Chapter VII: Introduction (3)

The little boys follow the same pattern as do the little girls, running in a gang based upon the double bonds of neighbourhood and relationship. The feeling for the ascendency of age is always much stronger than in the case of girls because the older boys do not withdraw into their family groups as do the girls. The fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys gang together with the same freedom as do the twelve-year-olds. The borderline between small boys and bigger boys is therefore a continually shifting one, the boys in an intermediate position now lording it over the younger boys, now tagging obsequiously in the wake of their elders. There are two institutionalised relationships between boys which are called by the same name and possibly were at one time one relationship. This is the _soa_, the companion at circumcision and the ambassador in love affairs. Boys are circumcised in pairs, making the arrangements themselves and seeking out an older man who has acquired a reputation for skilfulness. There seems to be here simply a logical inter-relationship of cause and effect; a boy chooses a friend (who is usually also a relative) as his companion and the experience shared binds them closer together. There were several pairs of boys in the village who had been circumcised together and were still inseparable companions, often sleeping together in the house of one of them. Casual homosexual practices occurred in such relationships. However, when the friendships of grown boys of the village were analysed, no close correspondence with the adolescent allegiance was found and older boys were as often found in groups of three or four as in pairs.

When a boy is two or three years past puberty, his choice of a companion is influenced by the convention that a young man seldom speaks for himself in love and never in a proposal of marriage. He accordingly needs a friend of about his age whom he can trust to sing his praises and press his suit with requisite fervour and discretion. For this office, a relative, or, if the affair be desperate, several relatives are employed. A youth is influenced in his choice by his need of an ambassador who is not only trustworthy and devoted but plausible and insinuating as a procurer. This _soa_ relationship is often, but not necessarily, reciprocal. The expert in love comes in time to dispense with the services of an intermediary, wishing to taste to the full the sweets of all the stages in courtship. At the same time his services are much in demand by others, if they entertain any hope at all of his dealing honourably by his principal. But the boys have also other matters besides love-making in which they must co-operate. Three are needed to man a bonito canoe; two usually go together to lasso eels on the reef; work on the communal taro plantations demands the labour of all the youths in the village. So that while a boy too chooses his best friends from among his relatives, his sense of social solidarity is always much stronger than that of a girl. The _Aualuma_, the organisation of young girls and wives of untitled men, is an exceedingly loose association gathered for very occasional communal work, and still more occasional festivities. In villages where the old intricacies of the social organisation are beginning to fall into disuse, it is the _Aualuma_ which disappears first, while the _Aumaga_, the young men’s organisation, has too important a place in the village economy to be thus ignored. The _Aumaga_ is indeed the most enduring social factor in the village. The _matais_ meet more formally and spend a great deal of time in their own households, but the young men work together during the day, feast before and after their labours, are present as a serving group at all meetings of the _matais_, and when the day’s work is over, dance and go courting together in the evening. Many of the young men sleep in their friends’ houses, a privilege but grudgingly accorded the more chaperoned girls.

Another factor which qualified men’s relationships is the reciprocal relationship between chiefs and talking chiefs. The holders of these two classes of titles are not necessarily related, although this is often the case as it is considered an advantage to be related to both ranks. But the talking chiefs are major domos, assistants, ambassadors, henchmen, and councillors of their chiefs, and these relationships are often foreshadowed among the young men, the heirs-apparent or the heirs aspirant to the family titles.

Among women there are occasional close alliances between the _taupo_ and the daughter of her father’s principal talking chief. But these friendships always suffer from their temporary character; the _taupo_ will inevitably marry into another village. And it is rather between the wife of the chief and the wife of a talking chief that the institutionalised and life-long friendship exists. The wife of the talking chief acts as assistant, advisor, and mouthpiece for the chief’s wife and in turn counts upon the chief’s wife for support and material help. It is a friendship based upon reciprocal obligations having their origins in the relationship between the women’s husbands, and it is the only women’s friendship which oversteps the limits of the relationship and affinity group. Such friendships based on an accident of marriage and enjoined by the social structure should hardly be classed as voluntary. And within the relationship group itself, friendship is so patterned as to be meaningless. I once asked a young married woman if a neighbour with whom she was always upon the most uncertain and irritated terms was a friend of hers. “Why, of course, her mother’s father’s father, and my father’s mother’s father were brothers.” Friendship based on temperamental congeniality was a most tenuous bond, subject to shifts of interest and to shifts of residence, and a woman came to rely more and more on the associates to whose society and interest blood and marriage entitled her.

Association based upon age as a principle may be said to have ceased for the girls before puberty, due to the exceedingly individual nature of their tasks and the need for secrecy in their amatory adventures. In the case of the boys, greater freedom, a more compelling social structure, and continuous participation in co-operative tasks, brings about an age-group association which lasts through life. This grouping is influenced but not determined by relationship, and distorted by the influence of rank, prospective rank in the case of youth, equal rank but disproportionate age in the case of older men.

