Malipini today is a very large tribe with clans distributed over three major valleys, the upper Lai, the middle and lower Ambum and parts of the Sau river valley in the Kompiam area. Malipini origin traditions begin in the upper Lai at Lakaiyoko near Sopasa in approximately the eighth generation with the following legend:
“In the beginning a long time ago, there were few people on this earth except for one man named Kindole Puu who lived at Lakaiyoko in the upper Lai valley just near to where the turn-off is to Sopas hospital today. He had a beautiful house surrounded by gardens with all kinds of food and sambisambi grass (pitpit). He had made the inside comfortable with possum skins, cassowary feathers and other birds’ feathers. He ate well, living from fresh possum meat, the meat of cassowaries and other birds as well as food from his gardens. Year after year he went on living this good life.
Meanwhile, further down the Lai valley in the Laeyapo region, there lived a man named Sikini. This man had a huge pig that he had taken care of for his entire life by taking it out in the morning so that it could root for worms and bringing it back to his house for the night. One day when Sikini was off doing something, the pig got lost. Sikini went looking for him, following his hoof prints until he reached Biripa. There he found a spot where the pig had rooted for worms, but the pig was nowhere in sight. He looked for the pig all day long but with no success. When it got dark, he went to sleep under a tree.
Early the next morning he followed the tracks further up the valley towards Lakaiyoko. From there the tracks went to Sopas and then straight up Mt. Yulimanda and down the other side until they disappeared into a swampy area where he could no longer find them. He stopped for the night and slept. The next morning, he made one more attempt to find his pig. As he was searching, he stepped into a swampy place that felt freezing cold on his foot. He bent down, picked up a stick, and chewed on it. It had a salty taste. He forgot all about his pig, cut down fern trees and built a hut. Then he collected wood from the swampy area, made a big fire inside the hut, and burned the wood. He gathered up the ash that contained salt. He wrapped it in sundu and pandanus leaves and then started home, forgetting all about his pig.
When he reached home, his wife was there. He told her what had happened and stayed home for three days. On the fourth day, he told his wife that he would go ahead to make more salt at the salt pools and that she should follow him with supplies. When he had left, she put some bananas, taro, ginger and yams in her net bag and followed the same path that he had taken. She was pregnant and by the time she reached Lakaiyoko, she began to feel labor pains. She lay down to rest, and some hours later gave birth to a son. Too exhausted to go on, she remained there breast-feeding the baby.
Kindole Puu, who was on his way home, was very surprised to find a woman sitting next to the path. As he approached the woman and child, he asked,
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“I was following my husband who went to make salt when I went into labor and gave birth. That is why I am here,” she replied.
Kindole Puu invited her to stay at his house and carried her net bag while she followed with the baby. Inside the house was plenty of roast pork, cassowary meat and possum, so he told her to eat as much as she pleased. Later he showed her his gardens and told her that she could stay with him and take whatever food she liked from the gardens.
They lived together for some time while the baby grew strong and healthy. One day Kindole Puu found out that the woman had a husband not far from Biripa and asked the woman if she wanted to go back to him. He told her that if she went for a visit and felt like coming back to him, that she could as she knew where his house was and what his land was like. She could just tell her husband to come for a visit whenever she felt like it.
She packed up her belongings and prepared to leave. But just as she was about to go she had second thoughts, sat down and said to Kindole Puu, “I am happier with you than I was with my first husband, so why don’t we stay here and raise our family and give a name to the child that I brought from Biripa inside my womb. What name do you want to give him?”
Kindole Puu got up and said, “We should name him Malipini.” After that they became husband and wife and took very good care of the little boy. When he was big enough to help his parents by chopping firewood, fetching water and so on, the woman got pregnant and gave birth to another boy whom they named Potealini. The years passed and Kindole Puu and his wife died. Malipini and Potealini grew up, married and had descendants who make up the Malipini and Potealini tribes living today.”
