Poum kani, the village swallowed

kani

Source term: Kani

kani - the circumcision being of the Tami and its neighbours and the bullroarer that is its voice; Kaniglieder, the men of the league. Siassi - the island traders whose canoes the women would have run out to meet.

After the boys were circumcised the men feasted on pigs at the spirits' place, and had to watch the bones: a dog could carry one off, and an uninitiated woman who found it would know where the pigs had gone. Bamler was told what that cost one Poum village on the coast below Cape King William. The secret got out, the neighbouring villages heard, and the chief had no choice but to call the men of the kani league to the fixed punishment, death for the whole village. When they had ringed the village he took the kani, stood in the middle of the plaza and shouted, "Women, come down, the Siassi are here!" As the women left the houses he began to swing it. The men burst out and beat every villager to death, men and women. Two small children were spared, so that people could point at them later. The village was razed until only palm stumps and a few posts showed where it had stood. Bamler thought the story might be invented, or might be true of a chief who preferred death to shame.

seht, ihre Vorfahren haben das Geheimnis offenbar werden lassen, da hat sie der Kani alle verschlungen.

Look, their forefathers let the secret out, so the kani swallowed them all.

G. Bamler, "Tami" (1911), p. 504

Particulars

Object

The kani, the bullroarer of the circumcision league; its form is not described in this story.

Function

Swung by a village chief as the signal for the allied kani men to fall on his village after its women had learned the men's secret.