VI

THE GIRL IN THE COMMUNITY

The community ignores both boys and girls from birth until they are fifteen or sixteen years of age. Children under this age have no social standing, no recognised group activities, no part in the social life except when they are conscripted for the informal dance floor. But at a year or two beyond puberty—the age varies from village to village so that boys of sixteen will in one place still be classed as small boys, in another as _taule’ale’as_, young men—both boys and girls are grouped into a rough approximation of the adult groupings, given a name for their organisation, and are invested with definite obligations and privileges in the community life.

The organisation of young men, the _Aumaga_, of young girls and the wives of untitled men and widows, the _Aualuma_, and of the wives of titled men, are all echoes of the central political structure of the village, the _Fono_, the organisation of _matais_, men who have the titles of chiefs or of talking chiefs. The _Fono_ is always conceived as a round house in which each title has a special position, must be addressed with certain ceremonial phrases, and given a fixed place in the order of precedence in the serving of the kava. This ideal house has certain fixed divisions, in the right sector sit the high chief and his special assistant chiefs; in the front of the house sit the talking chiefs whose business it is to make the speeches, welcome strangers, accept gifts, preside over the distribution of food and make all plans and arrangements for group activities. Against the posts at the back of the house sit the _matais_ of low rank, and between the posts and at the centre sit those of so little importance that no place is reserved for them. This framework of titles continues from generation to generation and holds a fixed place in the larger ideal structure of the titles of the whole island, the whole archipelago, the whole of Samoa. With some of these titles, which are in the gift of certain families, go certain privileges, a right to a house name, a right to confer a _taupo_ name, a princess title, upon some young girl relative and an heir-apparent title, the _manaia_, on some boy of the household. Besides these prerogatives of the high chiefs, each member of the two classes of _matais_, chiefs and talking chiefs, has certain ceremonial rights. A talking chief must be served his kava with a special gesture, must be addressed with a separate set of verbs and nouns suitable to his rank, must be rewarded by the chiefs in tapa or fine mats for his ceremonially rendered services. The chiefs must be addressed with still another set of nouns and verbs, must be served with a different and more honourable gesture in the kava ceremony, must be furnished with food by their talking chiefs, must be honoured and escorted by the talking chiefs on every important occasion. The name of the village, the ceremonial name of the public square in which great ceremonies are held, the name of the meeting house of the _Fono_, the names of the principal chiefs and talking chiefs, the names of _taupo_ and _manaia_, of the _Aualuma_ and the _Aumaga_, are contained in a set of ceremonial salutations called the _Fa’alupega_, or courtesy titles of a village or district. Visitors on formally entering a village must recite the _Fa’alupega_ as their initial courtesy to their hosts.

The _Aumaga_ mirrors this organisation of the older men. Here the young men learn to make speeches, to conduct themselves with gravity and decorum, to serve and drink the kava, to plan and execute group enterprises. When a boy is old enough to enter the _Aumaga_, the head of his household either sends a present of food to the group, announcing the addition of the boy to their number, or takes him to a house where they are meeting and lays down a great kava root as a present. Henceforth the boy is a member of a group which is almost constantly together. Upon them falls all the heavy work of the village and also the greater part of the social intercourse between villages which centres about the young unmarried people. When a visiting village comes, it is the _Aumaga_ which calls in a body upon the visiting _taupo_, taking gifts, dancing and singing for her benefit.

The organisation of the _Aualuma_ is a less formalised version of the _Aumaga_. When a girl is of age, two or three years past puberty, varying with the village practice, her _matai_ will send an offering of food to the house of the chief _taupo_ of the village, thus announcing that he wishes the daughter of his house to be henceforth counted as one of the group of young girls who form her court. But while the _Aumaga_ is centred about the _Fono_, the young men meeting outside or in a separate house, but exactly mirroring the forms and ceremonies of their elders, the _Aualuma_ is centred about the person of the _taupo_, forming a group of maids of honour. They have no organisation as have the _Aumaga_, and furthermore, they do hardly any work. Occasionally the young girls may be called upon to sew thatch or gather paper mulberry; more occasionally they plant and cultivate a paper mulberry crop, but their main function is to be ceremonial helpers for the meetings of the wives of _matais_, and village hostesses in inter-village life. In many parts of Samoa the _Aualuma_ has fallen entirely to pieces and is only remembered in the greeting words that fall from the lips of a stranger. But if the _Aumaga_ should disappear, Samoan village life would have to be entirely reorganised, for upon the ceremonial and actual work of the young and untitled men the whole life of the village depends.

Although the wives of _matais_ have no organisation recognised in the _Fa’alupega_ (courtesy titles), their association is firmer and more important than that of the _Aualuma_. The wives of titled men hold their own formal meetings, taking their status from their husbands, sitting at their husbands’ posts and drinking their husbands’ kava. The wife of the highest chief receives highest honour, the wife of the principal talking chief makes the most important speeches. The women are completely dependent upon their husbands for their status in this village group. Once a man has been given a title, he can never go back to the _Aumaga_. His title may be taken away from him when he is old, or if he is inefficient, but a lower title will be given him that he may sit and drink his kava with his former associates. But the widow or divorced wife of a _matai_ must go back into the _Aualuma_, sit with the young girls outside the house, serve the food and run the errands, entering the women’s _fono_ only as a servant or an entertainer.

