Chapter VI: Introduction (2)

For the boy it is different. He hopes that some day he will hold a _matai_ name, a name which will make him a member of the _Fono_, the assembly of headmen, which will give him a right to drink kava with chiefs, to work with chiefs rather than with the young men, to sit inside the house, even though his new title is only of “between the posts” rank, and not of enough importance to give him a right to a post for his back. But very seldom is he absolutely assured of getting such a name. Each family hold several of these titles which they confer upon the most promising youths in the whole family connection. He has many rivals. They also are in the _Aumaga_. He must always pit himself against them in the group activities. There are also several types of activities in one of which he must specialise. He must become a house-builder, a fisherman, an orator or a wood carver. Proficiency in some technique must set him off a little from his fellows. Fishing prowess means immediate rewards in the shape of food gifts to offer to his sweetheart; without such gifts his advances will be scorned. Skill in house-building means wealth and status, for a young man who is a skilled carpenter must be treated as courteously as a chief and addressed with the chief’s language, the elaborate set of honorific words used to people of rank. And with this goes the continual demand that he should not be too efficient, too outstanding, too precocious. He must never excel his fellows by more than a little. He must neither arouse their hatred nor the disapproval of his elders who are far readier to encourage and excuse the laggard than to condone precocity. And at the same time he shares his sister’s reluctance to accept responsibility, and if he should excel gently, not too obviously, he has good chances of being made a chief. If he is sufficiently talented, the _Fono_ itself may deliberate, search out a vacant title to confer upon him and call him in that he may sit with the old men and learn wisdom. And yet so well recognised is the unwillingness of the young men to respond to this honour, that the provision is always made, “And if the young man runs away, then never shall he be made a chief, but always he must sit outside the house with the young men, preparing and serving the food of the _matais_ with whom he may not sit in the _Fono_.” Still more pertinent are the chances of his relationship group bestowing a _matai_ name upon the gifted young man. And a _matai_ he wishes to be, some day, some far-off day when his limbs have lost a little of their suppleness and his heart the love of fun and of dancing. As one chief of twenty-seven told me: “I have been a chief only four years and look, my hair is grey, although in Samoa grey hair comes very slowly, not in youth, as it comes to the white man. But always, I must act as if I were old. I must walk gravely and with a measured step. I may not dance except upon most solemn occasions, neither may I play games with the young men. Old men of sixty are my companions and watch my every word, lest I make a mistake. Thirty-one people live in my household. For them I must plan, I must find them food and clothing, settle their disputes, arrange their marriages. There is no one in my whole family who dares to scold me or even to address me familiarly by my first name. It is hard to be so young and yet to be a chief.” And the old men shake their heads and agree that it is unseemly for one to be a chief so young.

The operation of natural ambition is further vitiated by the fact that the young man who is made a _matai_ will not be the greatest among his former associates, but the youngest and greenest member of the _Fono_. And no longer may he associate familiarly with his old companions; a _matai_ must associate only with _matais_, must work beside them in the bush and sit and talk quietly with them in the evening.

And so the boy is faced by a far more difficult dilemma than the girl. He dislikes responsibility, but he wishes to excel in his group; skill will hasten the day when he is made a chief, yet he receives censure and ridicule if he slackens his efforts; but he will be scolded if he proceeds too rapidly; yet if he would win a sweetheart, he must have prestige among his fellows. And conversely, his social prestige is increased by his amorous exploits.

So while the girl rests upon her “pass” proficiency, the boy is spurred to greater efforts. A boy is shy of a girl who does not have these proofs of efficiency and is known to be stupid and unskilled; he is afraid he may come to want to marry her. Marrying a girl without proficiency would be a most imprudent step and involve an endless amount of wrangling with his family. So the girl who is notoriously inept must take her lovers from among the casual, the jaded, and the married who are no longer afraid that their senses will betray them into an imprudent marriage.

But the seventeen-year-old girl does not wish to marry—not yet. It is better to live as a girl with no responsibility, and a rich variety of emotional experience. This is the best period of her life. There are as many beneath her whom she may bully as there are others above her to tyrannise over her. What she loses in prestige, she gains in freedom. She has very little baby-tending to do. Her eyes do not ache from weaving nor does her back break from bending all day over the tapa board. The long expeditions after fish and food and weaving materials give ample opportunities for rendezvous. Proficiency would mean more work, more confining work, and earlier marriage, and marriage is the inevitable to be deferred as long as possible.

