Chapter IX
Female Reproductivity
The reproductive capacity of women is often phrased in terms of women's ability to nurture children. The Foi say that a mother, much more than a father, works hard to carry children in her string bag and breast feed them when they are infants. The idiom of breast feeding is a convenient starting point for introducing a set of myths that illustrate Foi images of female nurturance and reproductive capacity.
The Breast-Milk Women
The following myth depicts the sufficiency of female milk in its reproductive aspect and contrasts it with the relative insufficiency of male hunting. Like "The Origin of Tree Grubs," the story involves the reversal of sex roles and the oral fertilization of a man. However, in this myth, it is sexual intercourse and nurturance that are metaphorically equated rather than sex and hunting.
There once was a longhouse where only men lived. In it, there lived one man who was habitually unsuccessful at finding game. The other men who regularly brought home meat and made their own sago would not share their food with the poor man. They only gave him the fingers and claws and inedible scraps to eat for they had nothing but contempt for him. One time, the poor man went downstream and came upon a large garden. In it he saw great quantifies of ripe yams, bananas, and sugarcane. Standing there, he watched and saw a very large woman with huge breasts arrive to gather food from the garden. Her breasts were as large as a man's thighs and they hung down very low. The man was afraid. He hid near the base
of a banana tree with ripe fruit. The woman came to cut the bananas down and, looking, saw the man hiding there. She shivered with fright and asked him, "What are you doing here?" The man replied, "I am a poor man and have come in this direction seeking game." The woman allowed him to take some of her garden food, and the man returned with it to his long-house. There he ate the food secretly so his brothers would not discover what he had found.
He returned habitually to the woman's garden and received vegetables that he ate in secret in the longhouse. Another time he went again downstream to get vegetables and the woman arrived to gather food from the garden. This time she said to him, "If you wish to take vegetables now, you must first drink my breast milk." The man suckled both of the woman's breasts until they were dry and shriveled up. His stomach then swelled up, and there in the middle of the garden he vomited forth the milk, along with blood and bile fluid. When he was finished his skin was slack and empty, but the woman revived him by feeding him ginger, cucumbers, and other vegetables. The woman then said to him, "Come back in two days' time."
The man did so, and the day he arrived he heard the sound of laughing voices. There he saw many young maidens. They approached him calling out, "Aiye! Father! Father!" and they followed him. He went further and saw the woman; her breasts now hung slackly. He returned to the long-house and told his brothers, "Construct women's houses." They all built women's houses for themselves. When they were finished, he went and brought all the women back to the longhouse and each man married one of the maidens. The poor man, he married the woman from the garden, the one whose breasts he had suckled. They all lived there. But one man of the longhouse kept beating his wife. The other women were angry at her mistreatment, and they discussed it amongst themselves at night. The poor man kept returning to his woman's house that night to see if the women were planning anything. But in the middle of the night, they all left. When it became light the next day, the poor man returned to the woman's house downstream. He saw that his wife's breasts were large and full once again. He wanted to speak to her but was afraid, and so he left, and he and his brothers lived alone as before. That is all.
The first half of this myth elaborates a pervasive theme in Foi myth, the equation of women and game animals, for in substitution A through D , a man who fails to obtain game succeeds in providing wives for his brothers. The story begins with a man who is unsuccessful in hunting and hence rejected by his brothers in the longhouse. One day he comes upon a garden owned by a woman with abnormally large breasts. The woman regularly supplies him with vegetables that he eats secretly, refusing in turn to share them with his brother (A : garden food for meat; quasi-maternal or marital nurturance for same-sex food sharing). But before he is permitted to obtain more vegetable
food, the woman forces the man to drink her breast milk (B : breast milk for garden food), substituting a subordinate dependent relationship with a woman for a similar relationship with his male siblings. He regurgitates the milk, along with his own blood and bile fluid, which covers the garden (C : rejected milk and blood for garden food). Afterward, his skin becomes "shriveled up," as do the woman's breasts, and he is given more garden food, which revives him. The obviation of the initial substitution completes the identification of the poor hunter as one dependent on women as well as men, for the Foi conventionally describe poor men as having "bad skin".
He returns to the woman's garden two days later, however, to find that the vomited fluids have been transformed into young maidens who call him father (D : women for breast milk; daughters for brothers), obviating A by transforming the failed hunter into a successful father. But the man, by failing to find game, has feminized himself. He has therefore been metaphorically impregnated by the woman and subsequently mingles his own blood with the breast milk, "planting" these procreative substances in the garden (since he has no womb) where they gestate into daughters. The myth therefore reverses the normal masculine and feminine roles in conception and encompasses a figurative equation between breast milk and semen. Thus, the man is able to provide his brothers with wives as he was unable to provide them with meat (again obviating A ).
But one man in the longhouse mistreats his wife (E : rejected wife), first obviating A by revealing the men's simultaneous inability to care for their brother and their wives, and internally obviating B by replacing intersexual nurturance with its opposite, intersexual hostility. This causes the return of the women to their original breast-milk form (the man discovers that his wife's breasts have "swelled up" again), reversing the initial exteriorization of breast milk in substitution C and returning the men to their original wifeless state (F : breast milk for women). The motivating modality of BDF plots the transforming sequence "garden-food—breast milk-women-breast milk-(garden food)," transposing this theme of female reproductive sufficiency against the facilitating modality that details the limitations of male contingency (A : inability to share—C : inability to gestate—E : inability to treat wives properly).
The internal obviation of
"mother" finds daughters. This sequence is structurally comparable to the same internal obviation in "The Origin of Tree Grubs" where, consequent to an initial conflation of sex and hunting, the female "hunters" find "game" in the form of their husband's cross-cousin. In each myth, the feminization of the male protagonist is the residue of his inability to "be" male by hunting successfully. The corollary of this is that women's roles are also precipitated by the conventional performance of such male activities, for the female protagonists in each myth are correspondingly masculinized by the men's predicament. For the Foi, male and female can only be defined in relation to each other and not in isolation. The two myths can thus be said to represent an imaginative statement on the nature of intersexual "schismogenesis" (see Bateson 1958).
The Origin of Fish Poison
The next myth also partakes of the metaphorical equation between subsistence activities and procreation. Through the symbolic manipulation of female blood and its lethal properties, it also achieves a statement on the manner in which men can utilize social ties through blood for socially appropriate purposes and comments on the innate continuity of female progeniture I discussed in chapter 5.
