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The Decomposition of an Event

Marilyn Strathern

Department of Social Anthropology

Manchester University

In one of the most remarkablevisual memorialsto firstcontactin the PapuaNew

Guinea Highlands, Michael Leahy recordedthe greeting given his companion,
the patrolofficer A. D. O. JamesTaylor.' A sequenceof photographsshows him
approachinga groupof some eight men, takingoff his hat, and opening his arms
as he walkstowardthem. The men standtheirground,andarefinallyseen shaking
hands. The event took place in 1933 in the mid-Wahgi;the people appearto be
from the outskirtsof what afterwardsbecame known as the Mt. Hagen area.
Taylor removed his hat to give a clearer view of his face. But I wonder if
thatsimple act was not more disconcertingto the watchingmen thanreassuring.
I do not have access to evidence in the conventionalsense. That the shot of
him with his hat off also shows the men scatteredand at least one of them turning
away in apparentfear, and thatLeahy sensed enough tension at thatpoint to stop
photographingand cover Taylorwith his gun, are neitherhere nor there-by then
Taylorhad also advancedseveral yards. Nor can I refer to oral-historicalreconstructionsof people's memoriesof thatevent, as they have recountedso much of
theirreactionto the arrivalof these Australians,or point to some clinching statement thatthey were afraidwhen he took his hat off. Yet even if there were such
remarksto hand, I am not sure thatthey would be a substitutefor what I wish to
convey by othermeans.
We know from the evocative sequences of Connolly and Anderson's film,
First Contact(1984), that Highlandersin general were curious aboutthe apparel
of the explorers,thatthey did not realize it was detachableand concludedit must,
therefore,containvast internalorgans. We know thatthe droppingsof these creatures were inspected and that in Hagen their detritus-old cans and suchlikewas avidly collected for a while (see A. Strathern1984:22). We know that they
were rumouredto be spirits. Yet there are also enough hints in people's recollections, as well as in Leahy's and Taylor's diaries, to suggest that such amazement
as Hagenersmight have felt was mixed with displays of bravadoborderingon
nonchalance.It is the element of amazementthat I wish to explicate. For what is
recordedin the Australianaccountsas the subsequent"discovery" thatthese spirits were men seems to have come itself as a furthermoment of amazement, a
revelation.Hagenerswere to surprisethemselves by what they found out.
A Westernobserveris likely to be more impressedby fear than by amazement. Wherefear is regardedas one of the emotions that drive humanrelations,
244

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DECOMPOSITIONOF AN EVENT 245

