Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (1922)

The body of the canoe is “a long, deep well” carved from a lightweight log and attached to an outrigger float of a smaller log. Canoes are typically sailed with the float on the wind side. The stability of the craft depends on depth of the dugout, distance between dugout and outrigger, and size of outrigger log. Canoes are outfitted with a sail and often painted white, red, and black.

Malinowski notes that there’s a romance and a thrill in riding in canoes, but he cautions that these are his own feelings, not those of the natives. However, he thinks he can gauge their feelings correctly: They admire a good canoe and enjoy a good sail. In fact, canoes are thought of as “marvelous, almost miraculous achievement[s]” (80), held to possess individuality and regarded almost as living things.

The three types of canoes each have a corresponding purpose and ownership structure. First, the small, lightweight canoes (kewo’u) used for coastal transport are simple dugouts with an outrigger, owned by an individual for personal use. The larger and “more seaworthy” kalipoulo are like kewo’u but with “built-out planking and carved prow-boards” (86). Used in fishing villages, they are owned by the headman of each fishing group, who performs fishing magic and receives the majority of the fish caught from his craft.