A man once lived with his old aya [grandmother] near the bank of a deep river in a place in the west where it was forbidden for men to go. They dammed the river once and gathered fish. Another time, a man, disregarding the injunction, came to stay with them and saw their peculiar method of fishing: the man took hold of his grandmother and began beating her with a stick. The old woman did not cry out as he did this. As her grandson beat her, he splashed water over her with his other hand, so that the blood from the woman's wounds flowed into the river in great quantity. When she was apparently exsanguinated, her grandson threw the corpse aside in the nearby bush. The visitor watched in anguish and cried out, "Brother! Don't do that to your poor aya !" But the other man did not heed him. After disposing of the body, the man went to inspect the dam in the river. There he found fish of all varieties and in great quantities, which the two men began to remove. The man gave the visitor a large bilum of fish to take with him when he departed.
Another time, the man returned to the place in the west. He and the other man went to gather more fish and, to his amazement, he saw the man's old grandmother sitting in the sun apparently unharmed. Returning once more to his own house, the visitor told his relatives what he had seen. They all traveled with him to the west this time, and they watched as the man struck his grandmother in the same manner and used her blood to
kill fish. When they all returned yet again, they were astonished to see the old woman alive and unharmed. "Now I know how to do it!" the visitor thought to himself excitedly.
One time at his own house, the visitor invited his mother to his house and she sat on the bank of a nearby creek while he constructed a fish dam. When he was finished, he held her tightly and began to beat her with a stick. "Sonny, what are you doing?" she cried, and his relatives also expressed their consternation. When the old woman's body was covered with blood and viscera, he held the body by the legs and dipped it into the water, finally discarding the corpse when he was finished. He inspected the creek but found not one dead fish there. In great agitation, he went to find his mother's body but saw that she was truly dead. Crying, he took a stone war dub and returned to the other man's house in the west. He told the man what had happened to his mother and the man replied, "I did not tell you to do anything like that." As he spoke, he walked around in circles, and the visitor watched as he turned into somokaraya Derris root, while his grandmother turned into somobamuya Derris. Nowadays, when we prepare fish poison from these two plants, we say that it is the blood of this man's old aya that is spreading through the water. That is all.
Aya is the term a man uses reciprocally with his FM, MM, MBW, ZSW, and his wife's relatives of the same category. A man nowadays also uses the term reciprocally with his WM, the yumu avoidance rules having been slightly relaxed in recent years due to Mission influence (see chapter 5).
Informants from the Lake Kutubu villages, in contrast to the Upper Mubi villages where I did my work, spoke of a marriage preference that they called hua mogarira verogibu , "mother in back turn-give," or more colloquially, "marrying behind your mother's back." This specified marriage with a woman from one's mother's mother's clan (that is, MMBSD or MMBD if of appropriate age). The kinship terms used between men and women standing in this relationship would be ma~ ya and emo'o respectively in the Upper Mubi kinship usage, with which marriage is tolerated but not encouraged and at any rate is not preferred or prescribed. But taken as a starting point, this kinship terminological usage provides an entree to the differential relational protocol between a man and his mother's and mother's mother's clans. This myth seems to concern these differences.
An adult man and his aya , which I will take to mean mother's mother (though keeping in mind the range of other relatives in the aya category) live together in an area of the bush forbidden to humans. This and the man's wifeless state underline the liminal character of this domestic arrangement (A : man plus aya for man plus wife). A
visiting man discovers their peculiar methods of killing fish: the man strikes his aya , separating her blood and flesh, allowing the blood to flow into the dammed water (B : blood for aya ; blood for skin). The "poison" causes many fish to be killed (C : fish for blood; fish for aya; aya for fish poison)—in effect, the old woman has mediated the man's attainment of female fishing productivity through her own maternal substance, the blood which she shares with her daughter and with her brother. In other words, the "blood" of a woman in the aya category is her daughter, which is a man's wife, whether one applies the term after marriage as the Upper Mubi Foi do, or whether one seeks a "daughter" (or brother's daughter) of a woman whom one calls aya before one's marriage.
The visiting man returns to find that the old woman had not been killed after all (D : live aya for dead aya ) obviating A by positing the continuing claims through the aya category a man may make in terms of marriage, for fish poisoning represents the exemplary subsistence activity requiring intersexual cooperation for the Foi. The visitor becomes convinced of the efficacy of this procedure and attempts to substitute his own mother in the same manner, whom he ultimately kills (E : mother for aya ), revealing that blood cannot be claimed through the mother but only through the mother's mother for purposes of marriage (obviating B ). This impels the transformation of the man and his aya into the two Derris species, both of which are necessary in the poisoning of fish according to the Foi (F : fish poison for aya relationship, reversing C ). Henceforth, men will invoke the blood of the old woman when reciting a magic spell (different from the one given in "The Fish Spear") for preparing fish poison.
In another myth which also accounts for the origin of Derris poison, a man's mother's brother claims the former's wife to help him in his cannibalistic fishing, after which the two of them are also transformed into wane and ma'asome , the other names for the two Derris plants. Just as in the current myth, a man may make claims through the aya to obtain the reproductive capacity of a wife, so may a man make claims upon his ZSW, whom he helped raise the bridewealth for. The two mythical portrayals of the aya relationship are reciprocals of each other, as is the aya term itself.
The Two Matrilateral Brothers
The origin of Derris poison is the theme of at least four separate tuni , all of them thematically related. For the Foi, fish poison is in-
timately associated with the lethal properties of menstrual blood, and thus all four myths deal with various aspects of female reproductivity and uterine kinship.
In chapter 5 I noted that the marriage of men of the same clan to women of the same clan promotes congruence in bridewealth distribution networks. As with the Etoro (Kelly 1977:94 ff.), the solidarity of patrilaterally related men among the Foi is enhanced if they also share coordinate matrilateral relationships. In "The Fish Spear," an elder and younger brother become differentiated as a result of their marital destinies. In the following myth[1] the focus is inverted: two inherently differentiated brothers become additionally related through their ties to two pairs of female siblings.
There once lived two sisters. Toward the east was a forbidden area. "Men, don't go there!" people always said. But one day the elder sister went to this forbidden area. She came upon the house of a little old woman living by herself. She had a small fire with only two pieces of firewood in the house. The young woman chopped more wood for her and placed it on the fireplace rack. She had also brought her infant son with her. The old woman then said to her, "I will look after the child. I heard a tirifa [Cyrtostachys species] palm fall down outside—go out and bring back the spathe." The woman did so, and while she was cutting the spathe, she heard her child crying back at the house, but she said nothing. When she returned, the child and the old woman were gone. The woman had also gathered frogs, and there at the house she put them in bamboo tubes and prepared to cook them. Then, from behind the dividing wall of the house she heard, "Mother, give me some of that frog and sago." She looked and saw a young adolescent come from behind the wall. It was her child who had suddenly grown into a young man. She gave him some frog and sago which they ate and they returned to their house.