amazementmay well be takenas a trivialreactionto a spectacle. By contrastwith

the descriptionsof fear, therefore, the amazementthat a Hagener recalls at the
discoverythatthe strangerswere humanseems mere reflex-one, moreover,that
puts the Highlandersimply in the position of "realizing" the true natureof the
worldas a Westernerwould see it.2
Yet when Gell (1975:243) observes of the Umeda thatthe identificationof a
maskeddancerwith the figureof a cassowaryis only a disguise for the profounder
identificationof the cassowary with the man, he is pointing to the power of revelation. I suggest thatit was not the distinctionbetween Hagenersand Australians
thatwas to have the profoundestimpact, but the collapse of that distinction. And
that that collapse possibly gave Hageners the sense of power that was to be reflectedin Australianeyes as a quite excessive pragmatismin the pressurethey put
on theirsubsequentrelationship.
Ratherthan deflect my speculationswith qualification,I proceed as though
they were a matterof report. Interpretationis conveyed in the form of ethnographic description and assertion. Thus I assert that the revelation that the
strangerswere humanwas not the slow dawning of the reality of the situationto
the Hagenmind, but the resultof theirown analyticwork;thatwhatwe mightcall
analysisin Hagen takes the form of decomposition, takingapartan image to see/
make visible what insides it contains;that this is a process that gives the elicitors
of those insides, the decomposers,power as witnesses to theirown efforts of elucidation;thatthe elicitor/witnessis in a crucial sense the "creator" of the image,
and his/herpresence thus necessary to its appearance-so that what might have
been disconcertingaboutTaylor's gesturein takingoff his hat was thatthis figure
appearedto be autonomouslydecomposing itself.
If any aestheticpremiseholds across all of Melanesia, it is thatforms appear
out of other forms (M. Strathern1988). That premise makes perceptiona procreativeact, as we might imagine a child being broughtforth from the body of a
parent.Indeed, it denotes the accomplishmentof humanbeings. But the relationship between forms may be envisaged in several ways, and I take my cue here
fromRoy Wagner'sanalysis of Barokimagery(1986). Unmediated,the relationship may be prospective(the child appearsas its parentin anotherform) or it may
be retrospective(whatmakesthe parentis thatit containedthe child). The parental
body may also act in a mediatingrelationship, and thereby as a conduit for the
reproductionnot of its own but of another'sform, as holds for the generationof
clanshipin the Highlands:fromthe bodies of non-agnaticstrangerscome the childrenof the agnaticclan. It is the process of mediationto which I draw attention.
For "child" and "parent" we can imagine any person and the relationships
of which he or she is composed. However, the inclusive genderwill not quite do.
It is the productionof forms regardedas male ratherthan female work that concerns me here, and the genderof the acts to which I referthroughoutthe articleis
masculine.

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246 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

The procreativeanalogybetween clans and children,or grownmen and little

boys, is not fortuitouspoetics. From the fetal imageryof the crew membersof a
Gawan canoe (Munn 1986) to the pathos Andrew Strathem(cf. 1975) records
afflicting Hagen men's sense of themselves as "mere boys" when they put on
theirgrandestdisplays of wealth, there is an importanttemporaldimensionhere.
To appearas one's child is like appearingas one's shells or pigs. One has anticipatedthe outcomeof one's efforts. For to appearas one's child is to appearcompleted, as the end productof one's own activities. Certainlyin Hagen at the moment of the most active display of their accomplishments,clansmen also present
themselvesas the objects of the accomplishmentsof others. Their presentationis
necessarilyunderthe gaze of a witnessingaudience. Indeedthey submittheirpersons to thatgaze, for the audience's work is to decompose the image, to find the
"parent"in the "child," the relationshipsthatcompose the person and are to be
acknowledgedas the cause of the activity. And fromone perspective,the imaging
activity is caused by the elicitory action of the witnesses themselves, who-crucially-include those who receive the wealth. The audience becomes the processing conduitfor the creationof the image that the donorspresent.
Wealththatappearsfromthe body of the clan is the clan in a particularform,
the creationof something new, in Annette Weiner's phrase(1980). The body of
men is decomposed:literally, they draw the valuables out of themselves, in the
case of shells fromthe smoky packageskept in the recesses of theirhouses, in the
case of pigs from their stalls. These now exposed indices of clan wealth are simultaneouslysigns, the outcome of relationswith others, signifying the original
capacityof the clan to draw the wealth to itself. But in this revelation, the men
"finish"-to borrowan Austronesianidiom-that capacity:what is celebratedis
the outcome. Donorsdance impassively, completed;it is the audiencethatis supposed to be moved. The capacityto elicit wealth is now seen to lie with the recipients, for it was they who compelled the display, who decomposedthe clan, even
as theirjudgmentscompose the final image the dancerspresent (cf. Schieffelin
1985a). They have become the cause of the event. In that sense, the revealed
wealthcollapses the distinctionbetweendonorandrecipient,for in its appearance
both can be seen as creatingit for the other.
Whateverother identities Hagen dancersproject, no wonder they also sing
of themselvesas boys, for they face the procreatorsof theirself-image and anticipatethe audience'sperceptions.The form of one body/mindis reproduced,then,
by being processedthroughthe body of another,a movement that takes place in
time. In this sense, the perceivedform is also a memorialto priorforms. Its composition implies decomposition, as Battaglia (1990) has described for Sabarl
memorials.
Kuechler's(1987) accountof malangganfigures in northernNew Irelandis
pertinent.By convention, a hiredcarveris instructedto reproduceout of his own
mind/bodyan image that someone else had seen a generationago; the recall of
the image substitutesfor the recallof the deceasedpersonwhose presence/absence
now takes the form of malanggan. The stranger-carveris the crucialprocessorof
that image, for it furthertakes the form of his transformationof it. He is the ve-

