that mine town con s t ruct ion be gan at Arawa ,
would resul t in a demand for fresh vegetab les from S iwai
164
that could eas ily become impo rtant with airfreight overheads
of only 2 c . to 3c . per pound (PR Boku 12 / 6 7 -6 8 ) .
In the
event the con s t ruc t ion of neither Tonu nor Baku airstr ips
resulted in the airfreight ing of ve getables from S iwai .
Howeve r air s t r ips in the most i solated par ts of Bougainville ,
especially Oria and Lehu in the remote int erior o f Buin ,
were used for air freight in g cocoa and co ffee whils t some t ime
after 19 7 2 , when the t ran s -island road fin ally l inked S iwai
to th e copper mine and the east o f the is land, the product ion
and ext ernal market in g of vegetables did b ecome a valuable
adj unc t t o the s t andard cash crop s .
This was a rather lat er
phase in the deve lopment of S iwai agricul ture .
Finally and least important of all , there were also o il
palms .
The World Bank team that s tudied New Guinea in 1 9 6 3
had recommended that an oil palm plan t at ion b e estab lished
in Bougainville ( IBRD 1 9 6 5 : 12 0) . Al though a success ful o il
palm proj e ct was subs equent ly developed at the Buin agr icul­
t ural st at ion , the success of cocoa meant that it could never
have b een ext ended to vil lages .
Moreover , by the time it
was apparen t that o il palm too was success ful there, it wa�
politically impossib le to implement a set t lement s cheme in
Bouga inville . The o il palm was probab ly the only t ropical
lowland cash crop grown success fully elsewhere in the coun t ry
tha t never reached S iwai .
Af ter cocoa , an d the brief interest in rubber , there
were no sys temat ic attempt s by the didimen to int roduce new
crop s in to the area .
Cabb age , tomato and o ther ve getab le
seeds were dist ributed to those who asked for them to
encourage pro duct ion for the local south Bougainvillean
markets bu4 by the l ater 19 60s both didimen and S iwais knew
that they were only in terested in co coa .
The only possible
al ternat ive that either s ide cons idered seriously was cat t le
but co coa remained dominant . Experimen t s with o ther cash
crops had done no more than disillus ion the experimenters .
The consoli dat ion of the coco a economy
From 1 9 6 6 onwards high incomes from cocoa resul t ed in
a s teady increase in the numb ers o f co coa t rees b ut the
Council , and their advis ers , were never completely sat isfied .
In July 1 9 6 6 the Council was concerned that not all men had
5 00 t rees and some of thos e that did were not looking after
them properly ; Purauko (Tonui ) complained : mi lukim p lenti
man ol i sindaun long wokim baske t na o l i no save tingting
long go long gaden bi long o l (I have seen plenty of men
165
s it t ing making baskets and n o t even thinking about go in g t o
their gardens ) ' .
Indeed the whole Council decided that
people were no t working hard enough ; the chairman recommended
that every day from Tuesday t o Friday councillors s t rike the
vill age gong and send all the men to work whilst all the
councillors voted fo r a mot ion that everyone should work on
their conununal ( company) gardens for one week in every month .
At the s tart o f the 1960s cocoa growin g had been st ill a
novel vent ure in S iwai (p . 14-2 ) but in the first hal f o f that
decade cocoa became success fully estab lished almost throughout
the area . Yet from 195 9 onwards , culminat ing in the record
low of July 1 9 6 5 , co coa p rices fell fairly st eadily (Appendix
I I I ) . The impo rtan t factor that spurred the extens ion of
plant in gs was not therefore the relat ive price o f cocoa but
the sub s t an t ial sums of cash that had been received by the
early producers .
After the sl ight lull in cocoa plan t in g in 19 6 5 , when
the weather was very bad and pr ices low , the st eady in creas e
in plantin g resumed in 1 9 6 6 and has cont inued ever s in ce
( Figure 16 ) with only minimal relat ionship to the price of
co coa ( Fi gure 1 7 ) . There had previous ly b een disputes over
the own ership of land , especially b ecause a permanent t ree
crop was b eing planted , but never claims that there was an
ab solut e shortage o f ground .
In 1 9 6 7 there was the first
indi cat ion that this was po ssib ly becoming the case ;
S iumai
(Noronai ) pointed out to the Council , ' Long mipe la bi long
antap, mipe la no gat inap graun bi long p lanim kakao .
Olge ta
graun o l i pinisim pinis o lsem i orait long lukautim pik
( For those of us who l ive in the moun tains there is not
enough lan d for plan t ing co coa . All the ground is used up
and its only good enough fo r keeping pigs on) ' . 2 This was
an exaggeration but the problem was probab ly never far from
S iwai thoughts .
Although all sub s equent reco rds o f the society are
incomplete some of the receip t s do indicate how much the
early coco a growers earned in the n ext few years . In the
last s ix months of 1 9 6 6 alon e Kepoama s old some 7 7 9 1 pounds
of dry b ean and received about $ 75 0 ; Komoru , who had taken
over the Arnio village plan t at ion , sold 11 , 5 12 pounds for
about $950 and Hatah ( Rano ) who began product ion b etween
1 9 6 3 and 1 96 6 , s old 14 , 389 pounds and received about $ 12 00 .
A year lat er he earned over $ 1 900 . Thes e figures may well
2
rt is al so pos sib l e to translate the last sect ion as '
and it ' s only sufficient for looking af ter p igs ' but the
first t ranslation is more probab ly correct .
166
0
�
x
(/)
(!)
z
�
z
<l
..J
Q..
400
300
�
8
u
I.&...
0
200
0:::
I.LI
m
:::E
:::>
z
100
1959
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
YEAR
Figure 1 6 .
Cocoa plant ings 1 9 59-72
be incomplete b ut they do repres en t what seems to have b een
a not atypical s ix month period .
Clearly however the success
o f these few men was atypical ; most other S iwai growers received
much les s (b ut there is no in format ion on the number o f
growers and their receipt s ) s ince they were selling wet bean .
Apart from that at Konga , fermentaries seem to have then
exis ted at Amio , Hanong , Materas , Maisua , S ininai , Jeku and
Rano (wh ere Hatah and Kepoama worked together ) so that in
mos t part s o f S iwai there was reasonable access t o ferment­
aries and during this period the S oc iety b egan t o purchase
sub s t an t ial amounts o f dry bean , which approximately t reb led
the incomes o f the produ ce rs .
167
1 2 00
1 1 00
1 00 0
900
800
en
a::
<(
.....I
_.
0
c
700
600
500
400
300
200
1 00
0
---+�-t----1.---+-�+---+�-+---t���+--+-�-+---11---+-�
1956
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
YEAR
Figure 1 7 ,
Cocoa price 1 9 5 6 - 7 2
Ferment aries developed more slowly even though t h e tiny
driers that were first con s t ruct ed demanded no great t echno­
lo gical expertise . In May 1961 the Ass istant District
Conuni ss ioner told the Council that
Mi lukim p lenti kakao i s tink nating . Mi laik
yupe la mekim box long em na mekim drai . Sapos
husat . kakao i redi pinis, em i mas go lukim box
bi long Basing na wokim bi long em o lsem ' ( I have
seen p len ty of cocoa j us t ro t t ing .
I want you
-1 6 8
t o make b oxes [ fermen taries ] t o dry the cocoa .
Whoeve r has ripe cocoa beans must go and see
Has in g ' s ferment ary and make one o f his own
l ike that ) .
Widokuma had the first fermentary in south Bougainville
at Mos i get a and Has in g (Jeku) the first in S iwai .
But again
there was con fus ion over policy ; in November 1 9 6 4 the Cotnl cil
were told that it was necessary for one man to have at least
5 000 coco a t rees before a fermen tary could be j us t i f ied .
Whil s t in 1 9 6 9 it was stat ed in the Territ ory Annual Report
that the con t inued poli cy of the didimen was that members
sell their wet bean cocoa direct t o the S oc iet ies s ince dry
bean co coa , pro cessed by individual s , was usually o f po or
This had indeed been the o riginal nat i onal policy
quality .
set out as part of the Cacao Ac tion Plan in 1 9 5 5 (PCA 1 9 5 6 :
49 ) . Th ere is no in fo rmat ion on the numb er and dist ribut ion
of f ermen taries for the first few years of co coa pro duct ion
but by mid-19 6 7 there were a rep o rted eleven fermentaries
in Siwai ( in cluding three Society fermentaries) and the
administ rat ion then believed that it was ' very necessary to
Co-operat ive o f f i cers and didimen
in crease the number ' .
were not always in accord . All the ind ividually owned
f ermentaries were o f bush mat erials and it was estimat ed
that they dried as much as 80 per cen t o f the S iwai co coa
crop . The S iwai So ciety was considering the ins t al lat ion
o f mechani cal driers to cope with the ant icipat ed in crease
in p rodu ct ion that would fo llow when more than hal f o f all
Small fermentaries grew
the trees were bearin g cocoa .
rapidly ; one y ear lat er the number had doub led to fifteen .
When the didimen carried o ut a cen sus o f co coa growers
in 1 9 6 8 they fot.m.d s ome 805 cocoa growers dist ributed
throughout S iwai . There were growers in every village except
Aitara and by this t ime the number of growers in each village
had become more or less proport ionate to the populat ion ;
thus there were 35 growers in Matukoli , 31 in Kaparo and
even 2 9 in Ruis ei , which had final ly got s tarted , whils t
small villages like Ko t u , Lakemba and S ikurai had no more
S iro i , with only nine growers , was st ill
than three growers .
Some 5 4 o f these 805 growers
something of a disappo intment .
had mo re than a thous and trees although the average number
o f t rees per grower was ab out 600 . A year later the didimen
repeated their survey , this t ime recordin g 92 6 co coa growers
with an average number of trees per grower o f around 4 70 .
S iroi had improved from n ine to th!rteen growers but elsewhere
169
the changes were l es s s ub s tan t ial . � New cocoa plantat ions
were s t ill being estab lished and old · plantat ions ext ended
but by this t ime all those mos t interes ted in cash c ropp ing
had already begllll their plan tat ions and those then beginning
plantat ions were le ss int erest ed in planting very large
areas .
S ub t rac tin g cocoa companies , and a few others (such
as mi ss ion plantat ion s ) , f rom the 19 7 3 list of growers
produces a to tal of around 860 distributed amongst approx­
imat ely some 1 2 00 adult males (aged ove r 2 0 ) .
S ince this
to tal included a s i gnificant p roport ion (perhaps one in f ive )
o f ab sentees and old men the in co rpo rat ion o f new cocoa
plantat ions appeared to be approachin g sat urat ion poin t .
A further count o f cocoa t rees in Augus t 19 72 revealed
that the numb e r of new plan.tings had fall en st eadily s ince
19 6 9 , although the average number o f trees per grower was
about 640 . Plantat ions had generally been related to road
developmen t s and those some distance away had usually b een
neglected to s ome ext ent ; mos t of these earlier plantings
had now ceased hence it was believed that the ext en s ion of
feeder roads would s t imulat e more plantin g . However by the
mid�l960s a numb er of hous eholds had left their line villages
to es tab lish their own individual houses , o r small hamlet s
o f close kin , near t o p revious ly distant cocoa plan tat ions .
An old set t lement patt ern was being revived .
The didiman ,
probably B . R. Fren ch , then reco rded that ' the average plantin g .
of 6 4 0 trees is either related to a minimum requirement fo r
money for coun cil tax , s chool fees , et c . or due to a
" comp rehension gap" - people not b eing ab le to see thems elves
as b ig-t ime o p erators with higher incomes . Time is not a
l imit in g fac t or . ' In that parti cular year a holding o f 6 4 0
t rees might have pro duced wet bean worth l e s s than $ 100 (well
in exces s of c ouncil tax and s chool fee s ) but in o ther years
it was two or th ree t imes that . Nevertheles s French was
generally correct ; mos t S iwais did not see thems elves as
' b i g-t ime operators ' , b ut not because of some comprehen sion
gap . Their wants were then sat i s fied with these income levels .
On the o ther hand there were already a large number o f
success ful busine ssmen i n S iwai , o f t en us in g their cocoa
plantat ions as a basis for diversified developmen t ( see
Chap ter 8) .
3
s ince this census also recorded three growers with over
2 000 t rees who had not b een recorded in the 1 9 6 8 census ,
whils t a large number o f others were recorded with less
t rees in 1 9 6 9 than in 1 9 6 8 , it is imposs ible to place a
great deal o f t rust in the census data .
1 70
As more of the new co coa p lantat ion s came int o product ion
and o thers reached f ull product ion , after ab out seven y ears
of growth , the amoun t of co coa produced in S iwai increased
much fas ter than the rate of new plan t in gs . Thus in 1 9 6 8- 6 9
s ome 2 2 4 ton s o f cocoa were sold t o the· S o c iet y ; three years
later in 1 9 7 1- 72 314 ton s were sold t o the S ociety ( and a
fu rthe r 7 6 t ons sold elsewhere ) . E s t imates made in August
19 72 sugg e s te d that the next year would more than doub le th e
19 71- 72 output . Because o f a fal l in p rices incomes did not
rise quit e s o quickly ; nonetheless in 1 96 8- 6 9 the S o ciety
received $ 1 30 , 7 8 7 from cocoa sales .
In January 19 7 0 t he kiap , J . G . S teven , e s t imated that
about 2 0 per cent of the annual product ion of cocoa was lost
- through diseas es , such as capsid bugs , p ink diseas e , thre ad ­
b l ight , longico rn bugs and als o through ' b ad man agement ' .
This seems a high estimate , at least for the disease component ,
although in 1 9 6 9 DASF b rought in the first measures t o
combat disease ; fertiliz ers were int roduced and eight DDT
dust ing mach in es were dist ribut ed within S iwai . Lit tle use
seems t o have b een made o f e ither fertilizer or dust in g powder
yet there i s now l it t le evidence o f cocoa diseases in S iwai
plantation s ; i t was s imply a further indicat ion that S iwai
cocoa production was becom in g of regi onal importance and
deserved spec ial ized att ent ion .
In 196 7 the Buin , S iwai and Bana ( B an on i -Na govi s i )
So ciet ies j oined t o gether to estab l ish the Bus iba S ociety
which was intended to l ink s ome of their e f fo r t s through a
central workshop for tr uck s and t ract o rs , and a warehouse
from which consume r goods could be dist ributed t o the memb er
s ocieties .
Although in it s f irst e i ght months of operat ion
it had a t urnover o f $ 2 00 , 000 problems o f management and it s
general dup l i cat ion o f the act ivi t ies o f t he individual
societ ies resulted in it s virtual collap se in 1 9 7 0 when the
S iwai and Bana Socie ties b oth with drew .
It was an amb i t ious
experiment in large-s cale integrat ion which in the end proved
an expens ive disappointment .
Even in the early 19 7 0 s the S iwai Society itsel f had n o t
managed t o achieve completely succes s ful operat ion ; in Augus t
1 9 71 i t was forced t o stop purchasin g wet b e an cocoa for
three weeks when the s upply of sacks ran out .
Outlyin g areas
too were less wel l s erved ; in the same month the p eople o f
the Hais i area complained tha t the Society t ractor was not
vis it in g them often enough to purchas e their co coa regularly .
They had no Society directo r in their area and mos t people
171
had been s ellin g t o co coa dealers ' for s ome t ime ' ; one of
the reas on s for the privat e sale was that the Society refus ed
to make on the spot paymen t s for wet bean cocoa s in ce they
preferred to make the growers return with the t ractor to
Kon ga .
In this way they were ab le to ensure a ready supply
o f labour when the t ractor became b ogged ; not s urprisingly
the Hais i people res ent ed the long walk home . No more than
a handful o f villagers actually tm ders t ood the way in which
the S ociety estab lished the price o f co coa . Nor were the
So ciety above making a number of penny-pin chin g economies ,
which contrib ut ed little t o e f ficient adminis t ration s o that
this con t inued to be a prob l em.
(For example towards the
end of 1 9 6 7 the Society directors refused to appoint a new
secretary from Hutj ena on Buka island , s ince the air fare
was too expens ive . ) Yet they had become a mass ive ent erprise
by the s tandards of rural S iwai ; by 19 70 there was an
impres s ive row of four fermentaries at Konga , plus o f fices
and s t o res , a t � uck , a landcruiser , two tractors and t railer s ,
all of whi ch p rovided full-t ime employment for some twen ty­
three people , with a full-t ime European co-operat ive officer .
At the s ame t ime the DASF s t ation at Konga als o had a
European o ff icer and fourt een agricultural as sistan t s ;
special i s t int erest in S iwai agriculture had never been s o
great .
Rather earlier in 1 9 6 8 the S ociety directors had agreed ,
following a sugges t ion from the Vice-Chai rman To ' o s ih , that
wh en the S oc iety had obtained enough money they should
purchas e adequate land for a plantat ion o f their own .
It
was in tended that this be on the scale o f a European-owned
plantat ion . Nothing ever c ame o f this idea and when in 19 7 4
Toboruai plantat ion i n Buin was offered f o r s ale t o the
S o ciety they demurred .
Ret rospectively they were probab ly
fo rtunate to have es caped ownership and management of a large
plantat ion .
The revenue that the Society had earned from cocoa sales
enab led them to cons ide r o t her poss ib le sources of earning
money ; att empt s at divers if i cation were prompted both by a
fear that the cocoa p rices might eventually collapse compl etely
and by concern that the lar ger and more success ful S iwai
cocoa p ro ducers were al ready selling their own cocoa elsewhere
and that this t rend migh t con t inue , eventually threatening
the S o ciety ' s future .
In 19 6 9 the Society became intere s t ed
in developin g a large s cale cat tle farming proj ect in S iwai ;
this s cheme , whi ch eventually failed to come to f ruit ion , i s
discussed in t h e following chapt er ( pp . 1 87 -9 6 ) . The following
1 72
year they decided to set up a bakery at Konga but nothin g
came o f that . A l i t t le lat er they d i d however , apparent ly
without di scus s ion o r dis sen t , purchas e 7 000 shares in
Bougainville Copper Limited . The frus t rat ing inab ility t o
develop th e cat t le s cheme persuaded the society direct ors
to look el sewhere and , clearly in fluenced by European advisers ,
they determined to obt ain land and take up business leases
Thus in August 19 7 1 the Chairman
in the new t own of Arawa .
o f the S o ciety wrote t o the Di rector o f the Departmen t o f
Lands , S urveys and Mines request ing three urban al lotmen t s
in Arawa , so that
when individuals of the S iwai areas have suf ficient
cap it al and commercial knowledge an opportllll ity
will exist for them to commen ce bus iness .
They are
par t i cularly worried that they will be left in a
s imilar posit ion to indigenous people in o ther
dis t r ic t s of Papua New Guinea who f ind it impo s s ib le
to commen ce b us iness en terprises in the main cent res
becaus e they have no l and or buildin gs in thes e
cent res .
They are concerned that they may become the ' poor
rel at ion s ' in Bougainvil le becaus e they have not
b een in the happy po s it ion t o receive the benefits
affor ded s ome Kieta people through B . C . P . Develop­
ment of the are a .
The So ciety ant icip at ed that the earliest stores would be
o f j o int Bougainvillean-European ownersh ip , result in g
eventually in complete ownership b y Bougainvillean s . Within
a mon th the S ociety t ook up two busin es s / commercial leases
in the t own ; they cont inued to pay rates on these b ut the
s ites were never developed so that by April 19 74 the Society
wished t o get rid o f the land , cla iming that they were
tr icked int o t aking it by their white co-op erat ive advis ers .
Another at t empt at d ivers ificat ion had come t o a disappo int ing
en d .
By the end o f the decade copra prices had s t ill not
Copra once
risen whil st cocoa p rices were risin g rap idly .
again was b ecoming no more than a minor cash crop ; thus in
October 1 9 6 9 the didiman repo rted that in Mamagota village ,
which was probab ly reasonab ly typ ical o f condit ions el sewh ere ,
' very lit tle cop ra is being made at the moment and many nut s
are being left in the bush to rot .
They s ay that they have
too much work with their cocoa to worry about copra ' .
( In
Aitara 75 bags o f copra had ro t ted whilst they wait ed s ix
173
mon ths for the arrival o f a ship . )
Consequen t ly for the
finan cial y ear 1 9 6 9- 70 the S iwai S o ciety had a turnover o f
$ 16 8 , 3 76 f o r co coa , $18 , 96 1 f o r baskets and a mere $ 5 30 for
copra . By then there were more than twice as many cocoa
growers a s th ere were coconut growers . However coconut
planting was being en couraged as a shade crop in new cocoa
plantat ions s o that new co conut plant in g never ceased whil st
those who ret ained their faith in coconuts were eventually ,
if b riefly , rewarded in 19 74 when the copra price rose
sharply . Even in Augus t 1 9 7 2 there were as many as 21 copra
driers in S iwai ; four of these were owned by Hari villagers
and the dis tribut i on (Figure 1 8 ) partly reflects the historic
do minan ce o f co conut s in the coas tal , low-lying areas of
S iwai . Never theless at the s t art o f the 1 9 70s co coa
complet ely dominated the S-iwai cash crop economy .
Despite all these development s there were s t ill
p roblems ; the great est of thes e was t ransport . The only
pl ace that co coa could be exported from was Kangu on the
Buin coas t b ut by 1 9 6 7 the de ficiencies of the Kan gu port
were par t i cularly apparent ; there were no storage facilit ies
there , there was a lack o f cargo space on ships and s in ce
Bougainville was the ' end o f the l ine ' (PR Buin 6 / 66-6 7 )
ships return in g t o Rab aul o f ten left without b ackloadin g
s in ce they had too much t o take o n els ewhere .
Con sequen t ly
by the t ime cocoa left Buin its quality had generally
deteriorated .
But for the maj ority o f S iwais this was not
the main t ran sport prob lem ; their problem was one of get t in g
For mos t part s o f mos t years the
the ir own cocoa t o Konga .
Society tract o r could not negot iat e the t racks into Rat aiku ,
no r could it go north of S in inai ; elsewhere , especially in
Mokakuru , small areas were cut o ff for smaller t ime p eriods .
In 1 9 6 7 there were s t rong demands f rom western S iwai that a
buying point be estab l ished at S in inai or that they be
al lowed t o j oin the Bana So ciety , based at Beret emb a in
Nagovisi .
The S in inai area had already ( in 19 6 5 ) requested
their own s eparate s ociety and in 1 9 6 7 the counc illor for
Hais i requested that the people from the four villages there
be allowed to take their shares out of the S ociety . In the
end they did n ot , although in 1 9 6 6 , when members from b oth
Hai s i and S ininai wanted to j o in the Nagovis i Development
So ciety , some had their share c apital returned to them .
Later in 1 9 6 8 the S ociety direc tors reco gniz ed the dangers
of fiss ion and dec ided to build f ermentaries at Miheru and
Haisi . Neither was built and they were s t ill dis cus s in g
the idea two years later . There were no obvious solut ions
to these transportat ion problems ; remot e , upland areas found
174
./
0
'
'
'
'
COPRA
D R I ER
...
0
2
Figure 1 8 .
4
6
8 km
Copra dr iers 1 9 7 2
1 75
market in g difficult al though , in s ome s en s es , they gained
from it s ince it was an indirect incent ive for them to
S ome familiar
const ruct their own fermentar ies early on .
dif ficul t ies remained ; the So ciety directors were st ill
spending much of their t ime t elling people t o plant more
t rees and Kerukai (Kap aro ) comp lained t o the other Society
directo rs that he was unab le to persuade people t o plan t
500 co coa t rees each .
Other p rob lems were of a rather dif ferent order .
Transport difficulties represented , t o some ext ent , the
prob lems of succes s ; sub sequen t ly , conflic t s b e tween
bus ines smen and fears of lab o�r shortage were minor p rob lems
that even more obvious ly s t emmed from the success ful e s t ab­
l ishment of a cash crop . There was no doub t that co coa­
growing had brought prosperity . At the annual mee t ing of
the Society a pro f it of $10 , 045 was announced , which was
almost cert ainly enormous ly in excess of any previous year .
By 19 6 8 pro f it s were poten t ially s o great that one o f the
Chinese t raders in Buin a t t empted t o lease a quarter of an
acre in S iwat for a ferment ary site and al s o obtain a l icence
t o. purchase wet bean throughout S iwai . Al though the owner s
were will ing t o lease t h e l an d S iwai Council b rought s trong
pres sure to bear on them and the Chinese t raders remained
no nearer than Buin town .
(Two y ears later the Society and
the Coun cil united to oppose the gran t ing of a pedlar ' s
licence t o ei ther a European or a Chinese t rader from Buin
who both wanted to t rade inside S iwai ; they s tated that s in ce
there were nearly 70 private s t ores in S iwai , any S iwai
could ob t ain anything he wanted f rom these . )
By 1 9 70 there were fears that labour shortages would
diminish the rat e of plan t in g , as they seemed to have done
in Buka ; a spec ial DASF repor t on south Bougainville Co coa
Product ion s t at ed that there was an ' acut e lab our sho rt age ' .
Early planters had had sufficien t labour but intending
planters could not get enough especially s ince the copper
mine had att racted many young men .
It was feared that because
of the apparent labour shortage and the lure of a new cat t le
indust ry cocoa p lantin g would decline . At the February 19 7 0
Bus iba S o c iety directors ' meet ing a mot ion was p assed that
Bus iba should find labour f rom outs ide Bougainville ( ' Highland
lab our ' ) s ince local labour was in such short supply .
The
S o ciety were also willing to cons t ruct houses for such
labourers , a remarkab le change in the usual att itude t o
outs i der s .
1 76
In January 1 9 7 0 the kiap pat ro llin g through S iwai found
that he was contin ually b ein g asked if cocoa would become
the same as peanut s (PR Konga 1 / 6 9- 7 0 ) .
This proved to be
a to tally pes s imis t i c assumpt ion , although following p revious
S iwai experience and the 1 9 6 5 slump in prices , exce ss ive
con cern was s carcely s urp risin g .
Apart from the dist ribut ion o f some excep t ional crops
such as potatoes and coffee at Iru there were few regional
variat ion s in the innovation of new crops .
Is olat ed Ai tara
was ignored but otherwi se crops seem to have spread quickly
throughout S iwai ; many , like co ffee , began at the Konga
agricultural s t at ion o r , like cocoa , were quickly cen t red
there but , al though patrol o f ficers o f t en claimed to ob serve
that villages near Konga were the first to ac cept these new
in tro duct ions the little numerical evidence that exists
suggests that this was rarely significan t . Unt il the
emergence of the Konga s t at ion and , as soc iated with it , the
spread of cocoa the villages that suffered least war damage ,
such as Mamago ta and Aitara on the coast and mountain villages
like Mo rokaimo ro , were probably the wealthiest in t erms o f
cash earnin gs , but affluence b ased on copra sales was not
great .
Dis t r ibut ion of war damage claims t o the central
villages removed this disparity but that was a temporary
In 1 9 5 5 there was no great food surplus in the
benefit .
Konga area ; ' . . . it is not a very wealthy area ' (AP R Buin ,
1 9 5 5 ) but the central villages soon pushed ahead as cash
crops be came e s t ab l ished .
Mos t new cash crop s were established at Konga init ially
so that it is no t surp rising that villages living close to
Konga o f ten grew and mas t ered these crop s first but any lag
between a s t ar t at Konga and adoption elsewhere in S iwai was
very slight . Di s t ances were short with the excep t ion o f
Ait ara and the remot e Hais i area ; this was the l a s t p a r t o f
S iwai to adop t cocoa and in 1 9 6 2 when the people o f that area
decided to build thei r own so ciety collecting poin t for rice
and b aske t s the so ciety adviser was del ighted s ince ' support
from thes e more outlying villages is often poor ' . Hais i an d
Hiru-Hiru villages were at t ached to the Bana Local Government
Council for many y ears and it is only recently that this area
has been inco rp o rated more clos ely in t o the rest o f S iwa i .
Iru , whi ch had b een at the forefront of cof fee production ,
clung t o this for a lon g t ime but eventually gave way to
co coa no later than many o the r p laces .
In isolated Ait ara
cocoa planting began only in the 19 70s ; in 1 9 6 9 they were
177
st ill primarily dependent on copra and acces s ib il ity was such
that it was mo re convenient to sell it on the irregular
visits by ship of a Chinese trader from Sohano , rather than
carry it to Konga .
It is possib le that the people of Iru
were dis co uraged by didimen from planting co coa , which is
certainly a mo re bulky p ro duct than co ffee ; it is even more
l ike ly that no one was int eres ted in explaining cocoa growing
in Ait ara .
(Even Toml in was unaware o f the existence o f
Aitara village in 1 9 5 5 . )
In a quar ter o f a century after the war p eanut s and ,
fo r a t ime, rice became estab lished as food crops but there
have been few new fo od crop int roduct ions .
I recorded one
kind o f ban ana brought back by a S iwai miss ionary from Tari
in the Southern Highlands of New Guinea and a more decorat ive
kind o f b amboo brought from Fais i . 4 The didiman , Hal ing ,
found twen ty-one varieties of sweet pot ato in Rataiku in
1960 ; he s ta t ed that l es s than hal f o f these had been there
more than twenty y ears . The o thers had e ither been int roduced
by the Japanese or by l ab ourers returning from the Solomon
Islands (APR Eas tern Division , S iwai , 1 9 6 0 ) .
This report was
probab ly to some extent erroneous , yet it does reflect a
continuous and parallel p ro cess o f int roduct ion and
experimentat ion , for food crops as well as cash crops . Yet
these chan ges in the sub s i s t ence economy are quite dwarfed
in significan ce by the int roduct ion and ext ension of cash
croppin g .
Al though spat ial variat ions in developmen t were quite
small a n ew p attern had emerged ; the early po st-war disad­
vant ages of villages in the cen t ral area had been reversed .