The younger sister also had an infant son. She said to her sister, "Tell me how to make my son grow quickly too," and kept pestering her to reveal the secret. Finally, the elder sister said, "All right, you must do thus and thus . . . ," and she carefully told her what to do. The younger sister went to the forbidden area with her son and gathered frogs. When the old woman told her to go fetch the tirifa palm spathe, she knew what would happen then. As she was removing the spathe, she heard her child screaming from the house. She cried out, "Old woman, what are you doing to my child?" She returned to the house and saw from behind the dividing there appeared a young nasal-voiced uga'ana . In his whiny voice he told his mother to give him frog and sago. This woman's child too had suddenly become a young adolescent, but in this case he had turned out wrong. She returned to the house and the four of them lived there.
The two young men would make traps in the bush and catch much game. The elder sister's son, the good man, would always bring home
whatever he caught and share it with all the others, but the young sister's son, the uga'ana , he never brought any of his catch home. The others all asked each other, "What is he doing in the bush?" One day, the good man pretended to be sick so that he could follow his brother. He said to him, "Brother, I can't go to the bush today. Would you look at my traps for me?" The other man agreed and left. The elder sister's son followed him, wondering what the other man was doing. He arrived at a place where the uga'ana had made a small fire. He saw that there was marsupial, cassowary, bush fowl, and all other kinds of meat in great quantities which the uga'ana had caught in his traps. He had also cooked sago and had carefully cut all the meat up into equal portions. He put each portion aside with some sago, one for each member of the household, saying out loud as he did so, "This is for my mother, this is for my aunt, this is for my brother, this is for me." Then he called out, "Mother, come and eat!" and he ate her share. He called out for the other two to come and eat and then ate their share also. When he finished eating, he noisily drank water and prepared to return to the house. The good man quickly ran back before him. "He is going to eat us!" he thought. When he arrived at the house he cried, "Mother, auntie, he is going to eat us!" But the uga'ana 's mother said, "Do not lie. He would not do any such thing. He is going to bring meat home which we will eat." The young man replied, "Then you may wait here for him," and he left with his mother. They came up to a large swiftly flowing river. Standing near the bank of it was a huge tabia tree. The two of them took their belongings and climbed up the tree. In the middle of the trunk, the young man carved out a room. They made sleeping places for themselves inside and gathered food. With tree sap, the young man fastened a door to this little tree house. Then, from the house where they had run away from, they saw yellow smoke drifting up. The woman thought, "This boy spoke truthfully—that uga'ana is cooking and eating his mother." The young man said, "I did not lie. I told her to run away but she did not believe me." And he and his mother remained hidden in the tree house.
Meanwhile, the uga'ana found the trail of his aunt and brother and followed it to the tabia tree. He began to chop the tree down but, as he did so, he was stung viciously by snakes, stinging nettles, and biting insects which the other man had placed at the base of the tree. Unable to continue, the uga'ana ran away. Each time he returned to resume chopping, these things attacked him. But slowly he did cut the tree down little by little.
The other young man saw that the uga'ana would soon succeed so, with an obsidian blade, he made large cuts above and below their room around the circumference of the tree. Finally, the tabia tree fell as a result of the uga'ana 's exhausting efforts. As it fell, the section with the tree house separated, fell into the middle of the river, and was swiftly carried downstream. The little house zigged and zagged as it rushed along with the current. The stupid uga'ana , however, thought they were still inside the tree and he searched for a long time. "Are they here, or what?" he thought.
The elder sister and her son continued to race downstream. When they felt themselves stuck on some projection, they would rock back and forth until they freed themselves and continued downstream. Finally, they became stuck again, but this time they felt that they were truly aground. They opened the door and looked out upon a beautiful, sandy place. There were ha~ ya edible-leaf trees, hagenamo trees, and large stands of bamboo. They left the tree house moored there and built a longhouse, and there they lived.
The woman had a very small parcel wrapped up in kunamiki'u , the fine cocoon fibers found in the bush. Unwrapping it, she found a tiny red pig inside. Soon it grew big. The young man brought home much meat and they lived a life of plenty.
Another time, the young man finished making a canoe. He then said to his mother, "Make a very long coil of hagenamo fiber rope." He tied one end of the rope to the hole in the side of the canoe. He placed new paddles in the bow and in the stern. Then he allowed the canoe to float downstream, paying out the rope as it did. Finally, the rope stopped moving and began to slacken, so he began to pull it back. He wound the rope up as he pulled it in and, when the coil was nearly the same size as when he started, he saw the canoe approach, paddled by two young women. When they arrived, he married both of them. He gave them each two bilums of meat to take to their relatives, after which they returned and lived at the young man's house.
They were living thus when one day the uga'ana appeared. From the other side of the river they heard him call out, "My brother, come and fetch me with a canoe." The good brother was frightened. "Has he still come to kill and eat us?" he thought. "I don't want you to come and get me, brother, but the wife who was sitting in the stern, I want her to come and get me. Not the one who was sitting in the bow, but the one in the stern," and he pointed to the woman. "Aiyo! So, you've come to say this?" the good brother thought. Then the wife who the uga'ana pointed out went and brought him to the other side. "So, this is where you came, eh? You certainly have a lot of food here!" the uga'ana said, and he ate the meat that the brother had put in the house. They slept that night, and the next day the uga'ana said, "Brother, I've come to say one little thing to you." Thinking of what the uga'ana was going to say, the brother just sat there silently. "Your first wife, the one who came in the bow of the canoe, I'm not speaking of, but the second wife, the one who came in the stern, I'm speaking of. I want to ask her to come with me." Then the other brother replied, "What is it you wish to do with her?" and the uga'ana replied, "No, I have a little work to do and I cannot do it alone so I've come to ask her to help me." The good brother said, "No, I refuse." But the uga'ana became very crestfallen and kept begging the brother to lend him his wife. Finally, in disgust, the good brother said, "You're a rubbish man," and to his second wife, "Come! Go with this wretch here." He left his brother and his first wife on the other side of the river and, before he went, the uga'ana said to them, "If at any time you hear thunder striking, and if it
comes over in this direction, then come and see me at my place. If you don't hear it, it means that we two will return here." Then the uga'ana and his brother's wife left.