IV

THE SAMOAN HOUSEHOLD

A Samoan village is made up of some thirty to forty households, each of which is presided over by a headman called a _matai_. These headmen hold either chiefly titles or the titles of talking chiefs, who are the official orators, spokesmen and ambassadors of chiefs. In a formal village assembly each _matai_ has his place, and represents and is responsible for all the members of his household. These households include all the individuals who live for any length of time under the authority and protection of a common _matai_. Their composition varies from the biological family consisting of parents and children only, to households of fifteen and twenty people who are all related to the _matai_ or to his wife by blood, marriage or adoption, but who often have no close relationship to each other. The adopted members of a household are usually but not necessarily distant relatives.

Widows and widowers, especially when they are childless, usually return to their blood relatives, but a married couple may live with the relatives of either one. Such a household is not necessarily a close residential unit, but may be scattered over the village in three or four houses. No one living permanently in another village is counted as a member of the household, which is strictly a local unit. Economically, the household is also a unit, for all work upon the plantations under the supervision of the _matai_ who in turn parcels out to them food and other necessities.

Within the household, age rather than relationship gives disciplinary authority. The _matai_ exercises nominal and usually real authority over every individual under his protection, even over his father and mother. This control is, of course, modified by personality differences, always carefully tempered, however, by a ceremonious acknowledgment of his position. The newest baby born into such a household is subject to every individual in it, and his position improves no whit with age until a younger child appears upon the scene. But in most households the position of youngest is a highly temporary one. Nieces and nephews or destitute young cousins come to swell the ranks of the household and at adolescence a girl stands virtually in the middle with as many individuals who must obey her as there are persons to whom she owes obedience. Where increased efficiency and increased self-consciousness would perhaps have made her obstreperous and restless in a differently organised family, here she has ample outlet for a growing sense of authority.

This development is perfectly regular. A girl’s marriage makes a minimum of difference in this respect, except in so far as her own children increase most pertinently the supply of agreeably docile subordinates. But the girls who remain unmarried even beyond their early twenties are in nowise less highly regarded or less responsible than their married sisters. This tendency to make the classifying principle age, rather than married state, is reinforced outside the home by the fact that the wives of untitled men and all unmarried girls past puberty are classed together in the ceremonial organisation of the village.

Relatives in other households also play a rôle in the children’s lives. Any older relative has a right to demand personal service from younger relatives, a right to criticise their conduct and to interfere in their affairs. Thus a little girl may escape alone down to the beach to bathe only to be met by an older cousin who sets her washing or caring for a baby or to fetch some cocoanut to scrub the clothes. So closely is the daily life bound up with this universal servitude and so numerous are the acknowledged relationships in the name of which service can be exacted, that for the children an hour’s escape from surveillance is almost impossible.

This loose but demanding relationship group has its compensations also. Within it a child of three can wander safely and come to no harm, can be sure of finding food and drink, a sheet to wrap herself up in for a nap, a kind hand to dry casual tears and bind up her wounds. Any small children who are missing when night falls, are simply “sought among their kinsfolk,” and a baby whose mother has gone inland to work on the plantation is passed from hand to hand for the length of the village.

The ranking by age is disturbed in only a few cases. In each village one or two high chiefs have the hereditary right to name some girl of their household as its _taupo_, the ceremonial princess of the house. The girl who at fifteen or sixteen is made a _taupo_ is snatched from her age group and sometimes from her immediate family also and surrounded by a glare of prestige. The older women of the village accord her courtesy titles, her immediate family often exploits her position for their personal ends and in return show great consideration for her wishes. But as there are only two or three _taupos_ in a village, their unique position serves to emphasise rather than to disprove the general status of young girls.

Coupled with this enormous diffusion of authority goes a fear of overstraining the relationship bond, which expresses itself in an added respect for personality. The very number of her captors is the girl’s protection, for does one press her too far, she has but to change her residence to the home of some more complacent relative. It is possible to classify the different households open to her as those with hardest work, least chaperonage, least scolding, largest or least number of contemporaries, fewest babies, best food, etc. Few children live continuously in one household, but are always testing out other possible residences. And this can be done under the guise of visits and with no suggestion of truancy. But the minute that the mildest annoyance grows up at home, the possibility of flight moderates the discipline and alleviates the child’s sense of dependency. No Samoan child, except the _taupo_, or the thoroughly delinquent, ever has to deal with a feeling of being trapped. There are always relatives to whom one can flee. This is the invariable answer which a Samoan gives when some familial impasse is laid before him. “But she will go to some _other_ relative.” And theoretically the supply of relatives is inexhaustible. Unless the vagrant has committed some very serious offence like incest, it is only necessary formally to depart from the bosom of one’s household. A girl whose father has beaten her over severely in the morning will be found living in haughty sanctuary, two hundred feet away, in a different household. So cherished is this system of consanguineous refuge, that an untitled man or a man of lesser rank will beard the nobler relative who comes to demand a runaway child. With great politeness and endless expressions of conciliation, he will beg his noble chief to return to his noble home and remain there quietly until his noble anger is healed against his noble child.