The women’s _fonos_ are of two sorts: _fonos_ which precede or follow communal work, sewing the thatch for a guest house, bringing the coral rubble for its floor or weaving fine mats for the dowry of the _taupo_; and ceremonial _fonos_ to welcome visitors from another village. Each of these meetings was designated by its purpose, as a _falelalaga_, a weaving bee, or an _’aiga fiafia tama’ita’i_, ladies’ feast. The women are only recognised socially by the women of a visiting village but the _taupo_ and her court are the centre of the recognition of both men and women in the _malaga_, the traveling party. And these wives of high chiefs have to treat their own _taupo_ with great courtesy and respect, address her as “your highness,” accompany her on journeys, use a separate set of nouns and verbs when speaking to her. Here then is a discrepancy in which the young girls who are kept in strict subjection within their households, outrank their aunts and mothers in the social life between villages. This ceremonial undercutting of the older women’s authority might seriously jeopardise the discipline of the household, if it were not for two considerations. The first is the tenuousness of the girls’ organisation, the fact that within the village their chief _raison d’être_ is to dance attendance upon the older women, who have definite industrial tasks to perform for the village; the second is the emphasis upon the idea of service as the chief duty of the _taupo_. The village princess is also the village servant. It is she who waits upon strangers, spreads their beds and makes their kava, dances when they wish it, and rises from her sleep to serve either the visitors or her own chief. And she is compelled to serve the social needs of the women as well as the men. Do they decide to borrow thatch in another village, they dress their _taupo_ in her best and take her along to decorate the _malaga_. Her marriage is a village matter, planned and carried through by the talking chiefs and their wives who are her counsellors and chaperons. So that the rank of the _taupo_ is really a further daily inroad upon her freedom as an individual, while the incessant chaperonage to which she is subjected and the way in which she is married without regard to her own wishes are a complete denial of her personality. And similarly, the slighter prestige of her untitled sisters, whose chief group activity is waiting upon their elders, has even less real significance in the daily life of the village.

With the exception of the _taupo_, the assumption of whose title is the occasion of a great festival and enormous distribution of property by her chief to the talking chiefs who must hereafter support and confirm her rank, a Samoan girl of good family has two ways of making her début. The first, the formal entry into the _Aualuma_ is often neglected and is more a formal fee to the community than a recognition of the girl herself. The second way is to go upon a _malaga_, a formal travelling party. She may go as a near relative of the _taupo_ in which case she will be caught up in a whirl of entertainment with which the young men of the host village surround their guests; or she may travel as the only girl in a small travelling party in which case she will be treated as a _taupo_. (All social occasions demand the presence of a _taupo_, a _manaia_, and a talking chief; and if individuals actually holding these titles are not present, some one else has to play the rôle.) Thus it is in inter-village life, either as a member of the _Aualuma_ who call upon and dance for the _manaia_ of the visiting _malaga_, or as a visiting girl in a strange village, that the unmarried Samoan girl is honoured and recognised by her community.

But these are exceptional occasions. A _malaga_ may come only once a year, especially in Manu’a which numbers only seven villages in the whole archipelago. And in the daily life of the village, at crises, births, deaths, marriages, the unmarried girls have no ceremonial part to play. They are simply included with the “women of the household” whose duty it is to prepare the layette for the new baby, or carry stones to strew on the new grave. It is almost as if the community by its excessive recognition of the girl as a _taupo_ or member of the _Aualuma_, considered itself exonerated from paying any more attention to her.

This attitude is fostered by the scarcity of taboos. In many parts of Polynesia, all women, and especially menstruating women, are considered contaminating and dangerous. A continuous rigorous social supervision is necessary, for a society can no more afford to ignore its most dangerous members than it can afford to neglect its most valuable. But in Samoa a girl’s power of doing harm is very limited. She cannot make _tafolo_, a breadfruit pudding usually made by the young men in any case, nor make the kava while she is menstruating. But she need retire to no special house; she need not eat alone; there is no contamination in her touch or look. In common with the young men and the older women, a girl gives a wide berth to a place where chiefs are engaged in formal work, unless she has special business there. It is not the presence of a woman which is interdicted but the uncalled-for intrusion of any one of either sex. No woman can be officially present at a gathering of chiefs unless she is _taupo_ making the kava, but any woman may bring her husband his pipe or come to deliver a message, so long as her presence need not be recognised. The only place where a woman’s femininity is in itself a real source of danger is in the matter of fishing canoes and fishing tackle which she is forbidden to touch upon pain of spoiling the fishing. But the enforcement of this prohibition is in the hands of individual fishermen in whose houses the fishing equipment is kept.

