FIG. 9 (ci-dessous) : Appuietête
composite (kali), formé
de trois éléments de bois
liés avec de la fi bre de coco ;
la barre est incrustée de 57
disques d’ivoire de cachalot.
Fidji, début/moitié du XIXe
siècle ; 46 cm.
Collection privée ; ex collection James
Hooper, no 810.
FIG. 9 (ci-dessous) : Appuietête
composite (kali), formé
de trois éléments de bois
liés avec de la fi bre de coco ;
la barre est incrustée de 57
disques d’ivoire de cachalot.
Collection privée ; ex collection James
Hooper, no 810.
114
FIG. 26 (below left): Father
Kirschbaum, undated photo
showing a group of recently
carved orator’s stools.
From Crispin Howarth, Myth + Magic:
Art of the Sepik River, Papua New
Guinea. Canberra, National Gallery of
Australia, 2015.
The notion that the stools might have been stolen
or looted from neighboring and rival villages
is worthy of consideration. We turn again to
Bateson and his fi eld notes, now in Cambridge,
to substantiate this explanation. A goodly number
of objects in Cambridge that were brought
back by the British anthropologist are indeed described
as having been acquired through looting.
Raids and looting were commonplace during
the so-called Palimbe wars, in which the Iatmul
fought some of their neighbors in the fi rst years
of the twentieth century. Apparently the most sacred
objects like the great slit drums or the watain
these objects? It cannot be ruled out, but no
documentation exists that confi rms that orator’s
stools specifi cally were ever taken by force.
The presence of these sacred objects among the
material that was brought to Europe by the early
explorers thus remains a mystery. However, it
is doubtful that these early examples come from
the most important ceremonial houses, although
some of the very large examples that left the
country in the early 1950s could well have been
in major houses. Immediately after the Second
World War, at the time that the cargo cults were
fl ourishing along the Sepik, a partial and some-
They use them in secret from their elders to hide
the clumsiness that a person inexperienced with
the objects would at fi rst display. When they begin
to be more comfortable, they move to the sai, the
offi cial training places, where they begin to wear
masks under the supervision of experts. However,
Bateson states that he never saw orator’s stools
anywhere outside of the great ceremonial houses.
That also appears to be the case on Chambri Island.
There, only the ceremonial houses that have
birds (usanasim, a metaphor which refers to the
presence of the large ridge poles with sculpted
birds on them) can have an orator’s stool. In the
end, while it is intriguing, this hypothesis also has
little evidence to support it.
ter drums (see those from Chambri that Bateson
acquired in the village of Malinge) were the
most targeted. It is not really possible to know
whether the fi rst stools collected by the German
explorers were looted examples and, if so, that
they would have been given up so easily once the
enemy had been deprived of them by the victors
who had seized them and had little interest in
keeping them.
There is also too little information to support
the hypothesis that the orator’s stools among
the Sawos or the Manambu of the Blackwater
Lakes area might have been traded at an early
date. Lastly, is it possible that European explorers
would have resorted to the use of force to ob-
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