They came up to a swamp where there was a pool of water. Perhaps at another time, the uga'ana had hid something there, because now he reached underneath and drew out a stone warclub decorated with snail shells. He took it out and gave it to the woman. He told her to stand there and said, "I'm going underneath the river. If something surfaces right here, then with this club kill it. If you fail to do so, I will kill you and eat you." The woman stood there and the uga'ana dove in. She waited there and presently she saw debris and scum floating down and saw a large woman with pendulous breasts hanging down her chest surface near her. She got out of the water at a small bend in the river and ran away. The woman allowed her to do so and presently the uga'ana came back. "Where did she go?" he asked. "I didn't see," she replied. "Don't tell me you didn't see her; she came here," the uga'ana insisted. "I didn't see her," she repeated. "If you do so again, I'll eat you instead," he replied and then left again. Again she waited. Again she saw churned-up water, debris, and surface scum, and she saw a middle-age man surface. He sped off after leaving the river. Again the uga'ana returned and inquired what happened. He promised again to kill and eat the woman if she allowed another to escape. Another woman with large breasts came, and this time when she surfaced the woman took the stone club and hit her in the middle of the head, and she dropped to the bottom dead. The uga'ana returned. "Where is she?" "No, I've killed her," she replied. "Thank you," he said and he shook her hand and was very pleased. "Very good," he said. Then he took the dead body and they carried it to his house toward the west. There he readied firewood and then disappeared. When he returned he carried with him a very large cassowary. This was for the woman to eat. But this uga'ana only ate people.
The next day, back at the good brother's house, they saw clouds gathering toward the direction of the uga'ana 's house, and thunder struck. "He said to come and see him if this happened," and so they went to the uga'ana 's house. There they saw that the woman had turned into a shoot of the wane Derris and that the uga'ana had turned into the shoot of the ma'asome Derris. The uga'ana had fetched the woman so that they could work together. That is why today if you only use one of the roots, it will not work. You must use both together for the poison to work. One is the uga'ana and the other is the woman. That is all.
Two sisters live alone as a female domestic unit. This myth introduces the recurrent character of the "little old lady" or man who dwells alone in a forbidden area of the bush and is a source of magical powers.[2] As is the case in other Foi tales, this character introduces the significant action of the story. In repayment for the (male) work of cutting firewood and fetching palm-spathe vessels (used in sago pro-
cessing), the old woman performs the exaggerated female task of rearing the young woman's child. The younger sister in this tale plays the role of the "foolish younger sibling" that serves as a contrast in so many Foi tales. She forces the elder sister to reveal the manner in which her son's maturity was accelerated but fails to observe the proper restraint during the process, which causes her son to mature as an "incorrectly formed" uga'ana . I therefore locate the significant substitution that opens this myth at this point (A : MZS for sisters; grown men for young boys; uterine-related men for linking female sibling pair).
The two young men add hunting to the domestic repertoire of the household. But while the elder brother shares his catch with the other members of the domestic unit, he discovers that his younger matrilateral brother does not. The latter instead eats the portions that should have been given to the others, clearly representing them as metonyms for the relatives themselves (B : animal synecdochical cannibalism for meat sharing). The elder brother attempts to warn his female relatives, but the younger brother's mother refuses to believe this, and only the elder brother and his mother escape alive. Although there is a substitution here—mother and son for MZ and MZS, or mother-son pair for sibling pair, that is, a generational transposition—I locate it as part of the following substitution: the mother and son find refuge in a tabia tree that they convert into a dwelling place. They manage to escape from the pursuing younger brother by detaching the section they inhabit and allowing it to fall free into the river when the younger brother chops the tree down. Foi men say that the tabia tree is the home of ganaro spirits and that "You should never cut it down for firewood after eating meat or else the spirits will make you ill with ganaro sickness." This is substitution C : water-borne for arboreal house. As a metaphor of fish poisoning itself—a treelike plant being chopped down and thrown into the water—it foreshadows figuratively the literal transformations that are to come. If we assimilate the Foi belief concerning the ganaro danger of the tabia tree, then the supernatural deadliness of the tree also metaphorizes the lethal properties of Derris root itself.
The mother and son float downstream until they are blocked by the land. They disembark at a place of great fertility and live a life of plenty. Using an empty canoe and a length of (female) bilum string, the man "catches" two women whom he marries. The resulting transfer between the two brothers which follows makes this substitution
clear, but here I will call substitution D "women for canoe," and in its obviation of A , "two sisters as wives for two sisters as linking matrilateral relatives," a conservation of uterine kinship. As the two women gave firewood and palm-spathe vessels for their sons in substitution A , so does the elder brother give meat and a canoe for his wives. Spathes allow women to make sago, and canoes allow them to fish, the two most important female subsistence tasks. D also inverts A by positing a transfer between males in place of one between females, and introduces the domestic complementarity of a husband and wife in place of the rather liminal mother-son complementarity that precedes it.
The younger uga'ana brother returns, however. He asks "not for the woman in the front (ga ) of the canoe, but for the one in the back (gamage )"; that is, not for the elder sister but for the younger. This mirrors the initial uterine split (see Fig. 15). The facilitating modality thus plots the transformation in matrilateral siblingship between the elder and younger brother. The two men not only are brothers through the female siblingship of their mothers, they become figuratively brothers—sawi or "sharers," the term used between wife's sister's husbands,—when, after considerable hesitation, the elder brother accedes to the younger brother's request. After obtaining his wife, the latter leaves him with the instructions concerning the thunder. The younger brother uses his wife in a cannibalistic parody of fish-driving (obviating B : cannibalistic fishing [intersexual] for cannibalistic hunting [male]). This is substitution E : wife for mother; humans for fish. And, as the brother and mother's sister were thrown into the water in substitution C , so is the brother's wife now. In another sense, substitution E also replaces the consanguineal cannibalism of B with a nonconsanguineal cannibalism. But the thunder sounds, and the elder brother discovers that his younger brother and younger brother's wife have been transformed into two pieces of Derris, wane and ma'asome (substitution F ), neither of which alone will kill fish, according to the Foi.
Triangle BDF , in contrast to the facilitating modality of ACE , deals with the transformation of male hunting into intersexual fishing, mediated by the brothers' sharing of wives (as opposed to their sharing of matrilateral aunts). While solitary male hunting requires no cooperation, the killing of fish by poison apparently does. And it requires a very specific type of intersexual cooperation, since the Derris root, though its sap is milky white in color, has red-veined leaves and is thus a female substance associated with menstrual blood. Henceforth,
Figure 15.
Transformation of Uterine Relations in the Myth "The Two Ma-trilateral Brothers"
the elder brother will "pound" ("kill") his younger brother and his wife and "throw them into the water" (thus inverting C where the opposite occurred: a mother and son were thrown into the water), turning the cannibalistic idiom inside-out by using a "human" substance to kill fish.
Sister-Exchange
"The Two Matrilateral Brothers" is an example of a Foi "woman's folktale"; it was related to me in several versions and always by a woman. The following story can be said to represent a male counterpart to the preceding myth: it contrasts a fanciful image of male nurturance and an exaggerated view of the irresponsibility of elder sisters.
