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10 Halmahera's fauna and flora as well as with Tobelo conceptualizations of it Even after I left the field, Tobelo preparators whom I had trained organized an expedition to Obi Island, with the help of the local branch of the Indonesian Nature Conservancy, to sample that island's avifauna and record information about it. On my return to Pasir Putih at the start of each new field season, I found more rare and unique animals properly cataloged and preserved for me in formaldehyde. Even though I wtil undoubtedly never obtain specimens of all Tobelo folk classes of animal and plant, many Tobelo seem anxious to help me do so. With the help of Adam Messer (during the 1980-1981 field season) and of course local Halmaheran preparators, I weighed die needs of my biologist colleagues alongside tiiose of my own research priorities, often favoring the former. Knowing the difficulties of sampling Halmahera's fauna and flora, and die scarcity of information known about it, I was anxious to prepare faunal and floral samples in die way biologists would find most useful. Thus I insisted on taking ectoparasites from the vertebrates collected, even though all lice and ticks are called o gani, and are of litde cultural importance. I also prepared multiple specimens of the same species in a variety of ways, thus some males and females of birds were made into study skins, otiiers skeletonized, others kept in formaldehyde, and so on. This emphasis on anatomical specimens was, in part, to correct the past bias among ornithologists toward relying solely on skins. My own emphasis on skeletal collections also reflects a sincere hope that we wtil eventually be able, with the help of archeology, to study the history of man's interaction witii other species on tropical islands of die Southwest Pacific. Such a study would need strong reference collections of die skeletons of local vertebrates. In die case of plants, I did collect many vouchers of sterile material that a botanist would have shunned, because I had to collect samples of plants for which Tobelo could provide cultural information even rf tiiose plants SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY were not in flower. The study of local material culture also involved collection and annotation of local technology (some specimens of which have been accessioned to the collections of the Yale Peabody Museum, Anthropology Division (numbers 248739 to 248876)), and detailed notes on choices of raw materials, methods of manufacture, cultural significance of the objects, and of course the linguistic forms appropriate to these realms. Esoteric information, however, was gathered in quite a different way. I studied "medicine" from Saul Rafane, the former Tobelo village chief of Loleba, and to a lesser extent also from otiier people whose trust had been gained over many months. Information was also recorded in formal interviews, in which a detailed discussion of a particular topic could take place; notes were typed onto file cards as the interviews were held. The Tobelo seemed to enjoy being studied; they waited patiently as lines were typed, and then said the next few lines for typing. Other texts were recorded in their entirety and transcribed later. I once very apologetically asked to record a trial for adultery. Soon otiier parties wanted their cases recorded as well, as if to emphasize the importance they attached to them. And once when I asked a vtilage minister if I could photograph die service in his church, I was embarrassed to find tiiat, when he saw it was time for my photograph, he stopped everything and lined up the entire congregation for die photo. At Pasir Putih, vdlage assistants were jacks-of-alltrades, helping in any chore that needed done; but most assistants still became chairmen of some department of their labor (there was die Head of Birds, Head of Genealogy Transcription, Head of Sea Life, etc.). In short, etiinobiological classification is an important and integral part of Tobelo culture, tiiough the topic is here to some extent heuristically isolated from otiiers, and its adequate study in its natural context requires, to die extent to which it is possible, a holistic or properly "ethnographic" investigation.
