Lyomoi

With his three wives, one from the Tsaka, one from Tambul and one from Mendi, Lyomoi had twelve sons. As they grew up, Lyomoi grew tired of all of their noise, quarreling, and disobedience. One day he gathered his sons together, gave them each a kalapu bird of paradise feather and told them to go out and make their own homes. The three sons from his Tambul wife remained near their father’s home in Tambul, the two sons of his Mendi wife settled in the north Mendi area and the remaining ones, who were sons of his Tsaka wife, settled in the Tsaka.

(Christopher Wanjo, Lyomoi of Imangoposa (Tsaka))

There once was a man from Ukulme in the Papatapulu area, a place that still exists by that name today. From there he went west hunting for possums. Even though he only brought four sweet potatoes with him, he went on and on. When he reached a place called Kepamulu, he saw smoke rising. Thinking that some people might be having a pig feast, he followed the smoke to Olyiambo. From there he saw that the smoke was really coming from Lakapumanda and so went on. From Lakapumanda he saw that the smoke was coming from the Ogamulu direction and so continued on. When he arrived at Pakepemanda, he realized that the smoke was coming from still farther away, somewhere on Kalintesa peak. Curious, he followed it, and when he had climbed the mountain, he saw that the smoke was trickling up from a gorge below. The gorge was called Kopeanda. The man descended into the gorge and came across a small, round house.

 

Rain was falling, but it stopped when he arrived at the bottom of the gorge. He reached a clearing in which a few elyoko branches were lying about. The young fern shoots in the area had all been eaten and only the older ones which were too tough were left standing. He noticed a dry patch where something or somebody had been sitting during the rain. Whatever it was, it had moved away, leaving only a dry patch. He wondered what had been there.

 

With the ax he had brought, he cut down some motili trees, put the bigger logs aside and made a house. When it was completed, he cooked the four possums that he had killed and his four sweet potatoes in an earth oven.

 

Then he chopped firewood and made a fire in the house. When he had finished making preparations for the night, he went and stood behind a tree with his bow and arrows ready in his hand. He focused on the nearby bush and wondered what would appear. Would it be a person, a snake or some strange creature. Sure enough, after some time he heard a noise. Then he saw a figure coming towards him and as it approached, he saw that it was a leper woman. Her skirts had been torn away, and she was stark naked. In her hand she held some elyoko branches and some fern leaves to eat. (Other versions of the legend explicitly state that she was a leper.)

 

When the woman could see that the area had been cleared and that somebody had been there, she was shy and frightened. The man from Ukulme kept watching her to see what she would do and then suddenly he rushed forward and grabbed her by the hand.

 

“Who are you?” He asked. “Are you a human being, or some other kind of creature, that you live here under such conditions?”

 

The woman did not say a word in reply, so he brought her into the house, and they sat there by the fire warming themselves. The man unearthed the food he had cooked in the oven pit and began to eat. “Try some of this and see what it tastes like. Eat the way I do,” he said. The woman tasted the food, liked it and ate more. Then they slept.

 

They stayed in the house for a few days, living off the remaining food. One day the man from Ukulme said to the woman, “Stay here, I am going away.”

 

The woman did as she was told and the man went back to Ukulme. He had put leaves along the way to mark his path, so it was not hard for him to find his way home. He followed his markers and went on and on until he reached Ukulme where he collected sweet potato vines, two sugarcane tops, taro and spinach seedlings.

 

He returned to Kopeanda where he and the woman cleared land around the house. They burned off the grass and debris left from house building and planted sweet potato, sugarcane, taro and spinach. They were fortunate because the crops in their garden grew well, and before long, they could harvest them and live off garden foods. They took some of their crops from their first garden and made new gardens nearby in which to plant them.