These were now the villages closest to Kon ga , where development
e f for t s had b een concent rat ed , and with the best , all-weather
ro ad acces s .
The in creas ing s uccess o f coco a t ended t o
emphasiz e thes e re gional dif ferences , desp ite the rather
great e r concent rat ion of fermentaries in the uplands .
However , al though the f irst indicat ion o f a con cern over land
shortage came from N o ronai , a Rataiku village not obviously
without land reserves , subse gE_�n:t: p� es sures were con cen t rated
_
_ _
4
In 1 9 65 the didimen at Boku were t rying to int roduce a new
species o f b amboo that would grow at low alt itude s s ince
they thought that people were was t ing too much t ime bringin g
bamboo from the hill areas fo r house -buildin g . A f ine grass ,
which some S iwais have made int o small l awns , may also be a
post-war int roduct ion .
_
1 78
By 1 9 6 7 S iro i and Kaparo
mo re in the cen t ral S iwai vil lages .
villagers were beginn in g to t ake up land for cash crop s south
of the o l d Buin road and a few y ears lat er a differen t pat tern
of inequalit ies , ran ged around the availability o f land , was
beginn ing to emerge .
The uneven dis tribut ion of the new cash crops also
creat ed regional inequal ity within south Bougainville .
The
const ruc t ion of the agricultural stat ion and sub s equen t
Rural Pro gre ss Society at Konga re sult ed in mos t exten s ion
work init ially b e in g concentrated around there hen ce cocoa
( and co ffee) grew mo st quickly in S iwa i . Nagovis i briefly
had a Rur al Pro gress S o c ie ty but it was ine f f i cient an d
soon clo sed , although it i s possible that the lo cally
developed Mos ige t t a Cocoa Comp any was much more success ful
than the S iwai Society for some t ime . By 19 5 8 the people o f
both northern and so uthern Buin , who had l o s t the ir early
agr icul tural s t at ion , were complaining that they had been
negle c t ed at the expense o f the people o f S iwai and Nagovis i ;
the p eople o f wes t e rn Buin were les s con cerned s ince they
were ab le t o sell sub st an t ial quant i t ies of peanut s and rice
to the S iwai Society .
The in it ial advantages that followed
the exist ence of an agricul t ural s t at ion for two y ears at
Kangu had lon g s ince dis appeared and the advantages of easier
access t o Buin town and port could not compet e with the more
sub s t an t ial admin is t rat ive as s i s t ance to S iwai , although
the lo cat ion of a s t at ion at Kon ga is always explained by
b oth administ rat ion and S iwais as s imply a result o f S iwai
en thus iasm for developmen t . When the Buin Market ing S o ciety
b e gan in 19 5 9 , then dependen t on sales o f rice an d sweet
potatoes (PR Buin 1 / 5 8-5 9 ) , S iwai was well ahead and even
fur ther ahead o f Nagovis i where in 1 9 60 one kiap claimed ,
without s uppo rtin g evidence , tha t ' the p eople are dirty , lazy
and backward ' (PR Baku 3 / 60-61 ) .
Transport orientat ion
towards Kan gu event ually res tore d Buin ' s advantage but
Nagovisi remained relat ively isolat ed un t il the 19 70s .
Chap ter 7
P igs an d cows :
animals in the agricultural economy
Throughout the post-war decades there were also changes
in the animal populat ion o f S iwai , al though the administra t ion
rarely seem to have t aken much int eres t in any lives t o ck
other than cat t l e .
Although theoret ically enthus ias t i c about
local pig-breeding and poultry-farming within P apua and New
Guinea , in p ract i ce they were more con cerned with Europ ean
developmen t s in these fields .
S iwais thems elves were
primarily int erested in pigs , but never for market ing ; they
o ccas ionally cons idered the connn erc ial possib ilities of
poult ry an d f inal ly experienced a wave of enthus iasm for
cat t le .
Aft er the war there was a shortage of p i gs throughout
southern Bougainville , and especially in S iwai where they
had b een almo st wiped o ut during the war . When the adminis­
t rato r , Colonel J . K . Murray , led a t eam acro ss s outhern
Bougainville in 194 7 , two y ears after the war , they found
' only f ive domes t icated p igs
and all o f these were o f
the wil d b ush type ' ( Co t t rell-Dormer , 194 7 ) . At tempt s were
made to purchas e pigs by t rading with shel ls in the Mount
Hagen , Chimbu and Bena Bena areas o f the New Guinea highlands ,
to resell for a nominal pri ce in s outh Bougainville , but the
at t empt s were unsuccess ful and they h ad to be b rought from
elsewhere (PR Kieta 9 / 4 7 -48) .
By the s t art of 1948 the
numb ers of chi ckens an d dogs were repo rted as sufficient ,
but there were not y et enough p i gs (PR Bougainville 1 0 / 4 7 -4 8 ) ;
in thos e y ears there was some difficulty in organiz ing proper
feas t s al though it was a lit t le easier in moun tain villages .
Th e pigs that survived the war , for example in the moun tains
o f eastern Buin , were o f very poor quali ty despit e some pre­
war mixing with pigs brought from European plant at ions (PR
Bougainville 1 1 / 4 7-48) . By mid-1949 there was apparently
an incre as e in numb ers ; the average S iwai vill age had two
or three pigs but Unanai , where the villagers were report ed
to b e having some success in b reeding pigs , had about twenty
•
.
i.7 9
.
180
The Buin s tat ion was then us in g Berkshire
(PR Boku 4 / 49-50 ) .
sows and Tamworths for breeding and boars were being sold
for £5 each . By 1951 the numbers o f pigs seemed t o have
in creased but there was s t ill an un even distribut ion ; the
area around S in inai had relat ively few and ' exorb i t an t prices '
were bein g charged , such as £5 for a s uckl ing p i gle t , whil s t
th ro ughout Siwai i t co s t £2 for servic ing sows . However a
cens us of dogs , poul try and p i gs c arried out early in 1 9 5 1
sugges t s that the shor tage was generally over ( Figur e 1 9 ) .
In some villa ges , no tab ly Matukoli , Mo ib inai and Ko tu , there
were more pigs than people and fo r the whole of S iwai there
were 43 p igs to every 100 people , a p roport ion roughly the
s ame as i t was befo re the war and also the same as it was in
1 9 75 . By then all the p i gs had a s t ron g ' European s t rain '
bred in to them (PR Buin 5 / 5 0 - 5 1 ) , although this was also t rue
before the war .
Sub s equen t ly , the patrol repo rts have not
in cluded any re feren ce to a p erceived shortage o f pigs anywhe re
In the e arly 1 9 5 0 s there were , once
in s outh Bouga inville .
again , adequate pigs in S iwai ; in f ive years the pig po pulat ion
seemed to have returned to it s pre-war numb ers , a surprisin gly
rapid rat e of recovery .
The mo st sub s t an t ial change in po st-war animal husbandry
was the swit ch from fen c in g garden s to prevent pig depre dat ions ,
a practice that was un iversal b efo re the war , to fen c in g in
pigs but not the garden s (and later cash crop s ) . This change
o c curred in some parts of Bougainville not lon g after the
war ; as one kiap noted early in 1 9 5 1 :
Throughout S iwai it has now b ecome the custom for
the p i gs t o b e fenced in and the gardens in the
main left un fenced . The southern and eas tern
villages have made s uch fen ces from the large
s upplies of ar c mesh abandoned in the area and
there were no complaint s o f p i g des t ruct ion in
these villages . This has also meant that gardens
are much closer t o the villages and much t ime is
s aved walking to them (PR Buin 5 / 50-51) .
The adminis t rat ion may h ave also encouraged this change
before the war ( Ol iver , 1 9 5 5 : 12 8) .
Some of the early p i g
compounds may have b een except ionally large ; in 1 9 5 7 the
kiap noted that there were some as l arge as 5 to 7 acres
(PR Boku 1 / 5 7 -5 8 ) .
This chan ge resulted from admin i s t rat ion policy ; it was
aimed at clo ser s up ervi s ion of the pig populat ion , so that
181
®
N U M BE R
OF
PIGS
/
' ' , , ....
_/
0
�I
o
2
4
6
8 km
L.._�-'-�--"-���---'
Figure 1 9 .
P igs 1 9 5 1
Source : P R Buin 5 / 50-5 1
1 82
mat ing could b e mo re clo sely con t ro lled in an attempt to
imp rove pig st rains (Hasluck , 19 7 6 : 135 ) . There was , however ,
a sub s t an t ial element o f administ rat ive conven ience ; p ig
damage for a lon g time had been the mo st important topic
discus sed in village court s .
In areas where there were mo re
p igs the change was very slow ; in August 195 6 the kiap , David
Elder , was s t ill reconnne nding to the Buin s that they reverse
their fen c ing policy on the grounds that gardens we re b ecoming
more valuable and p i gs les s valuable as cash crops increased
in import ance and there was , according to the kiaps , a
' decline in the social value o f p igs ' . Mo reover , it would
be easier for patrols to settle disputes and , f inally , imp o rted
stock coul d be int roduced to improve p i g qual ity . The Buins
th ems e lve s cotmter-argued that the fen ces kept out wild p i gs
which con t inued to cause damage (PR B uin 1 /5 6 -5 7 ) .
In s ome
areas the int roduct ion of cash crops was a more s ignificant
in fluence on this change t han administ rat ion policy ; moreover
there was often con fus ion as to what to do with th e p igs ,
individual villages and village rs reactin g in different ways .
Amongst the Rumb a valley Nas ioi o f eas t ern Bougainville ,
pigs almost died out dur in g the t r an s i t ion to cash cropp in g
in the late 1 9 5 0s an d early 1 9 6 0 s a s villagers dec ided to give
up p ig rearing , rather than e ither allow them t o roam wild
and damage p lan t at ions or fence them in ( Ogan , 19 7 2 : 11 8 -9 ) .
In S iwai the almo st complete absence o f p i gs after the
war and the early int roduct ion of rice gardens (and later
o ther c ash crops ) meant that there were sub s t ant ial s avings
in labour t ime ( and also timber) from fen c in g pigs rather
than garden s , hence the change was rapidly ef fected .
S iwai
had clearly t aken the lead in fencing p i gs . The kiap , D .
J . Hook , commen t ing on the neighb ouring Nagovis i and Bait s i
areas in 19 5 7 , ob served that there was a general ' le thargy
and unwill ingnes s ' even when it came to fencing in pigs ;
S iwai was hel d up as a ' model ' o f agricultural development
(PR Boku 1 / 5 6-5 7 ) .
But al though the adminis trat ion ' s arguments had , in a
sense , been b es t received in S iwai , there too there was not
tmmit igated succes s . In 1956 the kiap complained that the
pigs were not well-fenced and damage was bein g done to r ice
and cocoa plo t s as well as to sweet po tato gardens (PR Boku
3 / 55-56 ) ; two y ears later p ig damage was so b ad in Nagovis i
that t he kiap urged implement at ion o f the Nat ive Adminis­
t rat ion Regulat ions of 1924 which allowed that on its second
trespas s a pig could b e killed (PR Buin 5 / 5 7- 5 8) . Kiaps
cont inued to worry unduly about p i g damage , which seems t o
183
have remained a con s is t ent p rob lem fo r t idy administ rat ion ,
if not fo r p ig b reeding . The mo st s igni f icant change that
followed this administ rat ion at t it ude to p i gs was not in the
ag r icult ural sphere at all . It was , as in neighb ouring Nagovis i ,
' the end fo rever o f such pig-human res idential associat ions '
(Nash , 1 9 7 4 : 7 8 ) or , at least in S iwai , for a couple o f de cades .
The p rice o f p igs rose sub s t an t ially during the p eriod
of short age after the war although they did not , as one kiap
claimed , lose the ir ' so c ial value ' . Kiaps collect ed little
data on the p rice chan ges so that there are , at b es t , a few
casual obs e rvat ions · . Thus in early 195 7 in eastern Buin it
was impl ied that the price of an \lll. S pecif ied numb er o f p igs
re quired for a wedding had recently reached £15 0 , an d that
.
mee t in g th is cost was a pro b lem for many people ( PR Buin
5 / 5 6 -5 7 ) . In S iwai , in 1955 , the kiap recorded that there were
many nat ives who cannot afford to pay the t en to
fifteen pollll d s asked for a p i g . At one feast held
in Maisua village £150 was paid by 10 nat ives to
pur chase 8 p igs which were eaten at their feas t .
This , I think , is a typ ical example of any feas t
held in the S iwai area . Many nat ives wish to get
the p rice o f p i gs back to the pre-war standard
but this is made quite impos s ible by the fact that
the demand is so great and the s upply of war damage
money is mo re than suf ficient (PR Buin 1 / 5 5 -5 6 ) .
Clearly there was some confus ion over the availab il ity of
adequate cash within S iwai but there was al so the impl icat ion
that earnings from cash crops were s t ill ins ignif icant .
There are few reco rds of the pig b reeding polic ies o f
the didimen o r o f the impact that these have had ; almost
certainly didimen were primarily concerned with the cash
crops that met thei r con cep t of agricultural development
rather than w ith p igs , whos e use remained emb edded in the
social s truct ure . Nevertheless there were changes ; Hook
ob served how European boars had imp roved the s to ck and
increas ed the s iz e of litters , so that as many as t en pigle ts
were being born rather than the two o r three that came from
the old village p igs (PR Baku 1 / 55-56 ) .
To some ext ent
succes s appeared to depend on constant admin is t ration
as s i s t an ce ; Hook later no ted that mos t S iwai p igs had some
trace o f European s t o ck in them but that s ince most o f the
boars in t roduced by DASF after the war had e ither died or
been cas trated ; ' the old pract ice of leavin g sows to b e
184
servi ced by b ush b oars has ret urned ' so that he an d s ome
S iwais were concerned that the quality o f lo cal pigs would
s oon deteriorate (PR Baku 3 / 5 5 -5 6 ) . A year l ater a new kiap
ob served only s ome S iwai p i gs that showed ' t races of good
b reedin g ' (PR Baku 1 / 5 7-5 8 ) usually from the imported Berksh
Berkshires . Throughout three decades of agricul t ural change
in S iwai adminis t rat ion interes t and pol icies as sis ted in
the imp rovement of p i g s t rains and in their management but
never suc ceeded in making p ig husb andry a commercial succes s .
Indeed it is doub t ful i f any didimen believed this po ssible
o r if any S iwais were then int erested .
Chickens and ducks
Unl ike p igs , chicken s were only b riefly in short supply
after the war ; whether they survived bet t er than pigs ,
regenerated faster o r were reintroduced by the administ rat ion
is not clear .
By 1 9 4 8 chickens in S iwai were again suff icient .
A few years l ater they were plenti ful b ut , unlike ducks or
pigs , they were con s idered to have l i t t le value (PR Buin
1 / 5 5 -5 6 ) ; however the kiap Hook repo rted , a year later , that
many S iwai s had built chi cken runs and were in tending t o sell
both eggs and poul t ry (PR Boku 3 / 5 5 -5 6 ) .
Some o f these may
have succeeded b riefly but it seems un likely ; providing feed
and p reven ting disease were new prob lems that were not
Subs equen t ly
un der s t oo d well by th ese early poult ry p roducers .
there are scarcely any wr itten records of poul t ry product ion
in Siwai an d it seems that for well over a de cade chickens
( and to a much l esser ext ent , eggs ) remained s imply a
supplemen t to the diet ; qual ity did not improve and nothing
was marketed .
Chicken s const ituted the scavenging economy .
It was not un t il 1 9 6 9 that the first real poul t ry
proj ec t go t un derway ; the owner o f this proj ect was Haranu ,
of Miheru , who had al ready b een clos ely associated with the
mo re important economic development s in S iwai and especially
the emer gence o f t rade stores ( pp . 20 1 -2 ) . At this t ime he
had a small t rade s to re n ear Arnio vil lage ; using revenue
from this he obt ained a loan from the PNG Developmen t Bank
which enab led him t o set up the poult ry s cheme .
The Konga
didiman corrnnen t ed on the scheme in May 19 69 , ' at p resen t he
has five roo st ers and six hen s .
They lay four eggs a day .
He will sell about 50 eggs very sho rtly to Barclay Bro thers ,
Boku at 15 cents for two ' . The Bank loan enab led him to
build up t o about 2 7 chi ckens and their eggs were sold t o
Barclay Brothers (who were then engaged in cons t ruct in g the
main road between Kon ga and Baku) , and also to kiaps and
185
other lo cal administ rat ion o ff i c ials . The income from this
was very small , pos s ib ly because Haranu could not ensure a
regular supply of f resh eggs , and there were no local S iwai
purchasers so that despite reques t s from the didimen that he
main t a in the s cheme , he let the e ggs hat ch and s old all the
resultant chickens at $2 . 5 0 each for l ocal p art ies . Within
a y ear he had repaid the loan o f $240 but once a gain the
problem of market s and access to those markets p revented a
potentially valuab le proj ect from go in g ahead .
It was not
unt il the mid-1 9 7 0 s that any poult ry proj ects gave the
impression o f long-term viab ility .
Ducks must have been well-est ab lished by 1 9 54 although
they were no t counted in 1 9 5 1 ; one kiap , A. J . Humphries ,
obs erved that the Mus covy ducks were o f excellent quality
but that ' the s t andard price was t oo high t o permit a t rial
of their eat in g quality ' (PR Buin 1 / 54-55 ) . Perhaps no one
actually paid this part icul ar ' s t andard price ' s in ce a
di fferen t kiap , a year later , repor ted that the ducks , st ill
of excellen t qual ity , were ' used as a form of currency and
a sign o f wealth . They are bought and sold for about £2
each and , unlike p i gs , they are never eaten ' ( PR Buin 1 / 5 5 -5 6 ) .
In western Buin at the same t ime , a separat e kiap also
des cr ibed ducks as being importan t as currency rather than
Subsequen t to this
as a protein source (PR Buin 3 / 5 5-5 6 ) .
use as ' currency ' , for whi ch I have no addi t ional in format ion ,
ducks became , l ike chi ckens but in much smaller numb ers ,
s imply a diversificat ion of the S iwai diet . There are n o
records of duck or duck e g g market in g .
Catt le
Unt il the emergen ce of cat t le in village agriculture
there were no animals that were con s istently p ro duced for
market ing , p igs were always , in a s ense , marketed but
exchange was more or less circular and recipro cal . No one
was ab le to make money from b ein g a success ful pig-breeder
an d no one tried t o establish a modern , large-s cale pig herd .
Chi ckens , not a component of S iwai exchan ge t ran sact ions ,
were more easily incorporated in t o a market economy yet there
were no markets for chickens and e ggs and the sporadic
at tempts at market ing failed to succeed . Baskets and crops ,
even in poo r y ears , were usually a more consisten t source
of income .
186
Cat t le were an ent i rely d ifferen t p ropo s it ion from p i gs
and chi ckens . Before the war the administ rat ion had made n o
at tempt t o interest local farmers in c at tle p roduct ion b ut
Lutheran miss ion s at Ma.dang and other places on the New Guinea
mainland made some at t empt ( IBRD , 1 9 6 5 : 12 4 ) ; after the war
the s it uat ion ch anged l it t l_e nn t il the 1 9 5 0 s when the adminis­
t rat ion made a s t art at a l ocal dist r ib ut ion o f cat tle . By
195 8 there were p o ss ib ly s ome 1 7 , 000 cat tle in the Terr i t o ry
and the administrat ion was at t empt in g t o develop this rapidly
b o th on village holdings and European plant at ions (Hasluck ,
19 7 6 : 30 7 ) but it was slow p ro gress .
Th ere had been a few cat tle on the two S iwai miss ion
. st at ions b efore the war b ut none survived Japanese war t ime
requirements ; befo re that they had done no mor e than supply
After the war s ome mi ss ion s once
the mi ss i ons with · milk .
again reared cows ; Turib oiru mission in Buin had a couple o f
Herefords in 1951 an d b y the 1 9 60s cat tle were flourishing
at mos t mi ss ion s tat ions in Bougainville includ ing Kihili ,
Monoitu and Tonu (PR Buin 1 1 / 64-65 ) . Although there was n o
consistent drive b y didimen , adminis t ra t ion , mis s ionaries
or Bougainvilleans for local people to develop thei r own
cat t le proj ect s , by 1964 some S iwais were int eres t ed in
keep ing cattle ; mos t o f these had seen succes s ful c at t le
p roj ect s elsewhe re in New Guinea .
Con sequen t ly after much
discouragemen t , a few years later , the f irst catt le reached
south Bougainvillean villages . The first reco rd , in a patrol
report , of cat t le in vill ages was in February 1968 when a
cow and a small bul l were obs erved in the Buin village o f
Bogis ago , not far from Tabago Catholic mi ss ion where they
had been pur chased .
They seemed t o be wel l fed but were
ve ry much an experimen t ( PR Buin 2 / 6 7-68) . Later that year
Kuheo o f S ilaruho village became the first S iwai t o get his
own cow ; in Augus t 1968 it was doin g well . The cat t le
economy , o f f i c ially int roduced as an alternat ive to cocoa ,
had begun .
Cat tle were obviously quit e dif ferent from anythin g
that h a d preceded them in S iwai ; they were l it tle known an d
ext remely large an imals , they required large amount s o f
fenced l and and the economics o f main tain ing them was quit e
tlll known to S iwais , ye t cat t le farming was suited to the s outh
Bougainville envi ronment .
The main difficulty is the poverty
of the grass land that develops in cleared fore s t s or on
regenerat ed garden land , hence didimen placed cons iderable
emphas is on ext ens ive plan t in g of Para gras s (Brachiaria
mu tiea ) to supplement the natural graz ing .
High rain fall i s
n o t a p ar t icular d i s incent ive t o tropical cat tle farming and
187
the dif ficult ies o f e s t ab lishing cat tle in S iwai have not
been as s o c iated with the phys ical environment .
Adopt ion o f cat tle was quite slow ; a year aft er Kuheo
received his cow three individual p roj ects had begun although
Kuheo was s t ill the only man to actually have a cow . There
had however b een one new development ; in 1 9 6 8 the S iwai Society
had decided that they would l ike a cattle proj ect ( and als o
a store and cemented roads ) . F o r reasons that are n o t ent irely
cl ear , enthus iasm fo r this proj ect rap idly expanded and within
a few months many S iwai leaders and villagers were keen to
st art a b i g catt le proj ect on 3000 acres o f land near Ruisei .
This s ingle proj ect b rought the greatest dis co rd b etween
didimen and S iwais that has b een reco rded in the history o f
agricultural change in S iwai . Didimen ins isted that the only
p o ss ible form of development was by small individual or clan­
owned proj ects ; almost all S iwais ins is t ed that the b i g
proj ect was essent ial .
The bas i c argument for a large cattle proj ect was s et
out by the S iwai Society secretary ( guided by the European
So ciety adviser) in March 1 9 6 9 :
The s oc iety is almo st complet ely dependent upon
cocoa and thus it would be wise t o diversify any
propo s ed investmen t s . Many roads o f inve stment
have been cons idered and it seems fairly de finite
that a mode rat ely large scale cat t le proj ect would
be the mos t suitable .
Reasons why it is cons idered
that a cat t le p roj ect wouid be suc cess ful are :
a . Availability o f large t ra c t s o f ext remely
fert ile and acces s ib le land .
b . The near certainty that Con z inc Rio Tinto
o f Australia will go ahead with copper mining
in the Kieta area . The estimated populat ion
of the t own ship for C . R . A . s t a f f is 5 , 000
people . The p resent average consumpt ion o f
meat b y s t a f f is j ust a fract ion under 2 lbs
per head per day .
c . Obviously , to provide such large quant it ies
of meat , a large s cale p roj ect wil l be
essent ial .
The S iwai people are capable of
do ing this and there is no doub t in my mind
that they are the only people in Bougainville
who have t his capacity .
d . Cat t le thrive in the local environment .
e . There are no app arent catt le dis eases in the
are a .
188
S ince the S o c iety was expected to have a turnover in the
1 9 6 8 -6 9 f inanc ial year o f the order o f $ 15 8 , 000 it was con­
sidered ( assuming co co a pr ices we re maint ained ) that the
� ociety woul d b e ab le to invest a min imum o f $ 10 , 000 a year
i� such a proj ect . Anthony Potungah (Kapana) argued that
s in ce mo st people already had cocoa plantat ions it would b e
d if f icult for an y individual t o begin his own cattle proj ect ;
consequen t ly a l arge company was nece s sary . On ce again S iwais
we re reverting , this t ime more s t rongly , to the idea o f
commun al management o f a new economic venture . This belie f
may have b een re � forced , a s the administ ration cert ain ly
.
believed
, by the ir ob servat ions o f the op erat ion o f the copper
company ( CRA) and o the r l arge plantat ion and t rading compan ies ,
all of whi ch were highly p ro fi t able . S ize may h ave been the
key .
The administrat ion was far from enthus ias tic ab out such
a large-s cale cat tle proj ect ; the Director an d As sistan t
Director o f DAS F came from P o r t Moresby and po in t ed out the
mass ive cost involved and the neces sity for an eno rmous b ank
They were s t ill optimis t ic
loan to est ab l ish the proj ect .
about the potent ial for c at t le :
' a comb ined coconut-catt le
venture for the area s eems a sol.lll d prospect if the coconut
problem can be corrected ' . Lo cal didimen were concerned
with local problems ; they cons idered the f inanc ial diffi cult ies
but they also feared disputes between clans ( especial ly over
land) and worried that there was no one with the necessary
skills or in fluence to s t art a large company of this kind
which would have to have European management . Moreover they
somehow estimated that the proj ect would require about 6 0 0
l ab ourers f o r 2 00 days a year and consequen t ly were concerned
ab out the withdrawal of l abour from cocoa and feeder road
The head Bougainville didimen even proposed
maintenance .
that ' we are to talk to those concerned on var io us aspec t s
of the ven ture an d no t to become invo lved ; w e will advise
but not as sist as normally we do with the organis ing of
such a venture ' . S iwais resen ted these col.filter-proposals
s in ce they refus ed to believe that the individual proj ects
that the didimen p referred could ever be succes s ful with
somethin g as new as cat t le . The admin i s t rat ion were not
convinced and the Konga didiman felt that ' cat t le are not as
impor tant to the Siwai as their meet ings imply . I feel a
b it o f drama is j us t as important to them as a cow ' .
The
didimen there fore favoured smallholder proj ect s o f about 10
to 20 acres , with a s to ck of about ten hei fers and a bull .
Moreover Catholic mi ss ion policy , more app arent in Buin , was
that even this was too amb it ious and that p roj ect s should
189
conse­
have no more than one or two an imals (Ward , 1 9 7 5 : 60
quently the didimen decided that four S iwai ' in fluent ials '
shoul d go to New Guinea and inves t igat e cat t le proj ect s there
in the expe ctat ion that this experien ce would rein force DAS F
views on the ir suitab il i ty . I f this failed there was always the
po s s ib ility of recourse to a different tac t ic ; the res ident
didiman argues that ' pos s ibly a visit by Mr Tomlin would b e
help ful if h e is in t h e area a s h i s word seems to be gospel
here ' .
·
I t was int ended that four S iwais would visit both Lae
and the New Guinea Highlands to ob serve cat tle schemes but
in the event they go t no further than Lae . The four men
chosen , po ssib ly by S iwai S o ciety , were Gideon Matiha ( Ruisei ) ,
Manua (Munnu) , Joshua Mont o ro (Hanong) and Paro s (Kumuki ) .
They seemed to have s t ayed there for about a fortnight and
although they produced a b rief account of the cat t le proj ects
that they had seen colle c t ively they were divided and made
no recommendat ions . However at a special meet ing of the
S iwai S ociety Manua s tated that they had s een no large company
proj ects :
Long wanpe la p les o l i bin tok pastaim o l i bin
kirapim wanpe la bikpe la kmrrp ani tas o l i no long
taim kros i bin kamap name l long o l pipe l na o l
i bin lusim ( In one area they said they had
first started a big company but soon afterwards
the people were involved in disputes and the
company ended) .
One of the people present comment ed 'Tru ya . Long hap bi long
Siwai tu baimbai dispe la pasin i kamap sapos i l i wokim
In S iwai too this kind of di spute will
kampani (Very true .
b egin if a company is set up ) ' . Manua ther efore recommended
to the meet ing that the best pol icy was for ind ividual small­
scale proj ects but Jo shua Montoro was unconvinc ed ; he had a
different vis ion of a possible futur e .
Wanpe la mas ta long Lae i gat 1 , 3 0 0 bu lmakau na i
gat 6, 0 0 0 acre na i gat tripe la kau boi o l i ran
Taso l diope la mas ta i tok, 'I no
long hos bek .
kmrrp an i, mi na pikinini tas o l i s tap insai t longen '
( One European at Lae has 1 , 300 head o f cat t l e ,
6 , 00 0 acres and three ' cowboys ' who go rollll. d on
But this man said ' It isn ' t a company ,
horseb ack .
only me and my children rllll it ' ) .
190
However a numb er of p eople were afraid o f cows , an d the
. .
d�d�men
event ually convinced mo st o f the people at the mee t in g
:hat
i t was b e s t t o wait fo r t h e success o f individual proj ects
t ree or f � ur years , and then s et up a company if they
remained convinced . Neve rtheles s he pointed out that j ungle
had al ready covered up the S iwai So ciety co coa plantat ion and
many c � coa ?ompanies in other vill ages had al ready given up
following disputes .
De spite the opt imism o f l eaders such as
Lais i (Hari ) , Anthony Potungah and To ' o s ih (Turungum) , who
favoured the large coun c il proj e ct , S iwais were generally
un convinced and p referred to let ind ividuals or small group s
accept the risks involved in int roducing cattl e .
lil
�
Meanwhile there had b een s ome individual developmen t s .
