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PIGS, WEALTH AND STATUS IN THE PACIFIC
Pigs are a sign of wealth and status in the pig-loving islands of the New Guinea area, the South Pacific Melanesian islands and many of the Polynesian ones too. Pig are eaten at important ceremonies and given away at marriages, funerals, peace ceremonies and rituals that celebrate the dead. Pig are also used for doweries, child and mortuary payments, and compensations for murder or casualties sustained in a war. When warfare was outlawed, one anthropologist said, the big men tended to fight wars with pigs instead of axes.
New Guinea highlanders lover pigs so much they even eat rancid pork that "stinks so horribly," said one anthropologist, "that we have to carve it underwater lest we vomit on it" because pork all by definition is "a good thing."
Highlanders pay as much as a five dollars a pound for a pig. Twenty good-size swine can sell for $10,000. Although, the Highlanders get protein from yams, vegetables, frogs, rats and a few hunted marsupials, pork protein is more concentrated and easy to metabolize. Until recently most people from Papua New Guinea did not have access to milk, cheese, eggs or fish.
Pig Excess and Affection in the Pacific
"So overwhelming is the hunger for pig flesh among both the living and the dead," wrote Columbia anthropologist Marvin Harris, "that from time to time huge feasts are organized and almost all the tribe's pigs are eaten at once. For several days in a row, the villagers and their guests gorge on great quantities of pork, vomiting what they cannot digest to make room for more." When the feast is over, so many pigs have been eaten that it takes years to raise enough pigs for another feast. [Source: "Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches" by Marvin Harris, Vintage Books, 1974]
Pigs often live in houses, and are treated as companions. Pig loving cultures of Papua New Guinea sleep with them, give them names, walk them with leashes, cry when they get sick, and letting them eat at the dinner table. In some places women sleep with young piglets rather than their husbands. They care for them as they would small children, spoiling them and fretting over them of they are sick. Margaret Mead wrote: “pigs are so petted and cosseted that they assume all the characteristics of dogs ― hang their heads under rebuke, snuggle up to regain favor, and so on.”
Even though Pacific Islanders treat their pigs with great affection the animals inevitably end up on the dinner table. Even favorite pigs are ultimately eaten.
Pigs, Nutrition and Agriculture the Pacific
Pigs are by far the most efficient protein and fat producing animals domesticated by man. They convert grains and tubers into high-grade fats and protein more effectively than other animals. Almost 35 percent of the food by weight fed to pig is converted to meat, compared to 13 percent for sheep and 6.5 percent for cattle. In addition females produce litters that average eight piglets after a four gestation period. The piglets in turn can be fattened up to a 400 pound hog in six months. On the negative side pigs can not be used as a beat of burden or a milk producer.
It is estimated that between 40 and 6o percent of highland New Guinea agricultural production is used to raise pigs for pig feasts. This occurs even though the people that raise the crops are undernourished. In a severe case women were made into slaves to keep the pig supply going, depleting the soil an decreasing the birthrate in the process. The pigs primarily eat sweet potatoes — the tuber, the leaves, everything. They also eat taro, the traditional staple of the people, but it has to be cooked. Pigs find raw taro to be unpalatable.
The human ecology of Nembi people, one man observed, is very simple. "The men buy wives who work the land to produce the crops that feed the pigs which make the men wealthy in the eyes of other men." It is not unusual for a prominent big man to have six or seven wives and upwards of 40 children. Pigs consume 64 percent of all sweet potatoes and 40 percent of all labor. Sweet potatoes comprise 40 and 60 percent of the Nembi's year-round diet.
Pigs, Warfare and Life Among the Maring
In his book “Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People”, University of Michigan professor Roy Rappaport described the role pigs in the lives of the Maring, a highland tribe living in the Bismark mountains in Central New Guinea.
The Maring, observed by anthropologist Andrew Vayda between 1962-63 and in 1966, live in 190-square-mile area of forest. The raise pigs, subsist on tubers and practice slash and burn agriculture like most New Guinea tribes, and live in clans clusters with 200 to 850 members who defend homeland areas along streams. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books.
In a detailed study of one clan, Rapport said that the whole pig feast cycle was a complex, well-organized system that took into consideration population and ecosystem constraints. Maring clans traditionally spent around 12 years raising enough pig for a gorge-out feast that lasted less than a week and was followed by small scale wars with rival clans. More pigs were sacrificed to bring peace and finally the clans had only a handful of pigs and begin the process all over gain.
Raising the pigs and growing yams was the work of the Maring village women. Baby pigs were carried along with children to the gardens until they were old enough to forage for themselves in the forests and then fed yams at night. As the pigs grew and multiplied the women had to do more work to feed them until, after many years, they spent more taking care of the pigs than their families.
As the pig population grew, so did the human population. Finally things started to get out of hand. The women started complaining that they had too much work and gardens started to spill over into the territory of neighboring clans. The clan elders then met and decided on the time and place for a feast.