 

After some time, the woman became pregnant and the man wondered if she would give birth to a normal child. The woman went into labor and when the infant was born, it appeared to be a baby boy but then turned into a moko tree. The woman became pregnant again and gave birth to a child with legs that looked like a boy, but it turned into a stalk of lyakili grass. After that the woman became pregnant for a third time and when she gave birth, the infant had eyes, a nose, a mouth, an anus, hands and legs like a normal child, but the parents could not tell if it was male or female. The woman cuddled the baby for a while, but then it turned into a frog and hopped into the Kopeanda river.

 

The woman became pregnant for a fourth time and the Ukulme man thought that the next fetus would be anything but human since the first had turned into a tree, the second into a stalk of grass and the third into a frog. However, this time the woman gave birth to a baby boy. The man from Ukulme wondered what he should name him. He named him Lyomoi.

 

When Lyomoi grew up to be a young man, he helped his father make gardens and sweet potato mounds. His mother doted on him because he was her only child and made him many woven aprons. As time passed, she grew old and died and the Lyomoi and his father lived alone. Lyomoi became a full-grown man who could pull a bow, make gardens and build houses. After some years, his father died and Lyomoi lived alone at Kopeanda.

 

One day when Lyomoi was living by himself, he thought, “Why am I living in a gorge like this?” He looked up at Kalintesa peak in Tambul and thought what a fine place it would be to make a home, so he took his shield, bow, bow strings and other belongings and left for Kalintesa. There he built a very large round house with two doors (this is different than the Enga house style). The house site can still be seen at Kalintesa today. He planted a garden around the courtyard of the house,but otherwise spent his bachelor life hunting. He shot as many birds of paradise as he could and kept the feathers safely inside the house with the many aprons his mother had woven for him.

 

One day during the dry season, Lyomoi stood on top of Kalintesa peak and looked over the landscape. He wanted to take a trip but was undecided as to whether to go towards Hagen, Mendi or to go west. He had been yearning to take a trip west into the Tsaka valley, so the next day he took his bow and put on some of his best belts, aprons, and feathers and set off for the Tsaka. He went on and on until he arrived at Kulanga. From there he went to Pokaiti and then on to Atamanda. He stood at Atamanda and looked down at Tsaka Laiagama in the valley. That was where he had intended to go.

 

With bow in hand, he descended and approached Imangaposa. There he undid his bow strings and rested his bow against a tree. With only his axe in hand, he went on and arrived at Alumanda where he saw some girls making sweet potato mounds while giggling and joking. Their father and mother were also there and when they saw Lyomoi, they asked how he happened to have come to Alumanda. ” I came in this direction and just ended up here,” he answered. When they asked him where he came from, he said,”I live over there,” and pointed towards Kalintesa.

 

The father, Pembe, had cooked a side of pig, bananas and yams in a ground oven for his daughters who had been working in the garden. He unearthed the food and distributed it, giving some to Lyomoi.

 

The girls sat in a row inside the house with Sangamawana in front. Their father said to Lyomoi, “Since you have come here, you should take one of the girls back with you.”

 

Sangamawana did not hesitate to respond, “Father, I will go with him.”

Her father agreed to the proposal, and they all spent the night in the house. In the morning when Lyomoi and Sangamawana prepared to leave and her parents gave her a net bag and pregnant sow to take with them.

 

Her father said, “Keep this pig and may you do well with it. One day I will come and visit you and then you can give me bridewealth.”

 

Lyomoi took Sangamawana back the way he had come, and they arrived at Kalintesa and lived there. The pig they had brought with them had five piglets, two females and three males. When they were big enough, they castrated the two males and kept one as a boar. The mother pig became pregnant once more and gave birth to three male piglets. Sangamawana’s father came to visit them, and they gave the piglets to him as bridewealth.

 

Over the years, Lyomoi and Sangamawana had many sons. Lyomoi continued to hunt and shoot birds, carefully keeping their feathers. When there was a sing-sing or some other ceremonial event, Lyomoi distributed the feathers to his sons for decoration. He gave the feathers to his sons according to their birth order. First, he gave feathers to Kupalini, then to Yakumbakini, Sikitakini, Pindakini, Tombeakini, Sangopakini, Ipalangani, Yanane, Aikone, Tasikini and finally Tendopa.