At the s t art of 19 7 0 three p roj e c t s had some s t o ck ; Kuheo
( S ilaruho ) had t en cat tle and at Kinirui an d Amio , Kunopi
and Kamuai had four cat t le each . Tonu miss ion then had four
cat tle an d the Konga DASF , b eginning to estab lish their
demon st rat ion proj ect , had four cat t le thems elves . Not t o be
out done by these individualis t ic developmen t s the S iwai
Society had ob t ained two cat t le although they had no f ield
availab le for them . By May 19 70 the didimen had iden t i f ied
thirteen separate p roj ect s within S iwai an d were att emp t in g
t o evaluat e their future succes s . Apart from that o f Kuheo
which had progressed furthest , only three o ther p roj e c t s had
cat tle , an d already the Konga didiman , R . D . Hill , was not
convinced about the future of several o f thes e , such as that
at Kapana :
Barata , Konnei , P o t un gah (Kapana)
Konnei an d Potungah are mere sleeping partners .
Barata is not a b ig-head but is scared of cat tle
and feels un ab le t o look after them on his own .
I have told him countless t imes to cut back his
Elephant gras s an d sub-divide but he p rocras t inates
and mucks around so much I have reached the s tage
where I figure he will never have a decent proj ect .
He h as two wil d heifers (wild be cause Barata is
s cared of them and his kids t ease them) in a well
gras s ed paddock about 300 yards past the S ociety
towards Kapana . He may want two more heifers n ext
year but I can ' t s ee him get t ing around to
cl earing the bush (Hill , 19 7 0 ) .
In less than a y ear two o f the p artners in this connnun al
proj ect had dropped out . However , to R. D . Hill at leas t
one of the other p roj ect s , at Kinirui , offered rather mor e
pot ent ial .
191
K\lll o p i (Kinirui)
K\lll o pi has n ever had any t raining which is a good
thing as it means he b elieves what he is tol d . He
has worked as a cook for many years , is about 4 5 ,
a very hard worke r , intelligen t and a really good
bloke . He has 4 heifers at the moment . Two he has
paid for and two he is wait in g for a b ank loan to
buy .
I f the loan i s not app roved I s t rongly
re connnend another applicat ion be put in . He is one
o f the only cat t l e people in the area who is p repared
to work on his own and he would be a good person to
make an example of as I have no doub t s he will be
success ful . He has ab out 8 acres cleared and fenced
but is having t roub le get t ing pas t ures s o he s ays he
wil l p rob ab ly not buy any from our next herd
(Hill , 19 70) .
Although all t hese p roj ects had b egun early and therefore
represented the efforts of the few S iwais who were keen to
introduce cat t le , it was already clear that there were going
to ·be cons iderable prob lems ; s everal groups had fotmd it
difficult t o ob tain adequat e gro\lll d and o thers had failed
to clear their l an d . Two or three of tho s e involved had
been on cat t le management cours es but mos t knew litt le ab out
t e chniques of management . Kauma (Tonu) had ob tained a
heifer from Tonu mi ssion b ut was ' con t ent to t reat it like
a do g ' ; Huhu ( Ieku) did no more than ' s it down nothing ' and
throughout S iwai the large amotm t of work necessary to
estab lish cat t l e proj ect s had b een largely ab sen t . Kepoama
(Mus imino i ) , the pioneer of co coa growing , had al so b ecome
intere s t e d in ca t t l e b ut even he had not got far . The
didiman recorded that he ' has go t some gras s and has marked
out a bit o f grotmd but is probab ly an un likely s t arter ' ;
so he was . The didimen too had their p rob lems ; every S iwai
had reques ted that they init ially receive a small young
hei fer so that they could get used to it and ' t rain ' it but
all the cat tle they received at Konga were fully grown which
made them diff icul t t o dist ribut e . Moreover they were
already concerned t hat if a road or abat to ir was not built
they would on ce again have to purchase back the cat t le
before a ' real ' market emerged . By 19 7 0 t here fore cat tle
farming had b e gun in S iwai but there were no indi cat ions
that it would be success ful .
The earliest cat t le proj ects were mainly lo cat ed near
Konga (Fi gure 2 0 ) and re fl ect the fact that most of the
192
iJ
'
'
'
'
C ATTLE
P R O J E C TS
...
0
2
Figure 20 .
4
6
8 km
Cattle proj e c t s 1 9 7 0
193
f irst cattle raisers had already b een success ful in �ocoa
growin g ; for them cat tle were a means of dive rs i f icat ion
away from cocoa rather than an act ivity preferred in i t s own
right .
Thus , with one except ion , none moved into c at tle­
raising without already having t ried cocoa . Three o f the
proj ec t owne rs ( or part-own ers ) were S iwai didimen working
at Konga who already had some knowl edge , at least in theory ,
o f the organiz at ion o f cat t le p roj ect s . The one except ion
was Kuheo o f S ilaruho .
Kuheo was born in S ilaruho in the last years o f
German administ rat ion in Bougainville . His
fathe r , Haranu , was the last S iwai to b e hanged
by the administ rat ion at Monoitu in 192 3 when
So.on afterwards
Kuheo was about twelve years old .
he ran away t o Buin and was t aken by a European
t o Rab aul where he worked on a plantat ion n ear
Kokopo for three y ears .
There he worked as a
cook an d also looked af t er cows . Later he
worked at various places in New Guinea , includin g
Kain an tu , where h e helped t o set u p the first
st at i on an d airs t rip and was shot in the leg by
a ' wild man ' . Durin g the first p art o f the war
he wo rked in Rab aul , alon gs i de Michael Somare ' s
fathe r , building airst rip s and trenches but he
returned to S iwai to b ecome a s cout for ANGAU .
He t aught villagers how t o fire 303 rifles and
was h ims elf shot in the hand by the Japanese .
Befo re the war he had married two wives and aft er
the war he marr ied a third ; as he put it ' this
was t he t radi t ional way o f carrying out bus iness
to ob t ain land and p i gs ' .
Aft er the war he d id
indeed acquire a, l arge numb er o f p igs and much
land and cons equently achieved a posit ion of
high s t atus , usually b e ing recognised as a mumi .
He was p o s s ib ly the first person t o fen ce his
p igs but took little int erest in cash croppin g .
H e had always wan t ed t o ob t a in cows based on his
early experience in New Brit ain but the didimen
d is co ur aged him unt il eventually they decided he
In 1 9 6 8 , with
was cap able of runnin g a p roj ect .
his two son s , he b ecame the f irst cat tle owner
in S iwai ; as the didiman recorded in 1 9 7 0 ' he is
p re t ty thrilled that he is now going to see a
b i g c at t le herd b e fo re he dies ' .
194
L ike mo st new int ro duct ions int o S iwai the early innovato r s
o f c at tle we re mainly those who had some s ort o f p revious
experien ce with cat t le . Howeve r few o f t hese , not even Kuheo ,
were lookin g towards cat tle as an economi c alt e rnat ive s up erior
to anything that had gone b e fo re ; it was an addit ion an d not
an alt e rn at ive in the S iwai _ e conomy .
It was a move int o
bus iness , but bus iness a s p res t ige rather than a s an improve­
ment in c ash-earning capac ity b eyond the exi s t ing cash crops .
The idea o f a large S iwai So ciety p roj ect lapsed for a
couple of years s ine� in the ab sen ce o f DASF support the
Development Bank refused to grant a loan . The small s cale
proj ects were at b es t disappoint ing so that in May 19 7 2 the
Chairman of S iwai So ciety wrot e iron ically that ' If the
current rate of p ro gress cont inues the S iwai people may have
one or two head of cat t l e ready for s ale to Panguna/Arawa/
Kieta by the t ime the mining op erat ions are ready to cease .
This I b el i eve is s cheduled for the y ear 2005 ' . Despi t e
Lhis failure , b u t to some ext ent b ecaus e o f it , S iwai leaders ,
l ike Thomas Konnei , the Chairman o f the Society , remained
convinced that a large p roj ect was the b e s t way to develop
cat tle farming as a b us iness enterprise .
Consequen tly in
1 9 72 the Society were examin ing new p roposal s . Thei r aim
was t o e s t ablish a s ep arat e Society , which would collect
$10 , 000 in share capital ( from $ 10 shares ) , purchase 3000
acres o f land at Ruisei and b e g in the p roj ect with 100 cat t le
on 400 acres , in it ially with a European manager . Thi s t ime
the admin ist rat ion had revise d their att itudes ; the Chief
Rural Development Officer o f Bougainville , David B rown ,
cons idered that ' the S iwai people have developed s everal good
smallho lder cat tle p roj ect s and now cons ide r they are ready
to p rogre s s to the n ext s t age . This o ffice cons iders . . .
that it would be t imely t o advance to t he n ext s tage o f
development , i n the Buin sub -dis t rict , o f 100-head p roj ect s '
(B rown , 1 9 7 2 ) .
Indeed c ircums t an ces had changed ; the road
to Kie t a was open and there were obvious market s in the mine
t owns . Mo re over _ BCL had exp ressed ' moral s uppo rt ' for the
s cheme and p romised that Panguna Development Foundat ion would
as s ist in s upplying the venture .
Con sequently , with this
level of support , the S iwai So ciety applied to the Department
of Lands for a pas t o ral lease on the Ruis e i land . They
expected to purchas e 3000 acres at $ 1 per acre and make
imp rovement s t o it that would eventually raise its value t o
$ 500 , 000 ; cos t s in the f irst year o f op erat ion would amount
t o ab out $ 2 6 , 700 ( including $ 10 , 2 00 for clearin g and plant ing
the land and $2 , 000 for the manager ' s s alary ) . At the s ame
t ime that the Panguna mine was expanding its lab our force
195
and co coa was b ecomin g decidedly profitable , the Konga
didiman expected that the cat tle proj ect would give plenty
of employment at s t andard lab ouring rates to S iwai men whilst
it was even recommended that a good inducement to share
purchasers would be the proviso that only shareholders could
work on the proj ect . No es t imates were made o f the poten t ial
labour force . The expectat ions were hopelessly opt imist ic .
The needs o f the copper mine , and a new road , seem t o have
provoked a compl ete reversal o f policy on the part of the
didimen . When the lo cal didimen began t o make a more
crit i cal evaluat ion of the s cheme p roblems immed iately
became app arent ; the area t urned o ut to be 6 3 7 acres ( an d
n o t 3000 acres ) , although t h i s would not have made much
dif ference s in ce it would s t ill s upport 6 30 head o f catt le .
They also f ollll d that Sukina , the rep resentat ive o f the 102
people with rights of ownership t o the land , required $ 1600
compensat ion for the ' improvements ' on the l and , that is the
bananas , almonds , b readfruit and o ther economic t rees that
grew on the otherwise llll u sed land . Mo reover he was only
will in g to lease the land for twenty years at an annual rate
o f $ 2 p er acre . All o f thi s was s omewhat dif ferent f rom
what the s upporters of the p roj ect had envisaged . On ce again
land right s were dis couraging large-scale economic developments .
The changing demands on the part o f Ruisei landowners p rovoked
recons iderat ions on t he part of the S iwai S ociety so that at
the s t art o f 1974 they had ab andoned the po s s ib ilit ies o f
Ruisei and were search ing for a new s ite . There seemed no
prospect of the p roj ect ever start in g as arollll d this t ime
int e rest in the smaller s chemes be gan to decline .
Po ss ib ly the greatest const raint to catt le farming was ,
and is , the availab ility o f land ; although the Konga didimen
seem to have worked on the basis o f one cow per acre ,
est imat es for other t rop ical areas , including other parts o f
New Guinea , suggest that the animal dens ity should b e less
than half t hat . This means that for a smallholder s cheme
with t en cat t le , the min imum herd s iz e that i s viab le , at
least twenty acres o f land were required , yet very few
individual S iwais or even groups could ob t ain right s t o such
a lar ge area o f land , much more than was us ually required
for co coa p lant ing , even though cat t le p roj ects did no t
Consequently almost
const itut e pe rmanent use o f that land .
all the earli est proj ect s were to some ext ent commtnial group
effort s ; none involved purchas ing land b ut some consisted o f
a set o f f i elds fragmented becaus e o f the complexit ies o f
land t enure .
196
The mos t s t r iking characteris t ic o f early int e rest in
c at tle , on the p art o f S iwais , is the relat ive ab s ence of an
e conomic mot ivat ion for ob taining cat t l e .
Even the didi1aen
make no refe rence t o the economic potent ial o f c at t le and
ne ither the Society nor in dividual s seem to have b een
concerned ab out the long- te rm nature o f the returns t o cat t l e
farming .
Just as in parts of the N ew Guinea Highlands
( Finney , 19 7 3) ownership o f cattle , as with some o ther
bus iness ent erprises , was for pres t ige rather than p ro f its
although it was assumed that profits woul d follow from thi s
S imilarly cat t le were rarely compared
kind of b us ines s .
with pigs ; cat t le were symbols of pres t ige o r bus ines s and
they were not the int imat e component of the so cial and
domest i c s cene that p igs we re . The ecological d i f ferences
emphas iz ed the social differences ; cat t le ate different foods
and required much mo re land b ecaus e o f their more res t ricted
diet . The ext ent and nat ure o f lab our input s in to the two
forms of animal husb andry was also quite dif fe rent , espe c ially
in the estab l ishment phase o f cat t le farming .
Th e need for
large areas o f graz ing l and was not well understood .
Orientat ion t owards p res t i ge and the as sumpt ion o f easy
pro fitab il it y we re the main reasons for the inadequacies o f
cattle proj ect s .
Divers i ficat ion and dis int erest
Just as S iwais cons idered almost every po ssib le c rop
with commercial pos s ib ilit ies , so too with an imals .
In 1 9 6 9
a villager had reques t e d that the didimen p rovide donkeys in
S iwai , p resumab ly as a b eas t of burden , and the Konga didiman ,
comment ing on h is unwillingness to provide them, s t ated ' Am
I correct in as suming that donkeys would not b e suitable here
b ecause of l imit ed loads , wet condit ions an d the lack of
skilled people t o look aft e r them? '
(Ho rs es , on which some
mi ss ionaries had b een known t o t ravel through p arts o f
Bouganville in the pre-war years , app ear never to have b een
cons idered as a possib il ity for rural t ransport . ) Lat er on
in 1 9 7 2 the didiman received a couple of enquiries ab out t he
possib ility o f obt aining goat s ; they had b een ob served on
plantat ion s an d it was felt that they would make goo d food .
The Dis t r i ct Livest ock Officer was firmly against this ,
believing that they woul d be di fficult to con f ine and would
caus e con s iderab le damage in the villages by eat ing young
t rees and so on .
A rather different possib ility was the
export o f but t erflies ; some of those in south Bougainville
are amongst the rarest and most beaut i ful in the world yet
S iwai request s in 19 72 fo r in format ion on export ing them
19 7
In the end none o f these diverse p os s ib ­
were t urned down .
ilit ies were t aken up in S iwai , o r indeed elsewhere in
Bougainvil le , and mo st p eople remained quite content with
the range of an imals available to them.
The whole o f the animal economy , with minor except ions ,
was an addit ion to rather than a s ub s t itute for cash croppin g .
Animals promised n o economic success s ince market s were
distant and with the available technology animal product s
were not s t o rab le .
Cat tle init ially promised no more , so
that it was only the demands o f a few in dividual s , and the
as s is t an ce of mi ss ions rather than didimen , that enab led the
int roduct ion of a developmen t of a rather different order .
Cat tle represented b oth b us iness and p res t i ge ; they
disappo int e d the ir supporters in that they p roved to be
neither , especially s in ce the grandiose s chemes of the S iwai
Society could not be implemented . With the potent ial o f
cat tle unreal iz ed , no p art o f the animal economy b rought
economic success to S iwai .
Cash crops o f fered quicker , and
apparen t ly larger , cash incomes so that whatever prest ige
cat tle could p rovide was unable to compare with the economic
b enefit s o f coco a . The S iwai animal economy was als o
sub ordinat e t o cash cropp in g .
Chapter 8
Bus ines s and cargo
The co coa-cons cious S iwai is an ast ute b us inessman .
As s uch he calls a dollar a dollar and a spade a
spade
{ Donovan , 1 9 7 0 ) .
The S iwai is no fool when b us iness is involved .
He has a rather fierce p ride in his ab ility to
work hard and better hims el f in a ' p roduct ive '
sense and an equal measure o f pride in his ab ility
to l ive s imply and not j o in the ranks of the
sophis t icates for whom he has no admirat ion and
l i t t le t o le rance (Toml in , 1969 : 2 ) .
Be ginning with the communal cult ivation o f rice in the
early post -war years it was generally ass umed b y S iwais that
the purpose o f growin g cash crops was to provide an income
wh ich would be used not only to purchase various goods that
wer e nee ded or want ed , especially foods tuffs like s alt and
t inned meat , kero sene and b ush-knives , b ut also t o establish
s t o res and thus b ring b us iness development into S iwai .
Cash
cropp ing and b us iness development were essent ially separat e
p arts o f the s ame phenomenon ; indeed Nash s uggests that in
Nagovis i the comb inat ion o f t rade s to res and connnun al cash
cropping p erhaps followed a perceived European plantat ion
model ( 1 9 74 : 102 ) .
For S iwai this is e qually t rue .
Befo re the war the s t o res that had b r ie fly exis ted in
S iwai were es sent ially t iny b ranches of European and Chinese
bus inesses whi ch were cent red elsewhere (pp . 62 -3) . Aft e r the
war the Chinese t rader Wong You , who s e main int erest s were
in B uka an d Kiet a , at t empted t o res t art h is S iwai s to re b ut ,
acco rding t o in fo rmants , he was told by Deokare o f Kaparo
that s ince he had only paid 10 / - for the ground on which
the store was b uilt he could not return to take more money
from S iwai . Al ien-owned s t o res never ret urned t o S iwai ,
whereas they were accepted in Buin , and all the sub sequent
s t o res , apart from those as sociat ed with the mi ssions , were
198
199
es s ent ially the creat ions of S iwai entrepreneurs .
S iwais
were no longer store labourers ; they b ecame s t ore-owners .
The first s ix s t o res opened almo s t t o gether aroun d the
s t art of 1 9 5 3 , not long after the dist ribut ion of war
compensat ion money in S iwai . Although the average claim
amounted t o some £30 per household , claims were no t evenly
di st ribut ed within S iwai s o that S iwai leaders , especially
from cent ral S iwai , were able to claim ownership of con s ider­
able nat ural resources ( s uch as coconut s and s ago palms )
and almo s t certainly received s ums o f over £100 . By any
p revious s tandards familiar t o S iwais this was an eno rmous
s um an d represent ed a s ignificant incent ive to at t empt a
new form o f development .
S ix separate S iwai leaders began
s to res , Towai ( o f Kot u village) , No ' kia (Hukuha) , Haranu
(Hire) , P iruruho (Mus iraka) , Teremo (Amio ) and S ihirong
(Hari) , and th ere may have b een o thers in the mo re remote
village s . Although the Ass is t ant Dist rict Commis s ioner in
Buin , Mr Cole , disco uraged this new development , who s e
res ul t s t o s ome ext ent eventually j us t i f ied h i s caut ion , it
was a move that was inevitable . S everal of the s tores , like
that at Amio , were rllll in conj tm c tion with the communal
cult ivat ion o f rice on b ehal f o f l ineage group s ; the operat ions
o f the two sect o rs were invariably indis t in guishab le . Like
the at tempt s at communal cult ivation , the rat ionale o f the
early s t o res (at least as it was exp res s ed in 19 7 5 ) was t o
improve t h e access o f village people t o goods without paying
high price s o r travelling t o the Buin coas t at Kangu . The
intent ion that village s t ores would help people was familiar
elsewhere in Papua New Guinea but was much less important
than the belief that through the c reat ion of an extens ive
network o f credit and gift relat ions , and by s imply owning
a large collect ion o f s t o re goods in it s own room o r b uildin g ,
store-owners achieved p re s t i ge . For a t ime both these
obj ect ives were at tained ; prices were lowered and p res t i ge
was a ch ieved .
Befo re these novel developmen t s in S iwai one Buin man ,
Kungka , had already b ecome a b us ines sman o f s ome not e . As
early as December 1952 the kiap ob served that he had three
trucks , three t rade s to re s , two b akeries and large rice
gardens annually p roducing around two tons of excellent
rice which was sold in the s t o res . The rice was machine­
hulled by h is own huller ; o thers could hire this for a rent
of 25 per cent of their own c rop (PR Buin 4 / 5 2 -3) . Kungka
was therefore some way ahead o f any serious rivals but ,
becaus e his own village was in wes tern Buin whils t he worked
200
from Buin port at Kangu , his bus ines s act ivit ies proved t o
b e s omething o f a model fo r the rather later S iwai e f forts .
One o f the first S iwai s to re owners was Haranu , now an
elderly S iwai mumi o f s ome autho rity . Before the war he had
gone as a kukboi to the k iap in Kiet a , who s en t him to Rabaul
for further educat ion . Although he never achieved mo re than
literacy at reading numbers he became a p lisboi befo re the
war and during the war spent s ome t ime as a coastwat che r with
Paul Mason in the hills above Kiet a . Aft e r the war he
re turned to the village of Hire . The following accollll t ,
which cannot be collaborated in it s ent irety , is drawn
essent ially from his own de s crip t ion o f his early post-war
bus iness act ivit ies .
After the war Haranu e s t ab l ished a copra plant at ion
o f perhaps 400 t rees at the mouth o f the Mob iai
rive r , which has now been des t royed b y the sea. He
was the first pers on in S iwai to b uild a copra
drie r .
(Lat er he built a s econ d one near Hire ,
with the ass istance o f t he didimen s oon after they
first came t o Konga . ) He sold copra , sago s eeds
( ' ivory nut s ' ) and o c cas ionally t ro chus and mo ther
of pearl shells to Ton Lep , the Chinese t rader at
Buin . In 1 9 5 3 , with h is war damage money ,
en couragement from the Catholi c B ishop Wade (who
t o ld him this was a good way to us e the money) and
s ome as s is t ance from Ton Lep he set up his own
trade st ore at Hire and ass is t ed in f inan c in g and
r\llln ing the store s at Mus i raka , Ieku , Hukuha and
Hari . The s to re at Hari , which was r\lll b y S ihiron g ,
who had been a pre-war kukboi too , als o had a
bakery (NM-haus bre t) . The five leaders who were
involved each cont ribut ed £100 entirely from war
damage money and othe r men cont rib uted £1 and £ 2
each .
S ince there was a lot o f war damage money
in S iwai they soon made £ 300 p ro f it .
(Haranu
claims that their cash act ually reached £4000 but
this s eems improb ab le . )
All the goods fo r the
s t ore came from Ton Lep in Buin , when po s s ible
b ein g carried in Kungka ' s t ruck (which for more
than a decade was the only locally owned vehicle
in the whole of s outh Bougainville) , but more o ft en
they were carried on various shoul ders .
S omet imes
Haranu paid no money for the cargo but s imply
t raded copra and ivory nut s for it ; although his
copra drier was later set up n ear the s tore and he
2 01
encouraged people to b ring copra and ivory nut s to
him, this does suggest that the amount o f income
generated by the store may have been unimportant .
Late in 1955 Tomlin reco rded that coconut s were
being purchased by S iwai s t orekeepers at a p enny
each ( although in s ome villages there was s uch a
short age that 3d . each was being paid for plant ing
nut s ) while copra was being sold to Chines e traders
at e ither 4d . or 4�d . per pound which can have
left l it t le pro fit margin for these early b us iness­
men . The store l as t ed for two o r three years , o r
p o s s ib ly longe r . Tomlin noted in October 1 9 5 6 that
' nat ive s t o rekeepers have formed a buy ing club and
bulk their o rders so as to ob tain favourab le purchase
p rices ' , s o that this group of store s may have las ted
for mo re than three years . Haranu claims that he
clo sed his store s ince he felt both that men with
ed ucat ion would s oon s tart rlllln ing the s to re s and
that Ton Lep was ma.king too much profit from them.
P iruruho , who had the s t o re at Mus iraka , claimed
that the kiap , Mr Cole , had o rdered him to clo s e
his s tore after only about one y ear s ince there
were too many disput es over money . The o ther
related s tores clo sed after the same sort of t ime
period , although s ome operated sporadically
throughout the de cade and even longer .
Although Haranu s t ated that some money was left when his
store clo s ed it s eems that the first flush o f enthus iasm for
store ownership and the ab ility to purchase s t o re goods had
ended after the dwindling of the war damage payments and the
inab il ity of cash c rops to p rovide alternat ive incomes . The
cash that rema :ined must have b een decidedly less than the
original investment .
(Haranu hims el f later went on to b e
one o f the main inst igators in establishing the S iwai S o ciety ,
establ ished the first poul t ry proj ect in S iwai with a loan
from the Development Bank { p . 185 ) and in the 19 70s b egan a
cat tle p roj ect . )
The emergence o f the early t rade s t o res coupled with
the war damage p ayment s had a number of e f fects on S iwai
l ife . Compared with o ther areas o f Bougainville relat ively
few men were working out s ide S iwai ; in August 1955 the kiap
calculated that 2 8 per cent o f adult S iwai men b etween the
ages o f 16 and 45 were · wo rking out s ide S iwai . Although this
represented nearly a third of all adult males it was nonethe­
less lower than other areas ( c f . Connell , 1 9 7 8b ) . The kiap
2 02
believed that
this is p robably due to the fact that with the
large sum of money paid as War Damage Compensat ions ,
the c irculat ion o f money is , at present , quite
sufficient for their n eeds and any great des ire to
earn more money will therefo re not b e noticed in
the area unt i l this money has reached its ult imate
end , which is one of the many trade s t o res in the
dist rict
Product ion o f copra also decl ined during the period when the
compensat ion money was being spent and it was no t unt il
October 1 9 5 5 that Tomlin noted with relief that the final
complet ion of the payments had ' fo rced people b ack into
p ro duct ion ' .
In October 1955 Toml in reco rded t hat ' nat ive b us ines smen
employing a few lab ourers have b een growing rice to sell in
their s t o res ' .
It may well be therefore that the first hired
lab ourers , working out s ide their usual lin eage group and
receiving cash p ayments , emerged at much the same t ime as the
first b us inessmen . Tomlin ' s conclus ion on the b us inessmen
o f b o th Buin and S iwai is fairly clear :
There are a great numb er o f nat ive b us inessmen
throughout the who le sub -dist rict . Most o f these
individuals have b een t rained by miss ions and
plan t at ions and are generally better educated and
a cut above the rest . They comb ine with their
small t rade s t o res s ome agricult ural act ivit ies .
Quite a few grow rice to sell in their stores and
peanuts for sale through t raders . Thi s generally
means that they have other members o f their
famil ies as s is t ing them, or they employ o ther
nat ives to ten d their gardens .
Cocoa growin g is
now b ecoming the fashion with these characters
and quite a few are payin g casual labo urers t o
plan t it (Tomlin , 1 9 5 5 ) .
Although at that t ime the emphas is on cocoa cult ivat i on
was more typ i cal o f Buin , the general characte r is t i cs o f
S iwai b us inessmen are demarcated here . The employment o f
lab ourers marked a new phas e in the connne rcial i z at ion o f
S iwai agricult ure . Few o f these were regularly employed
although by the early 19 6 0 s there may have been some
indiv iduals who s pent more t ime on wage labour than on
203
agricult ural act ivit ies o f their own .
At much the s ame t ime that Haranu ' s s t o re closed
Anthony Pot ungah set up a s t o re at Konga and it is almo st
certain that there was never any t ime s ince 1953 when there
were not s ome local ly-owned s t o re s operat ing in S iwai . Thus
in August 1 9 5 5 there were fourteen licensed trade s t o res in
S iwai b ut according t o the kiap , D . J . Hook , only the three
at Konga , Harikagu and Hari appeared to be p rosperous .
Some
o f the s t o re s were in very small villages and Hook even found
some in gardens . He also ob served that al though the ret ail
prices allowed a p rofit of ab out s ixpence per art i cle , pro fits
were o f fset by the free dis t ribut ion o f foods t o the ' friends
o f the s torekeepers ' but that it was impo s s ible for them not
t o do that . The t ime when any local s tores would operate
cons ist en t ly at a pro fit was s t ill more than a de cade away .
Anthony Potungah began his firs t s tore around t he mid1950s b ut apart from him , all thos e who later became
s uc ce s s ful s t o re-owners did not s t art unt il the 1960s .
Pot ungah h imself found the condit ions for running t rade
stores in the 1950s very di fferent f rom two decades later
when his store was one of the more s uc cess ful in S iwai .
Po tungah had no formal educat ion b ut learn t to read
and write dur in g the war . Aft er the war he be came
a carpenter fo r Ton Lep in Buin . He wat ched care­
fully how Ton Lep us ed to mark up the prices o f
s tore goods and developed the idea o f estab lishing
his own s t o re .
Ret urn ing t o S iwai around 1955 he
us ed h is savings to set up a s tore near Kapana
village ob t aining his goods from Ton Lep ; mos t o f
these were the s ame sorts o f things that are s t ill
sold in the present s tores : rice , fish , lap laps ,
knives , kerosene and bat t eries . Although he did
not want any as sistance thirt een people nevertheles s
con t r ibut ed £5 each to the development o f the s tore ,
which also inco rporated a b akery . His stat ed aim
in s e t t in g up the s tore was t o as s is t the old people
o f S iwai by p roviding goods at prices they could
afford whil st s imultaneous ly enab l ing him t o make
one o r two pen ce p ro fit on each purchase . The
s to re was quite succes s ful and he had int ended to
develop the b akery int o a cafe (NM- haus kaikai )
but the ' shareholders ' told h im that they were
unhappy because he was ' eat ing ' their money . He
gave up in dis gus t , gave the s t o re key to one o f
204
them, Ktlll o pi , and told him to run it .
then collapsed .