Maring Pig Feasts
The feast that Rapport observed resulted in the slaughter of three-forth of villages pigs by number and seven-eighths by weight. In-laws and military allies were invited to the climax of the feast in which 96 pigs were slaughtered and the meat was distributed among 3,000 people (12 pounds for each person) which they ate over five days.
During the feast the males hosts and their males guests paint their faces in bright colors, dressed up in their best bird of paradise headdresses, marsupial-fur loin clothes and stuck a crescent shells through their nose. Over a thousand people gathered on a huge dance ground, where they admired each other’s costumes, forged military alliances, with men and women eyeing each other. Amassing and fattening up pigs fir such events that many animals can take up to ten years. [Source: "History of Warfare" by John Keegan, Vintage Books]
Describing the distribution of the meat from a three-sided ceremonial building, Rappaport wrote: "Several men climbed onto the top of the structure and from there proclaimed one by one the multitude the names and clans of the men being honored. As his name was called, each honored man charged toward the...window swinging his ax and shouting. His supporters, yelling battle cries, beating drums, branding weapons, followed close behind."
"At the window the mouth of the honored man was stuffed with cold salted belly-fat by the Tsembaga [clan member] whom he had come to help in the last fight and who now also passed out to him through the window a package containing additional salted belly for his followers. With the belly fat hanging from his mouth the hero now retired, his supporters close behind, shouting, singing, beating their drums, dancing."
Why don't the Maring simply raise a few pigs and eat them as they go along instead of raising them for over a decade and then eating nearly all of them in gluttonous feast? Columbia anthropologist Marvin Harris believes that it is the result of an adaption to their ecosystem. The feasts usually occur when the demands on the environment where a clan is living is stretched to the limit. The feasts are usually followed by clan wars which redistribute the land holding of the various clans in an area. By slaughtering a huge number of pigs at one time a host clan improves it chances of claiming more territory by giving away pork to a large number people in return for the military assistant in the clan wars. In other word, the feasts and the clan warfare that follows are system that the Maring have developed over the centuries to define and redistribute land according to "carrying capacity" of the land.
Pacific Pig Feasts
A traditional Tongan feast is an all day affair that involves cooking a pig in an oven in the ground consisting of stones heated over a fire. The pig and other foods such as chickens, fish and yams are wrapped in banana leaves and placed in the stones to cook slowly. Throughout Polynesia, and in countries like Samoa and Fiji, the underground-hot-rock cooking method is also used, though it’s prepared slightly different between each island, and is named differently.
The Maori in New Zealand, Hawaiians and other Pacific Ocean Islanders hold similar feasts. The “hangi” (traditional Maori feast) is a pig roast in which the pig is buried in a shallow pit and cooked with stones heated with firewood. On top of the wood, beef, chicken, corn, potatoes, “kumaras”, shellfish and eels are covered with sacks and earth and cooked for about an hour and a half.
The oven used to in a traditional Pacific pig feast is called an imu. According to Aloha Island Lei: An imu is essentially an underground oven. In Hawaii, typically an imu is dug a little deeper into the ground, whereas in Samoa it’s often mostly above ground, but cooked and prepared in a very similar fashion.
When placed in the imu, the pig is steamed and smoked resulting in meat that is incredibly tender and easily falls apart and undoubtedly melts in your mouth. The first step in preparing your imu cook is to dig a hole where your pig will e placed. Size of the hole will depend on the size of the pig. Add your wood and rocks and then light the fire. It will take a few hours to get the rocks up to temperature, you want them very hot.
Once the rocks are close to the right temp, you will need to prep your pig. By putting the pig on chicken wire it will make it easier for alter removal from the pit so this step is highly recommended.You can salt the pig and even add additional spices and seasonings if you’d like, but you’ll eat it with a sauce later so it isn’t as necessary. If you decide to season, add seasoning only to the inside of the carcass as anything added to the skin won’t penetrate the meat.
Preparing Pacific Pig Feasts
Ingredients needed for a Hawaiian style feast include a 65-kilogram whole pig, three four-goot-long banana stumps, shredded into 1/2-inch pieces, 75 Ti-leaves, with stalks. The fire is made with 100 pounds of keawe or mesquite wood, which heats 50 round river stones, with holes along with a one six-foot-long piece of meshed wire, 20 burlap bags, soaked in water and three 12-by- 10 feet. pieces of heavy duty canvas, [Source: foodnetwork.com]
To prepare the pig, according to the Food Network, dig a hole in the ground about 8-feet by 8-feet by 4-feet deep. Arrange wood in a pyramid fashion and the place the round river stones on top of wood. Light the wood and heat stones for about six hours or until wood starts to turn into bright red coals. Spread out the heated rocks to create a flat space where you’ll be putting your pig. Place the pig on its back. Add a few of the hot rocks to the inside of the carcass and tie it shut with wire and wrap the entire pig in meshed wire. . Arrange remaining stones over wood so it becomes level. Take out any wood that has not burned into coals.