The most important relationships[1] within a Samoan household which influence the lives of the young people are the relationships between the boys and girls who call each other “brother” and “sister,” whether by blood, marriage or adoption, and the relationship between younger and older relatives. The stress upon the sex difference between contemporaries and the emphasis on relative age are amply explained by the conditions of family life. Relatives of opposite sex have a most rigid code of etiquette prescribed for all their contacts with each other. After they have reached years of discretion, nine or ten years of age in this case, they may not touch each other, sit close together, eat together, address each other familiarly, or mention any salacious matter in each other’s presence. They may not remain in any house, except their own, together, unless half the village is gathered there. They may not walk together, use each other’s possessions, dance on the same floor, or take part in any of the same small group activities. This strict avoidance applies to all individuals of the opposite sex within five years above or below one’s own age with whom one was reared or to whom one acknowledges relationship by blood or marriage. The conformance to this brother and sister taboo begins when the younger of the two children feels “ashamed” at the elder’s touch and continues until old age when the decrepit, toothless pair of old siblings may again sit on the same mat and not feel ashamed.

[1] See Appendix, page 249.

_Tei_, the word for younger relative, stresses the other most emotionally charged relationship. The first maternal enthusiasm of a girl is never expended upon her own children but upon some younger relative. And it is the girls and women who use this term most, continuing to cherish it after they and the younger ones to whom it is applied are full grown. The younger child in turn expends its enthusiasm upon a still younger one without manifesting any excessive affection for the fostering elders.

The word _aiga_ is used roughly to cover all relationships by blood, marriage and adoption, and the emotional tone seems to be the same in each case. Relationship by marriage is counted only as long as an actual marriage connects two kinship groups. If the marriage is broken in any way, by desertion, divorce, or death, the relationship is dissolved and members of the two families are free to marry each other. If the marriage left any children, a reciprocal relationship exists between the two households as long as the child lives, for the mother’s family will always have to contribute one kind of property, the father’s family another, for occasions when property must be given away in the name of the child.

A relative is regarded as some one upon whom one has a multitude of claims and to whom one owes a multitude of obligations. From a relative one may demand food, clothing, and shelter, or assistance in a feud. Refusal of such a demand brands one as stingy and lacking in human kindness, the virtue most esteemed among the Samoans. No definite repayment is made at the time such services are given, except in the case of the distribution of food to all those who share in a family enterprise. But careful count of the value of the property given and of the service rendered is kept and a return gift demanded at the earliest opportunity. Nevertheless, in native theory the two acts are separate, each one in turn becoming a “beggar,” a pensioner upon another’s bounty. In olden times, the beggar sometimes wore a special girdle which delicately hinted at the cause of his visit. One old chief gave me a graphic description of the behaviour of some one who had come to ask a favour of a relative. “He will come early in the morning and enter quietly, sitting down in the very back of the house, in the place of least honour. You will say to him, ‘So you have come, be welcome!’ and he will answer, ‘I have come indeed, saving your noble presence.’ Then you will say, ‘Are you thirsty? Alas for your coming, there is little that is good within the house.’ And he will answer, ‘Let it rest, thank you, for indeed I am not hungry nor would I drink.’ And he will sit and you will sit all day long and no mention is made of the purpose of his coming. All day he will sit and brush the ashes out of the hearth, performing this menial and dirty task with very great care and attention. If some one must go inland to the plantation to fetch food, he is the first to offer to go. If some one must go fishing to fill out the crew of a canoe, surely he is delighted to go, even though the sun is hot and his journey hither has been long. And all day you sit and wonder, ‘What can it be that he has come for? Is it that largest pig that he wants, or has he heard perhaps that my daughter has just finished a large and beautiful piece of tapa? Would it perhaps be well to send that tapa, as I had perhaps planned, as a present to my talking chief, to send it now, so that I may refuse him with all good faith?’ And he sits and studies your countenance and wonders if you will be favourable to his request. He plays with the children but refuses the necklace of flowers which they have woven for him and gives it instead to your daughter. Finally night comes. It is time to sleep and still he has not spoken. So finally you say to him, ‘Lo, I would sleep. Will you sleep also or will you be returning whence you have come?’ And only then will he speak and tell you the desire in his heart.”

So the intrigue, the needs, the obligations of the larger relationship group which threads its carefully remembered way in and out of many houses and many villages, cuts across the life of the household. One day it is the wife’s relatives who come to spend a month or borrow a fine mat; the next day it is the husband’s; the third, a niece who is a valued worker in the household may be called home by the illness of her father. Very seldom do all of even the small children of a biological family live in one household and while the claims of the household are paramount, in the routine of everyday life, illness or need on the part of the closer relative in another household will call the wanderers home again.