The s t o re
The same problems that existed for the management o f the
communal gardens were therefore repeated in this and the vas t
maj o r ity o f the store s that followed . Anthony Potun gah ,
pos s ibly with the wisdom o f hinds i ght , couunented that h e had
never wanted ' shareholders ' but the collect ive o rganizat ion
of bus ines s and money-makin g act ivit ies was s omethin g that
it was impos s ible to avo id in the firs t decades of S iwai
commercialism.
Stores l ike th e grandiosely-t itled S iigiha
Trading S ociety at Kakotokoli had s ome 108 members in 1 9 6 7
Disputes over the
and were s t ill enrolling new sharehol ders .
des t inat ion of incomes , in s it uat ion s where no one was abl e
t o maint a in account s , prove d much t o o great f o r the long t erm
stab il it y o f such ent erprises . The relat ive longevity o f
the early st ores associated with Haranu and the other leaders
was a funct ion both o f their novelt y and the ext ent to which
a very small number of men provided the basic f inance .
Neither o f these condit ions was generally t rue o f mos t o f
the s t o re s that followed .
In 19 5 6 Rangai , o f Panake village ,
had what Hook des cr ib ed as a ' well-es tab lished wholesale
s t o re dealing in nat ive b aske tware ' but mos t of the s tores
we re l it tle more than small coll ect ion s o f foodst uf f s .
Neverthel es s in Feb ruary 19 5 7 Tomlin was able t o s t ate with
s ome pride that ' lo cal n at ive s t orekeepers are caterin g well
for the cons umer s ide of the bus in es s and many art icles are
sold here at le s s than Buin p rices . This is having a marked
e f fect on local diet . Much more tinned meat and fish are
consumed ' . These were not apparently con s idered to b e
expen s ive an d were eaten with the locally p roduced rice .
One characterist ic that would seem t o dis t inguish S iwai
f rom othe rwise comparable parts of Melanes ia , at leas t unt il
the mid-1 9 60s , was the unwillin gnes s with whi ch income was
spent in the t rade stores . Tomlin reco rded that , ' they talk
scept i cally o f the money they are spending on consumer goods
as "rubb ish money" b ecause it does not produce anythin g and
is was t e d . This is the reason why they l imit it t o a smal l
percentage o f their total income and s ave the res t . t o develop
addit ional revenue producing busines s ' (Tomlin , 1 9 6 9 : 2 ) . He
believed that S iwais were except ionally ' frugal-minded ' .
Nevertheless despite this reluctance to spend freely , the
purchases made in s t o res were s imilar to thos e elsewhere in
Melanes ia ; mo s t prominent o f these were foodstuff s , then
clo th in g , radio s , tools and household equipmen t . B icycles
became important and were much used for transportin g cocoa ;
2 05
Tomlin was care ful t o note that ' anyone worth his s alt owns
one , and uses it in conj unct ion with his work rather than as
A high
a means o f amus ing himsel f ' ( Tomlin , 1 9 6 9 : 2 ) .
propens ity to s ave , even out o f quite small earnings , never
proved to b e a disin cent ive to furth er store expans ion .
It was obvious t o both didimen and S iwa is in the 1950s
that the main deterrent to bus ines s suc cess was the lack of
transport although , without con s iderable f inance from out s ide ,
which was consp icuously lackin g , it would have b een difficult
to ameliorate this problem . Tomlin ob served that co conut s
were being b ought ' by the bus inessmen ' but before they had
smoke-dried the copra or devis ed a means of transpor t ing it
to Buin the coconut s had o ft en developed s izeable shoots .
In 1 9 5 6 a group o f villagers from Panake , Ruisei , Kapana and
Ieku had b een saving their money (prob ably mainly war damage s )
with the intent ion o f buying a t ruck . They did no t succeed
and the transport prob lem was no t ent irely solved satis fact ­
o rily unt il 1 9 7 2 . By 1 9 5 6 the con cept of bisnisman seemed
to be recognized , at least by Tomlin and p resumably by S iwais
as well ; Tomlin noted that some o f them were managing to do
quite well and that the Society ' has purchased a to tal o f
3 3 bags o f smoke copra from S iwai bus ines smen ' . He reco gnized
a number o f individuals who were success fully organiz ing
some comb inat ion of stores , copra purchas ing and smoking and
somet imes b akeries to the extent that by western criteria
there was a t iny group of smal l s cale ent repreneurs .
Early efforts at o rganiz in g and rtmning trade st ores
were made essent ially without alien ass ist ance ; Chinese
storekeepers were prepared to p ro fit from providing cargo
but the administrat ion b el ieved that the sto res would be
failures and took no int erest in encouraging their development .
Although most o f the goods came from the Chinese t raders in
Buin the Methodist miss ion at Kihili als o supplied cargo
( and purchased copra) . Later S iwai bus inessmen , such as Luke
Pauru , developed s ome skills from periods o f work with this
miss ion which , for most of the pos t -war years , had a greate r
in fluen ce o n the emergence o f business than i t s Catholic
r ival which was rarely concerned with going b eyond encouraging
cash crop p ing .
During the 1950s the skills involved in t rade
store management were gradually acquired but the prob lems o f
o rganiz at ion were s t ill too great t o allow p ro fitab ility .
It is apparent that in the early 1960s more stores than
ever before were being established in S iwai , many b ein g known
simply as ' canteen s ' . These latter were essentially the
2 06
result o f the ef forts o f a s ingle man o r a small group o f
kin t o buy in b ulk large quan tit ies o f b as ic foodstuffs
which wo uld b e sold only t o members of the man ' s househol d
o r the group ; they wer e n o t int ended to supply large numb ers
o f people or make a profit .
They were in the s t ri ct s ense
s t ores rather than shops , accumulated in the owners ' hous e .
Late in 1 9 6 3 the ColDlcil ins t ructed s tore-owners that they
mus t maint ain t rade stores in separate buildings ( fo r wh i ch
a l icence cost i.ng £3 had to be pur chased) rathe r than keep
go ods in the hous es that they slep t in . This did lit tle t o
reduce t h e numb er o f these t iny canteens . The number o f
bakeries was also increas in g rapidly although t h i s was not
without its p rob l ems ( the Cotlll c il de c ided in 19 6 7 that the
medi cal ass istant mus t in spect all of them with a view to
taking t o court those owners who did not maintain satis factory
standards ) . Flour was usually in sho rt supply ; skills in
b read making were o ften conspicuous by their ab s ence and
mo st had an essent ially ephemeral existence . Despite rather
than b ecaus e of th e p roli ferat ion in numbers many of the
s t o res were quite unsuccess ful as bus ines s ent erprises . As
one kiap reco rded at the end of 1964 :
' t rade s to res come
and go . They are not regarded as a lucrat ive ' source o f
income b ut a s a thing o f prest i ge for it s owner and a
convenien ce t o the vill age ' (PR Buin 5 /6 4 -5 ) . A year later
the kiap noted that the two adj oin ing villages o f Rab aulu
and Matukol i has as many as five trade s t o res but none o f
them of fered any prospect o f a long term future . Many seem
t o have b een essent ially a mean s of ext ending and s t rength­
ening s oc ial t ies and h ence their p rol iferat ion reflect ed
these aims rather than commercial requiremen t s . Thus the
early development of trade s tores in S iwai was much as it
was elsewhere in Papua New Guinea ; they were nominally to
provide various kinds of goods in the rural area and t o
demon s t rate their owner ' s p rest i ge . T o succeed in bus ines s
it was necess ary to save rather than share ; this was
impo s s ible in the early years and s tores foundered on disputes
over the e th ics o f dist ribut ion .
By t he late 19 60 s , however , t rade s t o res had b e come an
integral p art o f S iwai economic development . No lon ger were
they divo rced from the agri cul t ural sect o r , with all trans­
act ions being made f rom war damage paymen t s , but s tores were
rtlll from the pro fit s of the emerging co coa economy ; thus
there was a cont inuous supply of ftmds for trade s t o re
development . This did not o f course ens ure profitab il ity
but , because it was relat ively easy to ensure p ro fi t s from
co coa growin g , it did mean that s to res remained in existen ce
207
much lon ger than would have b een possible without this
external s ource of funds . By the end of 19 6 7 there were a
small number o f stores which seemed t o display suff icient
potent ial to suggest long t e rm success . The res ident kiap
s ingled out two stores , f rom the twenty o r s o then existing ,
those o f Hat ah and Paul Tup an a . There were als o four b akeries
and from these he s ingled out that of Luke Pauru as the one
with the greatest potent ial , especially s in ce Pauru had j us t
become t h e first person in S iwai and po ss ib ly in the whole
coun t ry , to apply fo r a loan of $ 400 from the newly formed
Papua New Guinea Development Bank to ext end his b ake ry . At
that t ime Pauru was s t ill a clerk with the Methodist Mis s ion
at Tonu b ut he had a trade s t o re and a sound knowledge o f
account in g procedures . Less than a decade later Pauru was
the l eading S iwai bus ines sman , Hat ah was making the great est
in come in S iwai from purely rural interes ts whils t Tubana ' s
stores and visions had long s ince collapsed in disarray
( PP · 2 1 5- 8 ) ·
On the other hand not everyone was familiar
with t rade sto res and some apparently long -estab l ished t rade
st ore goods s t ill had an un certain place in village diet s ;
in �ay 1 9 6 6 a s en ior administ rat ion o ff icial answered queries
at a S iwai Counc il meet ing emphas iz ing that t inned f ish were
not really snakes .
At the end o f 1 9 6 8 there were enough s uc ces s ful s to re s
f o r the S iwai Society direct ors t o cons ider set t ing up a
separate wholesale co-operat ive society which could dist rib ute
trade s t o re goods within S iwai . The Motuna Who lesale S ociety
was not however o ffic ially established un t il April 19 7 1 partly
b ecaus e o f oppos it ion f rom the Department o f T rade and Indust ry
who believed that there were already enough wholesale
societ ies (Bus iba , plus the Telei and Tut un a Societ ies in
Buin and Nagovis i respect ively) in s outh Bougainville . The
Motuna Society purchased goods f rom Rabaul and Kieta and
s old them to t rade stores within S iwai at a mark up o f 5 per
cent . Des pite b rief p eriods of p ro f it ab ility the Society was
run ext remely inef f iciently , mainly b ecause the direct ors
were on the whole t rade st ore owners with their own int erests
t o maintain whils t the secretary was event ually gaoled for
misappropriat ion o f the cash . Un t il the comp let ion o f the
t rans -island road it performed the funct ion o f p roviding
trade store goods in S iwai ; after that it could not compet e
with direct purchas es by t rade store owners in Kiet a and
faded away unt il it s eventual demis e at the en d of 19 74 .
By 1 9 70 Luke P auru had already demon s t rated most o f the
characterist ics that ult imat ely emphas ized his success in
2 08
bus ine s s . Early in the y ear he claimed t o the kiap that his
stores had an annual t urnover o f $20 , 000 ; the new kiap , F .
B . Donovan , provide d a pot ted b iography o f him in his pat rol
report :
Age 35 . Bus iness Manager to Tonu . Fluent English .
Operates the local Commonwealth Savings Bank
agen cy . He buys and re-sells coco a , has a t ractor
and two more motorcycles , all for hire . He also
has the mos t sophist icated t rade s tore in the
_ area - glass showcases , cold drinks , ice cream,
fresh b read and a loc al s tyle cafe , plus a small
p lantat ion . Travels regularly to Rabaul for stock
therefore his goods are cheaper than in Buin �
Buys b i cycles in lot s o f 5 0 f rom Rabaul .
Donovan p rovided a s imilar b rief b io graphy o f Hatah who ,
he felt , was the only other out s tandin g ent rep reneur in
S iwai and whos e bus ines s career was quite diffe rent from
that of Luke Pauru .
At the same t ime , late in 196 7 , that S iumai was b ecoming
con cerned over the lack o f ground for Rataiku cocoa planters
( p . 1 65 )
it was b ecoming more than apparent that some
men were do ing except ionally well out of co co a , not so much
b ecaus e they were the f irst planters but b e cause they were
inves t ing their incomes in various kinds of bus iness enter­
prise . Demand for lan d was goin g to grow .
It is us eful t o
examine Hat ah ' s career s ince it p rovides a short sket ch o f
the ext ent t o which economic differen t iat ion was already
po s s ible , with reference to the early career of one S iwai
bus inessman .
James Hat ah was born in Kohkui around 1 9 3 8 ; he had
about three y ears in the Musiraka village s chool
before go ing to Ka.n gu . There he was allowed to
look after the s chool s tore s ince he was not
int erested in carpent ry . After that he worked as
a store b oy for Ton Lep in Buin , who sub s equent ly
sent him t o work in his b rother ' s s t o re in Rabaul
where he st ayed for about five years at the end o f
which h e was reportedly earnin g about £40 per
month . Whilst he was there he sent money b ack to
his b rother to b egin a co coa plantat ion ; with a
kiap ' s ass is tance seven acres o f ground were
purchased for £175 [ the first recorded instan ce
o f l and sales in S iwai J . After three years , when
·
2 09
the cocoa began t o b ear , he returned to S iwai .
Around 1962 he began a small s tore at Kohkui ,
with some ass istance b o th f rom the missionary
and Luke Pauru , modelled on that o f the Methodist
Mis s ion at Tonu . There were five shareholders in
the s t o re : he and his b rother , his father , mo ther ' s
b rother and wife ' s b rother . This store made a
small p ro f it wh ich was used to develop a second
cocoa plantat ion on the far s ide of the Mob iai
river and to build a modern s t o re with metal roo f
and walls .
In 1 9 6 6 a second store and b akery
followed at Rano . Again there we re five share­
hol ders each of whom deposited $10 each . By this
t ime Hatah was us ing the name J . Arthur and writing
paper headed ' Rano Plantat ion ' which gave him a
cert ain advant age over other local s t orekeepers in
ob t aining credit and s t o ck from European and
Chin ese b us inessmen . Neverthele ss he b ecame
involved in a land disput e in Kohkui and was als o
unable t o pay h i s creditors ; his s t o res were clo sed
for a t ime and Burns Philp recove red various goo ds .
Following these t roub les he moved to Ra.no and
b ecame heavily commit ted to cocoa ; the earliest
records of his cocoa sales are from the period
March 1 9 6 5 to Oct ober 1 9 6 6 when he sold $ 1 , 415
worth of coco a ( and also $ 71 o f rice and two
b asket s at $ 4 ) .
S ince he earned at least $ 1 , 200
in the last s ix months o f 1 9 6 6 his s ales were
growing rapidly ; in eleven months from April t o
March 1 9 6 8 h e earned ano ther $ 1 , 900 f rom cocoa
sales to the s ociety . However by 1 9 6 7 he had
dis cove red that p ro f it s were greate r by selling
direct t o t raders such as Peter Chung and Roger
Port eous in Buin o r even Rab t rad in Rabaul .
Peter Chun g , especially , helped him to s tart up
his s t o res again .
In 1 9 6 7 each of these t raders
purchas ed dry beans from his fermentary and he
himsel f was buying wet b ean from areas as far
away from Rano as Unanai and Mamagot a , at a price
ld . per pound above the S iwai Society price .
It
was his own idea s ince there were no p r ivate
t raders in New Brit ain whilst he was there and he
was the first in S iwai to t ry this .
Con se quently
in 19 6 8 he again had two s tores in operat ion , was
sellin g dry bean to various t rade rs in cludin g ,
o ccas ionally , S iwai Society and he was also dealing
in basket s . Cocoa censuses at this t ime suggest
2 10
that he had about 4 , 000 t rees although the numb er
was rapidly increas in g .
S ince most o f h i s t rade
was p rivate there are no re co rds of the income
f rom thes e operat ion s , which went almost ent irely
to h im and his b rother , but it was enough t o
enab l e him t o purchase a L an d Rover in 1 9 6 9 , one
of the first p rivate vehicles in S iwai . Hiring o f
t h i s b ecame another st rand in h i s b us iness empire
which by 1 9 70 included 7 , 5 00 cocoa t rees an d ove r
a thousand coconut t rees . By then he had b e g un t o
use hired labour to look a f t e r the s to res and the
plantat ion s .
Hatah , after an early set b ack , b ecame an ext remely success ful
bus inessman , go ing on to b ecome the l argest , rurally b ased ,
S iwai ent repreneur . He was not typical o f the other early
cocoa growers ; although mo st t ried their hand at s ome kin d
of bus iness development none was really success ful . Never­
thele s s , although untypical in the sense that h e was ext remely
suc cess ful , his drive was almo st a p rototype for the develop­
ment st rategies that other S iwais sub sequently t ried , and
ind icat ed the possib ilit ies that were then open to ent re­
preneurs in the area .
Cargo
The exis tence o f cult movement s in Bougainville was
first reported as early as 1 9 1 3 when a group of leaders was
arrested by the German admin is trat ion at Lon t is in Buka .
Subsequent movements have occurred intermitten t ly in o ther
p art s o f B uka , where they have b een amply documented (Worsley ,
1 9 6 8 ) , an d to a lesser ext en t in parts o f eas t e rn and no rth­
we stern Bougainville . The phenomenon has not es caped
Nagovis i but in b oth S iwai and Buin there is s canty evidence
for cult movement s and what little eviden ce there is indicates
that cul t movement s were quite unimportant t here , especially
in comparison with other parts of Bougainville and most o ther
coast al areas of Melanesia . Why this should be s o is not
readily apparent .
In his account o f the Nas ioi o f the eas t coast o f
Bougainville , Ogan cons idered c argoism t o b e s imply a belief
system involving ' the belief that supernatural ass is t an ce is
ab s olutely necessary to achieve the material and social well­
bein g which Melanesians perceive as po ssessed by E uropeans '
( Ogan , 1 9 7 3 : 15 ) , and there fore can b e carefully dis t inguished
from p ar t icular o r ganiz ed movement s or ' cargo cults ' , whi ch
211
demanded some form of collect ive , co-operative operat ion .
In this latter cont ext the earli es t reco rded cult activity
in S iwai was in 19 61 when the two Catholic villages of Kaparo
and Hire were recorded as ' act ively part i c ipat ing ' in cargo
cults by the kiap who invest igated the p roblem ( this may not
have been the first cult movement in S iwai s ince the kiap ,
A . I . Redwoo d , referred t o the ' usual spotless cemeteries '
although this norm could have b een that o f other parts o f
Boug.ainville o r elsewhere ) ' After an inquiry , which included
a twenty-four hour wat ch on the villages , Redwood reported
that villagers were being organiz ed by a young A-grade teacher
called Tuhori f rom Kaparo village , and that the cemeteries
were spotless with all the grass and shrub s removed and
gravel b rought in and laid out . Tuhori ' s followers explained
that whit e men had hidden f r om them the road t o finding easy
money ; t ree crops were a hard way . They felt that s ilver
co ins and s t eel could be made in S iwai b ut the white men were
not showing them how this could be done . They believed that
in some way the cemeteries were the key to this wealth s ince
in Aust ralia they were always kept neat and t idy but here ,
when villagers cleaned them up and kept them t idy , the Nat ive
Affairs Officer always got ext remely angry . Moreover , on some
important days in the miss ion calen dar , such as All Soul s '
Day , the Catholic p riest usually conducted mass in the cemetery .
Tuhori was s oon sacked f rom the Monoitu primary s chool
teaching s t a f f by Fr Lebel but , although Redwood re corded
that a few months l ater the movement had died , some mani fes t ­
at ions of t h i s almost ' class ical ' cult lin gered o n in several
villages for ab out a decade . I
•
This part icular f o rm o f cult ism was only expressed in
Catholic villages including Siro i , Kot u , Matukol i and
Tokonoitu and was closely asso c iated with the Legion of Mary ,
1
In May 19 6 1 the S iwai Coun cil discussed the possib ility o f
obtaining a f ilm that would count eract the influence o f
those people in t h e dist r ict ' who think that cargo j ust
comes out o f cemet eries ' . In the end they decided not t o .
The re fe rence here t o ' dist rict ' may have only referred to
S iwai yet it is p robable that counc illors were cons idering
the in fluen ce o f the opinion s o f people f rom the nearby
Banoni and Nagovis i areas where cargo bel iefs were much
more prevalent . Despite the widespread polit ical support
fo r Paul Lapun , who was believed in many parts of Bougain­
ville to b e something of a p rophet , and who c ame from a
nearby part o f Banon i , there is relat ively litt le evidence
of S iwai cargo ist support for him .
2 12
a Catholic devot ional associat ion which aimed at st rengthen ing
the faith o f lo cal people through a comb inat ion o f good
works and regul ar p rayer mee tin gs (o ften three times a day
at it s peak of popularity ) . 2 The Legion first reached S iwai
in 1 9 5 6 b ut there was l i t t le interest un t il late in 1 9 6 2
when it was revived by a lay catechis t from Buka , Sylvester
Carley , who as part o f his t each ing made the mist ake of
recommen ding that graveyards be kep t clean . Thi s then
es calated to the ext ent that in some villages p rayers were
b e ing said and even meals cooked there ; in four or five
villages b ones were dis interred , cove red with cal i co and
used for worsh ip . The b ones from previously s cattered
burials were also centralized in the cemeteries where ' they
could be looked after properly ' . The minutes o f the Maria
Kwin b ilon g ol Apo stel (Mary Queen o f the Apo s t le s ) Praes idium
whi ch covered S iro i , Arnio and Kaparo villages ( although
they existed f or only a few months in 1 9 7 0 ) re fl ect s ome o f
the con fus ion .
In March 19 7 0 one o f the memb ers was warning
them again s t ' the custom of the people of Aitara of removing
bodies from graves in the cemetery and b ringing them b ack
to the village ' whil s t three months later they were concluding
that it was best to p ray in the church b ut it was als o goo d
t o p ray ' in o ther places ' o n come o ccas ions . The p raes idium
owned a s ecret pouch (NM-sikri t paus ) where money donat ions
were held , which was passed b etween memb ers at meet in gs s o
that t h e money coul d b e felt . The theology was con fused
and the apparent emphas is was very much on the potent ial
wrath o f S at an and the ne ces s ity fo r regular at t endance at
mas s , prayer mee t in gs and con fes s ion s . Especially during
the lat e 1960s cons iderab le pressure was p laced on those
who did not part icipate regularly in religious af fairs ;
this kind o f rel igious revival ism also exis ted in several
other S iwai villages .
On one o ccas ion , in Unanai , a villager
entered a shaking fit , claiming that he could s ee Jesus and
Mary and that cargo was on its way . This particul ar form ,
more common elsewhere , appar ent ly o c curred a s n o more than
this s ingle ep isode . Alt hough the res iden t Catholic pries t ,
Fr Lebel , cont inually railed against the foo l i shness o f
cul t act ivit ies , and in July 19 6 7 devoted two pages o f his
monthly news let t er , Catho lic Action , to a diat r. ibe against
the pract ice whilst Carley himsel f c irculated in April 1 9 7 0
a small b ooklet Tok na Pasin Kago warning that the pract ice
o f s aying ro s aries in the cemetery would not b ring cargo ,
2
The same l ink be tween cargoism and the Legion o f Mary had
als o b een earl ier present in Buk.a ( c f . Rimoldi , 1 9 71 : 1 38-9 ) .
213
these e f forts did l it tle to convince the small numb er of
p ract isin g cult ists that there were not alternative routes
to a ffluen ce , that the church was respon s ible for hiding
from them, s o that it was not tmtil the early 1 9 70s that the
Legions and the cults co llapsed more or less s imul t aneous ly .
A more obvious ly secular variant o f cargoism flourished
b rie fly around 1 9 5 9 , thus p re ceding a s imilar movement in
Nas io i ( Ogan , 19 7 3) , when Ariku , a Tonu leader , declared that
Bougainville should no lon ger be admin istered by Aus t ralia
but that the English should g ive Bougainville aid . At the same
t ime he set up a ' cultural centre ' - a small men ' s clubhouse
( S-kaposo ) which incorporated a ' bank ' and various t radit ional
arte fact s , such as coconut implements and so on . This early
indicat ion o f inc ip ien t or ' proto-nat ionalism ' (Valent ine ,
1 96 3 : 3 9 -4 0 ) was not however sub sequently reflected in
opposit ion t o the Local Government Cotm cils as it was in parts
o f Nas io i .
A further element that might have b een construed a s a
cult. movement in S iwai was a b rie f at t empt by a n ineteen year
old Mus imino i man to estab l i sh a Baby Garden , following what
he had heard o r pos s ib ly ob served o f the Hahalis Wel fare
Society in Buka . In 1964 he reques ted land to establish
such a place but was turned down by his mother ' s b ro ther and
the cotlll c illor for Ruisei . The kiap interviewed him and a
group o f villagers at Mus imino i and reported that none was
int erested in the idea . According to the kiap ' they were no t
at all inclin ed the s ame way at the Kunnu debauchers ' (who se
debauchery is left tmrecorded) and s ome men swung axes and
kn ives in the air at the originato r of the idea . The kiap
duly reported , ' The S iwais are a happy contented people and
although they are not Purit an s they are by no means a
morally loo s e people ' . Everything in this b rief attempt ,
the only one o f it s kind recorded in S iwai , is indicat ive o f
a s ingle young man ' s move t o int roduce sexual licence rather
than a cult movement . Unlike the Buka experience a sexual
element was never a component o f cult movement s in s outh
Bougainville .
Followin g his experien ces in the Kaparo cult and as a
teacher at Monoitu , Tuhori b ecame the secretary (NM-kus kus )
o f a set o f s tores that was bein g established by Tubana , a
middle-aged man from Kotu who was also a Cathol i c catechist .
( Catechis ts were appo inted in each o f the Catholic villages
to carry out the work of organiz ing and teachin g the village
people , especially by carrying out church prayer services
2 14
and act in g as a l ink between p riest and p eople .
Carley was
al so involved in t raining catechists and even in 1 9 70 in a
pamphlet OZ Kateket ( Catechis t s ) he was comparin g the Legion
o f Mary t o an army in wh ich the catechis t s were the captains
and the priest was the general . This was nat urally an image
that appealed to memories of the ef fect ive wart ime o rgan i z at ion
o f the Japanese army in S iwai . Tuhori himsel f , although no
longer a teacher , was s t ill the Pre s ident of the Kaparo
P rae s idium of the Le gion of Mary and Vice-Pres ident of the
Legion for the whole S iwai area . The o rganizat ion o f this
part icular bus iness ven ture was t o some people , S iwais an d
kiaps al i.ke , indis t in guishable from the cult act ivit ies that
preceded it and the s t o res that Tubana and Tuhori o rganized
became the focus of another adminis t rat ion inquiry b ecause
o f a complaint about s uspected cult activit ies made by the
S iwai council p res ident in May 1 9 6 7 . The investigat in g kiap ,
R . E . Dargie , reco rded in a patrol repo rt :
The act ivit i es are suspec ted to invo lve worship o f
ancest o rs in ceme teries so that cargo may appear .
It s eems that the whole village may b e involved
so no de f inite proof is available . A man named
Paul Tupana is s uspe c t ed of havin g some connect ion
with th ese act ivit ies .
Paul Tupana has estab lished
a ' company ' called Paul and Company , Kotu , which is
believed to have f inan cial as sets to the value o f
$1200 . Th is money has b een collected from people
in s even villages surroundin g Kot u , p lus village
people in the Arawa area of the Kieta s ub -dis t rict .
The p at rol o f ficer examined Paul Tupana ' s register
o f shareholders and found that s ome men have investe d
a s much as $20 in t h e company . H e aims t o establish
a chain o f t rade s t o res throughout the S iwai and
purchase a t ract o r .
Lat e r that year Dargie revis ited Kotu and made no reference
to any cult-elements in Tubana ' s o rgan izat ion , comment ing
only that the organiz at ion was chaot i c s ince he and his
a s s is t an t s were not very li terate and that dividends of
' shares ' wer e paid out in the form of t rade store goods .
Darg ie did however pursue his concern over cargoism elsewhe re
in S iwai , noting that ' beliefs in the oc cult remain in
certain co 1mmm i ti es , i . e . Kot u , Tohu , Ru ' nai , Kaparo and S ir o i
villages ' , a l l o f whi ch were Catholic villages , but that
ove rall ' they had not really got to cargo cult thinking yet ' .
Towards the end o f 1 9 70 another kiap recorded that ' cargo
cul t s are not a goin g concern ' , while Tomlin could not
2 15
' detect any vest ige o f cult ish belie f ' in S iwai and the
annual reports for the sub -district and for Bougainville had
never exp ressed concern over cultism in s outh Bougainville
in the same way that they wor ried over s uch p roblems elsewh ere .
The o rganizat ion o f s tores that Tuhori b egan las ted for
at least four years between 1 9 6 3 and 19 6 7 . The f inance to
st art the company was obt a ined from copra selling , es sent ially
by the villages of Kot u and Ru ' nai , but als o by other villages
as far away as Kaparo and S i ro i . All the copra was s old
from the b each at Ait ara .
In its earliest years it was known
s ign ificantly as ' Advance Government Solomons Society ' and ,
in this per iod , it was des cribed by i t s secret ary as being
j ust l ike a Development Bank , with returned plantat ion
labourers t rying to follow white men .