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DECOMPOSITIONOF AN EVENT 247

hide of its reproduction;its source rests with those who have a right to have it
reproduced.They implantit as they elicit it from him, throughdescriptionand
herbalingredientsthat will make him dreamthe appropriateimage.
Closer to the Highlandsare the Kaluli gisalo singers as describedby Schieffelin (1976) and Feld (1982), the visitors who come to a longhouse to elicit from
their audience their memories of their bereavements. Presentingthemselves as
birds, among other things, the singers remind the hosts of the bird souls of the
departed.The power of the singers' transformationof the sufferings of the men
of the host communityis the power of decomposition. The audience is moved to
fierce reaction, to weeping and to demonstration.Their "insides" are brought
"outside." It is not the singers' memories that are recalled or whose insides are
turnedout; on the contrary,the singers appearimpenetrable.The enragedhosts
brandthem with torches-but these burns affect only the skin, as though the
"stranger"-singerswere solid, a reflecting surface for the community's display
of emotion. Yet it is only throughknowledgeof the hosts' potentialmemoriesthat
the singer can engage their interiority.3Memories of the deceased are evoked as
thoughthe ancestraldeceased were outside the mind/bodyof their descendants;
they are then reclaimed, as it were, reproducedamong the presentcommunityof
men who are moved to appearas little boys weeping for their lost parents.
Donors and recipientsat a presentationof wealth in Hagen indicate a third
relationship.We could almost imagine the Hagen displayerof wealth combining
in a single male person the gisalo singer who is all surface, his external ornaments, movement,and songs undoingthe composureof the hosts' bodies, andthe
seated, undecoratedhosts who are moved to their feet to bring their memories
outside.
In the Hagen case, it is the decorateddonors who dance, and who bring to
the surfaceof their skins their own interior-their wealth-moving the undecoratedaudience,includingthe recipients,to acknowledgewhat they have done. The
momentof display is simultaneouslythe climax of the men's activity and the finish of it: theiracts can only now be reproducedin theform thatthe recipientswill
renderto them some yearshence. But as witnesses to whatthe recipientsproduce,
they will in turnbecome the procreatorsandcauses of the recipients'new activity.
Meanwhile,the donorssolicit thatdecompositionof themselves. Bringingout the
wealth and thus the relations of which they are composed is tangibly translated
into a transaction:the recipients must accept the valuables, consume them, take
them into their own minds/bodiesand houses. Otherwiseno decompositionhas
takenplace.

What convinced Hagen men that the Australians were human lay in the
things they brought.Three accounts are recordedby Connolly and Anderson.
"At first", says Ndika Wingti, "we used to wonderwhy they hadcome. We thought,
'Who are these people?' But when we saw the things they were tradingwe thought,
'We must befriendthem now. They must be our people.' " [ 1987:116]

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248 CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
"We got to Kelua," says Ndika Rumint, "and therewere crowds of people gathered
thereto see. People from all over the place. And thereit was, waiting for everyone to
have a look. You should have seen it! It was a prettything, and shiny, like the oil on
somebody's skin. . . . And it came with things-trade goods, axes, shells, to name
just a few. Heaps of them! Then we said, 'These [strange]men must be men-of-allthings.' " [1987:115]