Obligations either to give general assistance or to give specific traditionally required service, as in a marriage or at a birth, follow relationship lines, not household lines. But a marriage of many years’ duration binds the relationship groups of husband and wife so closely together that to all appearances it is the household unit which gives aid and accedes to a request brought by the relative of either one. Only in families of high rank where the distaff side has priority in decisions and in furnishing the _taupo_, the princess of the house, and the male line priority in holding the title, does the actual blood relationship continue to be a matter of great practical importance; and this importance is lost in the looser household group constituted as it is by the three principles of blood, marriage and adoption, and bound together by common ties of everyday living and mutual economic dependence.

The _matai_ of a household is theoretically exempt from the performance of small domestic tasks, but he is seldom actually so except in the case of a chief of high rank. However, the leading rôle is always accorded to him in any industrial pursuit; he dresses the pig for the feasts and cuts up the cocoanuts which the boys and women have gathered. The family cooking is done by the men and women both, but the bulk of the work falls upon the boys and young men. The old men spin the cocoanut fibre, and braid it into the native cord which is used for fish lines, fish nets, to sew canoe parts together and to bind all the different parts of a house in place. With the old women who do the bulk of the weaving and making of bark cloth, they supervise the younger children who remain at home. The heavy routine agricultural work falls upon the women who are responsible for the weeding, transplanting, gathering and transportation of the food, and the gathering of the paper mulberry wands from which bark will be peeled for making tapa, of the hibiscus bark and pandanus leaves for weaving mats. The older girls and women also do the routine reef fishing for octopuses, sea eggs, jelly fish, crabs, and other small fry. The younger girls carry the water, care for the lamps (to-day except in times of great scarcity when the candle nut and cocoanut oil are resorted to, the natives use kerosene lamps and lanterns), and sweep and arrange the houses. Tasks are all graduated with a fair recognition of abilities which differ with age, and except in the case of individuals of very high rank, a task is rejected because a younger person has skill enough to perform it, rather than because it is beneath an adult’s dignity.

Rank in the village and rank in the household reflect each other, but village rank hardly affects the young children. If a girl’s father is a _matai_, the _matai_ of the household in which she lives, she has no appeal from his authority. But if some other member of the family is the _matai_, he and his wife may protect her from her father’s exactions. In the first case, disagreement with her father means leaving the household and going to live with other relatives; in the second case it may mean only a little internal friction. Also in the family of a high chief or a high talking chief there is more emphasis upon ceremonial, more emphasis upon hospitality. The children are better bred and also much harder worked. But aside from the general quality of a household which is dependent upon the rank of its head, households of very different rank may seem very similar to young children. They are usually more concerned with the temperament of those in authority than with their rank. An uncle in another village who is a very high chief is of much less significance in a child’s life than some old woman in her own household who has a frightful temper.

Nevertheless, rank not of birth but of title is very important in Samoa. The status of a village depends upon the rank of its high chief, the prestige of a household depends upon the title of its _matai_. Titles are of two grades, chiefs and talking chiefs, each title carries many other duties and prerogatives besides the headship of a household. And the Samoans find rank a never-failing source of interest. They have invented an elaborate courtesy language which must be used to people of rank; complicated etiquette surrounds each rank in society. Something which concerns their elders so nearly cannot help being indirectly reflected in the lives of some of the children. This is particularly true of the relationship of children to each other in households which hold titles to which some of them will one day attain. How these far-away issues of adult life affect the lives of children and young people can best be understood by following their influence in the lives of particular children.

In the household of a high chief named Malae lived two little girls, Meta, twelve, and Timu, eleven. Meta was a self-possessed, efficient little girl. Malae had taken her from her mother’s house—her mother was his cousin—because she showed unusual intelligence and precocity. Timu, on the other hand, was an abnormally shy, backward child, below her age group in intelligence. But Meta’s mother was only a distant cousin of Malae. Had she not married into a strange village where Malae was living temporarily, Meta might never have come actively to the notice of her noble relative. And Timu was the only daughter of Malae’s dead sister. Her father had been a quarter caste which served to mark her off and increase her self-consciousness. Dancing was an agony to her. She fled precipitately from an elder’s admonitory voice. But Timu would be Malae’s next _taupo_, princess. She was pretty, the principal recognised qualification, and she came from the distaff side of the house, the preferred descent for a _taupo_. So Meta, the more able in every way, was pushed to the wall, and Timu, miserable over the amount of attention she received, was dragged forward. The mere presence of another more able and enterprising child would probably have emphasised Timu’s feeling of inferiority, but this publicity stressed it painfully. Commanded to dance on every occasion, she would pause whenever she caught an onlooker’s eye and stand a moment wringing her hands before going on with the dance.