Within the relationship group matters are entirely different. Here women are very specifically recognised. The oldest female progenitor of the line, that is, the sister of the last holder of the title, or his predecessor’s sister, has special rights over the distribution of the dowry which comes into the household. She holds the veto in the selling of land and other important family matters. Her curse is the most dreadful a man can incur for she has the power to “cut the line” and make the name extinct. If a man falls ill, it is his sister who must first take the formal oath that she has wished him no harm, as anger in her heart is most potent for evil. When a man dies, it is his paternal aunt or his sister who prepares the body for burial, anointing it with turmeric and rubbing it with oil, and it is she who sits beside the body, fanning away the flies, and keeps the fan in her possession ever after. And, in the more ordinary affairs of the household, in the economic arrangements between relatives, in disputes over property or in family feuds, the women play as active a part as the men.

The girl and woman repays the general social negligence which she receives with a corresponding insouciance. She treats the lore of the village, the genealogies of the titles, the origin myths and local tales, the intricacies of the social organisation with supreme indifference. It is an exceptional girl who can give her great-grandfather’s name, the exceptional boy who cannot give his genealogy in traditional form for several generations. While the boy of sixteen or seventeen is eagerly trying to master the esoteric allusiveness of the talking chief whose style he most admires, the girl of the same age learns the minimum of etiquette. Yet this is in no wise due to lack of ability. The _taupo_ must have a meticulous knowledge, not only of the social arrangements of her own village, but also of those of neighbouring villages. She must serve visitors in proper form and with no hesitation after the talking chief has chanted their titles and the names of their kava cups. Should she take the wrong post which is the prerogative of another _taupo_ who outranks her, her hair will be soundly pulled by her rival’s female attendants. She learns the intricacies of the social organisation as well as her brother does. Still more notable is the case of the wife of a talking chief. Whether she is chosen for her docility by a man who has already assumed his title, or whether, as is often the case, she marries some boy of her acquaintance who later is made a talking chief, the _tausi_, wife of a talking chief, is quite equal to the occasion. In the meetings of women she must be a master of etiquette and the native rules of order, she must interlard her speeches with a wealth of unintelligible traditional material and rich allusiveness, she must preserve the same even voice, the same lofty demeanour, as her husband. And ultimately, the wife of an important talking chief must qualify as a teacher as well as a performer, for it is her duty to train the _taupo_. But unless the community thus recognises her existence, and makes formal demand upon her time and ability, a woman gives to it a bare minimum of her attention.

In like manner, women are not dealt with in the primitive penal code. A man who commits adultery with a chief’s wife was beaten and banished, sometimes even drowned by the outraged community, but the woman was only cast out by her husband. The _taupo_ who was found not to be a virgin was simply beaten by her female relatives. To-day if evil befalls the village, and it is attributed to some unconfessed sin on the part of a member of the community, the _Fono_ and the _Aumaga_ are convened and confession is enjoined upon any one who may have evil upon his conscience, but no such demand is made upon the _Aualuma_ or the wives of the _matais_. This is in striking contrast to the family confessional where the sister is called upon first.

In matters of work the village makes a few precise demands. It is the women’s work to cultivate the sugar cane and sew the thatch for the roof of the guest house, to weave the palm leaf blinds, and bring the coral rubble for the floor. When the girls have a paper mulberry plantation, the _Aumaga_ occasionally help them in the work, the girls in turn making a feast for the boys, turning the whole affair into an industrious picnic. But between men’s formal work and women’s formal work there is a rigid division. Women do not enter into house-building or boat-building activities, nor go out in fishing canoes, nor may men enter the formal weaving house or the house where women are making tapa in a group. If the women’s work makes it necessary for them to cross the village, as is the case when rubble is brought up from the seashore to make the floor of the guest house, the men entirely disappear, either gathering in some remote house, or going away to the bush or to another village. But this avoidance is only for large formal occasions. If her husband is building the family a new cook-house, a woman may make tapa two feet away, while a chief may sit and placidly braid cinet while his wife weaves a fine mat at his elbow.

So, although unlike her husband and brothers a woman spends most of her time within the narrower circle of her household and her relationship group, when she does participate in community affairs she is treated with the punctilio which marks all phases of Samoan social life. The better part of her attention and interest is focused on a smaller group, cast in a more personal mode. For this reason, it is impossible to evaluate accurately the difference in innate social drive between men and women in Samoa. In those social spheres where women have been given an opportunity, they take their place with as much ability as the men. The wives of the talking chiefs in fact exhibit even greater adaptability than their husbands. The talking chiefs are especially chosen for their oratorical and intellectual abilities, whereas the women have a task thrust upon them at their marriage requiring great oratorical skill, a fertile imagination, tact, and a facile memory.

