1 - Introduction: W.H.R. Rivers and kava

Summary

In 1914 W. H. R. Rivers published The History of Melanesian Society, his heroic attempt to unravel the complexities of Oceanic cultures. Noting that the distribution of the two major drugs in Oceania appeared to be almost mutually exclusive, he suggested that they had been brought by two separate – though culturally related – waves of immigrants, the kava-people and the betel-people. Both these peoples brought other elements of culture with them, and the interaction of the immigrants with the original population and each other, together with processes of internal development, had produced the great cultural diversity that characterized the region.

Rivers thought that both the kava-people and the betel-people had migrated into the Pacific from south-east Asia. The kava-people came first, and as well as kava they brought shell money, the bow and arrow, the wooden gong, the pig, and the fowl. They also had secret societies, and associated with these were a cult of the dead, totemism, and the practice of taboo. The betel-people came later, and they also brought the custom of head hunting (1914, vol. 2: 226–7, 250–60, 533).

Betel chewing requires at least three ingredients: the nut of the areca palm (Areca catechu), the leaf, catkin or stalk of the betel pepper (Piper betle), and lime. Rivers believed that, because it was a complex practice, combining substances with no obvious common associations, it must have developed in stages. First the betel leaf was chewed, then the other ingredients were added later, one at a time.