There once lived two women. Each one had a younger brother who was a dibu u'ubi , a stunted, malnourished child. The two women treated their young brothers badly, making them sleep underneath the house. There the two women would throw them unwanted food scraps, charred pieces of fat and skin, burnt sago, and the leavings of pitpit. One of the women had lived there before with her brother; the other woman had joined her with her brother afterwards. This second woman would care for her brother slightly—she occasionally gave him proper food, which the two boys would share. But the woman who originally lived there, she did not even give a small amount of proper food to her brother. They all lived in this way.
One time an Usane was announced. The two women went hunting and brought back meat. Then, leaving the two boys underneath the house, they departed. Arriving at the longhouse of the Usane, they distributed their meat. The two boys meanwhile cried as they stayed by themselves. Before the two women had left, they had told their brothers, "Toward the west is a forbidden area. Do not go there," but they did not explain why. While the women were at the Usane, the two boys went to this forbidden area. In the middle of this place, they saw smoke rising from behind a tangle of tura'a vines. Looking, they saw a little old man in an old broken down house. He was burning his own excrement in place of firewood and, because he was unable to move, he had defecated all around his fireplace. The two boys cleaned up the house. "So this is what is here in the forbidden area," they exclaimed to each other. They fetched firewood and straightened the house. They built up a good fire and placed the old man near it so that he could warm himself. They rubbed the pus out of his eyes and carefully washed and rubbed his skin clean. They gathered food and fed him. Because the man had not eaten, the two boys had to force his jaw open in order to feed him. "Ai! Who is doing this?" the old man finally said. He looked and saw these two poor-looking boys. "What are you two doing?" he asked them and they replied, "No, we found you in this wretched state and have helped you." Then they helped him sit up and
straightened his limbs properly. The old man took a cassowary bone spike and split the trunk of a wild banana with it. He told the two boys to step through the resulting hole, and when they reached the other side, they had turned into handsome young men. The old man gave them each a fare sonono drum. "These are my favorite drums," he said as he took them down. Then he gave them pearl shells for decoration and tera'ayefi bark belts and gave them other items until their decoration was complete. They were indeed very handsome. He then gave them pearl shells with which to purchase pork at the Usane. "Eat pork with these," he said. "Don't come back here to repay me. Return to your house before your sisters do. They have left you two to go to the Usane."
The two young men took their drums and left. They distributed their shells at the Usane. It became time for the farega , the beating of the drums. One of the young men stood at the front of the line and the other young man stood in back of him. Thus they danced and beat the drums. The young girls were all watching the young men. The two women were there, and they were entranced by these two handsome young men in the front of the line. With the leaves of pitpit and used bamboo, they struck the ankles of the boys as a mark of romantic interest. The two young men remained silent however. When the dancing was over, they took their pork and ran home. On the verandah of the house, one of the young men used his drum as a headrest and slept, and the other young man did the same thing on the other verandah. Reclining there as the old man instructed, they heard the laughter of their sisters approaching. The two young men remained silent. The two women called out to taunt the two poor boys who they thought were there under the house. "No, two ugly, scabies- and ringworm-ridden boys like yourselves, we met at the Usane." They laughed scornfully at the two boys. They then searched for them but could not find them underneath the house. But there were the two handsome men that they had admired at the Usane, sleeping on the verandahs. The two women bowed their heads and ceased their laughter and went to the other side of the house. The two boys beat the two women with sharpened thorns. Then one boy married the other's sister and the other boy did the same. They did not pay each other bridewealth. They shared the women between them. That is all.
The Foi view the' distinction between immature and mature adults to be as profound as that between the living and the dead and between male and female. This myth uses this distinction to contrast the roles of younger and elder male siblings with respect to their sisters.
Two unrelated women live with their younger brothers whom they treat like pigs, keeping them underneath the house and feeding them on the leavings of human food (substitution A : malnourished, improperly cared for younger male siblings). The dependent status of the two boys diametrically reinforces the exaggeratedly unfeminine characteristics of the two women, who depart on a hunting expedition
when the Usane is announced (B : women as hunters; hunting for metaphorical "pig-raising"). The two boys, left to themselves, travel upstream to the forbidden area where they encounter a solitary little old man. They rebuild his house and take care of him, thus reversing the initial situation (C : care of older man for care of younger boys; younger boys for older females). In gratitude for their solicitous aid, the old man helps them to appropriate the characteristically rapid growth of the wild banana,[3] and the two boys become handsome, healthy young men (substitution D ). This obviates A by substituting the nurturing power of males for that of females. More precisely with respect to the resolution of the myth, the two boys have gained their maturity through a symmetrical exchange of "male nurturance," for Foi men view their house-building, firewood-breaking, and sickness-curing capacities as analogous and complementary to the more specific food-giving and child-raising functions of women. The two boys have replaced a helpless, dependent, and asymmetrical relationship with their sisters for a symmetrical relationship between men.
The two young men go to the Usane, after having been given new decorations "for their skin" as the Foi describe them. There they attract the amorous intentions of their two sisters (E : potential wives for sisters). This obviates B by revealing the fact that what the two women were really "hunting" was husbands, and what they were intending to exchange the meat for were male spouses. As the women threw pitpit leaves down to the two boys underneath the house, so they use these same leaves to signal their sexual desire, striking them below on their ankles even as the leaves must have fallen on the two boys' heads previously. The boys upon the completion of farega dancing, quickly return home. When the two women return later, it is revealed that the two young men they sought were each other's brothers, who punish them and then exchange them in marriage (F ). This inverts C :
In opposition to C , it might also be rendered "wives for drums or decorations," the metaphorical wealth of the skin that attracts women in the first place, and for which they are exchanged in bridewealth transactions. It also inverts the terms of the opening premise A (dependent women for dependent males).
As I have earlier discussed (chapter 5), Foi men determine the marriageability of a woman by the role they have taken in that particular
girl's nurturance and upbringing. A girl who has spent a considerable portion of her young life under the patronage of a man is considered unmarriageable by that man "since his clansmen and consanguines will share in her bridewealth" as the Foi explain. But by the same token, strong-willed men often claim unrelated female dependents as wives "because we work hard raising them." While partaking of the intimate identification and substitutability of women and wealth, this expression also maintains that nurturance must be repaid. Although the young men assume control at the end of the myth, it is nevertheless the sisters who are implicitly claiming them as husbands for the nurturance (however poor) they provided them: this is the meaning of the sisters' marking of the young men at the Usane. In back of this lies the theme of the myth, that the true reward for the boys' aid to the old man was the gift of attracting young women as wives—the supreme gift an older man can bestow upon a younger.