VII

FORMAL SEX RELATIONS

The first attitude which a little girl learns towards boys is one of avoidance and antagonism. She learns to observe the brother and sister taboo towards the boys of her relationship group and household, and together with the other small girls of her age group she treats all other small boys as enemies elect. After a little girl is eight or nine years of age she has learned never to approach a group of older boys. This feeling of antagonism towards younger boys and shamed avoidance of older ones continues up to the age of thirteen or fourteen, to the group of girls who are just reaching puberty and the group of boys who have just been circumcised. These children are growing away from the age-group life and the age-group antagonisms. They are not yet actively sex-conscious. And it is at this time that relationships between the sexes are least emotionally charged. Not until she is an old married woman with several children will the Samoan girl again regard the opposite sex so quietly. When these adolescent children gather together there is a good-natured banter, a minimum of embarrassment, a great deal of random teasing which usually takes the form of accusing some little girl of a consuming passion for a decrepit old man of eighty, or some small boy of being the father of a buxom matron’s eighth child. Occasionally the banter takes the form of attributing affection between two age mates and is gaily and indignantly repudiated by both. Children at this age meet at informal _siva_ parties, on the outskirts of more formal occasions, at community reef fishings (when many yards of reef have been enclosed to make a great fish trap) and on torch-fishing excursions. Good-natured tussling and banter and co-operation in common activities are the keynotes of these occasions. But unfortunately these contacts are neither frequent nor sufficiently prolonged to teach the girls co-operation or to give either boys or girls any real appreciation of personality in members of the opposite sex.

Two or three years later this will all be changed. The fact that little girls no longer belong to age groups makes the individual’s defection less noticeable. The boy who begins to take an active interest in girls is also seen less in a gang and spends more time with one close companion. Girls have lost all of their nonchalance. They giggle, blush, bridle, run away. Boys become shy, embarrassed, taciturn, and avoid the society of girls in the daytime and on the brilliant moonlit nights for which they accuse the girls of having an exhibitionistic preference. Friendships fall more strictly within the relationship group. The boy’s need for a trusted confidante is stronger than that of the girl, for only the most adroit and hardened Don Juans do their own courting. There are occasions, of course, when two youngsters just past adolescence, fearful of ridicule, even from their nearest friends and relatives, will slip away alone into the bush. More frequently still an older man, a widower or a divorced man, will be a girl’s first lover. And here there is no need for an ambassador. The older man is neither shy nor frightened, and furthermore there is no one whom he can trust as an intermediary; a younger man would betray him, an older man would not take his amours seriously. But the first spontaneous experiment of adolescent children and the amorous excursions of the older men among the young girls of the village are variants on the edge of the recognised types of relationships; so also is the first experience of a young boy with an older woman. But both of these are exceedingly frequent occurrences, so that the success of an amatory experience is seldom jeopardised by double ignorance. Nevertheless, all of these occasions are outside the recognised forms into which sex relations fall. The little boy and girl are branded by their companions as guilty of _tautala lai titi_ (presuming above their ages) as is the boy who loves or aspires to love an older woman, while the idea of an older man pursuing a young girl appeals strongly to their sense of humour; or if the girl is very young and naïve, to their sense of unfitness. “She is too young, too young yet. He is too old,” they will say, and the whole weight of vigorous disapproval fell upon a _matai_ who was known to be the father of the child of Lotu, the sixteen-year-old feeble-minded girl on Olesega. Discrepancy in age or experience always strikes them as comic or pathetic according to the degree. The theoretical punishment which is meted out to a disobedient and runaway daughter is to marry her to a very old man, and I have heard a nine-year-old giggle contemptuously over her mother’s preference for a seventeen-year-old boy. Worst among these unpatterned deviations is that of the man who makes love to some young and dependent woman of his household, his adopted child or his wife’s younger sister. The cry of incest is raised against him and sometimes feeling runs so high that he has to leave the group.

Besides formal marriage there are only two types of sex relations which receive any formal recognition from the community—love affairs between unmarried young people (this includes the widowed) who are very nearly of the same age, whether leading to marriage or merely a passing diversion; and adultery.

Between the unmarried there are three forms of relationship: the clandestine encounter, “under the palm trees,” the published elopement, _Avaga_, and the ceremonious courtship in which the boy “sits before the girl”; and on the edge of these, the curious form of surreptitious rape, called _moetotolo_, sleep crawling, resorted to by youths who find favour in no maiden’s eyes.

In these three relationships, the boy requires a confidant and ambassador whom he calls a _soa_. Where boys are close companions, this relationship may extend over many love affairs, or it may be a temporary one, terminating with the particular love affair. The _soa_ follows the pattern of the talking chief who makes material demands upon his chief in return for the immaterial services which he renders him. If marriage results from his ambassadorship, he receives a specially fine present from the bridegroom. The choice of a _soa_ presents many difficulties. If the lover chooses a steady, reliable boy, some slightly younger relative devoted to his interests, a boy unambitious in affairs of the heart, very likely the ambassador will bungle the whole affair through inexperience and lack of tact. But if he chooses a handsome and expert wooer who knows just how “to speak softly and walk gently,” then as likely as not the girl will prefer the second to the principal. This difficulty is occasionally anticipated by employing two or three _soas_ and setting them to spy on each other. But such a lack of trust is likely to inspire a similar attitude in the agents, and as one overcautious and disappointed lover told me ruefully, “I had five _soas_, one was true and four were false.”

