territories be established allowing the tribes thus protected to ..... Study of the. Way of Life, Mythology, and Developing ... 1777 A Voyage Towards the South Pole.
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Finally, Hippler suggests that I am arguing for “walling off’ tribal cultures, which he characterizes as “concentration-camp thinking” (p. 348). He then expresses puzzlement about my agreement with Bodley in rejecting the “human zoo*’ concept (p. 349). I support the suggestion made by Bodley that protected tribal territories be established allowing the tribes thus protected to determine for themselves what culture changes to permit, how, when, and at what pace - and like Bodley I reject the pejorative label “human zoo” for such an arrangement. It is in connection with forced assimilation (ethnocide) that there exists the danger of a “concentration camp” mentality arising to s u g gest an expeditious means of providing a final solution to the tribal problem (see, for example, Olarte 1942:21-22). In at least one country such thinking apparently became a reality (see Miinzel 1973, 1974: Lewis 1975; Arens 1976, 1978; Maybury-Lewis and Howe 1980). The concern of anthropologists should be that this never happen again, not anywhere and not to any group of human beings.
References Cited
Arens, Richard (ed.) 1976 Genocide in Paraguay. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Arens, Richard 1978 The Forest Indians in Stroessner’s Paraguay: Survival or Extinction? Survival International Document IV. London: Survival International. Hippler, Arthur E. 1974 Some Alternative Viewpoints of the Negative Results of Euro-American Contact with Non-Western Group. American Anthropologist 76:334-337. Lewis, Norman 1975 The Horrors of Cecilio Baez. Tropic (Miami Herald Sunday Magazine) 9(16): 16-23.
Maybury-Lewis, David, and James Howe 1980 The Indian Peoples of Paraguay: Their Plight and Their Prospects. Special Report Number Two. Cambridge (Mass.): Cultural Survival Inc. Munzel, Mark 1973 The Ache Indians: Genocide in Paraguay. IWGIA Document No. 11. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.
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The Ache: Genocide Continues in Paraguay. IWGIA Document No. 17. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indegenous Affairs. Olarte. Antonio M. 1942 El Vicariato ApostBlico del Ucayali (Perii): DescripciBn y Estado Actual (1942). [Lima.] Weiss, Gerald 1973 A Scientific Concept of Culture. American Anthropologist 75:1376- 1413. 1975 Campa Cosmology: The World of a Forest Tribe in South America. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Volume 52, Part 5. New York: American Museum of Natural History. 1974
Submitted 28 May 1980 Revised mnnuscript submitted 9 May 1981 Accepted 4 June 1981
“Big Man:” A Short Terminological History LAMONT LINDSTROM Southwestern ot Memphtj The term “big man,” over the past 40 years or has emerged as a typological concept in anthropology. This creation of a new scientific vocable, I argue, resulted from a number of haphazard and unplanned choices made by many individual ethnographers. The history of anthropological terminology in general - from “polyandry” to “slash-and-burn”-deserves a good deal more attention than it currently receives. The first time we match word to concept we use language; the second time, repeated. language begins to use us. As “big man” migrated from an everyday to a scientific vocabulary it carried with it a number of appended meanings and connotations and was further endowed with others. It is presently a verbal metonym: shorthand for a preconceived, unspoken typologic distinction (that opposition between big man and chief) and for a set of associated cultural characteristics. These include achievement of leadership status; small, short-lived polities: group members linked by kin and residence ties; competition for and so,
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uncertainty of authority: political consensus; economic ability; individuality and strength; shell valuables; pigs; etc. These assorted cultural characteristics are sometimes recognized and labeled with the slightly expanded terms “big man complex” or “big man system” (Harding and Wallace 1970:index). The success of the term “big man” as this sort of anthropological metonym has been only recent. The English word anthropologists and others used during the 19th and early 20th centunes to describe Melanesian leaders was “chief.” (A word whose cousin, cheJ has survived much longer in French anthropological usage, cf. Guiart 1963:16.) People soon realized the men thus described did not measure up to the idea encapsulated in the word. The romantic notion, entertained by Europeans, of strong, singular, tyrannical, omnipotent, polygynous, decorated, gracious, wealthy, and hospitable native chiefs was stretched to fit the realities of Melanesian leadership systems at threat of conceptual self-destruction. This is clear in various writings provided by explorers and others involved in the adventures of culture contact. To cite one example among many, Captain James Cook landed on Tanna (Vanuatu) in 1774 and searched for a person who matched his chiefly expectations, only to be disappointed: “They seem to have chiefs among them: at least some were pointed out to us by that title; but, as I before observed, they appeared to have very little authority over the rest of the people” (1777:II, 83). Those applying the term “chief’ often realized that it was a misfit and were troubled to redefine it to fit their data. Some put the term in quotes (Deacon 1934:index). Williams (1941: 260) noted a difficulty in discovering “true village chiefs” among the peoples round Lake Kutubu of Papua New Guinea although he continued to use the term to describe the sorts of leaders he did locate. Powdermaker (1944:41) translated the Lesu term for leader as “influential man” (a gloss later to be associated with “big man”) although she indexed such people under “chief.” The missionary ethnographer Codrington used the term “chief’ although with perceptive qualification: Chiefs exist, and still have in most islands important place and power, though never perhaps so much importance in the native view as they have in the eyes of European visitors who carry with them the persuasion that savage peoples are always ruled by
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chiefs. A trader or other visitor looks for a chief, and finds such a one as he expects; a very insignificant person in this way comes to be called, and to call himself, the king of his island, and his consideration among his own people is of course enormously enhanced by what white people make of him (1891:46). Hogbin (1939) and Oliver (1955), both drawing on field data from the northern and central Solomon Islands, developed and refined the concept of a new, unchiefly leadership type pulling together strands of argument and passing description scattered throughout earlier material. Out of the bosom of “chief,” the category into which all “savage” leaders were formerly put, grew a new ideal type. “Chief’ remained as the label of those sorts of leaders with expected leadership qualities given a European perspective while the second typological category evolved to encompass the Melanesian experience. This newly described type of leader did not yet own a widely agreed upon label. Most ethnographies up to the middle years of this century indexed descriptions of Melanesian leadership systems under “chief’ or “chieftainship” (see Codrington 1891; Rivers 1914; Williamson 1914; Fox 1924; Powdermaker 1933. for examples). From the 1930s through the 1950s, however, ethnographers began to adopt other terms to describe and classify Melanesian leaders. One tack was simply to carry over the vernacular term into the analysis. Hogbin (1938:290) decided to retain the indigenous term mwanekama in his discussion of Kaoka leaders as “to speak of the leaders as chiefs would clearly be most misleading.” Others, like Oliver (1955) spoke of mumi; Read (1946:llS) of gamm tzira. A second tack involved the invention of some new typologic label with which to escape the inaccurate connotations of “chief.” These devised labels included “headman“ (favored by Williams 1936: 236; Hogbin 1951:index, 1964:62; Belshaw 1954:108: Pospisil 1963:48), “centerman” (Hogbin 1939:62), “strongman” (Berndt 1969: 335; Du Toit 1975:385), “manager” (Bunidge 1969:38, 1975; Scheffler 1965:22), “magnate“ (Chowning and Goodenough 1965-66:454), “director” or “executive” (Salisbury 1964:236). and of course “big man.” These were competing terms during the 1950s and 1960s. Some ethnographers favored one and some another in an unplanned process of terminological natural selection. In the 1960s and 1970s. “big man” gradually expanded its appeal and emerged as
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the widely accepted anthropological typic label, defined by distinctive feature, in opposition to “chief’ (see Chowning 1979:66-67). The first instance I can find of “big man” considered to be an indexical term (thus presuming some anthropological utility and ease of recognition) is in Meads 1935 work Sex and Temperament in Three Pnmitive Societies wherein it appears, indexed, on page 326. Its move from common parlance to anthropology was slow. The short, general works on Melanesia written by Lewis (1951:249) and Cranstone (1961:llO)continue to index the term “chief.” More recent work, however, both general (Chowning 1977;Gunson 1978) and specific includes “big man” as an important and indexical term (as does the Encyclopedia of P a p w New Guinea (Ryan 1972)). Virtually every contemporary ethnographic description of Melanesian political systems both uses and indexes the term. The general, very popular and often reprinted article by Sahlins, “Poor Man, Rich Man, BigMan, Chief’ (1963)and also that by Burridge (1975). both taking a pan-Melanesian perspective, did much to cement the term into the anthropological lexicon. Sahlins’s article, moreover, was the first to use “big man” as part of its title. In recent years, “big man” has served as part of an increasing number of ethnographic titles including those devised by Finney (1973), Hawkes (1978), Keesing (1978), and Sillitoe (1978). “Big man” also appeared often in the collection of papers Politics in New Guinea (Berndt and Lawrence 1971), first published in the journal Anthropological Forum. Lawrence highlighted the term in his introduction to the volume. New generations of anthropologists are learning the term in the way such knowledge is usually transmitted-from the pages of introductory anthropology texts. Most recent texts discuss and index the term (Pearson 1974:220; Haviland 1975:269; Swartz and Jordan 1976: 493; Keesing 1976:353; Hoebel and Weaver 1979:455; Alland 1980:423; and Harris 1980: 304,for examples). Although a few writers continue to prefer other terms, they usually acknowledge the preeminence of “big man” with some sort of rhetorical bow (vide Burridge (1975:86),for example: “The Melanesian ‘Big Man’ or ‘Manager’ as I persist in calling him.”) In these instances, “big man” appears in a book’s index with a cross-referenceto the particular alternate term (i.e., ‘*seeHeadman.”) Those who describe Melanesian polities without “big men,” at the least, must carefully argue why the now ex-
