Cultural and economic importance of the Hiri Upon his return, his wife bathed in the sea, put on her finest clothes and began dancing. She was also to have the old women of Boera tattoo her skin. Before leaving, he told his wife to stay in the house, not to wash herself in the sea and to keep their fire burning. He and his friends sailed northwest into the waters of the Gulf, where they traded the pots for sago. Edai Siabo complied with the spirit’s request and built the first lagatoi, which he called Bogebada, or “sea eagle.” The eel directed him to build a lagatoi, fill it with cooking pots and follow the laurabada, a trade wind, to the west. While he was fishing, a great eel, a spirit, rose out of the sea and pulled him under. Many years ago, a man named Edai Siabo from Boera - a village near what is now Port Moresby - went fishing. We do know they traded so long ago they fostered the development of two separate “trading languages.” These languages, called Hiri Motu, derived from the Eleman and Koriki languages spoken in the Gulf estuaries where they traded, exist to this day. One problem, as archaeologist Jim Allen points out, is that “archaeologists do not really study trade more accurately they document the presence of exotic … artefacts in their sites and attempt to pin down the most likely source(s) of the raw materials involved.” Since the Motu traded away nearly all such exotic objects for consumables, there is a dearth of them left at their village archaeology sites. Others, including James Rhoads, suggest that although most archaeologists agree on around eight hundred years, even this “may be shortsighted by 1000 years.” Archaeologists have dated “the arrival of foreign products” in these same Gulf areas visited by the Hiri at 1800 years ago. Archaeologist Susan Bulmer’s studies suggest they certainly existed three hundred years before that. Certainly, they were prevalent when John Moresby, a Royal Navy captain, arrived in 1873. There is some uncertainty as to how far back in Pacific prehistory the Hiri voyages go.
These palms are ubiquitous in the western Gulf region of the Hiri’s destinations, where one pot would trade for one kokohara, a bundle of about 40 lb (18 kg) of sago. Sago is a starch extracted from the spongy center of sago palm stems ( Metroxylon sagu), and a single palm yields 800 lb (363 kg) of starch. The crew would then trade these items for rabia (sago) at the Hiri’s Gulf destinations, the farthest being over 300 miles (483 km) to the northwest. The arm shells were the principal money of the Motu, who would give them and clay pots to the crew on the Hiri. These articles of exchange were the same as those used in the Kula among the Trobriand and d’Entrecasteaux Islands, nearly 500 miles (805 km) to the east.
They would often trade these pots for toea (arm-shell adornments). From this the women made uro (cooking pots), tohe (sago storage pots) and hodu (water pots). Preparation for the Hiri began much earlier in the season, when women in the villages began the heavy work of digging clay. They featured the famous lara,or crab-claw sails, made of plaited pandanus. The vessels used in the Hiri, called lagatoi, were multihulled proas large enough to carry up to forty crew members. Their hunger season would start, and their famous Hiri voyages in search of food would begin. By November, all their yams would have been eaten. The men were fearless sailors and fishermen but also kept gardens onshore and harvested yams around April each year. The Motu are people of Austronesian origin who, during the time of the Hiri expeditions, lived in stilt homes among seven villages in the water offshore. It suffers a long dry season from June to November due to the southeast trade winds that run parallel to the shore. The area is in a rain shadow of the Owen Stanley Mountain Range and receives only 40 in (100 cm) of rainfall per year. The Indigenous people of the Port Moresby area, who called themselves the Motu, lived in a “symbiotic relationship” with members of the nearby Koita tribe, exchanging fish for their vegetables. The Gulf of New Guinea lies on the south side of the island, northwest of its capital, Port Moresby.
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