In another household, this same title of Malae’s _taupo_ played a different rôle. This was in the household of Malae’s paternal aunt who lived with her husband in Malae’s guest house in his native village. Her eldest daughter, Pana, held the title of _taupo_ of the house of Malae. But Pana was twenty-six, though still unmarried. She must be wedded soon and then another girl must be found to hold the title. Timu would still be too young. Pana had three younger sisters who by birth were supremely eligible to the title. But Mele, the eldest of twenty, was lame, and Pepe of fourteen was blind in one eye and an incorrigible tomboy. The youngest was even younger than Timu. So all three were effectually barred from succession. This fact reacted favourably upon the position of Filita. She was a seventeen-year-old niece of the father of the other children with no possible claims on a title in the house of Malae, but she had lived with her cousins since childhood. Filita was pretty, efficient, adequate, neither lame like Mele nor blind and hoydenish like Pepe. True she could never hope to be _taupo_, but neither could they, despite their superior birth, so peace and amity reigned because of her cousins’ deficiencies. Still another little girl came within the circle of influence of the title. This was Pula, another little cousin in a third village. But her more distant relationship and possible claims were completely obscured by the fact that she was the only granddaughter of the highest chief in her own village and her becoming the _taupo_ of that title was inevitable so that her life was untouched by any other possibility. Thus six girls in addition to the present _taupo_, were influenced for good or evil by the possibility of succession to the title. But as there are seldom more than one or two _taupos_ in a village, these influences are still fairly circumscribed when compared with the part which rank plays in the lives of boys, for there are usually one or more _matai_ names in every relationship group.

Rivalry plays a much stronger part here. In the choice of the _taupo_ and the _manaia_ (the titular heir-apparent) there is a strong prejudice in favour of blood relationship and also for the choice of the _taupo_ from the female and the _manaia_ from the male line. But in the interests of efficiency this scheme had been modified, so that most titles were filled by the most able youth from the whole relationship and affinity group. So it was in Alofi. Tui, a chief of importance in the village, had one son, an able intelligent boy. Tui’s brothers were dull and inept, no fit successors to the title. One of them had an ill-favoured young son, a stupid, unattractive youngster. There were no other males in the near relationship group. It was assumed that the exceedingly eligible son would succeed his father. And then at twenty he died. The little nephew hardly gave promise of a satisfactory development, and so Tui had his choice of looking outside his village or outside of his near relationship group. Village feeling runs high in Tui’s village. Tui’s blood relatives lived many villages away. They were strangers. If he did not go to them and search for a promising youth whom he could train as his successor, he must either find an eligible young husband for his daughter or look among his wife’s people. Provisionally he took this last course, and his wife’s brother’s son came to live in his household. In a year, his new father promised the boy, he might assume his dead cousin’s name if he showed himself worthy.

In the family of high chief Fua a very different problem presented itself. His was the highest title in the village. He was over sixty and the question of succession was a moot one. The boys in his household consisted of Tata, his eldest son who was illegitimate, Molo and Nua, the sons of his widowed sister, Sisi, his son by his first legal wife (since divorced and remarried on another island), and Tuai, the husband of his niece, the sister of Molo and Nua. And in the house of Fua’s eldest brother lived his brother’s daughter’s son, Alo, a youth of great promise. Here then were enough claimants to produce a lively rivalry. Tuai was the oldest, calm, able, but not sufficiently hopeful to be influenced in his conduct except as it made him more ready to assert the claims of superior age over his wife’s younger brothers whose claims were better than his. Next in age came Tata, the sour, beetle-browed bastard, whose chances were negligible as long as there were those of legitimate birth to dispute his left-handed claims. But Tata did not lose hope. Cautious, tortuous-minded, he watched and waited. He was in love with Lotu, the daughter of a talking chief of only medium rank. For one of Fua’s sons, Lotu would have been a good match. But as Fua’s bastard who wished to be chief, he must marry high or not at all. The two nephews, Molo and Nua, played different hands. Nua, the younger, went away to seek his fortune as a native marine at the Naval Station. This meant a regular income, some knowledge of English, prestige of a sort. Molo, the elder brother, stayed at home and made himself indispensable. He was the _tamafafine_, the child of the distaff side, and it was his rôle to take his position for granted, the _tamafafine_ of the house of Fua, what more could any one ask in the way of immediate prestige. As for the future—his manner was perfect. All of these young men, and likewise Alo, the great nephew, were members of the _Aumaga_, grown up and ready to assume adult responsibilities. Sisi, the sixteen-year-old legitimate son, was still a boy, slender, diffident, presuming far less upon his position as son and heir-apparent than did his cousin. He was an attractive, intelligent boy. If his father lived until Sisi was twenty-five or thirty, his succession seemed inevitable. Even should his father die sooner, the title might have been held for him. But in this latter possibility there was one danger. Samala, his father’s older brother, would have a strong voice in the choice of a successor to the title. And Alo was Samala’s adored grandson, the son of his favourite daughter. Alo was the model of all that a young man should be. He eschewed the company of women, stayed much at home and rigorously trained his younger brother and sister. While the other young men played cricket, he sat at Samala’s feet and memorised genealogies. He never forgot that he was the son of Sāfuá, the house of Fua. More able than Molo, his claim to the title was practically as good, although within the family group Molo as the child of the distaff side would always outvote him. So Alo was Sisi’s most dangerous rival, provided his father died soon. And should Fua live twenty years longer, another complication threatened his succession. Fua had but recently remarried, a woman of very high rank and great wealth who had a five-year-old illegitimate son, Nifo. Thinking always of this child, for she and Fua had no children, she did all that she could to undermine Sisi’s position as heir-apparent and there was every chance that as her ascendency over Fua increased with his advancing age, she might have Nifo named as his successor. His illegitimacy and lack of blood tie would be offset by the fact that he was child of the distaff side in the noblest family in the island and would inherit great wealth from his mother.