"He opened a case full of shells," says Ndika Nikints, "and I looked into the case
and cried out with amazement.Aaii! I was shaking my hand in excitement I was so
impressed.Then he said, 'Pig!' I didn't understandandwonderedwhathe was talking
about. He said, 'Pig! Pig!' I still didn't understand.So he made a gruntingnoise.
"I realisedhe wantedto give the shell for a pig. Aahh! I really wantedthe shell,
but my house was far away. Father!Whatcould I do? Then I thoughtof Ndika Powa.
He had a settlement nearby, where the church is now, that's where his temporary
home was then. ... So I went there and called out 'Is anybody there?' An old man
came out, and I said, 'Where's Powa?' The old man replied, 'He's scared, and he's
gone away.'
"I said to him, 'Bring this pig quickly!' He was afraid, and he hesitated, 'Give
it to me! I'll take it!' So I took the pig to the camp andthe white man saw it. He picked
the big shell up and gave it to me. I took it to the old man and said, 'Take this and
give it to Ndika Powa. And tell him the people-eatingspiritswantedto eat the pig and
gave this shell in return.You all ran off, thinkinghe was a spirit. Well, what do you
think now? He is the shellman! And I'm with him! Go and bring Powa! '. . . This

strangeman that came, he's not a spirit, he's the shellman! Hurryquickly, there's a
lot more shells!' " [1987:121-122]
Rumint is probably describing the landing of the second plane at the Kelua
camp, some miles farther on from the initial spot where Taylor was photographed,
in central Hagen country (Ndika are neighbors of the Yamka, who had claims to
the land there). That would make it 11 days after Leahy and Taylor first appeared.
Since the second day, they had attracted big crowds, and the expedition was able
to procure vegetable food. But the Hagen men were also somewhat aloof, and
would certainly not part with the pigs that the expedition needed to feed its huge
line of carriers. The Australian men found that the small shells and steel goods
and other trade goods were just not acceptable.4 That was to change over night.
Noting the pieces of gold-lip pearl shell people wore, Leahy and Taylor sent a
message back with the first pilot to bring some in his next load. And of all the
"things" that the newcomers brought, these were the things that made Hageners
change their mind.
The aircraft managed a return flight the following day. A huge number
watched the landing and the disgorgement of its contents. After it had left, there
was much speech making. Now among other things, the Australian men were
interested in souvenirs, and with the new cargo tried to trade people's stone axes
and spears. But they got no response from the Hagen men; they offered steel
knives and ax heads, and were met with blank refusal-until Leahy recalled the
shells. The moment the bag was opened and seen to contain pearl shells, one of
the Hagen orators immediately took charge, held a specimen aloft, and began
haranguing the crowd. The strangers had found their medium, and for a while a
plane was arriving almost every day with shells, an immediate result being that
the Australians were offered more pigs than they knew what to do with.

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DECOMPOSITIONOF AN EVENT 249