The Sister's Husband's Penis
The reproductive powers of women obviously include the children they bear for their husbands, which are also considered in literal terms as the children of her brothers. A man has the same rights in the bridewealth of his sister's daughters as he does in his own—and the same obligations toward his sister's sons. In common with other horticultural societies (see for example Fox 1972; Rappaport 1969), the Foi express ties of maternal kinship using idioms of planting, growth, and harvesting. In the following myth, the Lesser Yam (Dioscorea nummularia ) is used to metaphorize the relationship between a man and his sister's children.
Once there lived a brother and sister. The sister would go make sago but, when she came back to the house in the afternoon, she would put down her things and leave the house again. Telling her brother m cook his own sago, she would leave, and when she returned at night she would not bring anything with her. The brother thought, "What is my sister doing?" So another time when the sister went to make sago, the brother took her string skirt, bark cloak, her bilum, and her other clothes and dressed in them and followed. He arrived at a large clearing in the bush, just like a house site. He waited there, and presently he saw a penis approaching by itself. It headed straight for the man's groin. He took his stone axe and chopped it in half, and with a big whoosh ! it retreated. He went back to the house and put his own clothes on and waited for his sister. She returned, gave him fresh sago and said to him, "Brother, if you
don't want to cook this yourself, wait for me and I'll cook it when I return." Saying that she left hurriedly. He waited and waited but she did not return.
He slept and the next morning she was still gone. He went back to the place where he had severed the penis and saw that his sister had broken branches along the path she had taken. The man stayed several days and then decided to follow after her. He followed the small path until it came to a small hill and he saw the path leading up it. He went up and arrived at a longhouse. Arriving near the house he heard, "Eke! abia, abia ! [mother's brother]." And then, dancing as they came, were two small boys. Dancing, they took their mother's brother's hand. While they were dancing, a woman came out from the house and then went back inside. It was an ugly woman. The man merely looked at her. Then he went to the house with the two boys. Dancing, they led him to the house. Singing "Abia, abia, abia ," they brought him inside. They sat down in the house and the two boys said to him, "Abia , if the other men come and give you meat, do not eat it. We will bring you what you want." Then they brought him tobacco, smoking leaves, a pipe, sugarcane, sago, and other food. Having eaten, the man ignored what the other men gave him. Then the two boys said to him, "Abia , these men will give you yam runners for planting. They will wrap them up, but do not attempt to look at them. Just say 'thank you' when they give them. We too will say thank you. When they come to give you these, you must dance as you go to get them. When you take it, you will find it is not heavy, it will be light in weight. Having taken it, bring it to your house and put it outside along the side of the house and sleep that night. In the morning, break firewood and burn the bundle." The man agreed. They slept there that night.
The next day, the men told him they were going to give him the yam runners and they all left the house. The woman with the ugly face also came outside, and the two boys said, "That is our mother, your sister. Do you see her?" And the man said, "Yes, I have seen her." "That is your sister, our mother." And the man thought, "My sister has changed into an ugly woman? The two boys said, "Our father also is here, your sister's husband. It is he whom they have really wrapped up in that parcel of yam runners. It is intended that he will surprise you and kill and eat you later." The man heard this. Then he watched as the men came carrying something heavy on a carrying pole. It was so heavy that the pole was nearly breaking under the weight. They put it down and the man said, "Thank you! For giving these yam runners to take with me, thank you!" And the two boys said "Thank you" also. Then saying it again, he danced up and took the parcel. It was not as heavy as it appeared but was light in weight. Then carrying it and dancing, the two boys told him, "Abia , you must go now. If you notice something happening here, it is us fighting. At this time stay at your house." The man agreed. "Abia , when you get ready to burn this parcel, do not worry, the man inside cannot hear you." The man left, and taking the parcel he left it near the side of the house. He slept that night and the next morning took firewood. Piling it up along the side of the
house, he carefully fastened both doors. Then he took a bamboo flare and set fire to the entire house. As the flames engulfed the parcel, he heard the dying screams of the sister's husband trapped inside as he burned to death.
At this time, the man noticed the clouds become black with smoke over another area. Toward the house of his sister's sons, he saw flames lick the sky and smoke blot out the clouds. He sat down on a log and waited. The two boys, their faces covered with blood, came running. "Abia , we have fought, we are finished," they said. "No, let us all go now," the man said. But the two boys replied, "No, abia , you cannot come. They will kill us. You must stay here. If you see more smoke coming from below, you will know they are burning us." The two boys went back. He waited and once again saw black clouds of smoke. "They have burnt my sister's sons," he thought. Then thunder sounded. "They are dead," he thought. Thus it happened, so it is said. That is all.
The tale begins with a man who becomes curious as to his maiden sister's afternoon absences. Determined to discover the reason for this, he puts on her clothing and follows her track (substitution A : brother for sister). In a clearing in the bush, he encounters a perambulating penis that, apparently deceived by the brother's string skirt, attempts to copulate with him (B : penis for sister). The brother severs the organ, however, and it withdraws. The next day, observing that his sister has seemingly left permanently, the brother follows her to a longhouse where he meets his sister's children (C : sister's children for penis; sister's children for sister). The image depicted by obviation sequence ABC in every sense inverts the "real life" situation for the Foi: a man as a husband stays "planted" on his own ground while his penis is capable of long-distance copulation with a wife, who maintains her fratrilocal residence. Viewed from the other direction, it portrays a woman who does not leave her natal land and yet bears children who live with their father. The triangle ABC thus represents the obviation of the separation of cross-sex siblings pursuant to a woman's marriage.
As the brother approaches the longhouse, he is solicitously greeted by his sister's children who "dance" toward him in ceremonial fashion. These children effectively commute all interaction between the man and his affines to that between themselves and their mother's brother. The affines themselves present the man with a parcel of yam runners for planting (D : yam runners for sister; yam runners for penis).[4] The imagery here is vivid: in real life, a man can be said to plant a yam runner (his sisters) who will bear fruit hidden in another place (her own children), yet whose leaves "wander back" (like the sister's husband's penis, that is, his "wealth") and which can be "severed" and
replanted. In the myth, the affines in effect have substituted the reproductive power of the sister's husband (as yam runners) in exchange for that of the man's sister (obviating A ). But acting upon the sister's children's instructions, the man burns the parcel at which point it is revealed that it was the sister's husband whose penis had been severed (E : sister's husband for yam runner, obviating B ). It is a woman's brother who properly mediates the exercise of his sister's husband's procreative sexuality. Having destroyed it, the implication is that the man must accept the demise of his sister's children (F : separation of mother's brother and sister's children for separation of brother and sister, obviating A . In addition, this substitution includes "warfare for ceremonial presentation of sister's children," obviating C by encompassing the conceptual equation of affinity, ceremonialism, and warfare). The resolution of the tale is that a man must accept the loss of his sister's children to his sister's husband; in return he receives bride-wealth, the "planting material" that allows him to propagate his own line. It is consonant with the analysis I presented in chapter 5 that the wealth given by the wife-takers should be simultaneously viewed as male (a penis) and female (vegetatively propagated runners). In other words, wife-givers see the return payment as representing the male component of the sister's husband's line, while the wife-takers view the woman as an aspect of the wife-givers' female capacity. Hence in the myth they pay for her and her children with female (that is vegetable) procreative objects.
