The Folk Biology of the Tobelo People - Smithsonian Institution ...

NUMBER 34 23
people" (i.e., the Elders); they may honestly add, "We chUdren
nowadays don't know anymore."
Once at Loleba viUage, as I brought out and asked about
smaUer and smaller insect specimens, trying to reach die limits
of my informants' classificatory competence (or of their
patience), one friend squinted down at a tiny beetle I produced
in my hand and said, "You'd have to find someone who was
friendly with Adam and Eve to teU you die name of that!"
4. Tobelo (witii some exceptions) are generaUy careful not to
give the "wrong" name to animals or plants, and wUl seldom
proffer a name for an unfamiliar form.
5. Tobelo generally are, and feel tiiey should be, willing to
learn more about die proper classification of local biota (as weU
as about uses, habitat or behavior, and otiier characteristics of
biotic forms). They also usually stand ready to be corrected by
die more knowledgeable on details of tiieir folk systematics.
Though this seems to accurately portray die wUlingness of
individual Tobelo to revise and correct details of nomenclature
and classification, there are also local conventions of etiquette
that make younger people deferent toward and reluctant to
correct tiieir elders, and hosts similarly more likely to defer to,
rather than correct, tiieir guests.
6. Rarely, an unfamiliar plant (FLORAL FORM) (not
reported for 'animal') name may be revealed (by a former
"Elder" or by an individual's spirit-helper) to a person in a
dream, along with a "medicinal" use to which it should be put
The resulting personal "medicine" is regarded as exceptionally
powerful; by custom, this medicinal use must be tried before
anyone is told about its origin. But note tiiat tiiose who have
this experience say that only die name is revealed—tiiey must
seek die plant correctly so designated by inquiring of otiiers,
without giving any reason for tiieir inquiry.
7. Because folk medicine is esoteric, names of medicinally
useful plants are seldom freely discussed. Thus many plants are
only identifiable by practitioners of folk medicine, who are the
best Tobelo folk botanists. In several cases no other viUagers at
a particular place knew the name for certain plant-types. In
cases of disagreement about a plant's proper identification, die
most convincing argument for presenting a name as die
"proper" one is, "Ahi houru de!" 'It's my medicine!'
On die otiier hand, a village and church elder in one
kampung of Tobelo District once told me that he used certain
grasses I found there as his "medicine" but did not know tiieir
names. Other Tobelo who did not know him later simply
concluded he must have lied. They reasoned privately to me
tiiat die elder was either only pretending die grasses were his
medicine, or tiiat he purposely withheld die name.
8. Widely varying names for small arthropods or aewani2
'mere animals' may also be known only to a few, simply
because of the cultural insignificance of these animals and not
because tiiey are "esoteric." Yet die local presumption tiiat even
tiiey must have names is undaunted.
Finally, note tiiat we have here considered only some of die
Tobelo cultural presumptions tiiat seem to underly folk
classification, not presumptions about die classes of BIOTIC
FORM tiiemselves (cf. 4.4); some consequences of these
presumptions wUl be noted when appropriate throughout die
text tiiat foUows (see especially 5.2.2.4 and 5.2.3.5 on some
effects of esoteric knowledge on classification; and 5.2.1.3 and
5.2.2.4 on local attempts to reconcile die assumption of a
"proper" Tobelo classification with observed dialectal differences).