The purpose of ritual is highly practical. As Firth writes: “the Tikopia religious system was openly and strongly oriented towards economic ends, drew largely upon economic resources and served as a channel for their redistribution. It was also intricately interlocked with the system of rank. Chiefs and other lineage heads, in a broadly graded hierarchy, were not only the most prominent operatives in the religious system, they were also the legitimate representatives of the people and directors of group activities.“31 As we have also noted, due to their ritual connection with the gods, the chiefs were sacred; indeed, during the high rituals the god being worshipped might temporarily enter the body of the chief, so that, for that moment at least, he became divine.
The highest god in Tikopia, the Atua i Kafika, is unusual among Polynesian divinities: he was, in the age when both gods and men walked the earth, a man, the son of the Ariki Kafika, but also a culture hero who brought new kinds of food and new techniques to Tikopia. He was killed in a land dispute and was told that if he did not retaliate against his killer, he would be elevated to the highest divinity. It is on his model that later Kafika chiefs, his descendants, refrained from violence. Irving Goldman describes the centrality of the Atua i Kafika by saying that his forms “symbolize the social cosmos”: “As Atua he is a god, the `high’ god of Tikopia; as ariki Kafika he is the high sacred chief; and as Kafika he is the name of one of the four major descent groups and of its leading lineage, and of its temples. Kafika is god, chief, organic assemblage of people, and sacred place. He is the center of religion, of rule, of social and economic life. All else is dependent and peripheral-but not subsumed under Kafika.“32
Although ritual activity involved the general participation of the people, and “the mobilization of individual effort toward the common ends did imply a moral responsibility of every person for the welfare of others,“33 the major responsibility rested with the chief himself. It was believed that the worship of the gods secured benefits for members of the group as a whole:
Prosperity for the leader meant prosperity for his family and lineage. If the prosperity of any group seemed to lag behind that of other groups, this was regarded as due to the leader’s lack of power with the spirits prestige of a leader was involved in the prosperity of his group, and if this prosperity failed his reputation and his secular power to get his commands obeyed suffered. The structure of the lineage and clan system was such that people could not easily transfer their allegiance to other leaders; they simply failed to attend and support their leader’s rites. In rites where the reference was to the whole Tikopia society and not simply to one sector of it this kind of judgement also applied.34
If we compare Tikopia beliefs as expressed in ritual and myth with those of the groups we described in Chapter 3, we will see some significant differences. Powerful beings among the Kalapalo, Australian Aborigines, and Navajo were often, though not always, alpha male figures, who could be terribly destructive when crossed, even inadvertently, but with whom people could identify if they followed the proper ritual, and, through identification, their power could become, at least temporarily, benign. Some powerful beings were viewed largely as nurturant mothers, as in the case of Changing Woman, but this was hardly the norm in tribal mythology. If the myths do describe a moral order, a Law, as the Aborigines put it, it is not because powerful beings are always reliable or even moral. The myths are an effort to understand the nature of reality. Their narrators must use the analogies that lie at hand, analogies from their own social experience, with all its inner tensions and inconsistencies.
