Principio de proporcionalidad en sentido estricto

The archipelago of the Solomon Islands, which extends from Bougainville to San Cristobal, encompasses a total land area of 31,080 square kilometres (Kirch 2000:131).

The group consists of six main islands – Choiseul, New Georgia, Santa Isabel, Guadalcanal, Malaita and San Cristobal, and numerous smaller islands such as Ontong Java, Rennell, Bellona and the Santa Cruz Islands. The earliest settlement dates for the Solomons archipelago comes from a site on Buka, where a Pleistocene settlement was dated to 29,000 years ago (Kirch 2000:68). In the Solomons, the earliest recorded date for human occupation comes from sites on Guadalcanal of 6000 BP (Roe 1992), although it is probable that humans settled the region earlier to that (Walter and Sheppard 2006:147).⁷ The dispersal of Lapita peoples through Melanesia and on into the Pacific, between 1600 BC and 500 BC, has been linked with the spread of Austronesian languages throughout the Pacific (Bellwood et al. 1995:12), and in the Solomons both Austronesian and non-Austronesian language speakers are found often in close proximity to each other.

However, Walter and Sheppard have pointed out that dates for early Lapita settlement in the Solomons have not been found in the archaeological record outside of the Santa Cruz/Reef Islands (2006:67). Later Lapita settlement did take place in the group, and dates from after 2700 BP have been discovered in the Western Solomons.

Environmentally, the Solomon Islands are a mix of small, low-lying atolls with sparse vegetation (such as Ontong Java and Tikopia) and large, densely forested mountainous islands (such as New Georgia, Malaita). The majority of the islands are inhabited by Melanesians but many of the outer islands are Polynesian outlier, settled by Lapita-bearers from Western Polynesian islands, such as Samoa (Kirch 2000:144). As such, within the Solomons each island h0061s a variety of distinct societies and material culture.

7 Walter and Sheppard have highlighted the fact that, when compared to Polynesian archaeology, firm dates for early human habitation of Island Melanesia are relatively scarce (2006:139).

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The European arrival in the Solomon Islands

The first European visitors to the Solomon Islands arrived in 1568 when an expedition funded by the Spanish Government and commanded by Alvaro de Mendaña de Neyra briefly visited and named several islands, such as Guadalcanal, Florida (now Nggela), and San Cristobal (now Makira) (Hogbin 1939). It was following the expeditions’ return to Spain that the name the “Solomon Islands” was bestowed upon this group of islands. An obsession with gold that had been fuelled by recent Spanish expeditions in South America meant that gold was the commodity most desired by these adventurers. The promise of untold wealth and riches to be discovered on expeditions to even more remote places led to the misrecognition as gold of iron pyrites mounted on the heads of clubs from Malaita.

This encouraged the notion that these islands were the Isles of Solomon, where Solomon collected gold to decorate the temple at Jerusalem (Amherst & Thomson 1901; Hogbin, 1939).

Early written accounts from visitors to the Solomons indicate that cannibalism, and possibly headhunting, was well established by the mid sixteenth century. The voyage of de Mendaña, as described by Amherst and Thompson (1901), states that crescent shaped canoes met the Spanish fleet off the coast of Santa Isabel in 1568 and that there on a later occasion while building a brigantine they were approached by a group of seven war canoes, the occupants of which offered them the arm and hand of a boy together with some taro roots (1901:21). The chronicle states that the Spaniards refused this gift yet they seemingly took possession of the body part, burying it in sight of the visitors. De Mendaña noted that the islanders hung down their heads and were ashamed, but it is doubtful they were “ashamed” by any sense of wrongdoing in a European sense. It is probable that this gift was offered as a sacrifice or as a means of sharing the spiritual efficacy and success achieved during a headhunting raid. Its refusal by the Europeans was possibly viewed by the islanders as a rejection of the offering and of the ancestral efficacy and spiritual protection such an offering bestowed.⁸ Woodford (1909a:510) conjectured that the practice of taking human heads and capturing slaves had probably been carried out for many centuries before de Mendaña’s visit.

8 The account continues that the occupants of the canoes then travelled to an island close by where they lit a large fire upon which, the Spaniards assumed, they cooked the human flesh taken during the raid.