In 1965 it b ecame
known as ' Paul and Company ' . The Catholic miss ion direct ly
encouraged the establishment o f stores , b elieving that this
would fos t er a meas ure of economic independence . The main
store was at Kap aro , where Tubana had rights in land ; this
last ed for ab out three y ears and at various t imes there were
b ranches (NM-han ) in Unanai , Laku , Kot u , Siroi , S iuruhino ,
( Some o f
Lakempa , Hire , Ru ' nai and more b riefly el sewhere .
these , like that a t Laku , s t ill existed in 19 7 5 . ) There
was also a b ranch s t o re on the eas t coast at Arawa , which
was then s imply a Nas io i village near th e Catholic miss ion
at Tunuru . The mis s ion as s isted in ob taining store goods ,
from Wong You ' s t rade store in Buka and s omet imes from Rabaul ;
the mi ss ion ship ' St Joseph ' sometimes delivered these to
the coast at Managota and at other t imes they were b rought
from Kangu on the Buin coas t . The variety o f goods that
were obt ained , including mat t resses and blankets , made the
main s t o re ' j ust like a Chin ese store ' in variety an d
quan t it y and there fore somewhat larger than other S iwai
store s .
Like almost every b us ine s s that went b efore or afterwards
large numbers of people , certainly over 2 00 , purchased shares
in the company at £5 each , o ften us ing the p ro ceeds of their
earl ier sales of rice and p eanut s . There were certainly
over a hundred shareholders from a l arge number of S iwai
villages , including villages , s uch as in Rataiku , that did
not have a s t o re . Tub ana was unable to keep proper account s
o f the company ' s op erat ion s and when a secretary was employed
who had had s ome experience of st ore work and h ad attended
Co -operat ive Colle ge , it was t oo late to restore solvency .
Goods had gone to different b ranches without ac count in g and ,
l ike many other owners , Tub ana had given away various goo ds
216
freely .
Fo r example , the s tore a t S iroi was run by Ham , a
relat ive o f Tubana ' s ; at first he received no p ay for looking
after the store b ut on complain ing was given a lump sum of
$ 30 . All the pro fits o f the store went to Tubana and the
st ore was reasonably well pat ron iz e d although as Ham ob served ,
' there was no money in this v il l age ' . Other s tores operat e d
in much the same way . Th ere was a l s o a b akery at Kot u an d
copra driers were in operat ion at Kaparo , Hire and Kot u ;
these ma y well have p rovided s ome pro f i t f o r the company t o
b alance against the st ore de ficit s .
In t h e end , in the same
way that o ther S iwai bus inesses s imilarly fo1.lll d ered around
this t ime , the deb t s became so great that no more goods could
be obt ain ed and , in th is cas e , Tub ana was b rought to court
in Rab aul . The Catholic mi ss ion o rgan i z ed a de fence lawyer
for h im an d he managed to avo id gaol . Again , fairly typi c ally ,
most people could not b elieve that their money had disappeared
in this manne r and various s tore managers and secretar ies were
blamed for having ' eaten the money ' . Tuhori and o thers
at tempted to collect the deb t s , by then b etween $ 1000 and
$ 2 000 , from the d i fferent b ran ches b ut it proved to b e
impo ss ible . Tubana managed to organ ize s ome o f tho s e involved
into smoking co p ra at Mama gota , which reduced s ome o f the
deb t , although it was never completely cleare d . The problems
o f organiz at ion and admin i s t rat ion , without knowledge o f
account ing procedure s , had once again t riumphed over S iwai
att empts to increas e their degree o f part icipation in the
cash economy .
Paul and Company is unique for two separat e reason s .
First ly , although it shared almo s t al l the o rganiz at ional
characterist ics and the same eventual reas ons for failure as
contempo raneous S iwai s tores , it was much larger than anythin g
that had gone b efore . Hitherto s t o res had not b een j ointly
operated in this way ; nor were they generally so well and
widely s upported .
Secondly , there was a ritual element in
the management o f the stores . Tuhori encouraged people to
carry out t radit ional wealth magic ( S -sinapo ) , which is
' directly and exclus ively concern ed with accumulat in g capital '
( Ol iver , 1 9 5 5 : 35 6 ) , for the success o f the s t o re and the
eventual format ion of wealth ( S-manunu) . Wealth magic
involved t radit ional r i t ual pract ices (whi ch somet imes
involved s t o ring the f in gernails or hair o f the dead in a
box) which are st ill used in some parts o f S iwai . At the
t ime , TubCl.Ila and Tuho ri , and at least s ome o f thei r supporters ,
b el i eved that this alone was sufficient t o ensure success
and that money would eventually b e heard arriving in the box.
The failure of the pract ice was then att rib uted to the fact
217
that the correct f o rm of invo cat ion was n o longer well known ,
especially s ince each mat rilineage segment had its own
particular rite , and may therefore have b een carried out
incorrectly . Now s inapo is believed by them to be merely o f
some p o s s ible assis tance in these kinds o f bus ines s act ivity
and no t to be the only important factor ; thus a de cade after
the eventual failure o f P aul and Company the ritual element
was st ill emphas ized as at least a part ial exp lanat ion for
that failure . At the same t ime that some Siwais were incor­
porat ing ritual act ivit i. es into bus iness act ivity , shareholders
in the Arawa b ranch o f the store were engaged in cult
act ivit ies ; indeed Tuhori sub s equently disparaged their
heaping b ones into b oxes in their at tempts to ensure the
success of the store . By con t rast a sin gle b ran ch o f the
store was established at Ohai , near Ruisei , and the Methodists
who op erated that b ranch took no part in any o f the ritual
act ivities . The role and extent of r itual in bus ines s
activity was therefore quite variable and may have played a
role in other s imilar S iwai ventures . 3
3
Around the s ame t ime in a number o f Catholic S iwai villages ,
including Siroi and Kaparo , but . prob ably not in United . Church ·
villages , individual matrilineages organ iz ed what was known
as a Family Bank . All the memb ers of a mat rilineage would
contribut e money to the bank and o ther money was obt ained
by forming themselves into work group s for various kinds
of act ivity ( fo r example cl earing land for coco a plantat ions ) .
The money that was raised in these ways was o ften used to
estab lish t rade stores , or set up other kinds o f bus iness
act ivity , for the b enefit o f the memb ers . Again there was
a ritual element involved s ince each mat rilineage had
spirits ( S-mara) at tached to it and o ccasionally these had
to be placated in particular ways . Mo reover although the
Family Banks were essent ially a mode rn con cep t , they were
generally equated with the tradit ional nunoku , the hoard
of usually high value shell money ( S-tonui ) which was main­
tained by almo st every mat rilineage group . This was
tradit ionally organ ized by the mat rilineage leader ( S-mumi )
o r the f irst born ( S -simiri ) o f the lineage ( c f . Oliver ,
1 9 5 5 : 111 , 345 ) who would accumulate shell money from ,
amon gst other things , pig sales , and this could b e used in
various ways such as waging f ight s and o rgan iz ing feasts ,
Indeed
for the benefit o f memb ers o f the matrilineage .
contemporary theory also held that the money in the family
b ank could be used for the modern requirements of matrilineage
members such as payment o f s chool o r hospital fees . The
wel fare funct ions of the family b ank , or nunoku , had s carcely
changed .
218
In cont rast to a numb er o f o ther socie t ies in Melanesia
an d , in part icular , those o f the Madang coast area , tradit ional
S iwai b el ief systems demon s t rated the ' relat ive unimpor t an ce
o f religion as an exhaus t ive , ove rarching cosmolo gical syst em '
(Worsley , 1 9 6 8 : 300) ; more immediate en t it ies , such as earth­
spirits ( S -mara) are the connnon man i festations of the o ther
wo rld whils t ' each mat rilineage may b e said to have a common
and mo re o r less sys temat ic body o f bel i efs and p rac t ices '
( Ol iver , 1 9 5 5 : 44 4 ) . Knowl edge o f this b elief and ritual
system is o ften quite l imi ted . Mo reover the S iwai do not
' practice many daily , monthly , o r annually repetit ious ritual
acts by which they coul d reas sure thems elves that they , having
done their part s , might reasonab ly expect the sup ernatural t o
to d o t h e rest . They po s s ess coun t less magical devices f o r
e f fe ct ing de s ired ends . . . b ut i t was o u r ob servat ion that
many of even th ese are performed with an air of s ome
s cep t i c ism, wh ich is p rob ab l y not ent irely at t r ibut able to
the inroads of Christ ianity alone ' (Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 44 4 ) . The
ab sence o f an act ive sup erio r being ( quite unlike the Madan g
coas t ) coupled with the ab sen ce o f a ' l it erally memorized
sys tem o f re li gious myths
and
an ins t i t ut ion alized
t ribal p ries thood ' ( Ol iver , 1 9 5 5 : 444 ) enab led S iwai rel igious
bel iefs and prac t ices to chan ge con t inually .
Thus it was
po ssible for the dif feren t o rganizat ional and ritual s t ruct ure s
o f C atho l ic ism and Methodism to invoke very dif ferent forms
o f respon s e ; the greater emphas is that Catholicism placed
on ritual and on th e role o f Mary ( in part icular through the
Legion of Mary) were amongst the specific dif fe rences that
enabled such a diversity of response .
.
.
•
•
.
.
Other factors emphas ised S iwai ep istemolo gy . None o f
tho se who we re iden t if ied with cult movement s in S iwai was a
charismat i c leader , hence the leadersh ip that was provided
was never trans formed int o authority . No r were many
prophet ic as surances o ffered . Those who were leaders at this
t ime were either , l ike Tom S ipana the Council p res ident ,
st ron gly opposed to any indicat ion o f cult movemen t s , or were
amb ivalent or closely as sociated with other act ivities l ike
the S iwai Socie ty . Thus the audience that were respon s ive
to Paul and Company n ever became a following , and hence never
became a movement and an o rganiz �t ion , in the manner that
cults had grown elsewhere (Wors ley , 1 9 6 8 : 312 ) .
Both the
Soc iety and even the Cotm cil ( cf . Connell , 1 9 7 7d ) were rather
closer t o this s cheme o f development . The cult leaders
o f fered l it tle challenge t o t radit ional l eaders and the social
orde r was not disrupted . By con t rast to areas o f more
int ense cargo ism S iwai had relat ively slight contact with
219
Europeans , although during t h e war that contact was undeniab ly
t raumat ic , hence any sus tained comparisons between European
material and s ocial wellbeing and their own were e f fect ively
dulled . Moreover there was no sense o f relat ive dep rivation
compared with other Bougainvilleans who were never seen as
being in a superior s ituat ion . Otherwise at leas t one o f
the times when s ustained e f forts a t b us ines s development
failed might be expected to have been the precipitat ing
' cris is o f development ' in the same way that Rimoldi ( 1 9 71 :
311) observed the emergen ce o f the Hahalis Wel fare Society
of Buka in response to divergen ces of opinion over the worth
o f European developmental ins t itut ion s . This was not the
case , thus emphas i z ing that the resort to cul t s was far from
s imply an economic phenomenon ; on no o ccas ion was cul t ism
isolated f rom other endeavours .
Although the condit ions in S iwai that promoted the
des ire for European goods were s imilar to those elsewhere in
Melanes ia , the means adopted were different .
For those means
to b ecome a deeply ingrained c argo movement it was neces sary
to have a highly intellectualized tradit ional religion , the
assump tion s and beliefs of which could explain the origin o f
cargo .
Chri s t ian ity could be int e rp reted in the s ame way s o
that a series o f permutat ion s might b e worked out by taking
and comb in ing di fferent st rands of t radition al religion and
Christ ian it y
(Lawrence , pers . comm. 1 9 7 8) . This i s what
o ccurred around Madang , and in other coastal areas o f New
Guinea , but was so conspi cuous ly absent from S iwai .
S iwai
epistemolo gy di d not take this form; Christ ianity was rarely
interpret ed in the same way and cultism was trivial and
unimportant .
At the t ime that Paul and Company existed Oliver ' s
account o f pre-war pract i ces o f capital accumulation remained
in essence true :
The S iuai recognize perfectly clearly that prosperity
depends mainly on hard-work and intelligent enter­
prise , b ut they also seek supernatural aid in
I was never able to ob tain an
accumulat ing wealth .
expl icit s tatement about the relat ive importance to
prosperity of industry and wealth-magic , b ut fo rmed
the very firm imp ress ion that these hard-headed
rat ional is ts look upon the magical c omponent in
wealth accumulat ion as supplementary insurance
(Oliver 1 9 5 5 : 356 ) .
220
Throughout S iwai in a period o f ove r a decade , s ome
degree o f act ive p articip at ion in cargo cult act ivit ies
occurred in p robably no more than about a doz en villages b ut
in a variety o f forms .
Even there not all villagers took
In Methodist villages , a third o f all the villages in
part .
S iwai , there was almost no indicat ion o f cult ism, although
one Panake man had built a house in the shape o f an aeroplane .
Throughout the p eriod when cul t ism o c curred , mainly in the
early 1960s , co in ciding as it did with a lengthy p eriod when ,
as Tuhori ' s followers had pointed o ut , cash c roppin g s eemed
to b e _ p ro ducing little ret urn for the time and e f fo rt involved
there was n evertheles s a cont inued and much great er interest
in the ext en s ion o f cash cropping . Al though t radit ional
wealth mag ic was p ract iced in conj \lll c t ion with one group o f
stores , there i s no evidence that i t was in an y general use ,
whilst garden magic ( S -maki ) was not a component o f the
comm\lll al rice fields of the earl ier post-war years . Despite
constant unexpected failures S iwai commercial activit ies
were generally p ract ised without recour s e to rit ual as sistance ;
in this respect S iwai p ract ice was relatively unusual within
Bouga inville , s ince in mos t areas cargo ism was much more
pervasive , but was much mor e akin to that of east New Britain
in it s n egat ive respon se t o cult s . Despite the longevity o f
Tub ana ' s exper iment i t s eems t o have b een , in the end , little
more than a rather dif ferent form o f diversific at ion ; like
so many other attemp t s it too was unsuc cess ful .
Bus iness divers if icat ion
In the 1950s organiz at ion and management o f t rade s t o res
p roved t o be except ionally difficult ; without the war dama ge
payments few would have existed and none coul d have survived
for s everal y ears . The range o f dif ficulties generally
prevented o ut s ide intere s t in busines s development within
S iwai ; within S iwai too the small numb er of s t o res meant
that there was relat ively little competit ion . Durin g the
1960s familiarity with b us iness pract ices increased , the
re turns to co coa cult ivat ion int roduced a measure o f
affluence int o S iwai , compet it ion ensued , essen t ial ly within
S iwai b ut t o s ome extent from b eyond , and bus iness enterp rises
began t o expand and divers ify .
As early as 1955 the Administrat ion had established the
Nat ive Loans Board , which was a forer\llln er to the Development
Bank .
It was intended to make loans for rural development ,
as well as commerc ial and indust rial p urposes , and mos t loan s
were in conj unct ion with rural settlement s chemes ( Crellin ,
221
S iwai was too far away on the p eriphery for
1 9 72 : 5 0 7-8) ,
this scheme to have had much influence there . There is only
one record of a S iwai , Tumam of Usokoli village , applyin g
f o r a loan ; in Octob e r 1 9 6 6 , when Tumam app lied , h e had 1 300
cocoa t rees and , with the Buin Ass istant Dis t rict Connni ssioner ' s
encouragement , he was applying for a loan to enab le him t o
extend h i s plantat ion . N o record was kept o f whether Tumam ' s
applicat ion was success ful ; it is probab le that i t was not
and that he , l ike all other S iwais , had to develop his
bus iness venture with h i s own or his kin ' s capital and
lab our .
The newly formed S iwai Lo cal Government Council b egan
to take an int erest in agricultural development and , sub s e­
quently , in the organizat ion o f b us iness and market ing in
S iwai .
Thus in July 19 6 1 the S iwai Counc il dis cussed the
manufacture of baskets ; the As s istant District Of ficer had
p o inted o ut to them that many orders were coming in for
baskets but there was insuf ficient supply . The council
decided to establish a b asket commit tee who would travel
between vil lages encouraging b asket manufact ure and collect ing
b askets f rom producers .
( rhe committee prob ab ly never
existed but the de cis ion enab led the council to satis fy the
ADO . ) A year later the Society de cide d that all basket s
should be s o ld to the S iwai Society , rather than to the
Methodist Mis s ion store at Tonu which paid a s light ly higher
p rice or to those Europeans who wished to buy them.
Although one counc illor complained o f the nece s s ity for
ind ividual f reedom it was generally agreed that without their
s.ales of b asket s , and als o rice , the Society might eas ily
die . Despite coun c il res olut ions the same problem recurred
repeatedly .
Basket manufacture , albeit on a small scale ,
had always proved to b e a success in S iwai so it was s carcely
surpris ing that compe t it ion for b asket market ing opport un it ies
developed early .
The co uncillors themselves s ugges ted some pos sibilit ies
for new kinds of agricult ural development within S iwai and
o ccas ionally b eyond . At some t ime in 1964 the Council had
sent a mot ion to Bougainville district leaders asking i f
the administ rat ion would s e t up a sugar factory on the island .
However , later that year when the S iwai Council itsel f
discus s ed i t they eventually dec ided that i t would be too
much work ; cocoa would b e enough .
(How the idea ori ginated
is not clear ; it may have come f rom a few Catholic S iwais
who had gone to Fij i for religious t raining . ) The Council
itsel f never became involved in b us iness development in the
222
same way that many councils els ewhere in New Guinea did ;
indeed in 1 9 6 8 when the council decided to e s t ab lish a
co coa plantat ion o f its own to generate finance this was
only at the inst igat ion of the European adviser . Moreover
the council n ever even found a s ite for such a plantat ion .
(Almost the only bus iness in come that the. Coun cil ever
received was from the hire o f the council t ract o r . ) Bus ines s
was always eith er an individual or a S iwai S o ciety act ivity .
In the mid-1960s when it b ecame apparen t that p ro fits
could b e made from S iwai co coa Buin t raders , who had h itherto
purchased only the small quantit ies of dry bean that had
been b rought t o them by the early bus ines smen , attempted t o
gain a st ronger foothold in S iwai t o purchase wet and dry
bean there . The in fant co coa fermen t in g bus iness managed
to gain s ome nominal protection when the Council resolved in
1 9 6 6 that ' no Ch inaman or anyone else could come into S iwai
to start s uch a bus iness or else it would ruin the work o f
the Society ' . A number o f lat e r e f fo rts were made by Chines e
traders t o part i c ipat e in the S iwai economy , the las t o f
these applicat ions prob ably b eing that o f Len Seeto in
Novemb er 19 72 , but the Coun c il t urned h im down , arguin g that
he already had much money and that he understood b us iness
ext remely well so that lo cal people would not b e able to
compete (NM-wokim resis ) with h im ins ide S iwai . T omlin
explained this at t itude :
Being bus ines s minded and frugal they would p refer
that they operat e all retail bus iness thems elves
and do not want comp etit ion from out s ide rs . They
would pre fer to make do with small s t o res and put
up with shaky managemen t and inflated p rices in
the int er im period b efore development o f large
locally-owned stores , than have s t i f f compet it ion
come in to retard development o f their own enter­
p ris e . This att itude is a general one and extends
to all spheres o f b us iness activity and land .
Thus no land is made availab le to out s iders , other
than the Mis s ions , and when in one instance it was
proposed to sub divide the Agricultural Cen t re at
Konga and zone some blocks for bus iness purposes ,
very vocal obj ect ion was made .
They stated that
the reason for its ori ginal releas e was only to
allow the didiman space to estab lish h imself
b ec ause he was an integral part of their development
need s .
The s ame is said o f the land used for
educat ion p urposes (Tomlin , 1 9 69 : 1) .
223
Only Jus t in Seeto o f the Chinese t raders ever did
manage to t rade directly within S iwai and then only fo r a
month or so in 19 6 9 although all the t raders in Buin con t inued
to deal with S iwai b uyers and sellers . By the t ime that Len
Seeto was b eing t urned away there were already a cons iderab le
number o f S iwai co coa t raders , although few o f them were
then capable of compet ing with h im.
An impo rtant phase in S iwai b us iness development b egan
in 19 6 7 when Hat ah started purchas ing wet bean in different
part s of S iwai to dry in his own fermentary ; he was the
It was
f irst of the private co coa dealers ( S , NM-praive t ) .
an innovat ion which refl ected the p rob lems that the Society
o c cas ionally had in payment ( s ince as late as 1969· co co a
growers had t o wait several weeks for the S o ciety payment t o
come from Rab aul before they could be paid) , the dis t in ction
that the S o c iety had j ust made b etween So ciety memb ers and
non-members (who rece ived l �c . per pound les s ) and , mo s t
important o f al l , the ab ility o f individual S iwais t o
organ iz e and develop their own co coa purchas ing , dryin g and
market ing organiz at ion .
It also re flected the fact that
there was now s ufficient cocoa p roduced in S iwai and prices
were high enough for individuals to dry their own cocoa to
accept ab le standards and . sell it beyond the S iwai Society .
By June 19 6 7 the Soc iety di re ct o rs were concerned at this
developmen t , ' O l man nau ol i wok long sa lim nabaut ol drai
aoaoa ' (Men are now selling dry bean c o co a all over the
place) ' , and at tempted to inc reas e the purchase price o f
dry b ean .
In 19 70 there were perhap s only four important
S iwai cocoa dealers : Hatah , Pauru , Kepaama and Joseph Honna
( o f Hiru Hiru village) . Al l o f them had p as s ed through the
two preliminary stages o f s elling wet cocoa beans to the
Society , l ater fermen t in g their own wet bean ( invariab ly
supplemented by local purchases ) and sellin g dry b ean to the
Society , t ransport ing it to Buin port and tradin g directly
with Rab aul .
If these were the four largest private
dealers they were not the only ones and a n umb e r o f other
S iwais occas ionally fo llowed s uit , all bypas s ing the S iwai
Society , b ut mo st s ellin g to larger Chinese and European
t raders in Buin .
Cocoa p ri ce s had reached their highest
po s t -war levels whils t the complet ion o f several bridges
between Buin and Konga coupled with the emergence o f vehicle
ownersh ip within S iwai ( and , to a greater ext ent , in Buin)
meant that t ransport cost s had als o fallen . A number o f
f erment ary owners could make prof i t s f rom occas ional t rips
to Buin .
2 24
Although the Mono itu Catholic miss ion had a car around
1 95 6 , a l ack o f roads preven t ed its use f o r anything other
than o ccas ional t rips to collect cargo from Mamagota , whilst
the S o c iety t ractors of the 1 9 60s rarely ven t ured far b eyond
S iwai and then never for anything other than So ciety bus iness .
It was not there fore unt il _somet ime in 1 9 6 9 that Joseph Honna
int roduced the first Toyo t a landcruis er into S iwai ; Pauru ,
Hatah and Jos eph Lue , the Member o f the House o f As sembly ,
soon followed suit and one� again there was a further b as i s
fo r diversif icat ion within the S iwai rural economy . By mid19 71 , _ a y ear be fore the t ran s-island road had b een completed ,
there were about a doz en ut ilit ies in S iwai . Almos t all the
owners were thos e who early on had b ecome involved in p r ivate
cocoa deal ing although , s eemingly inevitably , few vehicles
were individually owned . On ce again each vehicle had its
part icular set o f shareholders although , as with the stores ,
few b ecame involved in the op erat ion and management o f the
vehicle .
In 1 9 69 some concern was expressed in the S iwai Counc i l
o n the emergence o f p rivate cocoa purchasers within S iwai
which , l ike the privat e sales o f b as kets and even rice
beforehan d , was caus in g s ome lo cal discon t ent . For the first
t ime , however , this was a development ent ir ely indigenous
to S iwai so that the ab ility of councillors and o thers to
obj ect to this compet it ion with the Society was s ub s tant ially
impaire d .
Although the Coun cil s ub s equently discus sed these
chan ges on other o ccas ions and were inevitab ly con cerned ab out
them they appear never to have passed any mot ion oppos in g
them. Too many counc illo rs had a part icular int erest in
co coa t radin g . A year later the p rob lem was raised again
in a S iwai Society meeting when one of the dire ct ors complained
that they thought the Co -operat ive Officer was h iding s omethin g
from them s ince the Society were buy ing wet b ean at 5 cent s
a pound whereas ' bus inessmen ' were b uy in g at 6 cent s . They
att empted to set up a mee t ing with Hatah , Pauru , Ke.p oama ,
Honna and als o To riou (Ha is i) , who were then the mos t
prominent S iwai bus inessmen . There may have b een a mee t in g ;
i f there was it did not s olve the p roblem and the European
co -operat ive o fficer sub s equently reported that b ecause o f
this , ' en thus iasm in the Soc iety is at a low l evel ' . However
the Coun c il eventually decided that privat e dealers mus t
have o f fi c ial l icences and in 1 9 71 Hatah , Kepoama and James
Iroro (Ma isua) were the first to o fficially apply for and
receive pedlar ' s licences from the S iwai Council .
225
A month later the familiar cry was raised in the Council
that the Society would die if more licences were granted .
It was then decided that all cocoa ferment ary owners would
have to regis ter their driers ( at $ 2 each) and that ferment ary
owners could not purchas e co coa from other individuals
unless they also had a t rade store licence (which co st $ 6 ) ;
moreover if they travelled abo ut to purchase co coa they then
had t o obt ain a pedlar ' s licence ( at $ 30 ) . There were st rong
obj ect ions to this within the council and although many
people did register their fermentaries , few obt ained trade
store and pedl ar ' s licences and the whole s cheme proved
almost comp letely inoperab le . Only the few who were int e r­
ested in maint ainin g the Council ' s revenue and ensuring that
the Society did not collapse were int eres ted in legislat ion
of this kind whi ch mos t individual S iwais saw as opposed t o
their own inte res t s . F o r th e first t ime i t b ecame apparent
that the collect ive int erest and respons ib lity that had
fostered and maint ained S iwai So ciety was ins uffic ient to
withstand the aff luence that had followed the rise in cocoa
prices and the desire o f individuals with in S iwai , both
co coa buyers and sellers , to b ene f it from the emergence o f
a success ful cash crop in whatever way they chose . As had
happened with rice p roduct ion before , collective organ izat ion
gave way t o individual ism.
Despite the emergence o f the private dealers and their
suc cess in undercut t in g the S ociety ' s p rices it appeared
that few of them were making s ubstant ial p rofits from the
operat ion b ecause of the p roblems of cocoa quality and
t ransport . The 1969 -70 Annual Report for the sub -dist rict
even obs erved that ' They cannot comp ete with the societ ies ,
all o f which are ins talling modern equipment with the
intent ion of p roducing a standard export qual ity cocoa and
most of them can be expected to cease op erat ing eventually ' .
Th is was not an unreason ab le con clus ion and indeed it was
rep eated word for word in the following year ' s report , y et
it proved to be quite unt rue s ince at the end o f 19 7 2 the
complet ion of the trans -island road f rom Buin to Kieta and
the s imult aneous rise in co coa prices resulted in the
b alance of advantages swinging dramat ically to the private
producers . 4
(A couple o f years later it was not th e future
4
Even early in 19 72 it was clear that s ome t raders were
marketin g such large quan t it ies that they must have made
large p ro f it s ; in the re co r ds of shipments for the four
months January t o April , 19 72 ( the only period for which
records are availab le) , Ronna , Pauru , Kepoama and Toriou
226
o f the p r ivate bus inessmen but t h e future o f the s o c ieties
that was beginnin g t o cause concern . )
By the end o f the 1960s , although the rap id exp an s ion
o f cocoa growing was un iversally welcomed by the adminis­
t rat ion , concern was b e ing _expressed in patrol reports an d
repeated a t sub -dist rict and dist rict level , that there was
a labour shortage in some areas , especially in s outh
Bougainville , that would soon s low the plan t in g rates . The
emergen ce of the Panguna mine workings as a s ource o f
employment was held t o b e mainly respon s ib le for this prob lem .
The dist rict Annual Report for 1969 -70 noted however that
the ' mo re enterp ris in g Buka farmers ' were employing casual
lab our f rom the New Guinea mainland o r f rom the poorest parts
of Bouga inville , To rokina and Keri aka . In this cont ext the
cocoa growers of S iwai , who had not b een dignified as
' farmers ' by the admin i s t rat ion , we re no longer so ' enter­
pris ing ' ; their s ources of labour were almo s t ent irely lo cal
and casual , working more in a tradit ional context o f
co-operat ion than as wage lab ourers . Mo re o r l es s s t an dard
wage rates then existed for casual lab our throughout south
Bougainville . In January 1 9 6 9 and for at leas t a year after­
wards the standard wage on a locally owned plantat ion was
sometimes $ 1 per day (which could be compared with the wage
of $ 1 . 40 per d ay then availab le to cas ual l ab ourers buildin g
the Konga-Boku road , through S iwai , f o r the administ rat ion )
although lat e in 196 9 rat es o f 70 cents p e r day were b e in g
paid in Musimino i and Ieku , and in t h e followin g year were
st ill 7 0 cents in Mamagota . Apart from about a do z en
employees of the S iwai Society , who were semi-permanent , an d
a number o f more temporary employees o f bus inessmen l ike
Hat t a , there were no permanent wage lab ourers within S iwai .
It was economically more at t ract ive to work elsewhere .
For at least s ome S iwais the ext ernal c l imate had
chan ged sub s t ant ially ; many were workin g in well paid j obs
in the various explorat ion and estab l ishment phases o f
Bougainv ille�per Limited . Others were employed in skilled
4 ( con t inue d )
shipped 219 sacks of co coa through the port o f Kangu . The
value o f this co coa at the prevailing prices was prob ab l y
around $ 1 700 hence , a fter t ran s po rt and purchas e cost s ,
Ronna and Pauru , who sold three-quarters of this cocoa an d
also had their own t ransport , must have received a reas onab le
income f o r th�s t ime o f the y ear . The impact o f the trans­
island road will be examined in a later pub licat ion .