Among the Tikopia, a different kind of society found itself reflected in a different conception of powerful beings. As Firth puts it: “One thus has an image, strongly visualized by the Tikopia, of the major spirits, the gods, behaving like the Tikopia conception of chiefs, but in an invisible, spiritual world. They had control of followers, and of major spheres or enterprises; they came and went at their own will; they could be terrible in anger; they dispensed benefits and punishments; their decisions, though conceived as arbitrary, could be swayed by appeals to their sympathy; there were distinctions and ranking among them, as among men.“35
Every god was the god of some lineage, and showed preference for his or her own, so that the morality for which they stood was one of clan and lineage loyalty, not generalized norms. The Tikopia gods look a little more like the gods of Homer than what we have seen before. The accounts of their doings are full of the discrepancies and disagreements depending on who is speaking that we have already mentioned, but there is perhaps a new degree of articulation. As Firth puts it:
Ideas of Tikopia spirits were then conceptualizations of power and control. They objectified and personified principles of randomness in human affairs, but they also encapsulated ideas about the structure of Tikopia society-of filial respect and paternal authority, of the status of chiefs, of differentiation of roles between men and women. They also expressed in a symbolic way a recognition of less clearly formulated interests and imaginings-notions about sex and human frailty; underlying anxieties about failure of achievement, about loss of bodily vigour, illness and death. This whole set of concepts was related to a set of specific social groups and social situations, and constituted an elaborate systematic framework with considerable logical articulation.36
If we speak of these beings as gods, however, it is not because they are so radically different from the powerful beings we have already encountered, but because their relation to humans, as exemplified in their role in ritual has shifted: they are now worshipped. “Worship,” as Firth puts it, “ordinarily implies respect, even admiration to a high degree, demonstrated by symbolic actions which indicate the asymmetrical relationship-as by reduction of bodily posture by obeisance, kneeling or prostration; or by presentation of objects in offering. These symbolic acts are prompted not only by recognition of status discrepancy but also by desire to be associated in some way with the position, actions or personality of the exalted one.“37 As we have noted, the Tikopia chief had few prerogatives of wealth and power; he was obeyed only when the people wished to obey him; but it is he alone, as representative of his people, who worshipped the gods. In Tikopia, a new degree of hierarchybetween gods and men, between chiefs and people-had come into existence, but little evidence of domination. The modest role of the Tikopia chief, however, was open, under other circumstances, to elaborations that would have enormous implications.
The Tikopia seem remarkably peaceful. And why wouldn’t they be, in their small society on their small island? Polynesians were warriors, and it appears that Tikopia did not escape their endemic warfare, even though, for generations even before the arrival of Europeans, disorder seems to have been rare. The island’s early history, however, was not so quiet. There are tales of repeated Tongan invasions that were finally repelled, but also, as Firth puts it: “Internally, Tikopia men of rank seem to have been almost obsessed by a thirst for prestige and power, and a hunger for land, and ready to resort to violence to secure their ends. This was a time, so Tikopia say, when there were many toa (strong men, warriors), and they were trying, by main force or by stratagem, to kill one another off so that each might rule singly, and the land own obedience to him alone.“38
Even more disturbing are stories about the extermination and expulsion of major groups of Tikopia themselves. In accounts that Firth believes are substantially true, two major groups, the Nga Ravenga and the Nga Faea, who may have been late-arrived foreigners, were eliminated in about 1700 and 1725, respectively. Land hunger on an island of small size and perhaps growing population is an obvious reason, though the Tikopia indicate that the immediate reason for the attack on the Ravenga was their insolent suspension of tribute. The details are quite horrifying: the Ravenga were exterminated, man, woman, and child, with only one survivor, though he did become the ancestor of a significant lineage; and the Faea were so threatened that, with their chief and most of their people, they went to sea on what was inevitably a suicide m
ission, leaving only a remnant behind.39 The stories were still recounted anxiously in Firth’s time lest something similar ever happen again. At least retrospectively, the Ariki Kafika was exempted from having ordered these dreadful measures. The chiefs as Firth knew them were more priests than warriors and were indeed not tyrants. But an island paradise Tikopia was not.
Although, as a chiefdom, Tikopia is a hierarchical, not an egalitarian society, egalitarianism is not left entirely behind. The choice of a new chief even has a “democratic” aspect-the people must acclaim him. Neither the preference of the old chief nor any religious ritual substitutes for the popular will. The role of privileged rank in Tikopia can be seen in important respects as similar to that of the Dreaming among the Pintupi, in that it provided a superordinate reference point capable of moderating and mediating the tensions of daily life. As Goldman puts it: “A primitive community under aristocratic leadership is essentially a religious community, acknowledging in the religious sense the inherent superiority of a ruling line. Under these conditions, subordination in such a community is no more demeaning than is subordination before an ancestral figure, a god, or a spirit. Such subordination is accepted as part of the natural order.“40 The very fact that lineage is continuous, given, and not negotiated, provides it with the possibility of embodying overarching norms. But lineage alone does not make a chief. he must be effective. Egalitarian sentiments, as well as the ever-present possibility of challenges from upstarts, ensure that “neither the arrogant nor the weak among the chiefs survives for long. 41 But the equilibrium characteristic of Tikopia, uneasy though it undoubtedly was, characterizes neither Polynesia as a whole, nor, as we will see, Hawaii in particular.