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pected leadership type (along with its complex or system) happens to be an inappropriate
ethnographic classifier given the facts of some particular society (see Hallpike 1977:141, for example). The final evolution of an idea of a new leadership type and the triumph of an accepted label for this type did not successfully come about until 200 years after Cook first noted a dissonance in fit between available terminology (i.e., “chief’) and ethnographic fact. The undoubted reason “big man” won through, at last, as the scientific label of the newly defined type of leader is that the term is often a direct translation of leadership status labels in a wide range of Melanesian languages. Nema aron‘ in the Kwamera language of Tanna, for example, means “big, grand, or important men.” Both European and Melanesian cultures model social upon physical mass. Even while early ethnographers used the term “chief’ they sometimes also noted that vernacular leadership labels actually meant something similar to “big man” or “rich man.” Codrington may have been the first to translate (in print) indigenous leader status labels as “great men” (1891:55).The term “big man” appears in other early ethnographic work although as a vernacular rather than scientific gloss. Landtman, in 1927, wrote, “the great chiefs, too, which there were in former times, seem always to have acted in connection with the other ‘bigmen’ ” (1927:169).Kaberry(1942: 95), Read (1950:216)and many others cite “big man” as the translation of various indigenous status labels. The fact that “big man” or “bigfala man” was, and is, an acceptable Pidgin English term for leader (in addition to “chief’ for local leaders and, historically, bos or marta for the European import) may also explain its eventual scientific success. Ray, in a small pidgin lexicon which presents data he collected during the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits in 1898,lists “Big big man” as signifying an “important man’’ (Haddon 1901-35:111, 253). Landtman. in his chapter on Pidgin English, gives an example to illustrate the use of “fellow” (“one big fellow man he come”) which he translates as “a great (or tall) man comes” (1927:424). In more recent Pidgin lexicons, Hall (1943:91) translate “bigfala man” as “grown man or important man” and Camden (1977:8)lists “bigman” as “community leader.” Administrators and missionaries also adopted this Pidgin term as a leadership status label. The missionary C. McLeod wrote of “big men“
REPORTS AND COMMENTS on Tanna as early as 1947 (McLeod 1947:lO;see also Bell 1939:8) antedating anthropological consensus in the matter. The quotation marks, which once adorned the term, holding it at arm’s length, are now coming off. Whereas “big man” may once have been an analytical oddity, big man (or bigman, or bigman) is now fervently embraced as common currency. Moreover, terminological playfulness has begun - a sure sign of the solid success of a category label. Where once big men stood alone, they now have had to give way to big women. The term, as often happens, has also been ennobled by virtue of its status as an anthropological scientific label and is now making inroads into a second everyday vocabulary. It has appeared in several popular, if highbrow, books and articles including Scheffler’s “Big Men and Disks of Shell” (1965) and Rogers’s New Guinea: Big Man Island (1970). In tracing its circuitous history, one follows the term from Melanesian languages, to Pidgin English, to expatriate European communities, to anthropology, and now back into the common parlance of a different society. Escaping the bounds of the anthropological community, its audience widens. Additional evidence that big man is well established in the anthropological lexicon is given by the measure of criticism the term has recently begun to suffer. Some ethnographers find it, along with its baggage of connotated cultural configuration, to be an unwieldy and inaccurate fit with ethnographic fact. Douglas (1979)criticizes the basic underlying opposition between Melanesian big man and Polynesian chief as falsely representative of the subtleties of ethnographic data from these areas (see also Lindstrom 1978). Sillitoe (1979:48),washing his hands of big man and also of all its terminological competitors, once again takes refuge in the comparative safety of the vernacular (using the Wola term 01 howma) in a perhaps futile attempt to escape the unstated presuppositions adhering to big man. Hallpike, overturning history, abandons big man and claims back the word “chief’ in his descriptions of Highlands New Guinea Tauade leaders although he is clearly unhappy with both labels (1977:142). The idea of big man developed, basically, in response to ethnographic experience in New Guinea and the northern and central Solomon Islands. The term took hold at the same time an idea that political status is due primarily to economic ability became popular: the exchange of pigs for authority, when most simply put.
