Page:The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia.djvu/170

Rh him from the same sub-clan. To the dowry of this one woman, the chosen representative of the sub-clan, all its male members contribute their share, though the whole is presented collectively by the headman. Thus every man in a district works for his chief, but he works for him as for his relative-in-law, however distant.

The headman of Omarakana, and chief of Kiriwina, is supreme in rank, power, extent of influence and renown. His tributary grasp, now considerably restricted by white men and crippled by the disappearance of some villages, used to reach all over the northern half of the island and comprise about five dozen communities, villages, or sub-divisions of villages, which yielded him up to sixty wives (of whom a remnant may be seen on pl. 30). Each of these brought him in a substantial yearly income in yams. Her family had to fill one or two storehouses each year (pl. 31) containing roughly five to six tons of yams. The chief would receive from 300 to 350 tons of yams per annum. The quantity which he disposes of is certainly sufficient to provide enormous feasts, to pay craftsmen for making precious ornaments, to finance wars and oversea expeditions, to hire dangerous sorcerers and assassins — to do all, in short, which is expected of a person in power.

Thus wealth emphatically forms the basis of power, though in the case of the supreme chief of Omarakana, it is reinforced by personal prestige, by the respect due to Rh