The Disposition to Nurture
Before looking more closely at Hawaii, let me amplify a bit the discussion of the disposition to dominate that links us to our closest primate relatives and is probably a part of our biological heritage. Its prototype may be the chimpanzee alpha male, but we should remember the bonobo alpha female, who shows us that the disposition to dominate is probably gender neutral, although despotism would be far too strong a word to characterize bonobo We have also seen how the disposition to dominate was modified, though not eliminated, among egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands, through a culturally mediated moral community as well as sanctions against upstarts.
In our description of leadership in egalitarian societies as well as of the incipiently hierarchical Tikopia, we have come across another disposition that seems as basic as the disposition to dominate: the disposition to take care of, to “hold,” as the Pintupi say, using the analogy of a nursing mother holding her child, that is, the disposition to nurture. Among both Pan species as well as the earliest members of the genus Homo, the long period of infant dependency required that the mother not only nurse the child for several years, but look after it and help it find food for several years after that. Among chimpanzees and bonobos, fathers do not seem to participate in this activity, although whether or not they have a latent disposition to nurture is not clear. Males do engage in grooming behavior and in some other forms of concern for others that might suggest something of the sort is present 43
If we look closely at the cases we have considered so far, we will see that the disposition to nurture is linked to the disposition to dominate in ways we might not at first have expected. A moment’s reflection makes it obvious that a mother nurturing a child is also, inevitably, dominant over it. What dominance there is among the Pintupi elders is expressed as the elders caring for the younger men. And the Tikopia chiefs were seen as caring for their people, not only by channeling the benevolence of the gods, but also by organizing the great rituals that were inevitably redistributive. The chiefs organized the accumulation of foodstuffs in preparation for the rituals (as the anetau did among the Kalapalo) that were then redistributed in the collective feasting. Redistribution is, however, not necessarily as egalitarian as it sounds. People are obligated to prepare food for the great rituals; the chiefs are generous in redistributing it in the name of the gods. The generosity of the Melanesian Big Man brings him prestige, but the contributions of his relatives and dependents that made his generosity possible are not equally acknowledged. We may not like to think of it when we say “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but it is the giving that creates dominance. As Marcel Mauss reminds us: “To give is to show one’s superiority, to show that one is something more and higher, that one is magister. To accept without returning or repaying more is to face subordination, to become a client and subservient, to become minister.“44 The archetypal minister is the child, who cannot repay what he or she receives, at least not until much later if ever. Thus if nurturance is linked to dominance, receiving is linked to submission. These elementary facts of human life must surely be kept in mind as we consider the relation between gods and men, rulers and people, in hierarchical societies.
If the disposition to dominate and the disposition to nurture are part of our biological heritage, they have been partially transformed by culture. In egalitarian bands, the disposition to dominate has in part become a disposition toward autonomy. Even in such intensely cooperative societies, each adult must make his or her own decisions; no one can tell one arbitrarily what to do. If men do submit to authority, as they do in Pintupi and many other such groups in the process of initiation, the ultimate intent is to make them into responsible, caring adults, able to act on their own and, in turn, to exercise authority over younger men when appropriate. Although all Pintupi males can become elders, not all Tikopia males can become chiefs-far from it. Even so, all are included in Tikopia society-Firth’s famous title We the Tikopia carries a profound truth. In stratified Polynesian societies, only the aristocrats have lineages; lack of lineage is the very definition of commoners. In this sense all Tikopia are aristocrats; incipient hierarchy has not overcome a basic egalitarianism. It was not inevitable that it would ever have changed; it seems the Tikopia had tried other alternatives and in the end preferred to remain “traditional” in Goldman’s terms. But elsewhere in Polynesia the story was very different and we must attempt to understand why.