At the heartof the matterwas, I suggest, a significantrevelation. Not just

that the creatureshad things-but they had the kind of things that would move
men, that would elicit from the Hageners themselves things that they valued,
namelytheirpigs. "He gave us shell valuables in returnfor pigs, and we decided
he was human" (A. Strathem1971:xii). It was the elicitorypowerof the creatures
that made them men, and they could exercise that power because they showed
they too had insides. This gave them a dimension in time. Or to put it another
way, this made relationshippossible. For in the Hagen view, one only has things
"inside" oneself, one's clan body, one's house, if these things have come from
other bodies, other clans, other houses. "Things" are the forms in which relationshipsappear.
The premise is an aesthetic one. Forms appearout of other forms, that is,
they are containedby them:the containeris decomposed, everted, to reveal what
is inside. We can call this indigenousanalysis. It follows thatpast and futurebecome present;any one form anticipatesits transformation,and is itself retrospectively the transformationof a prior form. It must also follow that forms already
exist, and indeed when we talk of human creations this is so: it is the work of
people to make new things appear-tubers from the ground, shells from houses,
childrenfrom women. By contrast,things that appearby themselves may be regardedas nonhuman,as wild spiritsare in Hagen.
Whethersuch wild spiritsare regardedas solid or as completely hollow (the
same thing), they have no insides, nothingto bringout, nothingto which one can
makeappeal. Now, people's insides are the faculties of both reasonand emotion,
and their communicationalcapacity, the intentions and things with which they
interactwith others. But such spirits are not moved by the plight of men (or
women). Theirvoracityis autonomous.There is no time dimensionto them;they
hold no "memory" of prior relationships, for they are only themselves. Wild
spirits are simply bizarre:neither the productof other forms nor anticipatinga
transformationinto other forms. Having "no form" in that sense-that is, not
being the particulartransformationof another particularform-they can take
"any form," appearin any guise, as featuresof the landscape,moving shadows,
headlessgiants, or even disguise themselves as humanbeings.
The decorationsthat disguise a humandancer, and presenthim in spiritual
form as his own ancestor, are different from the disguise by which wild spirits
conceal themselves as human. For in the lattercase, the externaldisguise is no
innerformrevealed, the transformationof an inside identitydisplayedon the surface, and has no intrinsicrelationshipwith the spirit. And although such spirits
may prey on people and may be placated with things on occasion, they do not
have the power to elicit from personswhat personsvalue. Here they standin contrastto ancestralghosts who do indeed elicit pigs from their descendants.
WhenHagenersfirstcalled the Australiansspirits,they apparentlymeantjust
suchapparitions,along with cannibalogres andthe morebenign sky beings. From
some of these beings valuablescould be cajoled, but they had no power, it seems,
to elicit a flow of countergifts (except in the context of specific cults attachedto
particularized,named manifestations,underthe control of ritualexperts). Their

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250 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

common characteristicwas that they existed formlessly and timelessly in themselves.

There is no doubt that the Australiansappearedbizarre. But the bizarreartifacts of a bizarrecreatureelicit no interest. The fact of differencebecomes uninterestingif nothing comes as the outcome of it; an untowardconjunction of
forms is not an event, not a relationshipin the historyof persons with a past and
a futureto it. The Australianmen, impressedwith theirown technology, assumed
that Hagen men would be equally impressed, and they "conjured" the first airplane out of the sky, pointing to the direction from which it would come, and
having their predictionmaterialize.There is no doubt that the size and noise of
the machinehad an effect. Yet once it had happened, it had happened, like the
radio, cars, and all the rest of the paraphernaliawith which Hageners were to
become familiar.The one thingthatmoved and surprisedthem-that madeNikint
cry out in amazementand excitement-was the very thing that the strangersalmost forgot to show that they had: the gold-lip pearl shell. And this was the one
item thatalreadybelonged to Hagen;everythingelse was a mere curio. The marvelous thing about these creatures,then, was what they had within them. Hageners were confrontedwith an image of themselves.
Leahy and Taylor now appearednot as spirit analoguesof Hagen men, but
as transformationsof them-not divided from "us" as "others," but "ourselves" in another form. Lederman (1986:373) reports of her own arrival at
Mendi that people were eager to assure her they had not been caught off guard;
their own accounts of themselves already contained the strangerswho were to
come.

Let me conclude by commentingon the difference between these two perceptions and the shift between them.
Wild spiritsand sky spiritsby and large occupied worlds conceived as analogous to those of humanbeings. "Our" pigs were "their" marsupials, "our"
sky, their "earth," and vice versa (see Schieffelin 1985b). The Australianssimilarly came in their skins, conceivably an analogous but distinct form of being.
This presentedno intrinsicbarrierto superficialinteraction.Forthe firstfew days,
the people at Kelua were pleased to supply "our" food for "their" tradeitems,
but that did not underminethe distinction-on the contrary,that they were able
to obtainsmall shells for food just confirmedthat what to "us" is non-wealth,to
"them" is wealth. What is of value to them (our rubbish/theirwealth) appears
analogousto what is of value to us (their rubbish/ourwealth), but with the corollary that what is of value to them, therefore, is not of value to us. It was the
collapse of the analogy, the obviation of the difference, that was the moment of
revelation:"their" wealth and "our" wealth were seen to be the same, to take
the one form of the pearl shell.
Fromthe startit seems that Hagenersreferredto all Europeangoods by the
term-mel, "thing"-they used for wealth, especially shell wealth. The analogy
between the artifactsof these creaturesand their own shells also implied a dis-