Of a different character was the problem which confronted Sila, the stepdaughter of Ono, a _matai_ of low rank. She was the eldest in a family of seven children. Ono was an old man, decrepit and ineffective. Lefu, Sila’s mother and his second wife, was worn out, weary from bearing eleven children. The only adult males in the household were Laisa, Ono’s brother, an old man like himself, and Laisa’s idle shiftless son, a man of thirty, whose only interest in life was love affairs. He was unmarried and shied away from this responsibility as from all others. The sister next younger than Sila was sixteen. She had left home and lived, now here, now there, among her relatives. Sila was twenty-two. She had been married at sixteen and against her will to a man much older than herself who had beaten her for her childish ways. After two years of married life, she had run away from her husband and gone home to live with her parents, bringing her little two-year-old boy, who was now five years old, with her. At twenty she had had a love affair with a boy of her own village, and borne a daughter who had lived only a few months. After her baby died her lover had deserted her. Sila disliked matrimony. She was conscientious, sharp-tongued, industrious. She worked tirelessly for her child and her small brothers and sisters. She did not want to marry again. But there were three old people and six children in her household with only herself and her idle cousin to provide for them. And so she said despondently: “I think I will get married to that boy.” “Which boy, Sila?” I asked. “The father of my baby who is dead.” “But I thought you said you did not want him for a husband?” “No more do I. But I must find some one to care for my family.” And indeed there was no other way. Her stepfather’s title was a very low one. There were no young men within the family to succeed to it. Her lover was industrious and of even lower degree. The bait of the title would secure a worker for the family.

And so within many households the shadow of nobility falls upon the children, sometimes lightly, sometimes heavily, often long before they are old enough to understand the meaning of these intrusions from the adult world.

V

THE GIRL AND HER AGE GROUP

Until a child is six or seven at least she associates very little with her contemporaries. Brothers and sisters and small cousins who live in the same household, of course, frolic and play together, but outside the household each child clings closely to its older guardian and only comes in contact with other children in case the little nursemaids are friends. But at about seven years of age, the children begin to form larger groups, a kind of voluntary association which never exists in later life, that is, a group recruited from both relationship and neighbourhood groups. These are strictly divided along sex lines and antagonism between the small girls and the small boys is one of the salient features of the group life. The little girls are just beginning to “be ashamed” in the presence of older brothers, and the prohibition that one small girl must never join a group of boys is beginning to be enforced. The fact that the boys are less burdened and so can range further afield in search of adventure, while the girls have to carry their heavy little charges with them, also makes a difference between the sexes. The groups of small children which hang about the fringes of some adult activity often contain both girls and boys, but here the association principle is simply age discrimination on the part of their elders, rather than voluntary association on the children’s part.

These age gangs are usually confined to the children who live in eight or ten contiguous households.[2] They are flexible chance associations, the members of which manifest a vivid hostility towards their contemporaries in neighbouring villages and sometimes towards other gangs within their own village. Blood ties cut across these neighbourhood alignments so that a child may be on good terms with members of two or three different groups. A strange child from another group, provided she came alone, could usually take refuge beside a relative. But the little girls of Siufaga looked askance at the little girls of Lumā, the nearest village and both looked with even greater suspicion at the little girls from Faleasao, who lived twenty minutes’ walk away. However, heart burnings over these divisions were very temporary affairs. When Tua’s brother was ill, her entire family moved from the far end of Siufaga into the heart of Lumā. For a few days Tua hung rather dolefully about the house, only to be taken in within a week by the central Lumā children with complete amiability. But when she returned some weeks later to Siufaga, she became again “a Siufaga girl,” object elect of institutionalised scorn and gibes to her recent companions.

[2] See Neighbourhood Maps. Appendix I, page 251.