2. Tobelo Folk Biology in Its Sociolinguistic and Cultural Context 2.1 The Tobelo Language Situation The Tobelo speak one of a group of eleven closely related languages of die North Halmaheran group or "family," which Wurm (1971, following Cowan, 1957) places in the West Papuan Phylum. Van der Veen (1915) had recognized the distinctiveness of the closely related North Halmaheran languages, which he showed to be non-Austronesian. As Wurm (1971:614-615) notes, "in all studies and discussions of tiiese languages... tiiey are treated as very closely interrelated languages of a single family displaying far-reaching lexical, structural and typological agreements." Two of the languages of this North Halmaheran group, Ternatese and Tidorese, have been written using a modified Arabic script since at least the end of die fifteentii or die early sixteentii century (Clercq, 1890:193ff), while literature on other languages of this famtiy was recorded by missionaries of die Utrechtse Zendingsvereeniging, who began mission work on the island in 1866 (L.P.S.D.G.I., 1976:3-21). According to Laycock and Voorhoeve (1971:514-515), tiiey produced, in addition to "mission literature," ... wordlists of Galela (Baarda, 1895), Tobelo [Boeng dialect—PMTJ (Roest 1905), Pagu and Modole (E31ca, 1916a,b), Tabaru, Waioli, Ibu, Galela, Loda, and Ternate (Fortgens, 1905, 1917); a Tobelo-Dutch dictionary (Hueting, 1908c, [supplement:] 1935); a grammatical sketch and a manual of Galela (Baarda, 1891, 1908) a grammatical sketch of Tabaru (Fortgens, 1928) and Tobelo (Hueting, 1936); a comparative study in Loda and Galela grammar (Baarda, 1904) and texts in Galela ([Baarda and Dijken], 1895), Tobelo fllueting, 1908b) Pagu and Modole (Ellen 1916c,d) and Tabaru (Fortgens, 1928); Hueting (1908a) gave a survey of the North Halmahera languages together with comparative vocabularies. It was later corrected and supplemented by Adriani (1912:300). Further have to be mentioned die history of Ternate, written in the Ternate language (Crab, 1878), the Ternate wordlist texts, and a few grammatical notes by de Clercq (1890), the notes on Galela grammar by Kern (1891), and an article on word taboo in Galela (Kern, 1893). References cited above are found with corrections in Literature Cited. Recently, fieldworkers from the National Museum of Ethnology at Osaka, Japan, have recorded unpublished Galela texts; and by using computerized compilations of Dutch missionary materials, have prepared in manuscript a Dutch- Galelan index from Baarda's (1895) Galela wordlist, a general index of 67,000 Dutch entries for North Halmaheran language materials, a semantic group index for Galela, and "K.W.I.C." (Key Word in Context) indices for Galela, Ternate, Pagu, Loda, and Tabaru (see Wada, 1979). 2.1.1 The Tobelo Dialects The Tobelo language is divided by Hueting (1908c:3ff.) into the northern dialect (spoken by Tobelo of the Tobelo district), 11 which he calls "genuine Tobelo," the Boeng Dialect (B), spoken by Tobelo of the Kao district (elsewhere Hueting (1921) called speakers of this dialect the "Kao Tobelo"), and the "Dodinga dialect" (D). I shall here use the abbreviation "H" (for heleworuru, see below) for die "genuine" Tobelo dialect of the Tobelo district, contrasting with the D and B dialects of die south. Hueting also writes (1908c:4) that words of "genuine" (Tobelo district) Tobelo—the dialect of the area to which he personally ministered—are used throughout these dialect ranges, but die B and D dialects have additional words not used farther north (though in fact many current common northern dialect words were unknown to my B and D informants). As D dialect is only spoken in two villages (see below), he is probably correct in noting that "the B [dialect] words are also in use among the D [speakers], but the reverse is not true" (Hueting, 1908c:4). Aside from the "not large" number of words specific to any particular dialect, Hueting (1908c:4) notes only two phonological differences distinguishing dialects: "die use by B and D of /for the [H dialect] Tobelo h, and sometimes by the D of s for the [otiier 'dialects'] h" In die absence of any more adequate study of Tobelo dialectology, it may be sufficient to point out tiiat tiiis difference is locally considered striking. The following examples of folk terms for BIOTIC FORMS Ulustrate the correspondence: H o hahihuku o ngohaka ma iyo-iyoko o heleheku B ofahihuku o ngohaka ma iyo-iyoko o helehekH D o hafisuku o ngofaka ma iyoiyoko ofeleheku The distinctiveness of the Dodinga dialect, tiiough it may be justifiable on phonological grounds, is not recognized by its speakers, who call tiiemselves Tobelo Boeng. Hueting's use of the term "Dodinga" could not refer to die village of that name (a Ternatese-speaking vdlage populated primarily by Islamic speakers of tiiat language until Makianese and Sangir/Talaud immigrants forming separate adjacent kampungs changed its ethnic makeup in the late 1970s). According to old informants at Pasir Putih (Jailolo District), the Tobelo (Tbl) word o todingana (= "Dodinga") was formerly used to refer to a large area encompassing die present villages of Dodinga (Tbl: o todingana), Bobaneigo (Tbl: o baneigo), Tetewang (Tbl: o tetewanga)#nd Pasir Putih (whose vUlagers resetded to die place given this Malay name by missionaries in the 19th century); but only these last two villages speak Tobelo, and die area occupied by them may be considered die full range of die "Dodinga" dialect (which thus now only has some 900-1400 speakers). At Pasir Putih I was told tiiat in former times, when
Page 1 and 2: The Folk Biology of the Tobelo Peop
Page 3 and 4: SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHRO
Page 5 and 6: Contents Page PREFACE v Acknowledgm
Page 7 and 8: Preface Acknowledgments I can only
Page 9: NUMBER 34 vii Leis, John D. McEachr
Page 12 and 13: efers to the culturally shared set
Page 22 and 23: 12 TERNAT^gL TJDOREC^/ MAfUEP MMMHQ
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Page 28 and 29: 18 TABLE 1. Language competence amo
Page 30 and 31: 20 pronunciation. When full sibling
Page 32 and 33: 22 ethnogeographic locations and of
Page 34 and 35: 3.0 Introduction Our first and most
Page 36 and 37: 26 whether the meanings of words ha
Page 38 and 39: 28 positing named intermediate clas
Page 40 and 41: 30 with the Tzeltal language. He st
Page 42 and 43: 32 1984a, for further explanation a
Page 44 and 45: 34 'to be white') 'which is white'
Page 46 and 47: 36 ing endocentricity are different
Page 48 and 49: 38 Also a reduplicated participial
Page 50 and 51: 40 Tobelo glama -Idmoko ngduku dunu
Page 52 and 53: 4. The Domain of the BIOTIC FORM, a
Page 54 and 55: 44 them in the definition of "relat
Page 56 and 57: 46 those which are "judged importan
Page 58 and 59: 48 w H < — PQ i—si o bianga 'mo
Page 60 and 61: 50 defined by the ability to 'breat
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Page 64 and 65: 54 head in phrases such as o iuru m
Page 66 and 67: 56 o gorohutu- o noara 'ray' o nawo
Page 68 and 69: 58 Indonesian word pala 'nutmeg.' Y
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60 be restricted to those of a "mod
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62 I regret that I was not present
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64 covert classes (for this domain)
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66 5.2.2.2 Non-symmetry and Immedia
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68 A similar case could also be mad
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70 This interpretation is unaccepta
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72 B B< + 1 o gumini 'vine' B" l o
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74 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANT
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76 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANT
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78 The edible coconut weevil larvae
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80 o goropa-ginene o hamu1 'grouper
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82 lexical realization,tiiese examp
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Al.O Introduction and Explanation o
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86 SL Simple Word CX Complex Word C
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t ~ o baacai ma gare-garehe [P-EN]
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90 O T O H=0 H 0(P) O - o bobihingo
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92 0(F) 0(F) 0(F) 0(F) 0(0 o(f) 0(F
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94 paiyongifi) V [NM1-2022] [BO] Ag
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96 H H H H VxT 0(B) H o gogerehi [C
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98 VxT O H 'red'; 'red buttocks' (e
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too 0 hitakono [SL] + o hitakono o
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102 (Sambucaceae) T ojobirono [SL]
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104 h - o keketuku [SL] h + o keket
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106 tranus Miq. (Tetramelaceae) [cf
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108 0(P) H T t + 0 boboha [CX,agent
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110 H H H TxV O T=H denia sp. (Ascl
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112 (Moraceae) t o poo-pooto ma dub
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114 T V H h T t t V o o o O O + o i
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116 Copel. (Polypodiaceae) [but cf.
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118 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO AN
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120 in cleared, recendy burned and
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122 fonganika [P-EN, 'the jungle fo
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124 the form of an invisible bird t
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126 A23 o nawoko [SL] 'fish' Note:
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128 form from Kampung Wasde (B-dial
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130 die surface as tiie fish swims)
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132 kuhlii (Muller and Henle, 1841)
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134 'ratiier Idee an abscess' (alte
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136 M M M M M U M M M M U M M simil
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138 m o iuru ma doka-dokara [P-EN,
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140 M o moloiru [SL] (uncoU.; Insec
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Famtiy Species ACANTHACEAE Acanthus
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144 Famtiy Species Ochrosia glomera
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152 Famtiy Species Tobelo B° term
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166 Taxon Tobelo B° term Freshwate
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184 2 It may be because, as the Tob
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186 Ellen, Roy F. 1979. [Introducto
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Manuscripts intended for series pub
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