The Origin of Usane
The last myth of this chapter does not so much account for the origin of the Usane pork-exchange as much as it describes the origin of the maternal relationship between a man and his sister's sons that makes the Usane necessary. Like the preceding myth, it draws upon the idioms of planting and regeneration, though in a significantly different form.
There once lived a man and his sister. One time he left for the bush leaving her alone in the house. Sitting there, she heard a loud wind begin to blow, coming from the west. The ground shook and thunder sounded. She was frightened. "Is something coming to eat me perhaps?" she thought. She sealed all the holes in the house and threw the steps down and sealed the doors. Presently, a huge python approached, as big as a tree trunk. The python circled the house and put his head through the door of the woman's half. Without speaking, the python told her to stand up, with gestures only.
"If I refuse, he will eat me," she thought. She gathered all her belongings and fastened the door behind her. She climbed onto the python's back as it instructed her to do with gestures. Then the python left. As they traveled, she broke off twigs and branches to mark her trail. They traveled a while until they came up to a cave. There the python told her to alight. Motioning for her to stay, he went and fetched firewood. "How will we light it?" she wondered. She waited and the python returned with a cassowary, leaves for steam-cooking, and a bundle of firewood. He gestured for her to cook it. "But I don't know how I will light the fire," she said to him. The python then struck his tail against the stone and sparks flew, and with a whoosh of flames, the fire ignited. They cooked the cassowary and the woman ate, though she was still frightened. They slept, and the next morning she again climbed onto his back and they left. They traveled until they arrived at a longhouse. There was a fine garden with sugarcane, banana, cordyline, ginger, and crotons, all on a piece of fine red ground. Inside the house there was no sign of fires having been recently lit. Once again, he lit a fire by striking his tail against a stone. He left, and when he returned he had brought another cassowary that he gave to the woman and which she ate. The python slept in the men's house and the woman slept in the woman's half. There they lived. The woman alone ate garden food and made sago. Presently, she became pregnant. The python instructed her to make a bark box, like the one in which puppies are kept. She gave birth to four tiny snakes no bigger than one's little finger. She put them in the bark box. They grew up until they were the diameter of a wrist.
One time the woman went to the garden and the python went hunting. At this time, the brother returned to his house after being gone a long time. He came back and found the house covered with bush growth. "Ai! Someone has eaten my sister!" he thought. He slept, and in the morning he noticed the trail his sister had made. The python had flattened the bush when it left, leaving a broad path. The brother followed it. He came upon the cave where they had slept, spent the night there, and in the morning continued on. He came upon the house. "Do men live here?" he wondered. He looked in both the men's and woman's half. "My sister slept here," he thought, seeing the woman's fireplace. He saw the bark box. It was fastened shut. He lifted the lid, and four snakes reached up with their mouths open as if to drink breast milk. He dropped hot coals into the box, burning the snakes. There they shrunk with the heat and died. He closed it again and went to the men's half and lit a fire there.
Later on, his sister returned and saw smoke coming from the house. "Who is there," she wondered. She saw her brother, and they hugged each other in relief. Then she went to the box to give breast milk to her snake children. But when she opened it, the snakes did not appear. "Did you look in this perhaps?" she asked her brother. "Yes," he replied. "What did you do?" she asked. "No, there were snakes in it and I burnt them," he said. "Brother, you've done something very bad! We are finished now. He will come and eat us. He is not a man, he is something else. You will see when he arrives," she wailed. Then she said, "We must not sleep at the
same time tonight. We must watch each other when we sleep. If he brings meat, do not eat a lot." There they waited.
Presently, a cloudburst pattered the roof and lightning flashed. The ground shook and it thundered. "He has arrived," the sister said. The python appeared carrying a very large cassowary and much firewood on his back. But as he approached the house, he sensed the brother's presence and turned with an angry expression on his face to the woman. "What is in the house," he asked in gestures. "No, there is nothing," she replied. "No, I feel something is there," he repeated. "No, my brother has come," she finally said. And the python's expression became happy. He flicked his tongue in and out with pleasure. "Yes, my brother. We are of the same mother and father," she explained. "Your true kabusi [WB]," she added. He went inside the house and prepared the cassowary. He indicated that they should both eat it. But the brother ate only a small portion. The python curled himself around the other fireplace and watched his wife's brother with pleasure. Then, noticing that his wife had not given milk to the infants, he sat up and said in python's language, "Feferegeme !" which means, "give them breast milk!" But the woman replied that they had been burnt in the fire. The python's expression changed once again. His skin exuded much slime. The brother knew now that the python intended to eat him. The python stared at the man with an angry red eye. The brother built up his fire and tried to stay awake as the python watched him. When the fire died down and the brother began to doze off, the snake would move forward, and then retreat when the brother started. He stayed awake all night but, close to dawn as the birds started singing, the two of them finally fell asleep. The python saw this and he straightened his body and swallowed the man whole. The sister was sleeping soundly, and the python left. As he traveled, he squirmed his body between the spaces in between tree roots in an effort to squeeze the brother to death. He tried to do this without success and kept traveling. He came upon a large lake and went underneath, settling on the bottom. Meanwhile, the sister awoke and found her brother was gone. She set out to follow him, following the python's path, seeing the flattened ground that he had left. She took food with her, crying as she traveled. She came up to the lake where the python had submerged. There she built a small house and waited.
Meanwhile, the brother was inside the python's stomach. He thought he was still sleeping in the house. He opened his eyes and thought, "What kind of place am I sleeping in?" It was very dark, and he realized that the python had swallowed him. He straightened himself and found that he was unharmed. The python's stomach was transparent, and he saw the water surrounding him outside. "What shall I do?" he thought. He had a cane armband on and underneath it, he felt an obsidian flake knife. It was very sharp and with it he started cutting the python's stomach. Having released himself, he swam to the surface of the lake. He was nearly overcome by the time he reached the top. His body and skin was covered with the internal secretions of the python's stomach. He came upon the house where
his sister was waiting, and said to her, "Sister, he is dead. I killed him. He will rise to the surface shortly." Presently the water started churning up with debris and twigs. It bubbled and churned, and the python's body appeared. The brother took lengths of vine and tied them to the python's body, telling his sister to fetch leaves for cooking. Then he gathered other men of that place and with ha~ ya, sa~ ae, kotabera, and bare leaves, they dragged the python's body to the surface and cooked it with those leaves. Having cooked the python in a very long earth oven, they cut up the meat. His sister said to him, "Give me a portion of heart and portion of kidney." The brother gave her these portions of the python.