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Leaders in other parts of Melanesia such as Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and also in Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, if studied with a different eye, owe their political status not (or not just) to big man vulgar economizing but to various sorts of heredity, to age, to position within a grade system, to their control and communication of valuable knowledge, to their modern education, or to their success in the contemporary political arena. Are these big men? They are, presently, in that they reside in Melanesia but they are big men with a difference. Again, as once with chief, an ethnographer is only able to use the big man typologic label with sometimes severe qualification. There are now classical big men and aberrant big men. The term and the anthropological leadership category it labels are undergoing a development which (in a context of changing social and political structures in Melanesia) may lead either to refinement or abandonment. Melanesians themselves, at least those in Vanuatu, are more familiar with and today much prefer the word “chief.” There are several sorts of National Councils of Chiefs, while I am unaware of any entitled National Council of Big Men. Terminological history repeats itself. Although current criticism of big man as a typological category is yet neither savage nor farsighted, as big man evolved in answer to the distortions of chief, some new term, in another 200 years, may eventually replace the both of them. Given the discipline’sfondness for terminological natural selection, is it likely this evolution will be planned? References Cited Alland, Alexander 1980 To Be Human: An Introduction to Anthropology. New York: Wiley. Bell, H. M. 1939 From the Rev. H. M. Bell. Quarterly Jottings from the New Hebrides 184:8. Belshaw, Cyril S. 1954 Changing Melanesia: Social Economy of Culture Contact. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Berndt, Ronald M. 1969 Political Structure in the Eastern Central Highlands of New Guinea. Anthropological Forum 2:327- 370. Berndt, Ronald M., and Peter Lawrence, eds. 1971 Politics in New Guinea: Traditional and in the Context of Change: Some An-
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thropological Perspectives. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press. Burridge, Kenelm 1969 Tangu Traditions: A Study of the Way of Life, Mythology, and Developing Experiences of a New Guinea People. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1975 The Melanesian Manager. In Studies in Social Anthropology: Essays in Memory of E. E. Evans-Pritchard By His Former Oxford Colleagues. J. H. M. Beattie and R. G. Lienhardt, eds. pp. 86-104. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Camden, Bill 1977 A Descriptive Dictionary: Bislama to English. Port Vila: Maropa Publications. Chowning, Ann 1977 An Introduction to the Peoples and Cultures of Melanesia. 2nd ed. Menlo Park: Cummings. 1979 Leadership in Melanesia. Journal of Pacific History 14:66-84. Chowning. Ann, and Ward H. Goodenough 1965-66 Lakalai Political Organization. Anthropological Forum 1:412-473. Codrington, R. H. 1891 The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folklore. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cook. James 1777 A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Performed in His Majesty’s Ships the Resolution and Adventure, In the Years 1772, 1773, 1774, and 1775. 2 vols. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell. Cranstone, B. A. L. 1961 Melanesia: A Short Ethnography. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Deacon, A. Bernard 1934 Malekula: A Vanishing People in the New Hebrides. London: G. Routledge and sons. Douglas, Bronwyn 1979 Rank, Power, Authority: A Reassessment of Traditional Leadership in South Pacific Societies. Journal of Pacific History 14~2-27.