Through Polynesia
With late precontact Hawaii we come to a truly terrifying example of the return of despotism that we spoke of early in this chapter: a stark distinction between social classes, even the existence of an outcaste class; heavy taxation of commoners; land expropriation at the will of chiefs; and-perhaps symbolic of the kind of society Hawaii had become-frequent human sacrifice. Compared to Tikopia, hierarchy was greatly intensified-chiefs, as we will see, had become sacred indeed; but domination, only barely apparent in Tikopia, was extreme. Chiefs ruled by divine right but also by force; and they could be conquered and killed by force. And yet most of what was evident in late precontact Hawaii was potential in Tikopia; it is possible, even probable, that early Hawaii looked more like Tikopia than what Captain James Cook observed when he was the first Westerner to visit the islands in
Whether Hawaii in 1778 was a state or not is a question we can postpone until later. That it was a deeply inegalitarian, stratified society, however, goes without question. Starting out from hundreds of thousands of years of egalitarian hunter-gatherers, and much more recently from only very incipiently hierarchical horticultural societies like the Kalapalo and the Tikopia, how did societies like Hawaii become possible? Returning briefly to the Pintupi, as close an ethnographic example to early hunter-gatherers as we are likely to get, I have pointed out their need to balance relatedness and autonomy (autonomy in this case meaning the autonomy of adult males and their families). Marshall Sahlins has made the thought experiment of imagining households in such societies as genuinely autonomous. Following Christopher Boehm I have argued that society, even in the loose sense of Pintupi local groups and extended relationships, would be necessary to prevent upstarts from destroying families by abusing or killing weaker men and mating randomly with women. But society in such cases is not just a defense against upstarts.
It is also, as I suggested in discussing the Pintupi, a necessary safety net for families that would be too fragile to survive alone. Sahlins underlines this point in discussing why his idea of a “domestic mode of production”production by and for the household alone-though a useful ideal type, is a performative impossibility:
It never really happens that the household by itself manages the economy, for by itself the domestic stranglehold on production could only arrange for the expiration of society. Almost every family living solely by its own means sooner or later discovers it has not the means to live. And while the household is thus periodically failing to provision itself, it makes no provision (surplus) either for a public economy: for the support of social institutions beyond the family or of collective activities such as warfare, ceremony, or the construction of large technical apparatus-perhaps just as urgent as the daily food 46
We will want to look at “warfare” and “large technical apparatus” more carefully in a moment-neither of them appears central for hunter-gatherersbut some public provision, cycled through extended kinship and religious ritual, is indeed essential for the survival of the simplest known societies (remembering that no human society is in any absolute sense simple). That should be obvious in each of the three examples described in Chapter 3. Agriculture, however, requires greater planning, effort, and discipline than hunting and gathering-that is why hunter-gatherers have often not been eager to adopt it.17 Even hunting and gathering expeditions require some leadership, however unpretentious. If we can take the Kalapalo and Tikopia examples as suggestive, horticulture requires more clearly institutionalized leadership. The Kalapalo anetu and the Tikopia chief organize economic activity for the sake of ritual, activity that produces a surplus that is then redistributed to the people at large. In both cases leadership operates to intensify economic activity beyond what households alone would produce, but leaders gain in prestige rather than in enhanced material rewards: their gain is more from what they give than from what they keep. As Sahlins puts it: “And in a larger vantage, by thus supporting communal welfare and organizing communal activities, the chief creates a collective good beyond the conception and capacity of the society’s domestic groups taken separately. He institutes a public economy greater than the sum of its household parts.” Yet, as Sahlins also notes, “what begins with the would-be headman putting his production to others’ benefit, ends, to some degree, with others putting their production to the chief’s benefit.“48
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