(Ambaipu Yakene, Malipini Kamaniwana clan of Kundisa)
In the telling of this legend, it is mentioned that Potealini was born to Kindole Puu and his wife and thus that he was a half-brother of Malipini. This justifies the general claim that Malipini and Potealini are ‘brother’ tribes. However, Potealini do not generally see Kindole Puu as their founding ancestor and have different origins at Kubalisa, so we will assume that Malipini and Potealini are only considered brother tribes because they have lived as neighbors from the beginning of oral history and probably much longer.
There are many versions to this legend. In one given by Mark Kaengeakali (Malipini Metaene clan, Lakaiyoko), Kindole Puu invites the woman to his house and goes out early in the morning and chops down the bridge over the Lai. He tells her that the flood washed away the bridge and that she must stay until he can build another. In still another version told by Taliu Uma (Malipini Wailuni clan of Meriamanda) the woman was from the Yakemane tribe near Wapenamanda. Her husband went to a pig feast in the Yandapo near Laiagama and she followed him. She was in labor when she met Kindole Puu who looked like a forest demon to her. She stayed in his house, and the ending is the same. Whatever version one accepts, the themes are similar, that Malipini was from a tribe further down the Lai who was adopted by the hunter and gardener Kindole Puu. Whether the legend represents migration from the mid-Lai or merely ties between groups in the upper and mid-Lai valley remains an open question.
Before going further in Malipini history, it is worth noting a few of the details of the Malipini origin legend. First of all, the legend stresses the importance of salt in the past. When the Sikini man finds salt, he completely forgets about his pig, leaves his pregnant wife and goes to make salt. Secondly it is interesting that when the wife leaves to follow her husband, she takes bananas, yams, ginger and taro, but not sweet potato. The emphasis on taro and lack of mention of sweet potato is common in the early history of the Lai as presumably these events took place before or just after the arrival and adoption of the sweet potato. Finally, all versions of the legend state that Kindole Puu was a hunter who also had gardens around his house. This suggests a mixed hunting and gardening lifestyle in the upper Lai in earlier generations, if such details can be taken as history.
There is little doubt that Malipini was a group of considerable size from early on in oral traditions. It consisted of 11 sub-groups, nine founded by Malipini’s sons and two by his daughters. As Malipini grew, land became short in the upper Lai. To the west was its brother tribe Potealini and to the east the tribes of Itapuni and Awaini. To the south was a high mountainous forest and to the north the fertile Ambum valley. The upper part of the Ambum was sparsely inhabited by Pumane and Aiele tribes and the lower part by Sene and Yokasa. It is not clear exactly when Malipini clans began to expand into the Ambum, but probably very early. Then, in the seventh-generation, large-scale warfare broke out in which Lyaini and Sakalini drove Pumane and Aiele out of the upper Ambum and Yakani drove Sene and Yokasa out of the lower Ambum to the Kompiam area. This left vast tracts of land empty.
Lyaini, Sakalini and Yakane could not occupy all of the land gained during the fight, giving groups such as Malipini the chance to expand into cleared land in the Ambum. The Kombane, Maome, Wailuni, Angaleane and Mangelonde clans then moved into the lower Ambum valley, mostly settling on the northern valley slopes.
The clans remaining in the Lai, Saketawana, Kaimanuane, Ainolowane, Totoma and Maia then moved from their origin place at Lakaiyoko up the valley sides of the Lai. Sakatawana extended into the same parts of the Yandapo where they acquired land with salt pools. Some of Sakatawana later moved into the Ambum near Kasi to land abandoned by the Sene Yokasa Tyakai clan when it left for Kompiam after suffering losses from a severe epidemic. A branch of Sakatawana and Angaleane later moved to near Pakilyama in the Kompiam area after finding the land around Pakilyama good for hunting. Another Sakatawana group left Sopasa in the third to fourth generation following a fight over pandanus nuts and resettled in the Yamanda and Labalama areas of Kompiam in the easternmost parts of the province. The expansion of Malipini left it spread out in three major valley systems, the Lai, the Ambum and the Sau, greatly expanding its possibilities for trade.
