Killers, big men and priests on Malaita: rfelections on a melanesian troika system

One of the unfortunate distortions created by the elevation of the Big Man as anthropology's stereotyped Melanesian political leader has been a deflection of attention from warrior-leaders, .who in many parts of precolonial Melanesia had power and prestige greater than or coordinate with that of entrepreneurial leaders. Big Men have held center stage in the period of ethnographic observation partly because men whose prominence was achieved in warfare and feuding have been forcibly removed from the stage by pacification. The role men given to violence and destruction played, and the understanding of such men in folk psychology, will be examined for a part of seaboard Melanesia (Malaita, Solomon Islands) where a complementarity between warriors and peace-keeping entrepreneurial leaders was institutionalized. On Malaita three leadership roles were clearly distinguished: a priest, who maintained relations between a kin group and its ancestors; a Big Man, in the anthropologist's sense; and a war-leader/bounty-hunter. Drawing in particular on evidence from the Kwaio of central Malaita, I examine these three leadership roles both at the level of ideal and practice; and I examine notions of folk psychology that underlie them. Whereas some Malaita peoples to the northwest and southeast seem to have more neatly and directly institutionalized these as complementary leader? ship positions, their separation in practice among the Kwaio was considerably less neat than the "troika idealization would suggest?and that too has interesting implications in terms of folk psychology. Despite the flexibility of actual practice, I will suggest that a distinction between positive powers of peace and stability ("living") and negative powers of violence and destruction ("killing'V'destruction") runs deep in Kwaio culture.