or 
JOURNEY TO NEW GUINEA AND NEW BRITAIN, 79 
YAM FEAST AND SPIRIT WORSHIP. 
When we reached the Trobriands Group the yearly Yam feasts 
were being held, and every village had its yam houses filled with 
the new crop, and feasts and dances were being held daily. On 
these occasions there is a great display of native property. The 
principal chief is kept for days almost without food, or only fed 
with some particular article and some betel nut. On a stated 
day he comes from his retirement and after certain ceremonies he 
ties a piece of prepared fibre round the posts of the yam houses. 
This makes them “taboo,” and no one can touch them. Plat- 
forms are then built and on these are displayed all kinds of 
valuable property, such as armlets, native money, &c. Then for 
many days the feasts and dances are held. When all is finished 
the people assemble, shout, beat the posts of the houses, overturn 
everything where a spirit may be hiding, and do all that they can 
to drive them away, and then the feasts are over. The probable 
explanation is that the spirits have been made wealthy for 
another year. They have got the spirits of the yams, and so 
have enough for their needs; they have got the spirits of the 
property, and so are made wealthy ; they have heard the songs 
and seen the dances, and now they are not wanted to frighten or 
disturb those who are living, and so they are driven away. It is 
much the same idea as that of displaying property before a dead 
man and putting a yam into his hand before he is buried, which 
I have noted in another place. 
POWER OF CHIEFS. 
Unlike those in other places in New Guinea, the chiefs in the 
Trobriand Group possess great power—as great indeed as that 
exercised by eastern Polynesian chiefs in old days. When 
Enamakala, the great chief of Kiriwina, comes from his house no 
one dare walk about the village in an upright position. Every- 
one either walks in an abject, stooping position, or in some cases 
actually crawls on hands and knees, and no one speaks above a 
whisper when he is talking. This man has thirty-one wives, each 
one of whom has, by the aid of her relatives, to keep a yam-house 
filled with food for him. Five of his wives have died, four com- 
mitted suicide, and one he killed. 
KIRIWINA VILLAGES. 
Much of the land in the* Trobriands is comparatively open 
country. This is due, I think, to some extent to the bush having 
