Listen to the myth of the Tamate, a mysterious race of dancers – half divine, half human – who visit the islanders of Vanikoro. The text is told in Teanu, the main language of the island.
 

The myth of the Tamate

I recorded this story on 1st May 2005, during my first trip to Vanikoro island, in the Solomon Islands. It was told to me by Chief James Cook Pae (~1935-2014), in the village of Temuo.

This myth tells the origin of the “Tamate” headdresses that are worn during certain ritual dances on Vanikoro.

These characteristic headdresses are unique to Vanikoro in their shape and colour; but they are reminiscent of the ritual headdresses that are worn in the nearby islands of northern Vanuatu, in the south. This historical connection is particularly obvious from the word Tamate, which is well known in northern Vanuatu. The word tamate is found today in the Mota language, but the same word was also the ancestral form in the whole region: for example, tamate is the origin of the word na-tmat in Mwotlap.

The original meaning of tamate was “dead person”, and from there “ghost; ancestor; godly spirit”. The Banks languages also use the same word to describe the headdresses used in ritual dances.

In sum, the word Tamate in Teanu clearly reflects events of social contact between Vanikoro islanders and the Torres–Banks islands of Vanuatu further south. Such events were evidently rare: apart from the Tamate masks, Vanikoro shows very little trace of cultural or linguistic connection with Vanuatu. In other words, rather than regular exchanges, the two areas only had intermittent contact with each other.

Interestingly, this myth of origin precisely tells how a couple from Vanikoro discovered these Tamate creatures, one day that they got lost in the ocean, on their way back from Utupua: they landed an unknown island located somewhere southeast, home to a mysterious population…
 

What were the islanders’ reactions? Fear or admiration?