Among possible _soas_ there are two preferences, a brother or a girl. A brother is by definition loyal, while a girl is far more skilful for “a boy can only approach a girl in the evening, or when no one is by, but a girl can go with her all day long, walk with her and lie on the mat by her, eat off the same platter, and whisper between mouthfuls the name of the boy, speaking ever of him, how good he is, how gentle and how true, how worthy of love. Yes, best of all is the _soafafine_, the woman ambassador.” But the difficulties of obtaining a _soafafine_ are great. A boy may not choose from his own female relatives. The taboo forbids him ever to mention such matters in their presence. It is only by good chance that his brother’s sweetheart may be a relative of the girl upon whom he has set his heart; or some other piece of good fortune may throw him into contact with a girl or woman who will act in his interests. The most violent antagonisms in the young people’s groups are not between ex-lovers, arise not from the venom of the deserted nor the smarting pride of the jilted, but occur between the boy and the _soa_ who has betrayed him, or a lover and the friend of his beloved who has in any way blocked his suit.

In the strictly clandestine love affair the lover never presents himself at the house of his beloved. His _soa_ may go there in a group or upon some trumped-up errand, or he also may avoid the house and find opportunities to speak to the girl while she is fishing or going to and from the plantation. It is his task to sing his friend’s praise, counteract the girl’s fears and objections, and finally appoint a rendezvous. These affairs are usually of short duration and both boy and girl may be carrying on several at once. One of the recognised causes of a quarrel is the resentment of the first lover against his successor of the same night, “for the boy who came later will mock him.” These clandestine lovers make their rendezvous on the outskirts of the village. “Under the palm trees” is the conventionalised designation of this type of intrigue. Very often three or four couples will have a common rendezvous, when either the boys or the girls are relatives who are friends. Should the girl ever grow faint or dizzy, it is the boy’s part to climb the nearest palm and fetch down a fresh cocoanut to pour on her face in lieu of _eau de cologne_. In native theory, barrenness is the punishment of promiscuity; and, _vice versa_, only persistent monogamy is rewarded by conception. When a pair of clandestine experimenters whose rank is so low that their marriages are not of any great economic importance become genuinely attached to each other and maintain the relationship over several months, marriage often follows. And native sophistication distinguishes between the adept lover whose adventures are many and of short duration and the less skilled man who can find no better proof of his virility than a long affair ending in conception.

Often the girl is afraid to venture out into the night, infested with ghosts and devils, ghosts that strangle one, ghosts from far-away villages who come in canoes to kidnap the girls of the village, ghosts who leap upon the back and may not be shaken off. Or she may feel that it is wiser to remain at home, and if necessary, attest her presence vocally. In this case the lover braves the house; taking off his _lavalava_, he greases his body thoroughly with cocoanut oil so that he can slip through the fingers of pursuers and leave no trace, and stealthily raises the blinds and slips into the house. The prevalence of this practice gives point to the familiar incident in Polynesian folk tales of the ill fortune that falls the luckless hero who “sleeps until morning, until the rising sun reveals his presence to the other inmates of the house.” As perhaps a dozen or more people and several dogs are sleeping in the house, a due regard for silence is sufficient precaution. But it is this habit of domestic rendezvous which lends itself to the peculiar abuse of the _moetotolo_, or sleep crawler.

The _moetotolo_ is the only sex activity which presents a definitely abnormal picture. Ever since the first contact with white civilisation, rape, in the form of violent assault, has occurred occasionally in Samoa. It is far less congenial, however, to the Samoan attitude than _moetotolo_, in which a man stealthily appropriates the favours which are meant for another. The need for guarding against discovery makes conversation impossible, and the sleep crawler relies upon the girl’s expecting a lover or the chance that she will indiscriminately accept any comer. If the girl suspects and resents him, she raises a great outcry and the whole household gives chase. Catching a _moetotolo_ is counted great sport, and the women, who feel their safety endangered, are even more active in pursuit than the men. One luckless youth in Lumā neglected to remove his _lavalava_. The girl discovered him and her sister succeeded in biting a piece out of his _lavalava_ before he escaped. This she proudly exhibited the next day. As the boy had been too dull to destroy his _lavalava_, the evidence against him was circumstantial and he was the laughing stock of the village; the children wrote a dance song about it and sang it after him wherever he went. The _moetotolo_ problem is complicated by the possibility that a boy of the household may be the offender and may take refuge in the hue and cry following the discovery. It also provides the girl with an excellent alibi, since she has only to call out “_moetotolo_” in case her lover is discovered. “To the family and the village that may be a _moetotolo_, but it is not so in the hearts of the girl and the boy.”

