Part 19 - The Solomon Islands

The earliest description of betel-chewing in the Solomon Islands is that given by Alvaro de Mendaña in 1568. It will be noted that he omits any mention of the areca-nut.

I quote the following passage from Amherst and Thomson’s edition, published by the Hakluyt Society^[1]:

“Their tongue and lips are very red, for they colour them with a herb which they eat; it has a broad leaf, and burns like pepper; they chew this herb with lime which they make from white lucaios, which is a stone formed in the sea like coral; and having a piece of this lime in their mouths, it makes a red juice, and this is why their tongues and lips are always so red; they also smear their faces with this juice for ornament. Although they chew this herb, they do not get this red juice unless they mix it with the said lime.”

And here I may say a word on this “red juice,” with which we are now so familiar. In spite of numerous inquiries among botanists and anthropologists I have not yet found a scientific explanation of exactly what chemical action takes place in betel-chewing for the saliva to turn red. Personally I believe it is due to the action of the lime on the juice of the betel-leaf, and that the areca-nut has nothing to do with it at all.

Mr C. M. Woodford, the Resident Commissioner of the Solomon Islands (1896-1914), agrees with me, and says that lime produces a similar change of colour in other vegetable juices. For instance, a decoction of the root of Morinda citrifloria is yellow, but changes to red with the addition of lime, and forms the source of the red dye used by the natives of the Solomon Islands.

Yet Dr Guppy says^[2] that the red colour may be readily obtained by mixing the areca-nut and lime in rain-water. A few simple experiments could surely settle the question definitely.

Mr Woodford tells me that, as far as his observation goes, the Areca catechu does not occur wild in the Solomons, but is grown always as a cultivated tree. There are certain inferior species of Areca indigenous to the Solomons which are also used in the absence of the cultivated nut. The unhusked nuts of Areca catechu are yellow when ripe, and as large as a small hen’s-egg. The nuts of the indigenous species of areca are much smaller, about the size of large acorns, but are more numerous to the spathe.

Dr Guppy^[3] mentions five species of areca besides the cultivated Areca catechu. In another part of his work^[4] he gives further details about betel-chewing.

In St Cristoval and the neighbouring small islands the lime is carried in bamboo boxes, which are decorated with patterns scratched on their surface. In the islands of Bougainville Straits gourds are employed for this purpose, the stoppers of which are ingeniously made of narrow bands of the leaf of the sago-palm wound round and round in the form of a disc and bound together at the margin by fine strips of the vascular tissue of the sinimi fern (Gleichenia sp.). Plain wooden sticks, like a Chinese chopstick, are used for conveying the lime to the mouth; but frequently the stick is dispensed with, when the fingers are used, or the areca-nut is dipped into the lime.

The betel, known in Bougainville Straits as the kolu, is grown in the plantations, where it is trailed around the stems of bananas and the trunks of trees. In these straits, as on the Malay coast of New Guinea, the female spike, or so-called fruit, is more usually chewed with the areca-nut. Around St Cristoval the leaves are generally preferred.

Dr Guppy also gives an interesting account of the effect the chewing of one, and then of two, areca-nuts had on his pulse, head and sight. He found their intoxicating qualities far greater than he had before suspected (see op. cit., p. 96).

For the ceremonial use of the areca-nut among the people of San Cristoval see the recent work by C. E. Fox,^[5] who gives several folk-tales in which both nuts and leaves play an active part. They also figure in birth, wedding and death ceremonies in somewhat the same way as among the tribes and castes of Southern India.

There is a curious belief that if a man bites round an areca-nut someone in his clan will die. He must always bite lengthwise.

If a boy with his first set of teeth chews areca, he must throw the husks into the fire, or his teeth will fall out.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Discovery of the Solomon Islands, edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Lord Amherst of Hackney and Basil Thomson, Hakluyt Society, London, 1901, p. 134.

[2]:

The Solomon Islands and their Natives, London, 1887, p. 303. Lewin, Ueber Areca Catechu, Chavica Betle und das Betelkauen, p. 66, maintains that the red colour is due to the areca-nut alone.

[3]:

The Solomon Islands and their Natives, London, 1887, p. 303.

[4]:

Op. cit., pp. 95-96.

[5]:

The Threshold of the Pacific, London, 1924, pp. 116, 121, 159, 1 60, 167, 183, 212, 230, 321 and 322.