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Whalers, Traders, Labour Recruiters, and Missionaries

Despite attempts by de Mendaña and numerous other European mariners to return to the Solomons they eluded sailors for about 200 years. It was not until the mid to late-eighteenth century that European activity resumed in the Solomons with the arrival of whaling vessels and vessels engaged in the trade route to China. The islands, in particular the New Georgia group, were a convenient stop-off point for re-stocking ships with fresh water and supplies, so much that the island of Rendova, located off New Georgia Island, is believed to have derived its name from the word “rendezvous”, suggesting a sexual nature to the form these encounters took (Hogbin 1939:10; Somerville 1897:359). During the initial contacts, and later more frequent encounters, trade and exchange took place between sailors and local islanders. As McKinnon (1975:290) noted ‘early European visitors exchanged iron for fresh food and trinkets’ and ‘later traders in search of whales and turtle shell carried supplies of tomahawks, for which demand was keen’. Iron – in the form of nails, hoop iron, or axe-heads – quickly became revered for its strength and durability (Bennett 1987:23). Initially traders seeking sandalwood, turtle shell, or bêche-de-mer, could acquire large amounts of these goods in exchange for a small amount of iron. From the 1870s onwards labour recruiters for plantations in Fiji and Queensland frequented the Solomons, offering three year contracts of work in exchange for a variety of European goods. These goods were generally paid directly to a local chief who then, in turn, paid the man who was to be engaged although the chief generally retained most of the trade goods for himself (Bennett 1987:86-87). However, the practice of “blackbirding”, or kidnapping indigenous people to work on plantations also occurred, and it was a direct result of such kidnapping practices that led to attacks on and murders of ships crews (see Jackson 1978 and Bennett 1987 for discussions of the labour trade in the Solomons).

The nineteenth century was a period of immense social change within the Solomons as the arrival of these “ghost-like” men in their large island-like ships and superior technology challenged local cosmological views and beliefs (Bennett 1987:22-23). A direct result of these interactions was that some coastal communities acquired greater access to trade and European goods, while inland (bush) communities did not, lacking as they did direct access to the sea and to traders and their goods. Such encounters and exchanges between Europeans and Solomon Islanders also introduced illnesses such as tuberculosis, venereal disease and dysentery into the group (Bennett 1987:38-39; Bayliss-Smith 2006). These diseases, together with a gradual escalation in headhunting raids

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during the mid nineteenth-century, resulted in both population decline and the movement of indigenous groups away from coastal areas. This period of sporadic contact between traders and the indigenous population was replaced in 1893 with the establishment of The British Solomon Islands Protectorate. With this came the imposition of British colonial rule in the form of Woodford and Mahaffy, which together with the establishment of copra plantations further affected local social and cultural arrangements, and material culture.

Traders and economic investors were not the only ‘developers’ attracted to the Solomons. During the mid-1800s missionaries arrived in the Solomons. The first to establish a base in the Solomons were members of the Marist Mission at Makira Harbour, San Cristobal in December 1845. However, on account of the murder of their Bishop in 1846 during a visit to Astrolabe Bay, Santa Isabel, and the deaths of several priests in the following months they abandoned the Solomons. It was fifty years before the Marists tried again. The Melanesian Mission had somewhat more success. They had been in periodic contact with coastal communities in the Solomons from the 1850s and in the 1860s Bishop Patteson twice visited the Solomons.

Later, following the opening up of the region with the establishment of the BSIP and the pacification campaign, many Christian missions, including the Marist Mission (1899 in Makira Harbour), the Methodist Mission (1902 in Roviana), the South Sea Evangelical Mission (1906) and the Seventh-Day Adventists (1914 in Viru Harbour, New Georgia) arrived in the Solomons, each choosing a different location. In his history of the Melanesian Mission in the Solomon Islands, Hilliard drew particular attention to the close links between the Anglican Melanesian Mission and the administrators of the Solomons (1974:97). They chose an island close to Tulagi, Woodford’s base, in the Florida Group as their main base. Many of the church men came from the same social class, faith, and even school as Woodford. A Bishop within that mission, Cecil Wilson, was an old school friend of Woodford’s from Tonbridge, and Woodford entertained him at Tulagi (Hilliard 1974:101). Woodford addressed meetings of the Melanesian Mission at Tonbridge in 1905 and 1916 (Hilliard 1974:109). Such close associations between the administration and the church influenced decisions made in relation to the management of the Solomons.