No very intense friendships are made at this age. The relationship and neighbourhood structure of the group overshadows the personalities within it. Also the most intense affection is always reserved for near relatives and pairs of little sisters take the place of chums. The Western comment, “Yes, Mary and Julia are such good friends as well as sisters!” becomes in Samoa, “But she is a relative,” if a friendship is commented upon. The older ones fend for the younger, give them their spoils, weave them flower necklaces and give them their most treasured shells. This relationship aspect is the only permanent element in the group and even this is threatened by any change of residence. The emotional tone attached to the inhabitants of a strange village tends to make even a well-known cousin seem a little strange.

Of the different groups of little girls there was only one which showed characteristics which would make it possible to classify it as a gang. An accident of residence accounts for the most intense group development being in the centre of Lumā, where nine little girls of nearly the same age and with abundant relationship ties lived close together. The development of a group which played continually together and maintained a fairly coherent hostility towards outsiders, seems to be more of a function of residence than of the personality of any child particularly endowed with powers of leadership. The nine little girls in this group were less shy, less suspicious, more generous towards one another, more socially enterprising than other children of the same age and in general reflected the socialising effects of group life. Outside this group, the children of this age had to rely much more upon their immediate relationship group reinforced perhaps by the addition of one or two neighbours. Where the personality of a child stood out it was more because of exceptional home environment than a result of social give-and-take with children of her own age.

Children of this age had no group activities except play, in direct antithesis to the home life where the child’s only function was work—baby-tending and the performance of numerous trivial tasks and innumerable errands. They foregathered in the early evening, before the late Samoan supper, and occasionally during the general siesta hour in the afternoon. On moonlight nights they scoured the villages alternately attacking or fleeing from the gangs of small boys, peeking through drawn shutters, catching land crabs, ambushing wandering lovers, or sneaking up to watch a birth or a miscarriage in some distant house. Possessed by a fear of the chiefs, a fear of small boys, a fear of their relatives and by a fear of ghosts, no gang of less than four or five dared to venture forth on these nocturnal excursions. They were veritable groups of little outlaws escaping from the exactions of routine tasks. Because of the strong feeling for relationship and locality, the part played by stolen time, the need for immediately executed group plans, and the punishment which hung over the heads of children who got too far out of earshot, the Samoan child was as dependent upon the populousness of her immediate locality, as is the child in a rural community in the West. True her isolation here was never one-eighth of a mile in extent, but glaring sun and burning sands, coupled with the number of relatives to be escaped from in the day or the number of ghosts to be escaped from at night, magnified this distance until as a barrier to companionship it was equivalent to three or four miles in rural America. Thus there occurred the phenomenon of the isolated child in a village full of children of her own age. Such was Luna, aged ten, who lived in one of the scattered houses belonging to a high chief’s household. This house was situated at the very end of the village where she lived with her grandmother, her mother’s sister Sami, Sami’s husband and baby, and two younger maternal aunts, aged seventeen and fifteen. Luna’s mother was dead. Her other brothers and sisters lived on another island with her father’s people. She was ten, but young for her age, a quiet, listless child, reluctant to take the initiative, the sort of child who would always need an institutionalised group life. Her only relatives close by were two girls of fourteen, whose long legs and absorption in semi-adult tasks made them far too grown-up companions for her. Some little girls of fourteen might have tolerated Luna about, but not Selu, the younger of the cousins, whose fine mat was already three feet under way. In the next house, a stone’s throw away, lived two little girls, Pimi and Vana, aged eight and ten. But they were not relatives and being chief baby-tenders to four younger children, they had no time for exploring. There were no common relatives to bring them together and so Luna lived a solitary life, except when an enterprising young aunt of eleven came home to her mother’s house. This aunt, Siva, was a fascinating companion, a vivid and precocious child, whom Luna followed about in open-mouthed astonishment. But Siva had proved too much of a handful for her widowed mother, and the _matai_, her uncle, had taken her to live in his immediate household at the other end of the village, on the other side of the central Lumā gang. They formed far more attractive companions and Siva seldom got as far as her mother’s house in her occasional moments of freedom. So unenterprising Luna cared for her little cousin, followed her aunt and grandmother about and most of the time presented a very forlorn appearance.

In strong contrast was the fate of Lusi, who was only seven, too young to be really eligible for the games of her ten- and eleven-year-old elders. Had she lived in an isolated spot, she would have been merely a neighbourhood baby. But her house was in a strategic position, next door to that of her cousins, Maliu and Pola, important members of the Lumā gang. Maliu, one of the oldest members of the group, had a tremendous feeling for all her young relatives, and Lusi was her first cousin. So tiny, immature Lusi had the full benefit of a group life denied to Luna.