Du Toit, Brian M. 1975 Akuna: A New Guinea Village Com-
munity. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema. Finney. Ben R. 1973 Big-Men and Business: Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth in the New Guinea Highlands. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
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Fox, C. E. 1924 The Threshold of the Pacific: An Account of the Social Organization, Magic and Religion of the People of San Cristoval in the Solomon Islands. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. Guiart, Jean 1963 Structure de la Chefferie en MClanesie du Sud. Paris: Mu* de L’Homme, Travaux et Memoires de L’Institut d’Ethnologie, No. 66. Gunson, Niel 1978 The Changing Pacific: Essays in Honour of H. E. Maude. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Haddon, Alfred Cort. ed. 1901-35 Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits. 6 vols. Cambridge: The University Press. Hall, Robert A., Jr. 1943 Melanesian Pidgin Phrase-Book and Vocabulary With Grammatical Introduction. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America at the Waverly Press. Hallpike, C. R. 1977 Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains: The Generation of Conflict in Tauade Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Harding, Thomas G., and Ben J. Wallace, eds. 1970 Cultures of the Pacific: Selected Readings. New York: Free Press. Harris, Marvin 1980 Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology. 3rd ed. New York: Harper and Row. Haviland, William A. 1975 Cultural Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehan 81 Winston. Hawkes, Kristen 1978 Big-Men in Binumarien. Oceania 48: 161-187.
Hoebel, E. Adamson, and Thomas Weaver 1979 Anthropology and the Human Experience. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hogbin, H. Ian 1938 Social Advancement in Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. Oceania 8:289-305. 1999 Experiments in Civilization: The Effects of European Culture on a Native Community of the Solomon Islands. London: G. Routledge and Sons. 1951 Transformation Scene: The Changing Culture of a New Guinea Village. London: Routledge and Paul. 1964 A Guadalcanal Society: The Kaoka
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Speakers. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Kaberry, Phyllis M. 1941 Law and Political Organization in the Abelam Tribe. Oceania 12:79-95. Keesing, Roger M. 1976 Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 1978 ‘Elota’s Story: The Life and Times of a Solomon Islands Big Man. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Landtman, Gunnar 1927 The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea: A Nature-Born Instance of Rousseau’s Ideal Community. London: Macmillan. Lewis, Albert Buell 1951 The Melanesians: People of the South Pacific. Chicago: Chicago Natural History Museum. Lindstrom, Lamont 1978 Bigman or Chief? Knowledge in Political Process on Tanna (Vanuatu). Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 57/58: 122- 146. McLeod, C. 1947 News From the Field. Quarterly Jottings From the New Hebrides 21S:lO. Mead, Margaret 1955 Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New York: W. Morrow and co. Oliver, Douglas L. 1955 A Solomon Islands Society: Kinship and Leadership Among the Siuai of Bougainville. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pearson. Roger 1974 Introduction to Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Pospisil, Leopold 1963 The Kapauku Papuans of West New Guinea. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Powdermaker, Hortense 1933 Life in Lesu. London: Williams and Norgate. Read, K. E. 1946 Social Organization in the Markham Valley, New Guinea. Oceania 17:93-118. 1950 The Political System in the Ngarawapum. Oceania 20: 185-225. Rivers, W. H. R. 1914 The History of Melanesian Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rogers, E. S. 1970 New Guinea: Big Man Island. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum. Ryan, Peter, ed. 1972 Encyclopedia of Papua New Guinea. Melbourne: University Press in association with the University of Papua New Guinea. Sahlins, Marshall 1965 Poor Man, Rich Man, Big-Man, Chief Political Types in Polynesia and Melanesia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 5285-305. Salisbury, Richard F. 1964 Despotism and Australian Administration in the New Guinea Highlands. American Anthropologist 66:225 - 239. Scheffler, Harold W. 1965a Big Men and Disks of Shell. Natural History 74( 10):20-25. 1965b Choiseul Island Social Structure. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sillitoe. Paul 1978 Big Men and War in New Guinea. Man 15:252-271. 1979 Give and Take: Exchange in Wola Society. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Swartz, Marc J.. and David K. Jordan 1976 Anthropology: Perspective on Humanity. New York: Wiley. Williams, Francis E. 1956 Papuans of the Trans Fly. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1941 Natives of Lake Kutubu, Papua. Oceania 1 1 :259-294. Williamson, Robert W. 1914 The Ways of the South Sea Savage: A Record of Travel and Observation Amongst the Savages of the Solomon Islands and Primitive Coast and Mountain People of New Guinea. London: Seeley, Service and Co. Submitted 20 December 1980 Revised manuscript submitted 28 May 1981 Accepted 14 June 1981
Mesoamerican Historical Linguistics and Distant Genetic Relationship STANLEY R. WITKOWSKI CECIL H. BROWN Northern Illinois University This is in response to Campbell and Kaufman’s ( A A 82:850-857, 1980) discussion of our