The British Solomon Islands Protectorate

Following the Western Pacific Order in Council in 1877, an act which was intended to safeguard British interests in the Pacific, the Solomon Islands fell under the loose

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jurisdiction of the British High Commissioner based in Suva, Fiji. Coupling the reputation for savagery and violence which the Solomon Islands had gained during the nineteenth century, together with the fact that the British Government never wanted responsibility for the region in the first place, the transformation of the Solomons into a British Protectorate and the pacification of its inhabitants was never going to be an easy or straightforward task from a British point of view. Having declared the region a British Protectorate in 1893, on the understanding that the islands were to be entirely financially self-supporting, in order to safeguard its economic interests in the Pacific in particular the highly valued Australian colonies, from French and German interference, it took another three years to appoint a Resident Commission to the Solomons. With the arrival of Woodford as Resident Commissioner in 1896 and Mahaffy as District Officer in 1898 the process of social and cultural transformation of the Solomons intensified. However, due to the distance of the Solomon Islands from the seat of British Colonial power at Suva, there was poor communication between the two centres, and the Solomons became sidelined in favour of economic development in other protectorates (Bennett 1987:149). This situation was not helped by the fact that both men worked in relative isolation from other Europeans during their initial years in the Solomons. From 1896 to 1898 Woodford was the only white colonial officer in the BSIP, and from 1898 to 1904 there was only Woodford and Mahaffy.⁹ Although supported by several indigenous police and the occasional visiting British naval ship, ultimately they were on their own in terms of government. The practicalities of dealing with such a large geographical area with such limited resources were difficult to overcome. While the circumstances which led to the appointment of Woodford and Mahaffy are discussed in their respective biographical chapters, the following section considers indigenous Western Solomons society in the early colonial period and the economic and social changes forced upon them as a result of Woodford and Mahaffy’s policies. For most indigenous people the establishment of the BSIP did not interfere with their daily lives. However, it was a different case in the Western Solomons.

On account of various factors, discussed below, their way of life and cosmological beliefs and practices were directly targeted by the colonial administration.

9 Briefly, from 1904 the following District Officers were appointed under Woodford: T. Edge-Partington (arrived in 1904), R Broadhurst-Hill (1909), N Heffernan (1910), J Barley (1912) and C Francis (1914). The sixth District Officer, A Oliphant (1906), did cause a scandal in 1906 when he held the post of Acting Resident Commissioner during Woodford’s absence. During this period Oliphant abandoned his post in the BSIP without leave and travelled to Australia. He was dismissed shortly afterwards.

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Western Solomon Islands society in the early colonial period

In order to situate the impact of Woodford and Mahaffy’s campaign in the eradication of headhunting and the transformation of the Solomon Islands into a profitable economic asset for the Crown it is important to briefly overview Western Solomons society in the early colonial period. This will bring to the fore the full impact of their pacification on the society and its affect on material and immaterial elements of cosmological belief and material culture. This section details Solomon Islands society in the early colonial period, the modes of life followed by people, the structural organisation of their societies and their cosmological beliefs. It examines in greater detail the motivations behind headhunting in the Western Solomons, and the scale to which it was undertaken following the establishment of the BSIP. Associated with this is a discussion of the material and immaterial manifestations of headhunting, including the treatment of the dead (both ancestors and enemies), the display of heads or their removal from public view, and the indigenous political systems that controlled and orchestrated headhunting raids.

Within Western Solomons society social relations were made and embodied in and through objects, including patronage of objects and trophy collecting, but also through political alliances. Critical within these sets of relationships were the objects and buildings which formed part of spiritual and cosmological beliefs (immaterial), and objects which were utilised in order to mediate and gain access to spiritual (ancestral efficacy) and material wealth (shell valuables and human skulls). These material and immaterial elements are so intertwined in the objects associated with headhunting in the Western Solomons that one cannot be discussed without referencing the other (cf. Bell & Geismar 2009). It frequently fell to visitors, such as Hocart, Somerville and others, to record the significance of the immaterial aspects of headhunting, such as the incantations spoken during canoe manufacture and consecration (Hocart 1935). Even today, in the display of objects associated with headhunting, rarely are the important immaterial elements noted, perhaps referencing only the European perception of the brutality of acts of headhunting.