She took them to an old kara'o tree that had long been tapped, so that the hole inside was dry. She cleaned the interior hole of dirt and twigs, and built a small platform of crossed twigs, as men do when collecting kara'o oil. She laid the two portions of viscera onto this platform and covered them with leaves. She waited four days, and when she looked again, she saw the two portions of meat had disappeared and there were only two tiny maggots there. She waited another four days perhaps, and when she returned again to look she saw two tiny infant boys. They wriggled and turned, and their skin was red and wrinkled. Again she waited and when she returned, she saw that the two boys were sitting up and crawling on their knees. They frolicked together. Another time they were big enough to want to climb outside. At this time, the woman gathered good food, ripe bananas, and different kinds of good meat and started to give them food regularly. They grew to be identical twins.
Another time, after the boys had grown up more, it was heard that a longhouse far away was to have its Usane. The woman went to her brother and said, "Brother, make me two sets of armbands, two sets of legbands, two sets of earrings and arm-shells, two bark belts, two pearl shells, two bows and arrows." The man did not ask her why she wanted these things but made them without inquiring. The sister said to him also, "Make two short drums, two beautiful drums exactly alike." The man did so. Soon it was time for the Usane. "Brother, go hunting," the sister said to him. "Bring back two bilums of marsupials and bring pearl shells also," she said. Then she went to give the decorations to the two boys. They decorated and practiced their dancing outside the house. It was very good. The woman smiled in pleasure and admired their handsome bodies. Tomorrow was to be the Usane. She said to her brother, "If two boys come, give them the two bilums of meat." The next day, the man left for the Usane. Along the path he met the two boys and they said to him, "Abia [MB], give us the bilums of meat." The man gave them to the boys along with the two duibo drums. They arrived at the longhouse and discovered that they were still searching for the two men to lead the dance line. The two boys arrived, and they took the two leading positions. They danced the farega and then received their aname , their pork and shell for meat. The two boys received two bilums of pork. Then the men decorated again and prepared to dance the usanega . They took their duibo drums and danced. The two boys sung:
"abiamo sa'ae sangura bibimekeribiyo
abiamo ha ~ ya wa~ yo bibimekeribiyo
abiamo bibi game bibimekeribiyo
abiamo kui adora bibimekeribiyo
Our mother's brother has cooked our
father in sa'ae sangura leaves
Our mother's brother has cooked our
father in ha~ ya wa~ yo leaves
Our mother's brother has cooked our
father in bibi game leaves
Our mother's brother has cooked our
father with sago."
The men heard this and thought, "It is dawn now, the Usane is over." They took their pork bilums and departed for their own longhouses as it became light. This was the first Usane. That is all.
A brother and sister live together as a domestic unit. While the brother is away, a giant python comes to the house and takes the sister with him (substitution A : python for brother; husband for brother). They arrive at a human house where they assume marital coresidence, and the sister gives birth to python infants (B : python children for human children). The liminal status of both the nonhuman children and the woman's maternal capacity is underlined by the confinement of the infant pythons in a bark box, which we can interpret as an external womb. The brother follows the track made by the python and, upon arriving at his sister's home, the first thing he does is discover the small pythons and kill them with hot coals (C : sister's children as metaphorical meat; brother for sister's children [since the sister leaves the infant pythons in the house and returns to find the brother in their place]). In another sense, the python is a penis symbol, and the killing of the python children represents the brother's obviation of both his sister's and his sister's husband's sexuality and re-productivity. The next two relevant episodes are an analogical corollary of this. The python returns and, learning of his wife's brother's deed, swallows him and settles on the bottom of a lake. There, the brother is "reborn" by slicing his way through the python's stomach (D : brother kills python) obviating A , but, more importantly, completing the identification of a man with his sister's children, for as the python fathered the infant snakes, so does he now figuratively "give birth" to his wife's brother. By "gestating" a human rather than pythons, the brother's supplanting of the python's paternal relationship represents the beginning of his own appropriation of the python to gestate truly human sister's children. From the sister's husband's point of view, he needs a man's sister to generate his patriline; from his
wife's brother's point of view, he needs his sister's husband to generate his sister's children.
After killing the python and becoming reunited with his sister, the brother prepares to steam-cook the python (treating him as "bride-wealth meat" in exchange for the python's initial abduction of his sister). On the request of the sister, he gives her two portions of the python's internal organs (E : python's internal organs for python children, obviating B ). This metaphorizes very nicely the contrast between male and female lineality: the brother gives his sister the python's maternally derived bodily organs, thus preserving the continuity of the python's maternal line in the act of obviating the python's patrilineality, even as the brother mediates his own sister's progeniture.
The sister places the two pieces of meat into the interior of a kara'o tree, where they first transform into two maggots and then into human infants (F : human children for python's internal organs; sister's "human" children for meat, obviating C : "meat" for sister's python children). The nurturance of the two boys and their subsequent growth and development mark the closing of the obviation sequence
I have already described the analogy the Foi perceive between the interior cavity of the kara'o tree and a woman's uterus (see chapter 4). The initial appearance of the two sister's sons as maggots on the python viscera preserves their identity as their father's offspring—"lit-tie snakes"—thus encompassing the obviation of C by
In chapter 7 I described the obviation of the initial interdict between wife-givers and wife-takers that occurs when children are born. The two preceding myths focused on this aspect of the sequence, contrast-
ing the different metaphors of matrifilial and patrifilial continuity. "The Origin of Usane" from one point of view represents the structural inverse of "The Sister's Husband's Penis." in that myth, the woman's brother obviates the external procreative sexuality (that is, the penis, or "wealth") of his sister's husband at the expense of losing his sister's children. In "The Origin of Usane," on the other hand, the woman's brother appropriates the sister's husband's internal organs, thus obviating the sister's husband's patrilineal identification with his own children.
While these two myths thus comment on substitutions D and E of the obviation sequence I diagrammed in figure 7 (chapter 7), the myths of the next chapter concern substitution B and C of that sequence, which focus on the initial differentiation of wife-takers and wife-givers themselves. These myths depict a number of important political and cosmological dimensions of affinity, as well as the analogy between various affinal dyadic relationships.