227
and semi-skilled j ob s elsewhere whils t Joseph Lue from Amio
village , the Memb er of the House o f As sembly fo r the
Bougainville Regional electorate , had b een on a t rip to
Washington for consultat ion s with the World Bank . A handful
o f others had visited Aus t ralia for military t rain ing o r
edu cat ion . From each o f them in different ways skills ,
in format ion and cap it al were f iltering back into the villages ,
enabl ing b us iness act ivit ies especially to more readily adapt
to and ado p t new t e chniques of organiz at ion and management
which eventually enab led a more secure lon g term fut ure .
By the end o f the decade , followin g the success of Luke
Pauru , a number o f individuals o r groups had managed to
obt ain loans from the Papua New Guinea Development Bank ,
mainly for the purchas e of vehicles or the estab lishment o f
cat t le p roj ect s .
Several o f them were ab le to maintain their
repayment s sat is facto rily , o f t en complet ing them well within
the allo t t ed t ime , hence S iwai ent repreneurs , despite the
early evidence , were beginn ing to prove themselves to be
good ' risks ' for the Development Bank ' s capital , especially
by con t rast with tho se in some o ther part s of Papua New
Guinea .
It is naturally difficult to e s t imat e how much cash was
actually circulat ing in S iwai in the post-war years ; much o f
the evidenc e suggest s that the earnings from migrant lab our
and from c ash c rops can not have b een great tmtil the late
1 9 60s when the copper mine and cocoa p rovided sub s t ant ial
incomes . However saving , by s t oring cash or by convertin g
cash into shell money , was always a p art o f S iwai l ife even
for those who had few cash earning opporttmit ies . There are
few hints o f this in the S iwai pat rol report s . However there
is some ind icat ion o f what these cash reserves might have
been s ince in the fairly remote Buin village of Lob igou ,
cons idered in 1964 to b e one o f the poorer villages o f south
Bougainville , seven hous es were s imultaneous ly des t royed by
fire and the kiap recorded the wealth that had b een des troye d .
S in ce there was no compens at ion he believed that the claims
were probably accurat e .
Six owners claimed that they had
lo st between them a total o f £ 14 4 and als o £16 . lOs . worth o f
shell money ( P R Buin 5 / 64 -65 ) . The kiap also carried out an
inventory o f ' modern ' goods in all the twenty-three villages
o f western Buin , findin g , amongs t other thin gs , 149 b icycles ,
16 radios , 3 cameras , 3 record players and 8 sewin g machin es .
At a t ime when cash crops had s car cely b rought las t ing
benefits in south Bougainville these sums attested b oth to
the local p ropens ity to s ave and t o the p o s s ib ility o f
228
accumulat in g some money even in the early 1960s .
It i s
probab le that both savings and the acquis ition o f mate rial
goods were great er in S iwai than in Buin .
The kiap , F . B . Donovan , made e s t imates o f S iwai incomes
for the financial y ear 1969 . He cal culated that from primary
produce ( $ 1 00 , OOO), local labour on the Konga-Bo.ku road
( $44 , 000) , migrant lab our ( $1 70 , 000 ) and b aske t s ( $1 9 , 000)
th ere was a t otal income o f $ 34 3 , 000 which gave an annual
per capita income of about $45 . Ward ( 1 9 75 : 87 , 9 7) derives
a mean per cap ita income for 1 9 71-72 o f about $ 2 5 , excludin g
the earnings o f migrant workers , and $ 34 when it i s included) .
Whilst for southern Buin , the kiap , C . A. Rivers , estimat ed
that the average income , in cluding migrant lab ourers '
earnings , was $ 4 3 . 50 per capita (PR Buin 1 / 7 1 - 7 2 ) .
In the
ab sen ce o f any more specific data these are p robab ly reason ­
able est imat es f o r this particular p eriod .
By t he middle and lat e 1960s the emergent affluence
that followed the success ful e stab lishment of cocoa growing
was enab l in g the resus c itat ion o f almost forgotten b ank
acco\lll t s which had b egWl after the dist ribut ion o f the war
damage p ayment s . At l eas t as early as January 1 9 6 6 an
o ff i cer from one o f the main Aust ral ian b anks was regularly
vis it ing both Tonu and Konga to handle deposit s and with­
d rawals ; his act ivit ies were p robab ly to generat e publicity
as much a s bus iness but they are indicat ive of s avings als o
b eing made in the ' mo dern ' s ector rather than through either
hoarding , convers ion into shell money o r expenditure ,
although each o f these were go ing on s imultaneously .
In
1 9 70 the kiap recorded that there were 124 3 s avings bank
acco\lll t s from Siwai - almo st exactly one per household .
Ano ther development as sociated with the cash economy
was the establ ishment o f small markets in S iwai . During
the 1960s more than a do z en Europeans , en gaged in differen t
k in d s o f adminis t rat ion act ivity , were living clo se to Kon ga ;
i t seems that their veget able requirement s may have s t imu­
lated the emergence · o f a market there at some t ime in the
late 1 9 6 0 s . From the s tart S iwais also proved to be
purchasers in the marke t and by 19 71 it had b ecome large
enough f o r th e council to con s t ruct permanent concrete
buildings and tables for the sellers . At the s t art o f the
19 70s , two more rural market s emerged , the firs t n ear the
Monoitu Catholic Miss ion and ano ther clo s e to the cros sToads
at Osokol i , and not far from the Tonu Methodist mi ss ion .
Once again the presence o f workers from out s ide S iwai , in
22 9
these cas es teachers and nurses mainly from elsewhere in the
co\lll t ry , proved t o be a s t imulus to development but it was
S iwais themselves who were th e main purchasers in these
markets . Although earnings from cashcrops enab led some
people to supplement their garden produce by food purchases ,
the maj ority o f purchases were by those who had permanent
wage employment lo cally or required food for some part icular
short term need . Purchase of vege t able foods was emphat ically
not a common o r regular feature o f the S iwai economy but the
existen ce of the market s was ind i cat ive of the inc reas in g
economic di fferen t iat ion .
The spread o f the cash economy was not without its
disadvantages . Gamb l ing was established by the mid-1950s ,
as a by-p roduct o f plantat ion lab our migrat ion , although in
Siwai it never came clo se to the proport ions it reached in
other parts o f New Guinea .
Fo r the f i rs t t ime in January
19 6 7 a Coun c il agenda it em was tabled to di scuss the fact
that there was too much stealing in S iwai . Whereas Oliver
was ab le to write , ' there is not much thievery ' ( 19 5 5 : 3 75 ) ,
and then invariably only o f drinkin g coconuts , cont emporary
the.ft had b ecome more widespread and d ivers ified .
Towards the end o f 1962 the admin ist rat ion relaxed its
policy on alcohol ; New Guineans were at las t allowed t o drink
spirit s in ho tels and b eer could be taken home . The S iwai
Coun c il dec ided shortly afterwards that b eer should not
however b e given t o any women . A month lat er the villagers
of Ruisei banned the carryin g and con sumption of beer in the
village . Wheth er this was merely a manifestat ion of S iwai
fears over the e ffects of al cohol or whether it was a
response to events that had already followed b eer drinking
It merely sugges ts that what
in S iwai is no longer clear .
a decade later, was to b ecome a problem in part s o f S iwai may
have already t aken some S iwai purchas ers beyond the t rad­
it ional range of t rade s t o re goods .
In 19 70 the kiap was
disturbed to note the number of people who had recent ly b een
prosecut ed for selling alcohol without a licence ; he commented
' there ' s no doub t there is great demand for alcohol ic
beverages and consumpt ion o f alcohol may b e come a problem ' .
During that year the first licensed liquo r s tore in S iwai
opened at Konga , prompting the kiap to comment , with some
exaggerat ion :
' The S iwai men are p ro l i f ic drinkers and
at t ack the amber with ab andon . Their only blemish is the
part ies which sell s tubb ies for 40c-60c and the promoter
makes a whack of a pro f it . However this has great ly declined
with the open ing of a l iquor store in the area ' . Apparently
230
the first real council debate o n drinking was in November
19 7 1 when it was cert ainly apparent that b eer had become
somethin g o f a prob lem .
In a debate s uffused with moral
inj unct ions , ' OZ tu.mbuna. bi Zong yumi o "l i no sav e d:Ping
( Our ancestors did not drink) ' and ' Man god i wokim i no
bilong yusim nogut bodi bi "long em (Men c reated by god should
not mist reat their bodies ) ' , demands were made that b eer
drinkin g should be permit ted only in a special building
(NM-haus d:ring) , whilst spirits should b e completely b anned .
No mot ion followed from this and the p roblem was no t s olved .
By the st art o f the p resen t decade S iwai had b ecome
Cocoa and ,
incorporated into a modern , commercial economy .
to a les s er ext ent , wages beyond S iwai provided an income
level sub s tan t ially great er than it had been even half a
decade earlier . This had resulted in con siderab le economic
dif feren t iat ion as success ful bus inesses and wage lab ourers
s imult aneous ly emerged within S iwai , a di f ferent iat ion that
d id not parallel more tradit ional fo rms o f social and
economic dif ferent iat ion . The f irst S iwai bus ines s men had
b een mumis but their places were event ually t aken by younger
men who had o f t en benefited b o th from formal educat ion an d
s ome kind o f pract ical t rain ing . These younger men also
had little b elief in the n eed for s up ernatural as s is t ance .
Increas ing income levels resulted in a pro l i ferat ion o f
stores and a great increase i n th e range o f goods ; a s S iwai
needs were more eas ily sat i s f ied their want s shi fted t owards
the consp icuous con sumpt ion of al cohol and with that some
soc ial problems emerged .
In three post war decades a cash
c rop economy had emerged and , following it s success ful
estab lishment , t rade s to res that had earlier f ai.led became
viab le , c ommerc ial interes t s further divers ified , although
not all were succes s ful , and bus iness app eared t o have
estab lished a firm foundat ion in S iwai l i fe .
Chapter 9
Taim bi long mani :
the pro cess o f incorporat ion
Is it any wonder that these people are p roud people .
An in fant could b e born , delivered , at tend s chool ,
at ten d an option o f religions , work at any number
o f j ob s , have a house built , marry , raise a family ,
grow co co a , have his vehicle fixed
without
havin g left h is home ( Donovan , 19 70) .
•
•
.
An accurat e perspect ive on the evolut ion o f S iwai agric­
ult ure is impo ss ib le .
S t at is t ics are ne ither comprehens ive
nor good and reliance on the exis t ing data can only be under­
taken with s ome d i scret ion becaus e o f unknown b iases in the
data and , to a much greater extent , in the des cript ions o f
chan ge . Both administ rat ion and S iwais had their o wn des ires ,
hop � s and expect at ion s , all o f which changed ove r t ime , and
none of whi ch was always reflected in the real i t ies o f chan ge .
The lack o f une quivocal standards o f evaluat ion ensures a
partly incon clus ive analys is o f th e course o f chan ge ;
especially in the earlier pe riods educated gues ses mus t be
resorted t o . There my own p ercep t ion s an d b iases , especially
in the select ions from exist ing repo rts and narrat ives , may
further distort the analy s is .
Con clus ions are somet imes
tentat ive ; indeed the quot at ions that b egan Chapter 4 indicate
the variat ion in conclus ion s that are p o s s ib le even over one
shor t t ime pe riod .
A numb er o f analyses have b een made o f the transit ion o f
t radit ional village s ub s istence economies into cash crop
economies in the Paci fi c are a ; one of the earli est of these
was Sal isbury ' s comparison o f the S iane o f the Eastern
Highlands and the Tolai o f New Britain ( Sal isbury , 1962 ) ,
which was followed by Eps tein ' s parallel analysis o f changes
in Tolai (T . S . Epstein , 19 6 8 ) . A more theoret ical model o f
the p rocess o f t ran s it ion was provided an d subs equent ly refined
by Fisk ( 1 9 6 2 , 1964 and 1 9 7 5 ) and his mo del has been independ­
ently appl ied to a numb e r of regions of the Paci fic including
parts of Guadalcanal ( Bathgate , 1 9 7 5 ) , Samoa (Lockwood , 19 7 1 ) ,
and Fij i ( Barnard , 19 74 ; Knapman , 19 7 6 ) , whilst others ( e . g .
231
2 32
S t en t and Webb , 19 7 4 ) have suggested re f inemen t s t o the b as ic
model for Papua New Guinea .
Eps t e in out l ined a more general descript ive sequence
for the Tolai o f east New Britain with four st ages ident i f ied
as the ' trans it ion period , 18 70-1895 ' , ' agricultural inves tment
period , 1 8 9 6 -19 30 ' , ' investment t rial perio d , 1931-1944 ' , and
' tert iary investment period , 1 9 4 5 -on ' (Epstein , 1 9 6 8 : Chap . 3) .
The f irs t stage was one o f early con t ac t with t raders
invo lving sub s t ant ial copra sales and the expans ion o f
coconut growin g ; the s econd s tage s aw a rapid ext ens ion o f
coconut plant ing unt il the third s t age when rap idly fal l in g
co conut pr ices resulted in some divers i fi cat ion , includin g
t ruck ownersh ip . The fourth st age , fo llowing the war , was
a p eriod o f much great er and more success f ul divers i ficat ion
coupled with the int roduct ion of lo cal government council s .
Bathgate has compared this sequence with that for the Ndi­
Nggai of wes tern Guadalcanal con cluding that the first three
st a ges are al so app rop riate analys es of econ omic change there ,
although in a more at tenuat ed t ime perio d : 1 85 0-1915 , 1 9 15 onwards , and 1950-onwards , with
the f inal stage not yet
being reached ( Bathgate , 1 9 7 5 : 84 0 -1 ) .
In S iwai it is not pos s ible to art iculate s tages o f
e conomic change with this degree o f clarity b ecause the
stages are unsat is facto rily de fined and because historical
data on S iwai is inadequat e ; it is impos s ible to s tat e when
either the ' trans it ion perio d ' or the ' agricul tural inves tment
pe riod ' b egan . Nor is it clear when or why they ended . Thus ,
in the 19 30s , there seems to have b een a lengthy period when
agricultural investment , in the s ense o f co conut plant ing ,
was discont inue d and labour migrat ion enab led the t enuous
maintenance o f a part ial cash economy .
' Agricultural invest­
ment ' res tarted followin g the war and rap idly divers i fied
int o an ' investment trial period ' which in the l ate 1 9 6 0 s ,
after another period o f regress ion , incorpo rated the ' te rt iary
investment period ' . None of these phas es is dis c rete ;
in d ividual households and villages were s imultaneously in
d i f fe rent s t ages whil st in s ome cases regre s s ion was o ccur r ing
at the s ame t ime as evolut ion . Moreover , for long periods
of t ime labour migrat ion cont rib ut ed much more to th e cash
economy than crop product ion .
Ident i ficat ion o f stages with
this de gree of general ity is no t a part icularly us eful task ;
by con t ras t the more spe cifically articulated s tages in
Fisk ' s model suggest a valuable bas is for comparison .
233
Fisk cons idered that although ' in this t ran s it ional
process there are many pos s ible s tages that could be def ined ,
presen t ing an almost cont inuous range o f degrees o f market
part ic ipat ion ' ( 19 75 : 5 3) it was possible to pick out four key
stages that could be id en t if ied roughly in the real worl d .
Thes e were :
( a)
Pure sub s ist ence in isolat ion . At this s tage there
is no effect ive contact with the monet ized sect o r ,
all consumpt ion depends on self-sub s i stent p roduct ion ,
and there is no sp ecializat ion , no t rade , and no
divis ion of lab our out s ide the group .
(b )
Sub s is tence with supplementary cash p ro duct ion .
At this s tage the essent ials of life are s t ill
mainly produced by the group that consumes them,
but supplement ary p ro duct ion is llll dertaken in o rder
to secure access to market goods and services not
ob t a inable direct ly from the group ' s own resources .
Examples are the s ub s istence gardener who produces
s ome extra s tap le foo ds for sale , or who adds a
small grove o f co f fee t rees to his garden , o r who
leaves his family on the sub s istence garden and
works for a t ime for wages .
(c)
(d)
·
C ash orientat ion with supplementary sub s isten ce .
In this stage , the producer is oriented mainly
t owards the monetized economy , and his main pro­
duct ive e f forts are direct ed at earning a money
income ; however , some , even a ·.s ub stant ial part , o f
h i s b as ic foods and o ther neces s it ies may be home
p ro duced b ecaus e , in terms o f fact or cos t , it is
more e conomical to do so . An example is the sugar
farmer in Fij i who may , as a s ideline , produce the
main food requirements of his family from land not
in us e for sugar p ro duct ion .
Complete specialization for the market . This is
the s tage where specializat ion and divis ion o f
labour are explo it ed t o the maximum, an d the
p ro ducer is dependent on the market for all the
goods and s e rvices he requires . This is , of cour s e ,
rarely reached in p ract ice , even in the mos t sophis­
t icat e d economies , for some o f these goods and
services will normally be p ro duced internally
within the family group . However , it is a stage
approached clo sely by sub s t ant ial components of
the populat ion o f advanced collll t ries , and , for
2 36
s ocial requiremen t s ) which enab les s ome t rade , s ome special­
izat ion and s ome divis ion o f labour . Becaus e of this ,
sub s i st en ce p roduct ion does not go on in total isolat ion
although it must n eces s arily have o f ten p resented that
appearance . What ef fe ct ively different iated this mode o f
product ion from what was t o follow was its ab solut e s eparat ion
from European in fluence ; un t il as late as the nineteenth
century the t rade and specializat ion that had p reviously
ex isted had b een independent o f European trade . There was
the re fore a long period in S iwai history when the sub s isten ce
economy was modi fied by a number o f small changes at the
margin s ; these changes mus t have b een undramat i c and sanct ioned
by S iwai leaders ( S -mumi ) . But what perhap s characterized
this p eriod was that the changes that o ccurred within it were
not des igned or de s t ined by the commercializ ation of the
external world .
If the b ulk o f S iwai his to ry is characterized by the
mino r , incremental chan ges of several thousand year s , then
more recen t h is t o ry is characterized by a numb er of dramat i c
changes that directed the S iwai economy apparently irrevo c ab ly
in new direct ions . As in other Melanes ian societ ies European
innovat ions were irres is t ible ; iron tools reduced demands on
garden lab our p rovidin g a surplus of t ime ( c f . Salisbury ,
1 9 62 : 338) which , following the consolidat ion o f larger
s o c ial group in gs , was eventually us ed in the p ro duct ion o f
commo d it ie s that could b e exchanged for t rade goods .
S in ce
pre-contact S iwai was a world of ' s ub s isten ce af fluen ce '
( pp . 4 6 - 7 ) , where needs could be satisf ied with small input s of
labour even before the introduct ion of steel tools , the
incent ives to cash c rop product ion had little to do with
t ime ; they were a comb inat ion of market prices , acces s t o
market s and a de sire f o r part icular goods . Despite the
int roduct ion o f iron tools , p robably around the mid-ninet eenth
century , accompanied by minimal labour migrat ion to Ge rman
plantat ion s , which resulted in the int roduct ion o f other new
goods , there is no eviden ce that there was any demand for
trade go ods unt il at least the start of the present century .
In p erhap s hal f a century of indirect , and o ccas ionally
direct , cont act with t rade rs there is no ind icat ion o f
increased interest in the product ion o f commodit ies that
might be t raded .
It may well have b een , however , that
cont act was so slight ( especially s ince most S iwais lived
some miles inland) , few commodit ies were storeab le for long
periods and lo cal warfare was s o common , that any S iwais who
were by then aware of the potent ial of t rade were e f fect ively
p revented from participat ing .
237
Between the firs t two s t ages in Fisk ' s model there was
therefore a period o f at leas t half a century when iron
t ools had d ramatically changed the nature of S iwai isol at ion ,
and altered the mode o f p roduct ion , without b r inging about
any more s igni ficant incorporat ion int o the commercial ,
t rading economy than was already presen t in many other part s
o f coast al Melanesia . Following the es tablishment o f an
Aust ralian admin ist rat ion , incorporat ion int o the cash
economy b ecame more general , yet there is s t ill no evidence
that this incorporat ion resulted from S iwai wishes .
Indeed
the administ rat ion resorted to two devices to encourage
part ic ipat ion in t rade : firstly , villagers were o rdered to
plant t en co conut s a head and , secondly , taxes were levied
on almost all able-bodied males b etween the ages of s ixt een
and forty .
It is not apparent that the first rule was widely
ob served in S iwai , other than by a number of p rominent
individuals such as Kope who saw their polit ical interest s
as bein g allied t o tho se o f the adminis t rat ion , whils t the
secon d forced plantat ion migrat ion rather than cash crop
p roduct ion ( c f . Oliver , 1 9 5 5 : 32 5 ) .
Once again , however ,
surpris ingly l it t le i s known about the t rading condit ions of
the p re-war years ; at the t ime that S iwais could have b ecome
involved in copra p roduct ion p rices were ext remely low and
t raders may have b een conspicuous by their ab sence . On the
other hand s t o res almos t certa inly existed in the int er-war
years wh ils t both copra and the main t rade alt ernat ive , the
ivory nut s of the sago palm , could be s t o red for periods o f
over a month . At least as late as the early 19 20s clothing
was not in general use and the European t rade s t o re goods
that then existed in S iwai s eem t o have come from plantat ion
earnin gs rather than t rade .
Thus during the 1930s the fall in copra prices reduced
the incent ive to make copra or plant coconut s , s in ce the co s t
o f goods was high (where they were availab le ) relat ive t o the
labour input required to obt ain them . During this p eriod
the S iwai domes tic economy ret racted t owards an abs olute
concent rat ion on food product ion , as als o o ccurred in a
s imilar s it uat ion in Ndi-N ggai (Bathgat e , 19 75 : 850 ) , with
the dist in c t ion that labour migrat ion p rovided the cash
required fo r t axes and a small numb er of necessit ies .
During the pre-war years although direct t rade in cash
crops was minimal there was a flow of b o th cash and t rade
st o re goods int o S iwai ; although v irtually all food was s t ill
produced in individual gardens a numb e r of t rade s t o re goo ds
( especially kn ives , cloth and lamps ) were coming int o general
2 38
use . Yet , us ing Arrighi ' s ( 19 7 0 : 2 0 6 ) dis t in ct ion , the use
o f mos t of these was ' dis cret ionary ' rather than ' necessary ' .
Th ere were two possible except ions : met al t ools (kn ives and
axes ) , s in ce they mass ively reduced lab our t ime , and cloth ,
which mi s sion teaching had e f fect ively t urned into a neces s ity .
Beyond thes e indispensable neces s it ies there was relat ively
lit t l e demand , thus goods that had lon g been ind i spensable
elsewhere such as soap , saucepan s ( cf . Knapman , 19 7 6 : 185 )
and salt , were st ill generally pro duced within S iwai . No
purchased foods had b ecome , in any sense , sub s istence
necess it i es .
In the pre-war years the Siwai economy lurched towards
par t ic ipat ion in the ext ernal cash economy , mo re at the
in s t i gat ion of the administ rat ion ( and , to a les ser ext ent ,
the mis s ion s ) than as a result of S iwai needs and want s .
Access t o market goods an d services was not ob t ained from
the groups own resources , but through lab our migrat ion ( rather
than cash crop cult ivat ion) ; the sub s istence economy cont inued
to evolve but by in corporat ing cash crop p ro duct ion only at
It is difficult to b alance remoteness from
the margins .
ma rket s against ob tain ing plantat ion wages ( although for
mos t S iwais the latt er must have generally p rove d eas ier)
and impos s ible to as sess the relat ive s ign i ficance o f admin­
ist rat ion p ressure and S iwai wishes .
Perhaps the main impact
of the two p re-war decades of Aust ral ian adminis t rat ion was
in the mo re widesp read dist ribut ion of t rade s t o re goods , as
a result o f the es tab l ishment in the twent ieth century o f
plantat ions (and also mis s ion and government stat ions ) in
Bougainville , and the emphas is that was placed on the
acquis it ion of cash and goods by both Europeans and plantation
labourers .
S iwai had s carcely begun to enter S tage Two ,
' sub s isten ce with supplementary cash p roduct ion ' , when the
war pre ci p it ated a dramat ic shift in the organ izat ion o f
agricult ural product ion .
Following the war S iwais made every possible e f fo rt t o
involve thems elves in the cash economy .
Despite constant
problems enthus iasm waned only rarely and indeed , in cont rast
to the pre-war years , it was invariab ly greater than that
of the administ rat ion ; however it was the relat ionsh ip b etween
S iwai re quest s and administ rat ion response that characterized
the o rgan i z at ion o f the post -war agricul t ural economy .
No s ingle crop ever seems to have been wanted as a cash
S iwais
crop by b oth S iwais and the administ rat ion together .
init ially wanted rice ; the didimen advised cauti on . The
2 39
didimen recommended peanut s and corn s o S iwais grew t hem but
rarely with en thus iasm. When the administ rat ion reve rted to
the idea that rice was indeed the b es t po ssible cash crop
the ri ce was dyin g , the mills b reaking and there was lit tle
lo cal enthus iasm for their b elated interest . Paradoxically
the first cash crop to b e int ro duced int o south Bougainville
by a Bouga invillean and ult imately by far the mos t success ful ,
cocoa , was init ially discouraged by the administ rat ion . Even
when they had recons idered , the en couragement o f the So ciety
directors , who unknown to thems elves had seen their future
workin g , was not sufficient to en sure that cocoa got started
throughout S iwai . Only too clearly it seemed to be ano ther
false dawn ; there was a slow response to yet another
possib il it y .
The risks involved in plant in g a long maturin g crop like
cocoa were generally avo ided un t il it became obvious that
I f the adopt ion rate
co coa was the mo st promising cash crop .
for each n ew crop int ro duced into S iwai gradually declined ,
as the evidence sugge s t s , this refl ect s no more than a growing
disillus ionment with the lon g term ret urns to innovat ion .
It is no p aradox that cocoa , ult imately the mo st success ful
cash crop o f all , was perhap s the mo st s lowly in co rporated
into the S iwai economy . When cat tle were introduced in to
S iwai it was partly a re sponse to the possible eventual failure
o f cocoa . No thing coul d be s o success ful for so long after
an era of disappoin tmen t s .
I f there was an element of fatalism
inherent in this , it was n evertheless a logical respon se to
p revious even t s .
In cont rast to rice , the act ual p ro duct ion o f co coa ,
after the early d i sas ters that at s ome point att ended every
new cash crop , at last b rought in s ub s t ant ial cash flows and
suc cess seemed as sured . This succes s , for the first t ime
both con t in uous and increasing over a period o f years , ens ured
In litt le
that cocoa would dominate c ash crop p ro duct ion .
more than a decade cocoa went from being merely a doub t ful
economic p rospect , to an established p o s it ion as by far the
mo st import ant cash crop throughout most o f the island . This ,
it s ub sequen tly t ransp ired , was only the beginning ; by the
end of the 1960s it had almo st too e f fect ively disposed o f
competit ion from other cash crops .
In the 19 6 9 -7 0 financial
year the S iwai So ciety (which then handled mos t of S iwai
agricultural product ion ) had a turnover of $ 1 6 8 , 3 7 6 from
cocoa , comp ared with $ 1 8 , 9 6 1 from b askets and $ 5 30 from cop ra .
Rice and coffee sales were insigni ficant ( PR Konga 1 / 70-71 ) .
Cocoa alone was triumphan t ; no new int roduct ion nor s ub sequent
240
revival coul d c�mpet e . After two decades , a cash c rop
economy , b ased upon coco a , had become estab l ished . Again in
cont rast t o the pre-war years , whenever t rade con dit ions
p roved tmf avourable (with prices falling or markets
d isappearing) there was never a move t o withdraw from the
cash economy (by ab andoning _ cash crop product ion) b ut always
renewed att empt s t o seek out b et te r condi t ion s , usually by
divers ify ing p roduct ion .
S iwais were respons ive t o market prices , although p o ss ib ly
not , at l east in th e e arly s tages o f p o s t -war change , to
variat ion s in the amotm t o f lab our requi red t o produce
par t icular crop s ; that is , there was no differen t iat ion
between rice and peanut s , ac co rding to the lab our input
By the t ime that
requi red , only to the comparat ive p ri ces .
co ffee and cocoa were being grown s imult aneously a more
sophist icated dist inction was possible , based on the returns
t o labour .
In format ion on the r elat ionship b etween market
prices and plant ing rat es is quite inadequate yet after the
init ial p eriod , when a small numb er o f p eople p lanted co ff ee
and cocoa ( fo r reasons o ther than the expected return s ) ,
qual it at ive evidence suggest s that short term t rends in
cocoa plant ing were influenced by past income from co coa
sales rather than by curren t prices , and lon ger term t rends
were in fluenced by the availab ility o f the one o c cas ionally
s carce factor of p roduct ion , labour . P rices from the first
harvests p rovided the b as is for the exp e cted future cash
return s from cash c roppin g ( c f . Eps t ein , 1 9 70 : 195 ) . Given
the tm certainty of fut ure prices ( and also that planters had
no means of asses s ing even shor t term pri ce fluctuat ions ) it
seems that S iwais have t ended to plant more cocoa t rees when
lab our was availab le rather than when prices were high or
moving upwards . 2
By the s t art o f the 19 70s almo st every S iwai household
was more or less in Fisk ' s S t age Two , ' the essent ials o f
life are st ill mainly produced by the group that consumes
them, but supplementary p roduct ion is tmdertaken in o rder to
secure access t o market goods and s ervices not ob t ainab le
2
A number of studies have examined the relat ionship between
cocoa p r i ces and plant in g rat es both in New Guinea ( Ep s t e in ,
1 9 70 , 1 9 7 1 ; Jones an d Stent , 19 7 1 ) and elsewhere . These have
not been examined in detail here , p rimarily b ecaus e of the
dear th of comparable material on his toric chan ges in S iwai ,
but will be examined in more det ail in a sub sequent monograph
on cont emporary agriculture .
24 1
direct ly from the group ' s own resources ' ( Fisk , 1 9 7 5 : 5 3-4 ) .