Place the shredded banana stumps evenly on top of stones and arrange half of the total amount of Ti leaf stalks evenly on the shredded banana stumps. Place wrapped pig in the meshed wire on top of Ti leaf stalks and add remaining Ti leaf stalks on top of pig. Next place soaked burlap bags on the Ti leaf stalks. Some people also pour beer to add additional moisture and in theory flavor. Then place heavy duty canvas on top of wet burlap bags. Place six inches of sand or dirt on top of that. All this keeps the steam from escaping.
Cooking takes at least six hours. There is a lot of waiting, It often takes eight hours and may take as long as 10 hours, depending on the size of the pig. After the food is cooked it is unearthed from the oven, with the soil, sacks and leaves removed layer by layer When its ready the meat is relatively soft and sometimes falls right off the bones
Lovo — A Fihian Pig Feast
Fijians call their feasts lovo. According to namalefiji: For centuries, Fijians have been using the lovo technique to cook and feed their communities, and the tradition plays a key role in Fijian culture and village life.The word “lovo” itself refers to an earthen oven, which is the centerpiece to the lovo tradition. A large hole is dug directly into the earth, and red-hot stones are placed within to line the bottom of the pit.While the lovo is being prepared, fresh meats like chicken, pork, and seafood are marinated in lush, hand-squeezed coconut cream and spices before being artfully woven with palm and banana leaves. Pulasami, a Fijian dish made of taro leaves stuffed with corned beef, onions, and coconut cream, is often included, as are a range of vegetables native to Fiji food: dalo (root of the taro plant), cassava (root of the tapioca plant), and uvi (wild yam). [Source: namalefiji]
Once the entire feast is placed on the hot coals, the lovo pit is covered with soil and thick banana leaves and left to slow cook for hours. What emerges is a wonderfully smoky and tender BBQ, meant to be shared community-style. The pork and pulasami falls apart at the touch of a fork, the chicken has soaked up amazing smoky flavor within its juicy meat, and the vegetables are delectably steamed and perfectly paired with a range of sauces and accoutrements.
Traditionally, a lovo feast was prepared in the villages to mark a special occasion, such as a birth, marriage, death or welcome visitors. Traditionally, Fijian women prepared the food, the men prepare the fire and tend to the lovo oven while the cooking in taking place and adding braided or foil-wrapped parcels to the coals before covering. The first step in preparing a lovo is to dig the fire pit, a bowl-shaped hole in the ground. Dimensions vary depending on how many people the lovo feast will be serving. Once the hole is dug, it’s lined with stones or bricks. These trap the heat within the oven, allowing the food to cook. Kindling and firewood is then added on top of the stones. It is lit and allowed to burn down until the flames die down and good hot coals remain. Now it’s time to add the food!
Chicken, pork, lamb and fresh locally caught fish can be marinated in herbs, spices and coconut cream squeezed by hand from local coconuts before being wrapped in foil and placed closest to the hot coals. A traditional dish called palusami is added next – it’s made with taro leaves, coconut cream and corned beef and makes an excellent hearty accompaniment to the feast. Finally, the vegetables are added. These can include breadfruit and root vegetables such as cassava (tapioca root), dalo (taro root), turnips, uvi (wild yams) or sweet potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper and olive oil before being wrapped in foil and placed on the coals. Sometimes food is also wrapped in beautifully braided banana- or palm leaf parcels, with or without the foil. This provides additional protection from the hot coals while imparting flavour and fragrance to the food inside. The food inside the parcels is steamed and infused with local flavour.
Desserts can also be added on top with the vegetables. These can include a soft, sticky dish called vakalolo, made from coconut and cassava drizzled with caramel sauce, or steamed egg custards. Palusami is a traditional inclusion in the Fijian lovo which complements the meat and vegetables perfectly. To prepare it, between twelve and twenty-four medium taro leaves are prepared by removing the tough stalks and soaking them in hot water. In another bowl, a can of corned beef is mixed with a small can of coconut cream, crushed garlic and some herbs. A baking dish is lined with foil and then the soaked taro leaves. Half of the corned beef – coconut cream mixture is added, followed by a layer of roughly chopped onions and tomatoes. Another layer of each is added and then the taro leaves are bent over to cover the dish (securing with toothpicks). The dish is then covered with foil and placed on the coals.
Image Sources:
Text Sources: “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life”, Encyclopedia.com, “Countries and Their Cultures”, Gale Group, 2001; Wikipedia,“Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2: Oceania,” edited by Terence E. Hays, 1991, Tourism Offices, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, The Guardian, National Geographic, Associated Press, AFP, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.
Updated July 2023