Malipini had long been the neighbor of the Itapuni tribe with whom relations were strained because both of these groups were expanding and competing for land in the upper Lai. At some point in their oral history, before the fifth generation, a fight broke out between Malipini and Itapuni, which developed into a Great Ceremonial War tournament which was fought for entertainment, structured competition, and above all for the exchange that took place after the fight.
The initial incident that sparked the fight was a seemingly trivial one. Exactly when it took place is uncertain, but the historical tradition goes as follows:
Once, long ago, a woman from the Itapuni Nemani clan named Yakoname went to her pond for growing reeds for skirts at Lakaiyoko. As was customary, she wore only a few old grass skirts while working so as not to soil her better ones. A Malipini man saw her and impressed that she was half-naked, climbed a lyunguna tree hoping to see more as she bent over to harvest the reeds. While hanging on a branch and ogling at her, the branch broke and he came crashing into the pond. The woman was startled and ran back to her house shouting, “Rape, rape!” Itapuni and Malipini then discussed the matter but could not come to a peaceful settlement and so a fight broke out. Some say that this fight also was one of the reasons why Malipini clans moved to the Ambum valley, giving some of their land to Itapuni.
Through the generations the fight became more and more like a sports tournament whose main purpose was the trade which took place at the end to pay the hosts who had allowed the fight to be fought on their land and to compensate for the dead of allied tribes. When there were too many pigs in the houses and plenty of wealth in the area and people were in the spirit for competition, trade and festivities, either Malipini or Itapuni would cause trouble to start another episode of this fight.
At the time of contact, the great tournament fights had developed to the point where hundreds and even thousands of men would line up on the battlefield for some days or weeks of fighting in front of many spectators. In the following months, great pig feasts and trading took place. Young men who were eager to make a name through fighting were encouraged to do so in these fights rather than sparking smaller, more vicious fights. The great tournaments involved Malipini clans from the Lai, Ambum and Kompiam drawing allies from many other surrounding tribes, drawing together many people for social and economic purposes as well as allowing Malipini and Itapuni to express their tensions in a less destructive manner. Malipini, because of its widespread distribution in three major valley systems, was quick to adopt many of the cultural developments that took place in the generations before first contact with Europeans
(Wiessner and Tumu 1998).
CLANS AND LOCATIONS
Malipini
| Clan | Location | Nearest school or aidpost |
|---|---|---|
| Kamaniwane | Kaiapa/Lakaiyoko/Pandai | Kaiapa/Kasis |
| Sakatawane | Sopasa | Sopas |
| Kasis | Kasi | |
| Pakalilyama | Pakalilyama | |
| Yamanda/Labalama | Yamanda/Labalama | |
| Totoma | Kopotes/Yangini? | Sopas |
| Ainolowana | Lakaiyoko | Sopas |
| Maioma | Tialaposa/Nomale | Yampu/Kasi |
| Kondau | Kaiap | |
| Maia | Kiui | Sopas??? |
| Kombane | Awalemanda | Kundis/Yampu?? |
| Mangelonde | Tialaposa/Talemand | Yampu/Kundis |
| Wailuni | Kaiputesa/Yandatundu | Meriamanda |
| Angaleane | Yatamanda | Yampu |
| Pakalilyama | Pakalilyama |
Note: Maia is said by some to be a daughter of Malipini who married and returned to her place and by others to be a daughter of Maioma who married a Sakalini man and returned with her sons.
Some say that Maioma is a daughter of Malipini who returned to her place with her sons and others say Maioma was a son of Malipini.
There is a Lyaini sub-clan in Kamaniwane founded by a daughter of Sakatawane who married a Lyaini man and returned to her place at Lakaiyoko.