Almost every household (except some o f the mo st elderly) sold
s ome garden o r cash crop p roduce but only a t iny minority
(ent irely con s is t ing of some o f tho se with wage employment )
had their ' main p roduct ive e fforts
directed at earning a
money income ' ( Stage Three ) ( Fisk , 19 75 : 54 ) ; even then almo s t
all o f t h i s small group st ill p roduced mo st o f their own food
and const ructed their own houses . The vast maj ority of S iwai
hous eholds produced both food crop s and market ab le crops and ,
in terms o f the distribut ion o f household lab our , spent more
t ime on food crops than on cash crop s .
•
.
•
There had b een lit t le sub s t itut ion o f purchased foods
for grown foods , and no evi�ence th�t the sub s isten ce acreage
had declined as a result o f this s ub s t it ut ion although there
was renewed hiring of wage lab our . Despite the rapid post­
war increas e in the S iwa i populat ion there was scant evidence
that any o f these changes were related to populat ion growth ,
either as cat alyst or response .
The changirg use of t ime in S iwai , which is not dis cussed
in detail here , 3 is an important fact o r in the t ran s it ion o f
the sub s is t ence economy towards a cash economy . Thus the
bas ic model provides for the adequate performan ce o f social
obl i gat ions as they are de f ined by the society ; t ime and
labour must be invested in this perfo rman ce . Bathgate ( 19 7 5 :
852 ) argues , on the bas is o f his ob servat ion in west
Guadalcanal , that as involvement in the cash economy
inc reases s o p art icipat ion in ceremonial obligat ions decreases .
This may t ake two forms , e ither s ome ceremonials are dis con­
t inued or they are maintained on a reduced s cale ; b oth o f
these forms existed in Guadal canal .
In S iwai i t seems that
at l east l.lll t il 19 39 there had b een lit t le decline in
ceremonials and ceremonial obligat ions (Olive r , 1 9 5 5 ) but
after the war this was no lon ger t rue ; a number of customs ,
notab ly those connected with child growth magic , were almost
complet ely ab andoned ( although there was als o an important
element o f mi ss ion disapproval) whilst feast in g on the scale
of earlier y ears was les s common . 4 On the other hand , in
3The dis t r ibut ion o f lab our t ime in contemporary S iwai agricult ure at least as it was in 1 9 7 5 will b e di scus sed in detail
in a sub s equent mono graph .
4 This ext remely important t ran s it ion can not b e examined in
det ail here , although further dat a and evidence is p resente d
in an l.lllp ublished paper (Connell , 1 9 7 7e ) , s ince i t will b e
the part ial s ubj ect o f a separate p aper .
In very re cent
242
cont rast t o t h e eviden ce that Bathgate provides and more
especially in con t rast to Ogan ' s ( 19 72 ) account o f economic
changes amon gst the Nas ioi o f eastern Bougainville , it is
apparent that th is decline in ceremon ial act ivity was much
less marked in S iwa i . However there is s ome eviden ce that
pig hus b andry , oriented t owards the ful f ilment o f s o c ial
obl i gat ions , has given way to cash crop p roduct ion .
In this
important sense , ta.im bi Zong pas in was indeed giving way to
ta.im bi Zong mani .
Although the re is eviden ce that t ime was being diverted
from social obl i gat ions t owards cash cropping there is no
eviden ce that t ime was b e ing diverted away from sub s istence
gardening as seems t o have happened in Guadalcanal ( Bathgat e ,
19 7 5 : 85 2 -3) . Almos t all households were generally ab le t o
provide the ir own food requirement s a t the st art o f the 1 9 7 0 s
whilst th ere had b een no in t roduct ion o f crops , tools or
techniques , other than thos e that ac companied the necess ary
t ransit ion from taro t o sweet potato , that might have reduced
lab our input t imes (although it is doub t ful i f , apart f rom
any fert ilizers , the re were possible changes in the garden ing
economy that would have enab led this ) . However it is p o s s ible ,
although the evidence is in conclus ive , that women spent
more t ime on sub s isten ce act ivity whilst men diverted their
own labour t owards cash crops . Cash cropping in mos t t ime
periods th ere fore seems t o have us ed lab our that had a low
oppo rtun ity cost .
·
In the post-war pe riod a numb er o f t rade s t ore goods
that had p revious ly b een s imply ' dis cret ionary ' purchases
became necessary , whilst the earlier neces s it ies became
commonp lace purchases . The number of manufactured p roduct s
that were necessary increased to in clude lamps (an d the
ke ro sene for them) , saucepans , nails and soap wh ilst a numb er
of foods t uffs had also b e come o ccas ional neces sit ies . The
mo st imp ortant of these were sal t , rice , t inned meat and
t inned f ish , sugar and co ffee . Although only salt was
essent ial to general household food preparat ion the others
were neces sary s ince almo st every hous ehold at s ome t ime
called upon wo rk groups t o as sist in either hous e-b uildin g
o r garden ing act ivit ies ; following this wo rk a meal was
always p rovided con t ain ing some or all o f these ' mo de rn '
4 ( cont inued)
years both t rends , the ab andonment and at tenuat ion o f
ceremonial s , have b een reversed following a general inc reas e
in income levels .
243
ingredien t s . Needs in this case were group det e rmin ed . Fo r
work group s meals solely from garden produce were no longer
conside red to be adequat e reward ; in this context , but not
generally , garden p ro duce was an inferior meal .
Of course
mo st of these foods , and several others , were eat en mo re
regularly in the s ame way that many people preferred to smoke
t rade s to re ( twist ) t obacco or cigaret t es rather than locally
grown tobac co .
S imilarly , although surprisingly few t rade
s t o re goods had b ecome neces s i t ies , mos t s t o res re gularly
sold a wide ran ge of goods .
As in all s t age models the important quest ions are what
act ually happened when S iwai s ociety , or part of it , moved
between st ages and what were the mechan isms that prompted
this movement ? As Fisk ob served , ' the prob lem is either to
lift the s ub s istence group over the humps where the incent ive
fact or is inadequate , or t o remove the humps ' ( 1964 : 1 72 ) .
Fisk suggested three non -market in fluences that would
effect ively overcome this p rob lem ; the first of these was
an ' art ificial inc rease in the level of cash pro duc t ion ' ,
carried out by persuas ion o r compul s ion ; in S iwai this
represent s the inte r-war s it uat ion of directed coconut
plan t ing . The second was an ' art ificial inc re as e in the
c ash ret urn p er tm it of lab our ' which could be achieved by
the tempo rary s ub s idiz at ion of market ing , t ransport and
p roces s ing facil it ies ;
in S iwai the period o f direct
gove rnment interest in encouraging cash cropping, espe cially
in the 1950s with the est ablishment of the Konga agricult ural
s t at ion ( an d the emergence of S iwai didimen) and the co­
operat ive s ociety , both of which were sub s idized for cons id­
erab le t ime p eriods . 5 The third was an ' artif icial increas e
5 As administrat ion an d S iwai interest in agricult ural development increased so the role of the mi ssions declined ; even
so , the p o s it ion o f miss ionaries as long-term res idents with
sub s t ant ial in fluen ce in local affairs , enabled them to
remain important in shap ing agricul t ural chan ges .
Cat tle
first came from the mi ssions and Tonui villagers rememb er
Mr Voyce demon s t rat ing r ice plant ing to them, whilst Tomlin ,
typically , not e d in 1954 of the Catholic p riest at Mono itu
that ' tre O . I . C . of this s t at ion is a keen agriculturalis t ' .
Indeed this was a role that Toml in, an d other administ rat ion
o f ficials , expec ted from the mi ssion s . Yet the role o f the
mis s ionaries was increas in gly one of emphas iz ing and legit­
imiz in g t he de cis ions of the administ rat ion and , t o a lesser
ext ent , s upport ing those o f the S iwais thems elves . As in
other areas of development the mi ss ions we re sup erceded by
sp ecialis t s and their concerns b ecame more exclus ively spiritual .
244
in the ut ilit y of money ' which could be accomplished by
t emporary sub s idiz at ion of the provis i on o f goods and
services ; in S iwai medicine ( an d , for that mat ter , mi ssion
s chools an d churches ) have always been sub s idized b ut the
inadverten t sub s id ies p rovided by the earl iest post-war
t rade s t o res may have b een the mos t significant influence
on the ut ility of cash . Th rough thes e means S iwai became
more dependent on a cont inue d relat ionship with the ext ernal
commercial e conomy . Each o f these three non-market in fluen ces
was clearly exo genous to S iwai social and e c onomic s t ructure
and each , espe cially the first , was o f limited impact . There
was however one in fluen ce within Siwai that was o f great
significance and t hat was the nat ure of the leadership sys t em.
Fo r at least the first two de cades aft er the war the
st ructure and process of economic development in S iwai followed
ve ry closely the model that Sal isbury has out l ined for the
Tolai village of Vunamami , espe cially s ince in b oth areas
the maj or dynamic forces ' were seen as the p erfect elas t icity
o f polit i cal act ivity by b i g men ' in the early phases ; then
In the next phas e came emulat ion o f the leade rs by
the p opulat ion at large , and an inc reased tolerance
for in dividualism
In the final phase o f cap it al
inves tment ( an d possib ly new innovat ion ) two fo rces
were act ive : economies o f s cale o r o rganizat ional
ef ficien cy facilitated p roduct ion , and affluen ce
permit ted the estab lishment of new invent ions
( Salisb ury , 19 70 : 11 ) .
.
•
.
S iwai leaders had become involved in cash crop s , essen­
t i ally for prestige and power rather than immed iate
economic ret urns , and it was this demand for pre s t i ge that
enab led cont inued innovat ion s t o go b eyond the apparent
barriers that low prices , inade quate market s and l imi ted
demand fo r cash and s t o re goods provided for cont inuous
(Before the war a
incorporat ion int o the cash economy .
combinat ion o f unfamil iarity and inaccess ib ility had e f fect­
ively prevented this process which was essent ially one of
maintenance o f the t radit ional social st ruct ure through
economic man ipulat ion rather than a more narrowly conce ived
economic phenomenon . Even so leaders like Kope had made
significant start s . ) This demand for personal achievement
(mot ivat ed not by profit b ut nevertheless measured predomin­
antly in te rms of economic criteria) , formulat ed as a con cern
for the s t at us o f the l eade r ' s own mat rilineage group rathe r
than o f the leader himself ( in t h e s ense that leaders claimed
245
to be concerned with performin g a s ervice for others rather
than maintain ing a sel f ish pro fit ( c f . Salisb ury , 1 9 7 0 : 2 3 8) -) ,
was suffic ient to push much o f S iwai society ove r the ' hump s '
in the Fisk model . Again , as in Tolai :
' The mark o f the
success ful l eader is that he can convin ce others that they
are not followers but partners in an enterp rise ' ( Salisb ury ,
1 9 70 : 331) . Mos t o f these enterp rises were decidedly risky
so that in the drive to achieve addit ional prest i ge leaders
were staking the i r reputat ion s on the success of the new
venture s de spite the communal organiz at ion .
It was indeed
essent ially the same pro cess that has earl ier been documented
in Tolai (Epstein , 1 9 7 0 : 18 6 - 7 ) .
Leade rs we re ab le to un dertake innovat ions largely
because of their cont rol ove r access to land . A L . Eps tein
has s t ated that in Tolai the coconut , be cause o f its lon gevity
could be planted only on land to which a man held ' t itle '
( that is , his right s were not me rely us ufructuary ) with the
effe ct that ' part ic ipat ion in the cash economy , indeed ,
but t ressed the t radit ional syst em rather than d is rupted it
( 19 6 3 : 2 11) . Although there i s no evidence that in pre-war
S iwai rest ri ct ions on land tenure af fected coconut plant ing ,
even in the early pos t -war y ears t here were problems o f
access t o land f o r plan t ing co conut s which b ecame great er in
the 1960s with the estab l ishment o f coco a . Co conut plan t ing
and subsequently co coa-plan t ing proved in it ially t o b e a
force of conservat ism, rein forcing the status o f S iwai
leaders , by but t res s in g their con t rol and admin ist rat ion o f
descent group land . Eventual ly younger men planted their
own plantat ions and that status and authority decl ined .
•.
In the 1960s a new t rend in the response to economic
opportunity emerged ; for th e first t ime some S iwais moved
away from the l ine villages to take up more distant mat ri­
lineage land where there was more opport un ity t o develop
their cash c rops . Although few moved more than two or three
miles and almo st none moved b eyon d S iwai ( although a number
of mat ril ineage groups had ac cess t o land elsewhere ) this
was nevertheless an import ant change . In the same period
there were al so a small but s ign i f icant number o f out right
land purchases , again ent irely within S iwai , although s ince
adequate land was generally availab le t o almost any prospect ive
cocoa planter this was not the s i gnificant t enurial change
it might have b een elsewhere . B oth of these t rends represented
a movement , alb eit t iny , t owards a more individual form of
cont rol o f l an d , with the t radit ional use-value o f land
S iwai lan d
gradually being replaced by it s exchange-value .
24 6
has b egun the t rans it ion from resource to commo dity .
The emer gen ce of connnun al cash croppin g of rice was
associated with the leadership and guidance o f S iwai b ig men
( S-mumi) although in New Guinea , as elsewhere in the Paci f ic ,
co -operat ives an d communal act ivit ies were welcomed and
encouraged as the form of c ash ent e rp rise mo st suited t o the
' communal ' ethos of t radit ional so ciety . Thus S t anner
commented :
' The communal sys t em is admirably suited t o co­
operat ive developmen t an d the idea appeals s t rongly t o the
Fij ians ' ( 19 5 3 : 2 2 8 ) . But these were o ft en as sumpt ions
without a bas is ; co -operat ion p roved to a relat ively s ophist­
icated , western form o f enterprise that had no inevit ab le
appeal t o t radit ional sent iments where the communal ethos
Subsistence cult ivat ion o f sweet pot at o , t o
was often rare .
an even greater ext ent than taro , which required great er
input s o f labour , was such that it left b ig men cons ide rab le
leis ure t o direct the effort s o f their fellows , a posit ion
wit h which they were en t i re ly famil iar .
Indeed organiz at ion
of large-s cale ceremon ials gave such leaders some experien ce
in the o rgan iz at ion of large numb ers of people , product ion
for exchan ge and the handling of s ome kinds o f exchange
t ran sact ion s . Mo reover much of the communal o rganiz at ion
of cash cropp ing could be directed in p recisely the same way
that earl ier admin ist rat ion act ivit ies , such as road-building
or house-b uil ding , had b een done previous ly , whilst in fluen ced ,
in different ways by the kind o f lab our organiz at ion involved
in p re-war plantat ions and Japanese war-t ime agricult ure .
Leaders were far from conservat ive ; individually or in
groups they made the init ial decis ions ab out the d irect ion
cash cropp ing might take although they had no more exp erience
of cash cropp ing than their fellows .
Indeed t e chnical
knowledge was quit e irrelevant ; the bene fit s of great er
wealth we re known an d lab our and rice seeds were availab le .
The re was nothing else to know , even though rice cult ivat i on
was quit e dis t inct from anything that had gone before s ince
it was a n ew c rop with a new form o f land t enure and an
ent irely di f ferent form of lab our organ i z at ion . The most
obvious explanat ion for the direct ion in which cash cropping
moved , t owards connnun al rather than individual gardens , may
be more s imply explained by local ob s e rvat ions o f Japanese
and European pract ices yet there is al so a more complex
explanat ion .
If leaders had begun cash croppin g on their
own , success would have ensured b oth a rise in individual
wealth and p rest ige , yet there was always the possib ility
that such a novel scheme might fail ; ret rospect ively the
247
risk was prob ab ly one o f lab our management rather than
acces s ib il ity to markets or c l imat ic disrup t ion , yet any
innovat ion on this scale inevit ab ly took place in a s ituat ion
o f un certainty .
Consequen t ly o rgan iz in g communal gardenin g
enabled a leader to guard against t h e risk o f failure (which
could then be at t ributed to the disappo int ing e f fo rt s of his
su ppor ter s , a famil iar complaint o f S iwai leaders ) and moreover
enabled him t o claim that communal gardens enab led wealth t o
b e spread more widely . A s uc cess ful garden would in any
case enhance his prest ige . Thus , although the development
it self was not conservat ive it was framed in a conservat ive
context , which enabled easy explanat ions o f failure , and ,
at the same t ime , maint ained dependence on sub s istence
product ion .
In t ro duct ion of cocoa took a different form .
The
earli es t innovators were not mumis ; they were individuals
who had b ecome aware o f the possib ilit ies of cocoa as a cash
crop and had b egun early . Their interest was ent irely cen t red
upon the economic pot ent ial of cocoa and they were interested
neither in demonst rat in g h igh status through the succes s ful
direct ion of group lab our nor in acquiring p rest ige through
ceremonial dist ribut ion o f the income . Thi s S iwai response
to cocoa was mediated by the didimen who quickly b ecame
convinced o f its value and so encourage d S iwai leade rs to
par t ic ipate in communal co coa growing . Although becaus e of
this communal emphasis mo st b ig men gained their own cocoa
plantat ion s early on , they did not develop them qui ckly and
other men almo st ent irely with experience gained from working
out s ide S iwai b ecame b o th Society d irectors and the l ead in g
bisnismen in the area .
A S iwai mumi was essent ially the rep resen tat ive o f a
mat rilineage group exercis ing a measure o f cont rol over its
resources , especially land , on b ehal f o f the members . He
did not ' own ' these resources and moreover was open to
challenge s for l eadership from those who had b een frust rated
in their at t empt s t o gain access t o land .
In a situat ion in
the 1960s where mo st men were ab le to ob t ain at leas t some
land either through matr i f il ial o r pat ri fil ial inherit ance ,
and hen ce were in a posit ion to support different mu�is , the
authority with which leaders could deny access to land to
potent ial memb ers o f their own mat ril ineage groups was
therefore limit ed .
The flexib ility o f so cial group format ion ,
after an in it ial p er iod o f uncertainty , even tually enab led
almo st unive rsal access to at l eas t some land on which cash
crops could b e plant ed . The role o f b ig men in the early
248
stages o f cash crop and bus iness development , an d e specially
the manner in which they op erated essent ially through the
opportunit ies and con st rain t s of a more t radit ional S iwai
soc ial and e conomic st ruct ure is suf fic ient indicat ion that
the values and inst itut ions of societ ies that have experienced
little c ontact with Europea.n s can b e ent irely adequat e for
rapid post -contact economic change .
Siwai values and
inst itut ions helped rather than hindered the course o f
economic chan ge , espe cially in the first couple o f de cades
after the war , although they hampered some individual
s t rat egies . Much the same con clus ions on the significance
of � radit ional ' values and inst itut ions have b een made for
Tolai ( Salisbury , 19 7 0 ) , Goroka ( Finney , 19 7 3 ) and some o ther
Pac ific areas . This is not to deny the cons iderable s ignif­
icance o f a number of exogenous chan ges which p rovided the
f ramework within which the S iwai economy could ope rat e in a
dif feren t manne r . The three mon-market in fluences were
important whils t one component of what Fisk calls the
' response fact or ' , that is the ' personality and character '
o f o f ficials and other agen t s of change ( 1 9 6 4 : 15 8-9 ) ,
espec ially in the form of K . I . Tomlin , was s ign ificant during
one part icular t ime p eriod . Endo genous and exo genous
influence have always been co-exis tent . Moulik ' s con clus ion
that ' the emergen ce of new needs is one o f the maj o r st imuli
for indigenous part icipat ion in cash c ropping and the cash
economy ' ( 19 7 3 : 12 3) is therefore open to crit icism. The
' needs ' that were crit ically important to cont inuous S iwai
part icipat ion in cash cropping we re generally not the
acquis it ion of mat erial poss es s ion s or foodstuf fs but a
drive towards s t at us , sel f-fulfilment and s el f -resp ect .
Aft er the coconut plan t ing o f the pre-war years , and despite
a growing dependence on ext ernal t rade , the level of part ici­
pat ion in the cash economy , perhaps surprisin gly , became to
a greater ext ent to depend on their own terms .
As F inney ob served , in his comparison o f leadership and
economic development in Goroka and Tah it i , it is however
o ft en t rue ' that any init ial at tempt to adapt exi s t in g mean s
t o modern economic ends , within a society un dergoin g rapid
change , may wel l result in a syn thes is o f the " t radit ional"
and the "mode rn" that may not support cumulat ive economic
growth and development ' ( Finney , 19 72 : 12 9 ) . Within S iwai
the early st ages of economic change , organ ized by big men
in a context o f comnnmal ent e rp rise , were b ased on s ome
t radit ional forms o f e conomic co-op erat ion b ut on an ent i rely
new and larger s cale and with external l inks to the cash
econ omy . These early co-op erative enterprises , stores , rice
249
fiel ds , cocoa pla:ntesins an d kampa:nis , were essent ially
t ran s it ional inst itut ions , a synthe sis of old and new .
In
- the earl ies t years the b ig men were the economic innovators
and , as Gee rt z has ob served in a different context , ' it is
in their ab il ity t o operate at once in the t radit ional world
of estab l ished cust om and in the modern worl d of sys temat ic
economic rat ional ity which is their chief res ource ' ( Geert z ,
1 9 6 3 : 15 2 ) . Event ually their ab ility proved insuf ficient to
adapt these t radit ional ins t it ut ions to a world o f sys t emat ic
economic rat ionality ; support fo r st ores fell off in the
same way that it did for the rice gardens . Although store
shareholders and supporters b elieved that this management by
the leaders had p revented profits bein g dist ribut ed t o them ,
especially b ecause o f the free dist rib ut ion o f some o f the
store goods (which , o f course , had act ually gone to many of
those shareholders) they did no t accus e the leaders o f
st eal ing from t h e stores , complaining inst ead that the money
had b een ' eaten ' . Shareholders we re p rob ably aware that
there was both an element of risk in new economic ventures
of this kind and that l eaders , at that t ime , were the only
appropriat e individuals who could p rovide the neces sary
exper t ise and management .
Despit e the pers is tent failures o f the earliest t rade
st ores , en thus iasm for s t o res , j ust as for cash crops , never
diminished although it was not unt il the late 1960s that
they began to make a con s istent profit . By this t ime few
t rad it ional leaders were st ill concerned w ith t rade s tore
management and the success ful stores were those that were
run by younger , educated men , o ft en without a l arge numb er
o f shareholders .
In this way there fore the suc cess ful s t o res
were divorced from the so cial and economic mil ieu in whi ch
the older s t o res had operat ed and failed . Bus ines s divers­
i ficat ion , inco rporat ing bisnis kar ownership and cocoa buyin g ,
also tended t o take the new individual istic form. Older
leaders who persevered with bus inesses found they had t o
abandon the ' more ant ique props to innovat ive act ivit ies
and rest their economic leadership on more techn ical economic
bases' (Ge ert z , 19 6 3 : 15 3) . Not all these ' ant ique props '
have b een removed and , as Finney notes , this may not be
ab solut ely necessary to ensure sus t ained economic growth
and development (Finney , 19 72 : 12 9 ) . What is however apparent
is that at the st art of the 19 70s the most success ful S iwai
bus inessmen were those , l ike Hatah and Pauru , who had
re ce ived a coIImlercial educat ion apart from S iwai t radit ions
and had b uilt up their own ent erp rises primarily through
their own resour ces . At the same t ime a number o f mo re
250
t radit ional leaders ,
like Haranu , h a d a ch i eved s i gn i f i cant
and c on t inued l evels of s u c c e s s in a variety of e conomi c
s phe res t h r o ugh a mo re t radit ional depen den c e on c o - o p e rat ive
f in anc e and lab o u r o rg an i z a t ion .
not two d is t in c t
men t ;
Emphat i c ally t h e re were
s pheres and s t rat e gi es o f e con omic deve l o p ­
in dividual b us ines smen and t h e i r ent e rp r i s e s ,
much they s eemed part o f
econ omic
rat ional ity '
howeve r
' the mod e rn wo rld o f s y s t emat i c
al s o rema ined a p a r t o f a t radit ional
Rap id e conomic change had n o t
S iwai e conomy and s o ciety .
re s ulted i n a dual e c on omy .
By the mid-1 9 5 0 s
bisnisman
in S iwai as o f course was
had b e come a s t an dard t e rm
the b as ic n o tm ,
bisnis ,
wh i ch
e s s ent ially re f e r red t o the management o f t rade s t o re s
S -s tua ) .
an d c o f fee we re p l an t e d an d a s e con d E urop e an t e rm ,
b ecame ,
(NM ,
At much the s ame t ime s mall p l an t at ion s o f c o c o a
as
lan guage ;
p lantesin ,
a f urth e r con t rib ut i on to
p lan t at ion ,
the S iwai
vil lage p l an t at ion s we re s imul t aneously develop ed
an d we re known as
karrrpan is .
Thus at l eas t
four d i s t in c t
f orms o f h ithe r t o al ien ent e rp r i s e had b e come e s t ab l i shed in
a rathe r d i f f e rent
fo rm in S iwai .
The maj o r d i f f e ren ce was
the ini t ial commun al o rgan iz at ion of the S iwai f o rm whi ch
was s omet imes ma in t a ined fo r decade s .
Th e advan t ages t o
s cale that t he communal o rg an iz at ion o f cult ivat ion allowed
were min imiz ed by
the part icular f o rm o f s ubj e c t ion o f
individual int e r e s t s t o t h o s e o f the c o - o p erat ive g roup ;
tho s e who put mo s t work in were o ft en n o t t h o s e who t ook t h e
mos t rewards o ut .
The s ame b a s i c p rin c ip l e s als o app lied
t o the S iwai S o c iety ;
there ind ividual int e r es t s we re les s
s ub s umed t o t ho s e o f the t o t al i t y o f the memb ers whil s t the
s up e ri o r e c onomic managemen t o f the S o c i e ty enab l e d great e r
re t urn s t o g o t o tho s e who d i d cont rib u t e the mo s t .
own ,
On
their
ind ividual s we re o ft en ab le t o f o llow the p ract i ces o f
the communally man aged garden s ,
their own in i t iat ive .
p l an t at ion s an d s t o re s through
Few were ab l e
to chal len ge the S o c i e ty
unt il l a t e in the 1 9 6 0 s when a small numb er o f S iwai s ,
p r imar ily with exp e r ien c e gain e d in mo re cash -con s ci ous
envi ronmen t s , were ab le to ach ieve the l evel of management
n e c e s s ary to
market
their own p ro duce and so bypas s
o p erat ive an d it s sma l l e r p r o f i t mar g in s .
p ro ce s s
By 1 9 7 2
the c o ­
this
of c ompet it ion had s c arc ely b e gun an d t h e S o c iety
rema in e d an empha t i c s uc c e s s
p ro duct ion ven t ure s ,
mos t
in con t ras t t o t h e connnun al
of wh ich had lon g s in ce col lap s ed .
Des p i t e the d is en chantment with admin i s t rat ion int e re s t
and as s is t an c e ,
e s pe c ia l ly w i t h r i c e cult ivat ion ,
an d the
fru s t rat ions of two de c ade s of d i s ap p o intment with t h e e f fe c t s
25 1
o f their at t empt s at part icipat ion in the cash e conomy ,
S iwais essent ially pers isted with p ract ical rather than with
ritual means of obt aining new wealth . The few cult movement s
were essen t ially desulto ry an d undramat ic , unaccompanied b y
the emot ional ism an d hyste ria o f s ome o f tho se elsewhere in
Melanes ia , and con f ined to a mino rity . They rep resented
both an at t empt at divers ificat ion and an at tempt to est ablish
relat ions with the administ rat ion on a morally acceptable
b as is . But cult ism rep resented an al ien intellectual system
that could not replace the indi genous sys tem ; S iwai leaders
played lit t le part in those cult movement s that did exist
even when their own s t atus and power were declining compared
with younger men . By cont rast cash cropping represented an
extension o f t radit ional e conomic interests and could b e
incorporated with lit t le difficulty into t h e exis t ing economic
system. That cult ism scarcely existed even durin g the more
dramat ic failures of cash cropp ing , and then was con fined
almost ent irely to one of the two religious groups in S iwai ,
s uggests that cargoism and b us iness were quit e dis tin ct
ent it ies an d , above all , re futes in S iwai the ant i­
epistemological b as is for cargo cul t s that Finney claims for
Goroka where ' b us iness
has b een
a cargo cult that
works ' ( Finney , 19 7 3 : 14 4 ) .
•
•
•
•
•
•
For the whole o f S iwai the vis ib le e f fe ct s o f the move
from taim bi iong pasin t o taim bi iong rrani have characterized
the post-war years and yet , what is apparent is that cust om
has only margin al ly b een neglected or ab andoned .
By 19 7 2 a
growing acquaintan ce with the cash economy had only b egun to
in fluence the o rganiz at ion , s cope and cont en t of s ocial
b ehaviour an d obligat ions . What had changed , however , was
the nature o f leadership . Be fore the war S iwai mumis were
powerful l eaders with the authority to det ermine the cours e
o f a range o f s o c ial and e conomic events .
Following the war
their in fluence was respon s ible for the main economic
developmen t s within S iwai ; when these finally became suc cess ful
on an individual basis , rather than on the collect ive b as is
that the mumis had planned , their authority declined . New
economic ins t itut ions , s uch as the co-operat ive society ,
emerged with the ab ility t o make decisions in areas where the
mumis had restricted competence . At the s ame t ime polit ical
inst itut ions , and espec ially the council , b egan t o erode
another b as is for the b ig men ' s authorit y . The Coun c il
especially was an alien ins t it ut ion that was not generated
from the n eeds or wishes o f the S iwai themselves and caused
some resentment on the part of big men some o f which was
almost immediate b ut was sufficient ly con t inuous to eventually
252
provoke a change in the sys t em of lo cal government an d admin­
ist rat ion that marked an event ual reve rs ion to a mo re t rad­
it ional cust omary form of village or commun ity government
( c f . Connell , 19 7 7d) . The more obvious success of economic
ins t it ut ions did not generat e opposit ion t o their partly­
al ien s t ruct ure ; for some t ime more individualis t ic household
fo rms o f cashcropping and b us ines s ent erp rise and the communal
fo rms of enterp rise that had been largely fost ered by the
big men , had run together, with the lat t e r invariably giving
way t o t he former as their superior sho rt -term economic
b enefits became more apparent to the individual part icipant s .