(Takuna Wapo of the Lyomoi Tendopa clan, Kalintesa, Tambul)

One day Lyomoi went hunting near Atamanda. From a high point he looked down towards Alumanda and saw smoke rising. Carrying the tanakae possums he had killed, he walked over the hills and down towards Imangaposa. From there he went to Sombomba and on to Alumanda where he saw that the smoke was rising from Kanapitamanda near Imangaposa.

 

When he arrived at Kanapitamanda, he saw a man, Pembe, and his three sons, Yambatane, Pauakaka and Waimini, building a house. Pembe’s only daughter, Sangamawana, was also there. Lyomoi, who was tired from his long journey, sat down and rested. They invited him to spend the night. Pembe’s wife told her husband that Lyomoi should sleep in the woman’s house with her daughter and the next morning she made arrangements for the two to get married without Pembe and his sons knowing.

 

When Lyomoi prepared to return to his own home with Sangamawana, Pauakaka and Waimini were very sullen as they did not want their sister to marry Lyomoi. They neither spoke to him nor bade him good-bye. Yambetane, however, wished them well and gave them a bundle of native salt, armbands, bananas, and sweet potatoes. Lyomoi and Sangamawana took these things and followed the shortest route, the Kunja route, until they reached Lyomoi’s home at Kalintesa. There they prospered and had many children.

(Lai Kupakali of the Lyomoi tribe, Imangaposa, Tsaka valley)

A man named Lyomoi lived in the grassy land of Lamendaiposa (Tambul). He married a Mandipau woman, a Tambul woman and a Tsaka woman. He had many sons with his Enga wife from the Tsaka valley, three with his Tambul wife and two with his Mandipau wife, who were named Kupa and Yakumba.

 

Kupa and Yakumba lived at Lamendaiposa hunting as many possums as they could. One day when they roasted them in an oven pit, the sons of Lyomoi’s Tambul wife, Tendopa and Aiakone came, unearthed the food, stole the possum and left. When Kupa and Yakumba returned, they only found left over, such as bits and pieces of ferns and breadfruit leaves. The next day Kupa and Yakumba went out hunting, killed possum, brought them home and roasted them once more. Again, Aiakone and Tendopa came and stole the food. From then on, they did so every time Kupa and Yakumba roasted possums. After some time, Kupa and Yakumba became fed up with Tendopa and Aiakone and asked themselves, “What shall we do?”

 

As they were sitting there and discussing the matter, a Mandipau man who was their uncle came to visit them.

 

“Uncle, you have come to visit us!” Kupa and Yakumba said.

 

“Yes, I have come here to see you,” their uncle replied wholeheartedly.

 

“Uncle,” said Kupa and Yakumba, “We have plenty of good food here, but some strange things have been happening lately.”

 

Since they had some possums in their house, they decided to roast them and let him see for himself. They knew that Tendopa and Aiakone would come and take the food as they always did, so they took the best bunches of spinach, taro and breadfruit leaves and the fattest possum and laid them on top of a bed of hot stones and leaves. Then they placed hot stones on top of this in such a way that they looked like they were lining the bottom of the pit. On top of these they placed some leaves and small possum, as well as others that had been mangled and chewed by their hunting dogs. The oven thus had two pits, an upper one with the poor food and a hidden lower one with the best food.

 

When the pit oven had been prepared, they sat in their house waiting. Aiakone and Tendopa arrived, filthy and covered with mud. As usual, they hurriedly unearthed the food, scattering the earth in all directions. They ignored the presence of Kupa and Yakumba and their uncle.

 

Kupa and Yakumba interrupted them saying, “Aye, stop it! We have a visitor here in our house. Our uncle just arrived from Mendi”

 

“We don’t care if your uncle is visiting,” Aiokone and Tendopa replied and walked away, eating the food.