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DECOMPOSITIONOF AN EVENT 251

tinctionbetweenthese creaturesand themselves. But thatdistinctionwas negated

at the moment5thatthe Australiansdrew forthfrom theirbodies exactly the same
kind of shell as theirown, and for which they desired its properequivalent-pig.
For the gesturecollapsed a relationshipbetween distinctelements in a potent image thatcontainedthatrelationshipwithin itself (cf. J. Weiner 1988).
As a gift, a shell embodies the efforts of both donor and recipient;in giving
a relationshipa past, it also gives it a future.6But only a relationshipcan make a
relationship"appear." Thatrevelationwas achieved throughhumaneffort. Consequently,the analogy may well have been negated in such a way as to release a
sense of power for the witnesses. The astonishmentwas Hageners'own realization thatthese creatureswere bringingforthwhat they themselves most coveted.7
The discovery that the Australiansdid indeed have insides was itself a process of elicitation. Hagen men compelled the newcomersto reveal what they had
within, and in that compulsion a relationshipwas implied. This meant that the
arrivalof the Australiansacquireda time dimension:it had become an event. The
creatorsof that event were its Hagen witnesses, who analyzed, processed, and
thus decomposedthe image of the strangers'first appearance.For the strangers
themselves now appearedalso as procreators,processors of the shells that had
been elicited from them. The sequel is well known. They were forced to freight
planeloadsof these special items into the Highlands, to an extent that within a
monthof the firstplane arriving,inflationwas rapidlypushing up the rate of exchange.8
It was not just that the Australianmen had insides that stunnedtheir Hagen
counterparts,it was that they were the same insides that were inside their own
bodies. Above all, they were recognizable as human because they contained
within them the capacity to transact.9This may well have promptedHageners'
counterpartsense of astonishmentat themselves for what they had produced.
Thingsthatcome from exotic places are always evidence of people's local capacities to draw them in. No wonder that the residentsof Kelua took charge of the
situation.The Australianspresentedthem with evidence of theirpower.
Among the authors of the spectacle was a man called Yamka Kaura, to
whose territorythese strangershad come (Connolly and Anderson 1987:127128). He organizedthe bringingof resourcessuch as timberand, in Michael Leahy's eyes, he exuded tremendousconfidence. But most especially it was he who
haranguedthe crowd. If the question was what to do with this strangepresence,
what was indicatedabout the past and what effects it would have in the future,
thatcould only be known throughpeople's own witnessing, as Kauraappreciated
when he seized the opportunityto get up and tell people what was happening.
Taylortook off his hat because, to him, the featuresof the humanface communicatedthe natureof his person. But on the Hagen side, perceptionhad to be
mediatedthroughpeople's own interpretativeacts, throughanalyzingthe impact
it wouldhave on them. And thatwould requiretime. The arrivalof the Australians
became an event, with a past and a future, the moment the strangersrevealed in
turnthe effects of the Hagen presence upon them. It was not the end of the world