In the past there was a clear l ink b etween polit ical
authority and economic re sources but this could not b e main­
tained throughout the dif ferent phases of p o st -war economic
development s .
In it ially leaders readily involved themselves
in the new forms o f cash crop development , becaus e o f thei r
own con t rol over right s in land , whereas for the s ame reas on
yotmger men were not eas ily able to part icipate on an
individual bas is . Although in s ome respect s t radit ional
leaders comb ined b oth ' t radit ional ' and ' p rogress ive '
qualit ies they were ult imat ely unab le , despite thei r divers­
i f i cat ion int o busines s act ivit ies , t o comb at the individualism
and fragmen t at ion that followed the success of cocoa . By
the 19,60 s t radit ional leaders were no longer ab le to con t ro l
and monopoliz e t h e f inan ces o f their s upport e rs ; mo s t
individuals could get by , even in accumulat ing shell money
for marriage payment s , without the support of their b ig man
although few wished t o do so . Although b ig men were often
able and willing t o p rovide the same range o f services that
leaders had performed in the pas t , o ther inst it ut ions and
individuals were also able t o do this , so that their prest ige
and autho rity were inevit ab ly dimin ished al though it was only
in the economic sphere that this was clear .
The S iwai enthus iasm for chan ge had b rought them the
agricult ural s t at ion and the first effe ct ive didimen in s outh
Bougainville b ut it als o b rought them many false dawns and
failures ; others envied their progress but in the end the
cycle of s tart s and st ops gave S iwai the p resent agricultural
system no faster than any other area of south Bougainville .
At the st art o f the 19 70s the S iwai agricult ural economy had
almost reached it s cont empo rary s it uat ion ; s ub sequent even t s
partly s t emmed from one more important chan ge , the con s t ruct ion
o f the t rans-island road in 19 72 which , without changing the
essen t ial nature of S iwai agricult ure , e f fect ively changed
many of the exist in g relat ionships of p roduct ion in agriculture
253
and especially b us iness . Nevertheless b y 19 70 , irrespect ive
of these s ub s equent changes , a success ful cash economy had
become unequivocably estab lished in S iwai ; the era of
tm cert ainty was apparently ove r .
I t was taim bilong mani .
254
Appendix I
Ten year agricultural development plan Buin Sub-district
Bougainville 1956-1966
This plan has b een tended on request for the District Commissioner ,
Bougainville , so that it may be included in a single plan for the Bougainville
District . Plans of this nature can be very useful in both present and future
administ ration of the area ; however , one which covers such a long period cannot
be expected to be particularly accurate since we are only able to evaluate the
priority of certain fields of development , from circumstances which exist at the
moment . Additionally, since we know not how policy will change during the period
we cannot form any idea of what financial ass istance would be available to enable
us to br_ing the plans which we now lay down into effect at later date . The
second hinge is the availability of staff to carry on with each development proj ect .
proj ect . These two factors , finance and staff , broaden the gap in the accuracy
and usefulness of such a long term plan . Since most other factors such as our
resources , population and th in gs of that nature are relatively stable , our
knowledge uf these enables us to t reat them as more-or-less definite ent ities and
bearing them in mind we cannot e rr seriously in predict ing what developmental
trends we must follow, allowing us then to scheme accordingly and make use of our
long range planning as a very useful guide as we progress and look forward to the
next stage of development .
It is suggested that b ecause of unknown factors , the following plan be
reviewed and amended at l east every two years in order to enhance its usefulness
to officers who take over dut ies in the district later .
The plan is set out in the following section s .
Sect ion ( i )
Sect ion (i)
Development of economic crops
( ii)
Organizat ion of product ion and marketing
( iii)
Development and improvement o f exist ing services and
facilities
( iv)
Resources and research
(v)
European settlement
(vi)
General
(vii)
Conclusion
Development of economic cropping
The aims of Agricultural Extension are as follows :
Part 1 .
Permanent t ree crops
(a)
Coconuts
Every encouragement to plant up as great an area as possible in the
Buin Linguistic area with a view to extensive copra product ion . In
all other areas to completely rehab ilitate war damaged groves and to
make new planting for food needs and copra production where the
latter is pract icable .
(b)
Cacao
To embark on a Sub-Dist rict-wide planting programme to supplement
present plant ings . Future central fermentary sites have already been
chosen , taking into account all appropriate considerations .
255
(c)
Coffee
A planting programme has b een started in the more inaccessible areas ,
and in higher regions . It is also being planted in the same areas
as cacao . This crop is expected to share importance close to that
of cacao growing, in the ten year p eriod .
Part 1 1 .
(a)
Annual Crops
Rice
This will b e a particularly important crop in the Siwai area in the
immediate future , however rice growing in Buin area will be increased
and will be introduced as a home consumpt ion crop in the other
subdivision s .
( b ) " Peanuts
A crop which does particularly well here , and is expected to increase
greatly .
(c)
Pot at oes
This crop was recently introduced t o the higher areas of the Sub­
Dist rict and has a great future , it is hoped that at least
Bougainville will be self-sufficient in potatoes later in the period
planned for .
(d)
Other Cereals
Maize , sorghums and millet s are now being grown for stock food , and
extens ion of growing will be seen shortly , and is expected to
cont inue .
(e)
Native foods and vegetables
These will remain at sub s istence level until such t ime as a market
outlet is found . At the moment approximately 100 , 000 lbs of sweet
potatoes is bought from Buin natives per annum.
Section ( ii)
Organisation of production and market ing
In the area such as this , where there are no inland transport services
in existence and there is no intra-area shipping because of lack of harbours ,
o rganised product ion and market ing is very essential since it involves the provision
of these services . The area is concerned with primary product ion only and this
requires machinery for processing the different types of crops such as rice and
peanuts , which can be very expensive . Hence if organisations are formed which can
own both transport and processing machinery and provide these services to the
producers from central estab lishments placed at strategic points , organisat ion of
both production and marketing is greatly simplified and the capital necessary to
start and maintain them is minimised.
The ideal organisat ion to do this is either the Rural Progress Society
or the Co-operat ive Societ y . The former has already been started in Siwai area ,
and although only in its second month is flourishing from support given it from
the nat ives in the area .
Once the natives running this Society are in a position to look after it
by themselves , we can then start to organise similar bodies in the other sub­
divisions . The plan at the moment is to move to Buin later on , then Nagovisi and
the Banon i .
The basic function of this Society i s to provide
(i)
( ii)
( iii)
( iv)
(v)
(vi)
Transport
Rice milling machinery
Peanut shelling and grading machinery
Central cacao fermentaries
Central cof fee fermentaries
Central copra driers
256
On-the-spot purchasing and guarantee of cont inual purchasing are the
things which will ensure support for these bodies from t he nat ive pro d ucers .
Should village councils be formed during the t en years , and I imagine
they will b e , local organisation of production and market ing will be further
simplified .
Sect ion ( iii)
Development and improvement of exist ing services and facilit ies
Roads and b ridges
There is nothing more important than good roads in this area . Since
there are no harbour fac ilit ies except in isolated points along the coast it is
essent ial that road t ransport handle nearly all produce hence the road system must
be made permanent and be in all-weather condit ion . Bridging of more rivers will
be necessary .
The re-opening of all the prewar roads is progressing but needs to be
speeded up . The only solut ion is to obtain heavy machinery . There is room and
necess ity for many new roads to link the more remote parts with Buin . In quite a
few cases the roads have been surveyed , but the nat ives have not sufficient
populat ion to handle the ext ra work.
Shipping
Apart from greater frequency of services , we must have wharfage facilit ies
and stores sheds at the wharf . The breakwater at present being built is the start
o f this , but the proj ect itself must be speeded up . The amount of cargo that will
be handled once product ion is organised is going to increase sizeably and better
facilit ies will be necessary to deal with it in the near future .
Sect ion ( iv)
Research
Resources research surveys will be necessary particularly if European
sett lement is contemplated . The most important of these is a complete soil survey ,
of which a preliminary has already been made .
An entomological survey would be of assistance so that plans for eradi­
cat ion of certain pests such as Elephant and Rhinoceros beetle can be formulated .
Visits of overseas experts on different crops would b enefit local product ion .
Fisheries resources surveys may lead t o development o f local fishing on
a commercial b asis .
Surveys of animals and hydro-power could also be useful . There has been
a forestry survey of the Luluai valley and Tonolei Harbour areas but I consider
that extension of this work will reveal quite a lot o f hitherto unknown stands of
good t imbers which may have commercial possibili t ies .
Sect ion (v)
European settlement
There are extensive t racts of land which could be opened up for European
settlement as a gricultural leases . Possib le fields of product ion are copra , cacao ,
coffee , etc . However there must be a guarantee of availability of imported labour
since the local populat ion could not possib ly stand the addit ional drain on manpower ,
part icularly if they intend going into economic c roppin g on any s cale themselves .
If t imber leases are made available there will undoubtedly be interest
shown in them. There is also a chance that secondary industries such as ply and
paper manufacture may eventuate .
257
Sect ion (vi)
General
Departmental
Acquis­
Staff necessary
Two immediately an d possibly a third later.
it ion of trained native staff essent ial .
Est ablishments
Extens ion centre at Konga in Siwai and a sub-stat ion
at Taruba in the Nagovis i . These both staffed by
Europeans . A third centre will be estab lished in the
Buin linguist ic area lat e r . At the moment I can see
no point in stat ioning an officer at Buin it self .
Transport
Light vehicles will be necessary at Konga and Taruba.
Finance
Sufficient to support centres and to open up new
ones , as per annual estimates .
Sect ion (vii)
Conclusion
As we picture it , the above is what we see open to development in the
current ten years period 1956-1966 . Administ rat ion and technical departments will
no doubt combine to see that we progress along the lines roughly mapped out .
The main points in the plan are
( a)
Development of economic cropping
(b)
Organisat ion of production and marketin g
(c)
Development and extens ion of exist ing services and conununicat ions
(d)
Surveys of our local resources .
K. I . TOMLIN
Konga . Siwai.
September 1956 .
258
Appendix II
Siwai Rural Progress Society :
A.
Jwie 1958 - November 1958 (5 months)
Stock (2 1 . 6 . 1958)
Purchases
Sales
Stock (26 . 11 . 1958)
B.
trading acco\lllt s
Baskets
Cane chairs
�
Rice
Com
78 . 8 . 0
299 . 12 . 0
2 32 . 5 . 8
225 . 3 . 0
15 . 10 . 0
33. 5.0
58 . 6 . 8
44 . 10 . 0
18 . 3 . 0
2118 . 8 . 3
1 32 4 . 1 . 6
914 . 11 . 0
1054 . 18 . 6
521 . 7 . 0
52 8 . 8 . 6
102 1 . 3 . 6
124 . o . o
57. 2. 7
56. o . o
7 7 . 11 . 0
May 1959 - October 1959 ( 5 months )
Stock (·16 . 5 . 1959)
Purchases
Total*
Sales
Stock ( 19 . 10 . 1959)
Baskets
Cane chairs
1 3 7 . 18 . 3
7 3 . 11 . 0
229 . 7 . 11
97 . 14 . 8
131 . 1 3 . 3
1 . 10 . 0
Peanuts
Rice
Com
93. 9.6
514 . 11 . 8
50 . 12 . 6
775 . 6 . 0 814 . 7 . 8
9. 9.0
1674 . 12 . 6 1419 . 5 . 10 2 75 . 5 . 6
2 . 3 . 9 1402 . 14 . 1 2 70 . 4 . 6
5. 1.6
16 . 11 . 9
1260 . 11 . 5
3. o.o
3. o.o
45 . 0 . 0
59 . 7 . 7
59. 7 . 7
Balance Sheet (21 . 6 . 1959)
Rice
Peanuts
Com
Baskets
Sales
1866
3074
111
292
Purchases from members
Hire of t ractor
Sack purchase
Hire of rice machine
1678
104
30
75
1876
3 74
120
67
20
244
11
704
24
37
Loss
21
Profit
C.
October 1959
-
January 1960 (3 months)
Baskets
---
Stock (20 . 10 . 1959)
Purchases
Total
Sales
St ock (11 . 1 . 1960)
D.
131 . 13 . 2
14 . 6 . 0
172 . 7 . 0
47 . 15 . 0
n . d.
Peanuts
Rice
1260 . 11 . 5 16 . 11 . 9
200 . 13 . 0 25 3 . 18 . 4
1908 . 12 . 5 4 34 . 4 . 5
349 . 2 . 3
n. d.
n . d.
Com
5 . 1. 0
6.0
86 . 4 . 1
70 . 0 . 0
n.d.
15 . 8 . 0
7 6 . 10 . 0
70 . 3. 7
n . d.
2.8.0
3.0.0
3.0.0
n .d.
April 1960 - August 1960 (5 months)
Stock ( 6 . 4 . 1960)
Purchases
Total
Sales
Stock ( 30 . 8 . 1960)
Baskets
Peanuts
Rice
Com
46 . 17 . 0
80 . 5 . 0
1 7 3 . 9 . 10
141 . 2 . 7
n.d.
700 . 1 9 . 4
81 . 8 . 0
782 . 7 . 4
648 . 10 . 0
n . d.
69 . 11 . 3
340 . 5 . 0
595 . 10 . 9
588 . 1 . 4
n.d.
24 . 6 . 7
20 . 0 . 0
88.4. 8
10 . 4 . 0
n.d.
Cocoa
31 . 4 . 2
34 . 13 . 2
1 36 . 6 . 8
129 . 10 . 4
n . d.
39 . 14 . 0
101 . 7 . 8
31 . 1 . 10
n . d.
* This total includes ' stock ( 16 . 5 . 59 ) ' , ' purchases ' plus all other expenses milling, b agging , handlin g , freight , e t c . and , apparently , s ome disaggregation
of administ ration costs . Wages must have b een very smal l ; in 1962 , the
secretary , Luke Pauru, was get t ing £10 a month and there were no other
qualified staff .
259
Appendix III
Copra and cocoa prices 194 7-19 74
Copra
(hot-air)
( ton)
in store ,
Rabaul
Cocoa
( ton)
ex-wharf ,
Sydney
Copra
(hot-air)
( ton)
in store ,
Rabaul
Cocoa
( ton )
in store ,
Rabaul
194 7 January
July
£28
£31
n.d.
n.d.
1962 January
July
£55
£55
£212
£212
1948 January
July
£38
£4 7
n.d.
£240
196 3 January
July
£55
£59
£190
£225
1949 January
July
£48
£48
£240
£240
1964 January
July
£59
£62
£200
£1 75
1950 January
July
£48
£49
£240
£250
1965 January
July
£72
£72
£100
£ 81
1951 January
Jul y
£49
£55
£250
£300
1966 January
July
£72
$143
£1 33
$416
1952 January
July
£65
£69
£285
£290
1967 January
July
$143
$120
$ 350
$450
195 3 January
July
£69
£69
£2 75
£290
1968 January
July
$126
$156
$520
$490
1954 January
July
£69
£75
£370
£580
1969 January
July
$ 15 1
$126
$ 780
$ 750
1955 January
July
£75
£70
£505
£340
1970 January
July
$ 118
$ 140
$ 760
$ 4 70
1956 January
July
£70
£6 3
£305
£235
1 9 7 1 January
July
$ 131
$123
$520
$ 360
195 7 January
July
£6 3
£5 8
£245
£245
1 9 72 January
July
$110
$103
$ 300
$440
1958 January
July
f.4 7
f.4 7
£350
f.400
1 9 7 3 January
July
$ 108
$12 7
$550
$880
1959 January
July
f.55
f.55
f.340
£2 76
1974 January
July
$200
$ 3 34
$750
$1100
1960 January
July
£73
£65
f.2 33
£25 5
1961 January
July
f.55
£55
£210
£200
Source :
Paaifia IsLands MonthLy.
260
Appendix IV
A note on documentary sources
The most important patrol reports and agricultural patrol reports
relevant to the Siwai area are separately listed below rather than referred to in
detail in the text . Thus ' PR Boku 1/72-73 ' refers to the report of the Patrol
carried out by G . Schweinfurth in Banon i , Baitsi and Nagovisi in July and September
19 72 . Patrol reports up to and including 1955 are stored in the Papua New Guinea
Archives (here re ferred to as PMA) in Port Moresby and subsequent reports are filed
in various locat ions including Konedobu (Port Moresby) , Arawa and sometimes the
patrol stat ions involve d . The following is a list o f all patrol reports known to
me on the S iwai area; those marked with an asterisk are particularly useful accounts
of the social and economic conditions at a particular t ime . It is almost certainly
incomplete especially for the period between 1959 and 196 5 . The following sect ions
list all other documentary material referred to in this monograph , classified
according to the chapter or sect ion in which it is used .
Pat rol reEorts
Spec ial Pat rol Flight
n . d . (1944)
J . M . Joyes
Southern Bougainville
*PR Bougainville
10/47-48
R. R. Cole
Siwai/Nagovisi/Baitsi/ Feb . -March 1948
Banoni
PR Boku 1/48-49
c . w . Liddle
Banoni/Baitsi/Siwai
May 1949
PR Boku 4/49-50
c . w . Liddle
Siwai
September 1949
*PR Buin 5 /50-51
A. K . Jackson
Siwai
March-April 1951
PR Buin 4 /51-52
J . F . Norton
Siwai
March 1952
PR Buin 1/54-55
A . J . Humphries Siwai
August-Sept . 1954
*PR Buin 1/55-56
D . J . Hook
Siwai
July-August 1955
PR Boku 3/55-56
D . J . Hook
Siwai
June 1956
PR Buin 6/56-5 7
G . R. G. Wearne
Siwai
Jan . -Feb . 195 7
PR Boku 1/57-5 8
R. J . Giddings
Siwai
August 1957
PR Boku 2/60-61
A . D . Pitt
Siwai
Sept . -Nov. 1960
PR Buin 5 / 64-65
A . Wallensky
Siwai
June-July 1965
PR Konga 1/66-67
R. E . Dargie
Siwai
May 1967
PR Boku 12/6 7-6 8
H . BalfourOgilvy
Siwai and Baits i
Dec . 19 6 7 -Jan . 1968
........
11 May 1944
*PR Konga 1 / 6 7 -6 8
R. E . Dargie
Siwai
Sep t . -Nov . 1967
PR Konga 2 /6 7 -6 8
R. E . Dargie
Siwai
Feb . -March 1968
PR Buin 2/68 -69
H . L . Balfour-
Siwai/Baitsi
February 1969
Ogilvy
261
*PR Konga 1/69-70
J . G. Steven
Siwai
January 19 70
PR Konga 2 /69-70
J . G. Steven
Siwai
March 1910
PR Konga 1 / 70-71
F . B . Donovan
Siwai
August-Nov. 1970
PR Boku 10 / 70-71
G . Schweinfurth
Siwai
May 1971
*PR Boku 2 /72-7 3
G . Schweinfurth
Siwai (Area Study)
Nov. 1972-March 1973
PR Boku 1 / 7 3-74
A. McGrail
Siwai
August 1973
PR Kieta 1/72-73
A. McGrail
Nagovisi/Siwai
October 1972
+ PR Kieta 2 / 72 -7 3
A. McGrail
Siwai/Buin/Bana
November 19 72
+ PR Kieta 4/72 -73
A· McGrail
Bana-Siwai
Jan . -Feb . 197 3
+
Unavailable in 1975
Agricultural eatrol reeort s
APR Buin Sub-Dist rict
K. I . Tomlin
March 1954
(Early 1954 ?)
APR Buin and Kieta
Sub-Dist ricts
K. I . Tomlin
1954
June-July 1954
*APR Buin Sub-Dist rict
K . I. Tomlin
1955
August-Oct . 1955
APR Buin Sub -District
No . l 141
K. I . Tomlin
1956
Jan . -March 1956
APR Siwai No . 4
D . C . Shepherd
J\lll e 1956
APR Siwai No . 2
K. I . Tomlin
J\llle 1956
May-J\llle 1956) one
patrol
May-J\lll e 1956)
*APR Eastem Division
Siwai No . 9
G . E . Haling
20 J an . 1960
January 1960
AP R Eastem Siwai
Konga No . l
M . L . Jones
January 1962
January 1962
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The environmental stage
Amdt , F . (1972 ) . ' Investigation on reports of food shortages due to garden damage
caused by excessive rains in the Buin sub-district '.• DASF, Kieta , mimeo (4pp . ) .
Bougainville Copper Pty Ltd (1969) , ' Bougainville .
investigations ' , Pangtllla , mimeo .
French , B . R. (1972 ) .
Shaw , P . E . (1969 ) .
Results of geological
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Letter to Rural Development Officer , Konga. 22 September 1969 .
The war economy
Anon (1945 ) .
Native Interrogat ion Reports (Australian War Memorial File 506 /8/5 ) .
Anon (1947a) . Brief report on a Survey of South West Bougainville ,
Typescrip t .
July 1947 (PMA) .
Anon (1947b ) . Operat ion Aircraft . Destruction o f Japanese gardens an d the use of
napalm bombs , Bougainville area, 1944-45 ( AWM File 337/8/1) .
D . L . Campbell (1946) . History of tfLe Japanese OaCJUpation of BougainviUe .
1942 - August 1 945 , Fauro (AWM File 5 35 / 3 / 2 ) .
Mareh
262
G . E . Haling (1960) .
Agricultural Pat rol .
Lugakei (Buin D . O . File 32 -lc . )
Rice
R. R. Cole , ADO Buin , Let ter to DO Sohano 23 May 1947 (PMA Box 421 3 , File 33 . 1 . 2 ) .
L . A. Dornan , Nat ive Rice Proj ect , Monthly Report , May 1949 (PMA Box 419 3 , File
AGR 2 8 . k . l) .
C . S . Franke , Notes on the Siwai Rice Proj ect , Buin Sub-district , 29 July 1950
(PMA Box 419 3 , File AGR 2 8 . k . l ) .
C . S . Franke ; Annual Report of Agricultural Extension Service , Buin Sub-district
July 1949-Jl.llle 1950 (PMA Box 4241 , File 38 . 2 . 10) .
E . R. Wilson , Buin Rice Proj ect , Pat rol Report , October 1952 .
G . G . Wilson , Rice Report , 29 October 194 8 , 2pp (PMA Box 3902 ) .
Rice Proj ect 1948 - Monthly Report March 1951-September 195 1 , et c . (PMA Box 419 3
DASF File AGR 2 8 . k . l ) .
Buin Sub -dist rict Agricultural Office Monthly Reports 1948-1950 (PMA Box 4 19 3 ,
File AGR 2 8 . L . l) .
Diversificat ion
A. K . Jackson , Nagovisi (Special Report) .
April 1952 .
(PMA) .
D . C . Shepherd , Rural Progress Society , Siwai . Let ter to Chief of Division of
Agricultural Extension , Port Moresby , 3 April 1956 .
K . I . Tomlin , Agricultural Pat rol Report .
Buin and Kieta Sub-dist rict s .
1954 .
K . I . Tomlin , Supplement to Special Report on Organizat ion of Product ion and
Marketin g , Buin Sub-dist rict , February 1956 .
Siwai Rural Progress Society
A . D . Boag .
Letter to Regional Agricultural Office r , Rabaul , 23 March 1959 .
Letter to Regional Agricultural Office r , Rabaul , 3 February 1960 .
D . N . Brown .
Lette r to Regist rar of Co-operatives , Port Moresby , 17 October 196 1 .
Catholic Act ion .
Vol . 8 , No . 2 , 1960 .
Vol . 8 , No . 1 0 , 1960 .
Vol . 14 , No . 4 , 19 67 .
G . A. Halin g .
H. Jackman .
Let ter t o District Agricultural Office r , Sohano , 12 August 1959 .
Letter to Co-operative Officer , Sohano , 20 January 1959 .
Letter to Honorary Advise r , Siwai RPS , 24 December 1959 .
Siwai RPS .
Report on 6 months to 19 Jl.llle 1959 , 25 Jl.llle 1959 .
Let ter to Dist rict Agricultural Officer , Sohano , 2 8 October 1960 .
R. Joseph .
Lett er to Co-operative Office r , Sohano , 10 December 195 8 .
M . M. Pember . Letter to Assistant Regist rar , Co-operat ive Sect ion , Rabaul , 1 8
January 1960 .
Letter to Assistant Registrar , Co-operat ive Sect ion , Rabaul , 29 April 1960 .
S iwai RP S .
Minutes 5 December 1959 .
Trading Accol.lll t s 6 . 4 . 60-30 . 8 . 60 .
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Territory of New Guinea .
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263
K. I . Tomlin . Supplement to Special Report on Organizat ion of Product ion and
Marketing, Buin Sub-district , February 1956 .
Special Report Siwai RPS , 18 June 1956 .
Special Progress Report Siwai RPS , 4 October 195 6 .
Annual Report Siwai Agricultural Extens ion Centre , 5 July 195 7 .
Lett er t o Dist rict Conunissioner , East New Britain , 6 August 1956 .
Special Report Siwai RPS , 26 February 195 7 .
Letter and Loan Request t o Department o f the Treasure r , 2 6 November 1956 .
Inspect ion Report and Balance Sheet 22 . 6 . 5 8-26 . 11 . 5 8 .
Letter t o Dist rict Conunissioner, Sohano , 1 2 June 195 8 .
Towards the cash economy
R. Bassingthwaite , Siwai Area, Department of Trade and Indust ry , Rabaul , tmpub .
mimeo , September 196 7 (File BD 9 . 2 . 6 . , Arawa) .
Boku Annual Report 1963-64 .
Bougainville Dist rict Annual Report 1962 -6 3 , 1964-65 , 1969-70.
Buin Sub -district Annual Reports 1961-62 , 196 3-64 , 1964-6 5 , 1965-66 , 1966-67 , 1968-6 9 .
I . N . Brown .
Letter to Regist rar of Co-operatives , 17 October 196 1 .
J . Christ ensen .
Let ter to Regist rar of Co-operatives , Konedobu , 18 March 196 4 .
Siwai RPS Balance Sheets , 2 8 October 196 5 .
DASF, Konga . Cocoa Product ion : Siwai , mimeo , Konga, n . d . [August 19 72 ? ]
South Bougainville Cocoa Production , August 1970 , 1 3 pp . (DASF Konga ,
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B . R. French , History of Konga ' s stat ion , Siwai Society and Agricultural . Extension
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R. Frost .
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M. L . Jones .
Letter to Registrar of Co-operatives , Konedobu, 8 April 1962 .
J . Simiri . DASF Field Notes , August 1968 (DASF Konga) Oct ober 1969 (DASF Kieta) .
Siwai Local Government Cotmcil , February 1960-0ctober 1975 .
Siwai
Rure , Vol . 3 , No . 4 , April 1962 ; Vol . 5 , No . 7 , July 196 3 .
Siwai RPS ,
Minutes 9 July 196 0 , September 1964 .
Balance Sheet , 1 3 . 9 . 68-2 8 . 2 . 6 9 .
K. I . Tomlin . Field Officer ' s Journal , 5 October 1955 (PMA Box 4145) .
G. G . Tually . Siwai RPS Inspector ' s Report , 11 October 1963 .
W . T . Wh it e .
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Pigs and cows
J . L . Anderson .
D . N . Brown .
Visit to Bougainville , 5 June 1969 [Konga File 14-la ] .
Letter to RDO Konga , 1 August 1969 .
Letter to RDO Buin , 13 June 1969 .
Letter to Regional Controller , Rabaul , 27 June 1972 .
DASF Konga.
Proj ect Progranune , 29 October 1969 .
L . A. Dornan .
Rice Proj ect ,
Monthly Report , August 1949 .
B . R. Fren ch .
Letter to D . N . Brown , Kiet a , 22 May 1972 .
264
Letter to RDO , Kieta , 11 September 1969 .
R. D. Hill .
Cat tle s ituat ion , Konga .
18 September 1969 .
Letter to Dist rict Rural Development Officer , Kieta,
Minutes of Catt le Meeting held by the four Siwai Influentials who toured New
Guinea Cat tle Proj e ct s , 11 October 1969 .
Present and prospec t ive cattle owners - Siwai area, 20 May 19 70.
T. Konne i .
Lett er to P. Quodling, BCL ; 15 May 1972 .
J . Montoro . O'l man bi long Siwai Zuk iuk nabaut Zang bisnis kau Zang hap bi long
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Lae
lp . , n . d . (Kon ga , 1969) . Typescrip t .
J . A . P itt .
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P . Quodling .
T . Simiri .
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Siwai Society .
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Bus iness
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Mines , 20 August 1971 .
R . D . Hill .
Let ter to Director, Department of Lands , Surveys
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B. R. French n . d .
Cocoa Production:
Siwai ,
W . T . White (Buin Co-operat ive Officer) .
4pp . (Augus t 1972) . Typescript .
Letter , 2 October 19 70 .
Cargo
s . Carley
(1970) .
(19 70) .
OZ Kate ke t ,
Tok na Pasin Kago,
mimeo , lOpp . ( Bougainville) .
mimeo , 15pp . ( Sohano , Bougainville) .
R. J . Giddings (1964 ) .
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A . L . Redwood (19 64 ) .
Polit ical Development , Pat rol Report , 18 December 1961 .
&
265
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