Two motives are given for this unsavoury activity, anger and failure in love. The Samoan girl who plays the coquette does so at her peril. “She will say, ‘Yes, I will meet you to-night by that old cocoanut tree just beside the devilfish stone when the moon goes down.’ And the boy will wait and wait and wait all night long. It will grow very dark; lizards will drop on his head; the ghost boats will come into the channel. He will be very much afraid. But he will wait there until dawn, until his hair is wet with dew and his heart is very angry and still she does not come. Then in revenge he will attempt a _moetotolo_. Especially will he do so if he hears that she has met another that night.” The other set explanation is that a particular boy cannot win a sweetheart by any legitimate means, and there is no form of prostitution, except guest prostitution in Samoa. As some of the boys who were notorious _moetotolos_ were among the most charming and good-looking youths of the village, this is a little hard to understand. Apparently, these youths, frowned upon in one or two tentative courtships, inflamed by the loudly proclaimed success of their fellows and the taunts against their own inexperience, cast established wooing procedure to the winds and attempt a _moetotolo_. And once caught, once branded, no girl will ever pay any attention to them again. They must wait until as older men, with position and title to offer, they can choose between some weary and bedraggled wanton or the unwilling young daughter of ambitious and selfish parents. But years will intervene before this is possible, and shut out from the amours in which his companions are engaging, a boy makes one attempt after another, sometimes successfully, sometimes only to be caught and beaten, mocked by the village, and always digging the pit deeper under his feet. Often partially satisfactory solutions are relationships with men. There was one such pair in the village, a notorious _moetotolo_, and a serious-minded youth who wished to keep his heart free for political intrigue. The _moetotolo_ therefore complicates and adds zest to the surreptitious love-making which is conducted at home, while the danger of being missed, the undesirability of chance encounters abroad, rain and the fear of ghosts, complicate “love under the palm trees.”

Between these strictly _sub rosa_ affairs and a final offer of marriage there is an intermediate form of courtship in which the girl is called upon by the boy. As this is regarded as a tentative move towards matrimony, both relationship groups must be more or less favourably inclined towards the union. With his _soa_ at his side and provided with a basket of fish, an octopus or so, or a chicken, the suitor presents himself at the girl’s home before the late evening meal. If his gift is accepted, it is a sign that the family of the girl are willing for him to pay his addresses to her. He is formally welcomed by the _matai_, sits with reverently bowed head throughout the evening prayer, and then he and his _soa_ stay for supper. But the suitor does not approach his beloved. They say: “If you wish to know who is really the lover, look then not at the boy who sits by her side, looks boldly into her eyes and twists the flowers in her necklace around his fingers or steals the hibiscus flower from her hair that he may wear it behind his ear. Do not think it is he who whispers softly in her ear, or says to her, ‘Sweetheart, wait for me to-night. After the moon has set, I will come to you,’ or who teases her by saying she has many lovers. Look instead at the boy who sits afar off, who sits with bent head and takes no part in the joking. And you will see that his eyes are always turned softly on the girl. Always he watches her and never does he miss a movement of her lips. Perhaps she will wink at him, perhaps she will raise her eyebrows, perhaps she will make a sign with her hand. He must always be wakeful and watching or he will miss it.” The _soa_ meanwhile pays the girl elaborate and ostentatious court and in undertones pleads the cause of his friend. After dinner, the centre of the house is accorded the young people to play cards, sing or merely sit about, exchanging a series of broad pleasantries. This type of courtship varies from occasional calls to daily attendance. The food gift need not accompany each visit, but is as essential at the initial call as is an introduction in the West. The way of such declared lovers is hard. The girl does not wish to marry, nor to curtail her amours in deference to a definite betrothal. Possibly she may also dislike her suitor, while he in turn may be the victim of family ambition. Now that the whole village knows him for her suitor, the girl gratifies her vanity by avoidance, by perverseness. He comes in the evening, she has gone to another house; he follows her there, she immediately returns home. When such courtship ripens into an accepted proposal of marriage, the boy often goes to sleep in the house of his intended bride and often the union is surreptitiously consummated. Ceremonial marriage is deferred until such time as the boy’s family have planted or collected enough food and other property and the girl’s family have gotten together a suitable dowry of tapa and mats.

In such manner are conducted the love affairs of the average young people of the same village, and of the plebeian young people of neighbouring villages. From this free and easy experimentation, the _taupo_ is excepted. Virginity is a legal requirement for her. At her marriage, in front of all the people, in a house brilliantly lit, the talking chief of the bridegroom will take the tokens of her virginity.[3] In former days should she prove not to be a virgin, her female relatives fell upon and beat her with stones, disfiguring and sometimes fatally injuring the girl who had shamed their house. The public ordeal sometimes prostrated the girl for as much as a week, although ordinarily a girl recovers from first intercourse in two or three hours, and women seldom lie abed more than a few hours after childbirth. Although this virginity-testing ceremony was theoretically observed at weddings of people of all ranks, it was simply ignored if the boy knew that it was an idle form, and “a wise girl who is not a virgin will tell the talking chief of her husband, so that she be not shamed before all the people.”

[3] This custom is now forbidden by law, but is only gradually dying
out.