Pre-Colonial and colonial New Georgian society was concentrated in settlements in which butubutu, or related groups or lineages, lived within a defined area of land called puava (Jackson 1978; Hviding 1996; Kupiainen 2000:32).¹⁰ The specialists that made up this society were hereditary or elected leaders (bangara), priests (chiama), and leading warriors (varane) who could also act as hired assassins for chiefs outside of their butubutu

10 The indigenous names provided here are taken from Hviding’s analysis of pre-colonial Marovo society (1996).

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Plate 10: Hope shrine with a variety of shell ornament offerings and wooden sculptures. Taken by AM Hocart, 1908. (ATL PAColl-1914-158)

whenever heads were required, or to carry out revenge killings for a bangara (Hviding 1996:87).¹¹ These three groups¹² were the controlling core of New Georgian society, but there were also numerous craft specialists responsible for canoe construction, house construction, woodcarving, and shell money production (Kupiainen 2000:35). Yet integral to, and of great importance to society were captives (known as pinausu), who were generally taken during raids on neighbouring islands (McDougall 2000).¹³ Some acted as servants, as ritual prostitutes, or as sacrificial victims should a head have been required.¹⁴

11 Hiring a varane from outside the kin group to undertake an internal killing would save that group from possible retaliation by the victim’s spirit (Hviding 1996:87). Payment from one chief to another for the loan of a warrior could take the form of a shell ring (Hocart 1931:304). Political alliances and kin linkages made refusing the loan of a varane difficult for a bangara.

12 Hviding (1996:88) states that this ‘triad of male leaders is a variation of a form not uncommon in the Solomons and sharing many attributes with the “troika” described by Keesing (1985).’

13 McDougall noted that on Ranongga it was the taking of captives, and not heads, that was the primary or motivating factor during raids (2000:99).

14 Most captives were not killed. They were either adopted by families or, in many female cases, married by their captors (Woodford 1890a:154). See McDougall (2000) for analysis of the role of pinausu on Ranonnga and their importance in social reproduction within that society.

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Plate 11: A wooden sculptural monument built to hold the “trophies” of Ingava, Roviana Lagoon.

(Festetics de Tolna 1903:331)

Many male captives were put to work manufacturing shell valuables in Roviana, which Hocart (MSS) noted was the main manufacturing centre for shell valuables, which were then traded or exchanged throughout the islands (Plate 12).¹⁵ In many instances chiama were captives who took on priestly duties within their community. This could be an extension of the desire to capture an enemy’s mana through heads, or through accessing that group’s spiritual efficacy (see below) (Hviding 1996:88), or perhaps the capturing community’s fear of dealing with the dangerous ancestral efficacy/power which priestly duties would entail (McDougall 2000:102-3; also see Hocart 1931).¹⁶ This situation has strong parallels with Polynesian concepts of the stranger-king, where the ruler was born

15 The Roviana districts of Kalikoqu, Saikilie, and Buni, and Marovo Island in the Marovo Lagoon were the most important centres for shell valuable production in New Georgia (Somerville 1897:364; Hviding 1996:93; Aswani & Sheppard 2003:s62).

16 See Woodford (1890a:150-152) for an account of Wange, the chiama of Ingava, and the methods employed by him in order to cure Ingava from bewitchment.

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Plate 12: Photograph showing people engaged in shell armlet manufacturing, Roviana Lagoon. Taken by Frederick Wootton-Isaacson, 1903. (MAA P.70201.ACH2)

outside the community and brought a new and different form of ancestral efficacy with him (Sahlins 1985).

As previously noted, Solomon Islands societies were involved within a developing pre-colonial economy and trade in European goods prior to the establishment of the BSIP.

While trade in Western goods characterised the interactions between Solomon Islanders and traders, and later government agents, the trade and exchange of indigenously made commodities continued between indigenous groups. The sea routes travelled between islands to acquire heads and/or captives were the same routes used by Solomon Islanders to trade between centres of manufacturing, for example between Roviana (shell valuables)

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and New Georgia and Guadalcanal (wicker shields).¹⁷ Although not visible on the geographic landscape these sea paths formed a vital link between communities and played an important role in the dissemination of material culture across the region. Although trade was predominantly carried out by gopu, specialised trading vessels that lacked the shell inlay embellishments and raised prows of tomoko (Aswani & Sheppard 2003:s57), the policy introduced by Woodford of destroying all tomoko and the burning of other canoes during punitive raids had a significant and disruptive impact on interisland trade. While the larger and more valuable tomoko were hidden from colonial eyes in anticipation of an attack, time may not have allowed for the removal of smaller trading canoes. Yet the destruction of these smaller canoes had as equal a negative impact on society as the destruction of tomoko: their removal severely disrupted interisland trade networks.

At the heart of Western Solomons village life, both physically and spiritually, was

At the heart of Western Solomons village life, both physically and spiritually, was