 

As planned, Aiokone and Tendopa got only the skinny mangled possums and did not notice that there was a second pit beneath the floor of the oven.

 

“Uncle,” Kupa and Yakumba said, “This is what we mentioned earlier, and it is for this reason that we roast our food at the very bottom of the pit. They have taken only the undesirable food, now let us unearth the best of it.” With that, they uncovered the oven, and the three of them ate the taro and the rest of the food.

 

In the morning their uncle asked them, “Do Aiokone and Tendopa always steal your food like that?”

 

“Yes, always,” Kupa and Yakumba replied.

 

“There’s land for men to live on where I come from,” said their uncle. “Are you coming with me or not?”

 

Kupa and Yakumba enthusiastically agreed to go with him and left without telling anyone. There, near Mendi, their uncle gave them land in areas called Koepa and Anjopa although exactly who got what area has been forgotten. They were each given an equal share. The land here at Konemanda belonged to Kupa and that land on the other side to Yakumba. The land at Iketa ceremonial grounds belonged to Kupa as well as the bush that can be seen from here, Imba-Soaip, Angamanda and the land beyond to the Mendi River.

 

When Yakumba saw the land he said, “There is no forest here to go to, no metae fern leaves to use for decoration, no wapename pandanus nuts, no fat and meaty possums and the water here is not cold. I am not going to stay here. I want to drink cold water, eat wapename pandanus, decorate myself with metae fern leaves and eat possum meat.” So Yakumba left and settled near the forest edge and Kupa occupied Konemanda, Angamanda, Iketa and all the land that borders Tongopa creek. Yakumba occupied the land on the other side of the creek and so even today, all our forest land which provides pandanus, possum and other products, belongs to Yakumba.

 

One day Lyomoi, the father of Kupa and Yakumba, came to visit his two sons. He brought with him a kina shell, a red plate of resin on which kina shells are mounted, and two kinds of bows, one called yanda patelya, and the other, uakapo mende seteapya. Kupa and Yakumba both wanted the uakapo bow and so they quarreled, ignoring the other gifts. However, since there was a kope ritual to be held in the name of their ancestors, they dropped the matter for the time being and together went down to the banks of the Tonke creek in Lengipa. There they prepared the ritual feast. Kupa worked hard gathering materials for the pit oven. He collected stones to line the oven, lokai wood for the fire to heat the stones, and piled the materials up at the ritual site.

 

Meanwhile Yakumba was idle, grumbling that it was too cold to work. He wandered here and there, stopping at his girlfriends’ houses. When it was time to prepare the food, they heated the stones on the open fire. While Yakumba went to clean some of the pig intestines, Kupa secretly made a pair of fire tongs and hid them.

 

When it was time to remove the hot stones from the fire, Kupa said mockingly to Yakumba, “If you can manage to do it with your bare hands, why don’t you take the stones out of the fire.”

 

Yakumba was annoyed by his brother’s snide remarks, searched for the fire tongs and found them. He picked up one of them and began to remove the hot stones from the fire.

 

“Try to do it with your bare hands, don’t take my fire tongs,” said Kupa angrily.

 

“Why don’t you try with your bare hands?” Yakumba snapped in reply.

 

“You only have one tong.” Kupa said and picked up the other and gave him a hard blow on the head.

 

Their father, who had been watching, shouted, “Aye, stop it!” but his voice was drowned out by the noise of the quarrel. The fight, which had begun in the morning, continued throughout the day, into the evening and throughout the next day. Lyomoi repeatedly called for them to stop the senseless fighting, but they totally disregarded him.

 

The fight escalated and other men began to take sides. At the end of a week of fighting, Lyomoi, who was indifferent as to who should win, distributed his wealth. He gave one bow (yanda patelya) to Kupa, strung and ready for use, and the other (yanda uakapo) to Yakumba unstrung. He broke the kina shell plate in half and gave half to each of his sons. He did the same with the kina shell. Finally, he gave setekumba poison to Yakumba and kopiakamamuni poison to Kupa, both of which are used in black magic. Then he left.