At the extreme end of Siufaga lived Vina, a gentle, unassuming girl of fourteen. Her father’s house stood all alone in the centre of a grove of palm trees, just out of sight and ear-shot of the nearest neighbour. Her only companions were her first cousin, a reserved capable eighteen-year-old and two cousins of seventeen and nineteen. There was one little cousin of twelve also in the neighbourhood, but five younger brothers and sisters kept her busy. Vina also had several brothers and sisters younger than herself, but they were old enough to fend for themselves and Vina was comparatively free to follow the older girls on fishing expeditions. So she never escaped from being the little girl, tagging after older ones, carrying their loads and running their errands. She was a flurried anxious child, overconcerned with pleasing others, docile in her chance encounters with contemporaries from long habit of docility. A free give-and-take relationship within her own age group had been denied to her and was now denied to her forever. For it was only to the eight- to twelve-year-old girl that this casual group association was possible. As puberty approached, and a girl gained physical strength and added skill, her household absorbed her again. She must make the oven, she must go to work on the plantation, she must fish. Her days were filled with long tasks and new responsibilities.

Such a child was Fitu. In September she was one of the dominant members of the gang, a little taller than the rest, a little lankier, more strident and executive, but very much a harum-scarum little girl among little girls, with a great baby always on her hip. But by April she had turned the baby over to a younger sister of nine; the still younger baby was entrusted to a little sister of five and Fitu worked with her mother on the plantations, or went on long expeditions after hibiscus bark, or for fish. She took the family washing to the sea and helped make the oven on cooking days. Occasionally in the evening she slipped away to play games on the green with her former companions but usually she was too tired from the heavy unaccustomed work, and also a slight strangeness had crept over her. She felt that her more adult activities set her off from the rest of the group with whom she had felt so much at home the fall before. She made only abortive attempts to associate with the older girls in the neighbourhood. Her mother sent her to sleep in the pastor’s house next door, but she returned home after three days. Those girls were all too old, she said. “Laititi a’u” (“I am but young”). And yet she was spoiled for her old group. The three villages numbered fourteen such children, just approaching puberty, preoccupied by unaccustomed tasks and renewed and closer association with the adults of their families, not yet interested in boys, and so forming no new alliances in accordance with sex interests. Soberly they perform their household tasks, select a teacher from the older women of their family, learn to bear the suffix, meaning “little” dropped from the “little girl” which had formerly described them. But they never again amalgamate into such free and easy groups as the before-the-teens gang. As sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls, they will still rely upon relatives, and the picture is groupings of twos or of threes, never more. The neighbourhood feelings drop out and girls of seventeen will ignore a near neighbour who is an age mate and go the length of the village to visit a relative. Relationship and similar sex interests are now the deciding factor in friendships. Girls also followed passively the stronger allegiance of the boys. If a girl’s sweetheart has a chum who is interested in a cousin of hers, the girls strike up a lively, but temporary, friendship. Occasionally such friendships even go outside of the relationship group.

Although girls may confide only in one or two girl relatives, their sex status is usually sensed by the other women of the village and alliances shift and change on this basis, from the shy adolescent who is suspicious of all older girls, to the girl whose first or second love affair still looms as very important, to the girls who are beginning to centre all their attention upon one boy and possibly matrimony. Finally the unmarried mother selects her friends, when possible, from those in like case with herself, or from women of ambiguous marital position, deserted or discredited young wives.

Very few friendships of younger for older girls cut across these groupings after puberty. The twelve-year-old may have a great affection and admiration for her sixteen-year-old cousin (although any of these enthusiasms for older girls are pallid matters compared to a typical school girl “crush” in our civilisation). But when she is fifteen and her cousin nineteen, the picture changes. All of the adult and near-adult world is hostile, spying upon her love affairs in its more circumspect sophistication, supremely not to be trusted. No one is to be trusted who is not immediately engaged in similarly hazardous adventures.

It may safely be said that without the artificial conditions produced by residence in the native pastor’s household or in the large missionary boarding school, the girls do not go outside their relationship group to make friends. (In addition to the large girls’ boarding school which served all of American Samoa, the native pastor of each community maintained a small informal boarding school for boys and girls. To these schools were sent the girls whose fathers wished to send them later to the large boarding school, and also girls whose parents wished them to have three or four years of the superior educational advantages and stricter supervision of the pastor’s home.) Here unrelated girls live side by side sometimes for years. But as one of the two defining features of a household is common residence, the friendships formed between girls who have lived in the pastor’s household are not very different psychologically from the friendship of cousins or girls connected only by affinity who live in the same family. The only friendships which really are different in kind from those formed by common residence or membership in the same relationship group, are the institutionalised relationships between the wives of chiefs and the wives of talking chiefs. But these friendships can only be understood in connection with the friendships among boys and men.