The attitude towards virginity is a curious one. Christianity has, of course, introduced a moral premium on chastity. The Samoans regard this attitude with reverent but complete scepticism and the concept of celibacy is absolutely meaningless to them. But virginity definitely adds to a girl’s attractiveness, the wooing of a virgin is considered far more of a feat than the conquest of a more experienced heart, and a really successful Don Juan turns most of his attention to their seduction. One youth who at twenty-four married a girl who was still a virgin was the laughing stock of the village over his freely related trepidation which revealed the fact that at twenty-four, although he had had many love affairs, he had never before won the favours of a virgin.

The bridegroom, his relatives and the bride and her relatives all receive prestige if she proves to be a virgin, so that the girl of rank who might wish to forestall this painful public ceremony is thwarted not only by the anxious chaperonage of her relatives but by the boy’s eagerness for prestige. One young Lothario eloped to his father’s house with a girl of high rank from another village and refused to live with her because, said he, “I thought maybe I would marry that girl and there would be a big _malaga_ and a big ceremony and I would wait and get the credit for marrying a virgin. But the next day her father came and said that she could not marry me, and she cried very much. So I said to her, ‘Well, there is no use now to wait any longer. Now we will run away into the bush.’” It is conceivable that the girl would often trade the temporary prestige for an escape from the public ordeal, but in proportion as his ambitions were honourable, the boy would frustrate her efforts.

Just as the clandestine and casual “love under the palm trees” is the pattern irregularity for those of humble birth, so the elopement has its archetype in the love affairs of the _taupo_, and the other chiefs’ daughters. These girls of noble birth are carefully guarded; not for them are secret trysts at night or stolen meetings in the day time. Where parents of lower rank complacently ignore their daughters’ experiments, the high chief guards his daughter’s virginity as he guards the honour of his name, his precedence in the kava ceremony or any other prerogative of his high degree. Some old woman of the household is told off to be the girl’s constant companion and duenna. The _taupo_ may not visit in other houses in the village, or leave the house alone at night. When she sleeps, an older woman sleeps by her side. Never may she go to another village unchaperoned. In her own village she goes soberly about her tasks, bathing in the sea, working in the plantation, safe under the jealous guardianship of the women of her own village. She runs little risk from the _moetotolo_, for one who outraged the _taupo_ of his village would formerly have been beaten to death, and now would have to flee from the village. The prestige of the village is inextricably bound up with the high repute of the _taupo_ and few young men in the village would dare to be her lovers. Marriage to them is out of the question, and their companions would revile them as traitors rather than envy them such doubtful distinction. Occasionally a youth of very high rank in the same village will risk an elopement, but even this is a rare occurrence. For tradition says that the _taupo_ must marry outside her village, marry a high chief or a _manaia_ of another village. Such a marriage is an occasion for great festivities and solemn ceremony. The chief and all of his talking chiefs must come to propose for her hand, come in person bringing gifts for her talking chiefs. If the talking chiefs of the girl are satisfied that this is a lucrative and desirable match, and the family are satisfied with the rank and appearance of the suitor, the marriage is agreed upon. Little attention is paid to the opinion of the girl. So fixed is the idea that the marriage of the _taupo_ is the affair of the talking chiefs that Europeanised natives on the main island, refuse to make their daughters _taupos_ because the missionaries say a girl should make her own choice, and once she is a _taupo_, they regard the matter as inevitably taken out of their hands. After the betrothal is agreed upon the bridegroom returns to his village to collect food and property for the wedding. His village sets aside a piece of land which is called the “Place of the Lady” and is her property and the property of her children forever, and on this land they build a house for the bride. Meanwhile, the bridegroom has left behind him in the house of the bride, a talking chief, the counterpart of the humbler _soa_. This is one of the talking chief’s best opportunities to acquire wealth. He stays as the emissary of his chief, to watch over his future bride. He works for the bride’s family and each week the _matai_ of the bride must reward him with a handsome present. As an affianced wife of a chief, more and more circumspect conduct is enjoined upon the girl. Did she formerly joke with the boys of the village, she must joke no longer, or the talking chief, on the watch for any lapse from high decorum, will go home to his chief and report that his bride is unworthy of such honour. This custom is particularly susceptible to second thought on the part of either side. Does the bridegroom repent of the bargain, he bribes his talking chief (who is usually a young man, not one of the important talking chiefs who will benefit greatly by the marriage itself) to be oversensitive to the behaviour of the bride or the treatment he receives in the bride’s family. And this is the time in which the bride will elope, if her affianced husband is too unacceptable. For while no boy of her own village will risk her dangerous favours, a boy from another village will enormously enhance his prestige if he elopes with the _taupo_ of a rival community. Once she has eloped, the projected alliance is of course broken off, although her angry parents may refuse to sanction her marriage with her lover and marry her for punishment to some old man.

So great is the prestige won by the village, one of whose young men succeeds in eloping with a _taupo_, that often the whole effort of a _malaga_ is concentrated upon abducting the _taupo_, whose virginity will be respected in direct ratio to the chances of her family and village consenting to ratify the marriage. As the abductor is often of high rank, the village often ruefully accepts the compromise.