 

The brother clans of Kupa and Yakumba have quarreled and fought since that time. One of Kupa’s sons named Popau became fed up with the constant fighting and use of black magic and moved to his mother’s place near Weta in the Marient valley of Kandepe.

(Saa Kelya and Puti Pakutae of the Lyomoi Kupa clan, Yolo and Angamanda,(Mendi))

The two boys grew up to be young men. Kupa married, while Yakumba remained single. Kupa decided to settle near the bank of the Tonga river and build a round house (Mendi style) there. He built two round houses, one at each side of the house and he and his wife slept on one side and Yakumba on the other. They lived together in one house.

 

One day Kupa decided to go on a long journey to the Yandapo near Laiagama to make salt in the salt pools (ca. 90-100 km away). Before he left, he said to his brother and wife, “You two stay here in this house and take good care of yourselves while I am away.”

 

After he had left, Yakumba made his gardens on one side of the house and Kupa’s wife made hers on the other. Kupa’s wife cooked for Yakumba and took care of the family pigs.

 

While Kupa was away, one of his pigs broke into Yakumba’s gardens and rooted up some of his sweet potato plants. Kupa’s wife, who was pregnant at this time, repaired the damage by replanting the vines. While she was doing this, Yakumba arrived back at the house and, seeing what had happened, hit Kupa’s wife.

 

She cried and as the tears rolled down her cheeks she asked, “Why did you hit me? After all, we live in the same house and it is our pig that has damaged our own garden, so why are you acting like this?” They were just about to drop the matter when Kupa arrived home from making salt in the Yandapo.

 

“What have you two been fighting about?” He asked.

 

“Yakumba hit me because our pig broke into his garden and uprooted some of the plants,” she answered with tears in her eyes.

 

“I told you to stay here and take care of each other, so why did you do such a thing to your sister-in-law?” Kupa asked. Then he put aside the net bag full of salt that he had carried down from the Yandapo, stepped forward and began to wrestle with his brother. After wrestling for a while, they paused, armed themselves with sticks and then continued to duel with sticks. When neither of the two brothers appeared to be able to beat the other, they each went into the house and each gave the other a bow, some arrows and a spear. Kupa positioned himself on one side of the house and Yakumba on the other and they continued to fight. Eventually, Yakumba moved over to one side of what is the road today at a place called Kondemanda and Kupa moved to the other side of the road at Lupatena.

 

The feud between the two brothers was taken up by their descendants and continues today. The descendants of Kupa and Yakumba continually fight one another, and news of these fights travels as far as Kola, the Tsaka valley and even Wabag, where it is well-known that these two sons of Lyomoi constantly fight one another, even though they are brothers.

(Kepoko Pyokoti of the Yakumba Kuna clan, Bitapa, Mendi)

As time went on and his sons grew up, Lyomoi grew tired of trying to keep track of these troublesome youngsters who were constantly disobeying him. They fought over sweet potatoes and spent much of the day hanging around, quarreling, or playing. Some cried while others laughed and there was always noise and confusion in the house.

 

One day Lyomoi called his sons together and gave them each a kalapu bird of paradise feather and told them to go their own ways to make their own homes. Only Tasikini who arrived later got nothing but the stick on which the feathers were kept. After that the young men went their own ways.

(Christopher Wango of Lyomoi, Imangaposa, Tsaka valley)

When Lyomoi gave out the kalapu feathers, Tendopa and Tasikini were elsewhere. When they returned, Tendopa was very upset and asked his father why he had left him and his brother out of the distribution. Lyomoi refused to answer, so Tendopa told him that he was going to take all the family’s land for himself. Thus, when Lyomoi died, Tendopa took the land, settled where his father had lived and remained there, while all the others moved elsewhere.

(Lai Kupakali of Lyomoi, Imangaposa, Tsaka valley)