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ANTHROPOLOGY
252 CULTURAL
after all. Camped on Yamka ground, fed by local food, the strangers gave those
facts a future in the return gifts they offered.
Perhaps what Kaura hoped was true for himself was true in a larger sense.
Perhaps what made the strangers human was that they could be perceived as procreative conduits through which Hagen men could continue to reproduce themselves.
Notes
Acknowledgments.This article was originally written for the session Memory and Exchange, convened by Debbora Battaglia and Susanne Kuechler, Annual Meeting of the
AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation, Phoenix, 1988. My thanks to both of them for
affordingthe occasion; to Debbora Battaglia for furtherhelp; to Jeffrey Clark, Claudia
Gross, and AndrewLattasfor their comments;and to Carl Pathian.This articleis a companionto M. Strather (1990).
'Threearereproducedin Souter(1964). Connolly andAnderson(1987) reproducea fourth
photographin which Taylor is mimickinga plane. It will be clear that what follows draws
heavily on Connolly and Anderson'smagnificentaccount.
2Fortheir part, the Australiansseem to have been rathertaken with themselves as "spirits," andkept up whatthey regardedas the appropriatecharade,producinga gramophone,
for instance, to play to an open-mouthedcrowd-showing off the technological marvel.
Perhapsthe Australiansthoughtthattheiraudiencewould thinkthe gramophonesome kind
of magic, or as containingsome kind of power similarto the power of theirguns on pigs.
But what they did not reckon with was the indifferencewith which Hagenersgreeted the
principalinstrumentthatdivided the newcomersfrom these "men of the Stone Age": the
steel knives and axes they had broughtwith them as tradegoods. In fact it took some time
beforepeople were preparedto accept steel goods. Thereafter,there was a steady demand
for steel, but one that never reachedthe inflationarydimensions of the demandfor pearl
shell.
31

am gratefulto AndrewLattas(personalcommunication1988) for this refinement.

4Theevents aretelescoped in Leahy's subsequentaccount(LeahyandCrain 1937); cf. also

the abbreviated"diary" that was published in The GeographicalJournal, March 1936.
This account comes from the letters of the geologist, Kingsbury, cited in Connolly and
Anderson(1987:120-121).
5There was, of course, no one "moment." Rather,shifts in perceptionmust have recurred

over and again. It should be clear that I do not offer an historicalaccounthere: I take my
cue from Gewertzand Schieffelin's (1985) discussion on ethnohistory.

6Inthis sense, the Australianswere alreadyin the world, alreadyknown, before they appeared,for they were revealedto be a type of humankind,Hagenersin anotherform.
have focused on exchange, but therewere otherdimensionsto the obviationof the analogy, includingthe provenanceof the Australianswhen thoughtof as "sky beings," and
theircolorationas "red people."

71

8Thequantityof pearlshells became a persistentproblemin Hagen, because people would

not part with their pigs for less. The Leahy brotherscharteredDC3 aircraftdirect to the

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OFAN EVENT 253

DECOMPOSITION
principalsource, ThursdayIsland, at an outlay of ?1,000 sterlingfor a planeload. Despite
this, shortageof shells was an ever-presentembarrassmentto the settlers, who never had
enough to meet demand. It is estimatedby Hughes (1978) thatbetween the establishment
of the Hagen base in 1933 and the end of the prewarcivil administrationsix years later,
shells of all kindsdistributedthroughoutthe Highlandsmusthave numberedbetween5 and
10 million. This enormousactivity on the part of the newcomers was the outcome of the
repeatedexperience of someone such as Michael Leahy, who complainedin his diary in
April 1934, a year afterfirstarrivingin Hagen:
We have a price war on our hands;they are demandingtwo gold-lip pearlshells or one gold-lip and a tomahawk[for
a small pig], which is impossible-a gold-lip costs 2/6d in Salamaua and 4/6d air freight. [quoted in Hughes
1978:312]

9"So how did Wirufinallycome to comprehendwhites as human?When I asked this question I received the somewhat enigmatic reply 'because their arms bend,' i.e., they have
elbows, tuku. Tukuis a verb for exchange" (Clark 1986). The image of the elbow recalls
the Sabarldepictionof exchangerelationshipsthatact as a pivot in the departureand return
of wealth (cf. Battaglia 1983).
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