Ebook: From the Two Canoes: Oral Traditions of Rennell and Bellona

Rennell and Bellona are two Polynesian Outlier islands in the British Solomon Islands. The people of Rennell and Bellona often refer to their islands in their rituals and poetry as two canoes. The ancestors who discovered the islands came from the east in two canoes, and the crews of these two canoes laid the foundation for the culture of Rennell and Bellona. Each island, furthermore, is canoe-shaped, with a low-lying interior and high coastal walls not unlike the sides of a canoe.

The first three chapters of this book contain matter designed to make the islanders' traditions given in later chapters more meaningful. Chapter 1 includes brief discussions of the following topics: the field experiences of the two authors (Section 1); a physical description of Rennell and Bellona and a resume of their few contacts with the outside world (Section 2); the social organization, kinship system, religion, and cultural inventory of the people (Section 3); the language, orthography, and translating techniques (Sections 4 to 6); the function of stories and story tellers in the culture (Section 7); the selection and arrangement of the texts (Section 8).

Chapter 2 presents brief biographies of the 49 tellers best known to the compilers, and Chapter 3 consists of genealogies of ancestors and living persons, from the first immigrants down through some 23 generations to the children of the present chiefs.

In Chapters 4 through 19 the traditions of the Rennellese and Bellonese are given in their own words, with our translations into English in parallel columns. The traditions are not presented here in the order in which they were told in the field, which depended on the knowledge and moods of 72 informants, but have been rearranged in the following historical-semantic order: the gods and the semimythical early inhabitants; the immigration of the ancestors of the present-day people from a place called 'Ubea; the formation of settlements and clans and subdivisions of clans, and the nearly constant fighting and strife; the vicissitudes and doings of ordinary folk, and the arrivals of castaways from other islands; finally, the conversion to Christianity in 1938 with its traumatic events at Niupani.